How Grindr Is Reinventing Itself as More Than Just a Dating App

Into, its digital magazine, is helping build an online LGBTQ community

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In May 2017, the social networking and hookup app Grindr contacted Zach Stafford with a bold proposition: become the company’s first editor in chief.

Stafford, a veteran journalist who had worked at the Guardian and at the magazine Out, said he was immediately intrigued at the idea of building a queer publication from the ground up.

“What Grindr realized was that there was a really big appetite among LGBT consumers,” Stafford said. “They called me and floated this idea: Could we reasonably create a magazine that’s digital that could make queer people see themselves in new ways and feel like their stories were being told?”

A year in, Stafford continues to helm Into, an original content shop at Grindr that now has more than a dozen staffers and publishes about 20 pieces of content a day on Intomore.com,

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This story first appeared in the September 3, 2018, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.