There’s Now A Tinder For Friendships

If you like your platonic relationships as gamified as your romantic ones, there's now an app for that. Hey! VINA launched yesterday in San Francisco, and it promises to connect women with other women seeking new, meaningful female friendships using a Tinder-like interface — swiping and all. In the same vein as Tinder, the app uses your existing network of Facebook friends to set up your account. However, rather than rely solely on your location and whatever you've Liked on Facebook to find matches for you, Hey! VINA also requires that you complete a brief personality questionnaire. This is where you provide info that a potential friend might want to know: Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you prefer meeting up for coffee or wine? Users can flesh out their profiles by listing favorite activities or skills they'd like to learn, or taking personality quizzes ("Who’s your sitcom BFF?"), Fast Company reports. From there, users can swipe through a selection of women in their area whose questionnaire answers or interests align with their own. The app will send an introductory message to both people when they match — because, in an app for friendships, how do people know who's supposed to make the first move? Of course, Hey! VINA shouldn't replace IRL interactions. It's a networking app made for first impressions, and its site actually encourages users to get off their phones and meet up with their matches face-to-face. But the app itself attempts to fix an oft-bemoaned problem that many adults encounter: Outside of work, where can you make friends? Can it be done? All evidence points to yes, and maybe this app will make it easier. The app is technically only available in San Francisco, but you can download it now and get on the waiting list no matter where you are in the U.S.