Polyamory in the News: Tinder Social now enables group swipes, and more poly tech news

Two more poly-tech stories! Mashable discovers that Google Calendar is our secret sauce (late to the party), and the BBC reports on Tinder rolling out a new feature allowing groups of two, three, or four to look for others.

Why Google accidentally became the best thing to happen to polyamory

Vicky Leta / Mashable

By Ariel Bogle

Polyamory, where people have more than one romantic partner with everyone's knowledge and consent, has particularly benefited from platforms like Google Calendar and Google Keep....

There isn't a great deal of technology purpose-built to support polyamory or new types of relationships. There is the Poly Life app, but it's limited by the fact it's only available on iOS. Apps like Tinder, while they do help people find partners, don't support relationships that are already formed. [It does now; see below.]

This is where Google Calendar excels, allowing partners to work out their relationships down to the minute details. You can share all events with a partner, for example, or simply allow them to see whether you're busy or free. Alternatively, you could build an entirely separate calendar together.

Simon Hildebrandt, 37, a web developer in Sydney, and his partner have opted for full calendar sharing. "It's very much a personal choice with each person. It's something that we often discuss with people in the poly community — how open you are with multiple partners," he told Mashable Australia.

...For one 29-year-old student in western Sydney who preferred not to be named, the note-keeping app Google Keep has been particularly helpful.

On the app, which is synced to both their smartphones, she and her boyfriend keep a list of everything they've agreed to and issues they'd like to discuss. "It's mostly for agreements of what we'd like to do in our relationship," she said.

...For her, using Google Calendar is also a good way to ensure you have time for yourself, something she finds vital when negotiating with multiple partners.

"Everyone is very, very concerned about making time for everyone," she explained....

In many ways, Google Calendar seems purpose-built for polyamory. Unlike Facebook, it permits people to use multiple profiles, allowing an important delineation between work life and personal life....

A new kind of openness

For Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow (yes, it's his name), 32, a scientist in Sydney, the benefit of Google Calendar is its openness.

According to Meow, there's two broad streams of polyamory: "Kitchen table poly" and "parallel poly."

"Kitchen table poly is what we're going for, where we all sit down and talk about everything and we all make friends," he explained. "Parallel poly is more like, I would have individual relationships that don't have any relation to each other."

His arrangement is of the "kitchen table" type and he gives all his partners access to his calendar, allowing them all to check in easily and find time to meet.

"The trust is good. My partner can say 'oh, why isn't he home' and she can look at my calendar," he said. "It's a way for us to communicate without having to tell each other what we're doing all the time."

..."To some extent, I feel like the technology has enabled this lifestyle, which previously was only available to a really hardcore crowd who were willing to do a lot of hard work in terms of managing people's feelings," Hildebrandt said.

For one computer scientist in Sydney who did not want to be named, 25, it also helps alleviate the heavy lifting. "A lot of it is really stuff that's useful in mono relationships too, it's just that the organisational load is higher when you're poly."...

The whole article (July 19, 2016). Are we not geeks?

---------------------------

Tinder's new group mode, Tinder Social, isn't supposed to be about sex. (Tinder is not about sex. Right.) But it can be used that way, as the BBC reported on Thursday:

Tinder launches group dates feature

Tinder is launching a new feature that allows groups of friends to discover each other and meet up.

Until now, the app had focused on offering singles a way to find dates.

Its chief told the BBC that the move marked the "first step that we're taking to make Tinder more social and a little broader when it comes to the types of connections we want to enable".

But one expert said Tinder Social might be seen as a group sex feature.

"Tinder is seen by many as being a hook-up site," commented Ben Wood from the CCS Insight consultancy.

"So, it needs to be careful. By expanding in this direction, rather than becoming a more interesting social meeting service, it could be perceived as an orgy app."...

An earlier version of Tinder Social was tested earlier this year in Australia. It is now being rolled out in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Tinder Social is free to use but must be unlocked within the app.

To use it, users must first opt in to the feature within the existing app. Then they need to:

      – select who they are going out with; other members of the group must also be signed up to the service
      – say where they are going
      – say what they plan to do

Users can then see other groups. If a member from both sides "swipes right" to pick the other, members can then make the necessary arrangements via a group chat feature.

As a security measure, users may leave a group at any time. Furthermore, the next day, the group chat expires, and individual members need to like each other to stay in contact, assuming they have not already swapped other contact details.