“We really push for the physical aspect of getting off your phone and out and about,” Martin says. And it’s paying off. According to data shared with WIRED, the US cities that see the most action—that is, the horniest cities—are Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta. (These figures are based on the highest number of sessions within a geographic area.) London saw a 475 percent growth in usership from 2022 to 2023, and Vancouver is Sniffies’ most discreet city. Perhaps most surprisingly, the app experienced a 290 percent increase of straight-identifying users in 2023.
Green says he uses the app twice a week “if I’m actually going to meet up with somebody, but I will go on there and scroll every so often.” (His last name was changed to protect his privacy.) According to the company, the average Sniffies user identifies as towards (25.6 percent of total users), has a penis size of 6.67 inches, prefers to cruise a park, restroom, or a residential tower of some sort, is into edging and cum play, and is most likely having sex on Mondays. Since joining, Green describes his time on Sniffies as “kinda calm,” compared to his friends. The encounters he has had, he says, have been “from apartment to apartment, nothing outside or in the gym.”
Cruising has occurred for centuries, and an app like BKDR is a “direct, no-nonsense product that allows people to get on and get off in a very literal sense,” says CEO Eric Silverberg. BKDR is another rising player among the burgeoning world of queer cruising apps. Silverberg says users on Scruff and Jack’d—sister apps to BKDR (all three are owned by Perry Street Software)—were articulating “a clear desire for a platform that prioritized sexual expression and sex.”
The demand certainly seems to be there—and the potential for such apps is only growing. Although BKDR launched less than a year ago, it has already expanded to Latin America and Europe. “It’s early days for us, but over 1 million people have visited BKDR in the past month,” Silverberg tells me, adding, “We think it will be the biggest product in our portfolio.”
Growth brings its own set of problems, however. A recent Reddit post detailed how a more conservative kind of user now inhabits Sniffies. “Now that (the app) is getting really popular in some places there are a ton of guys on the map in my area and most of them are just there to waste your time. I’m looking for (a) hookup right now,” user @curiousFriend2 wrote. “Sniffies used to cater to lowkey guys and even some cumdumps and the more sleezy side, but now the Grindr crowd (has) come in and a lot of them are not even into those things and publicly announce it.”
Sniffies took off following the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, and Martin believes the isolation of the pandemic led to users being more open-minded about cruising. “People’s mindset changed to realize that they want to take advantage of the moment,” he says.
That’s mainly what Green is after most days, though he says he tries not to use Sniffies as a crutch. “It’s cool to go on during my downtime—late at night or early in the morning,” he says, “because I actually have stuff to do, and I don’t want to throw my day looking for dudes,” he says, before adding that “if you’re solely looking for fun,” it’s unbeatable.
