HER Lesbian Dating and Social App Launches New Site for Phoenix

After thousands of requests from gay, bisexual and non-binary women in Phoenix and Tuscon, CEO and Founder Robyn Exton has opened a portal of her meet-up site HER (formerly known as DAATCH) in Arizona. The site now has portals in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Portland and Miami.

"I want to play a wider role in women meeting each other," said Exton. "It's less about dating and more about connecting a community of queer women."

Exton originally began the site in London in 2013, then moved it to first-tier cities in the U.S. Rather than make it a "Grindr for her" as some have tagged it, Exton designed the site based on what women are really looking for, rather than just rebranding a male-oriented app. With 500,000 matches made, it's clearly working.

"HER is about creating a space where lesbian, bi, queer, curious, flexisexual, pansexual and not-so-straight women can meet and find out what's going on in their lesbian world," said Exton. "Women aren't looking for a 'Hot or Not' -- they want to chat and meet up, make friends, meet girlfriends, find events. HER is a complete lesbian community and we can't wait to bring it to Arizona."

Access to the website is given via private Facebook sign-ins that verify that the user is female-identified. Registered users now see profiles one at a time, and they can like any that interest them. If they've liked you back, you can start chatting.

After raising a million dollars from investors such as Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, YC's Garry Tan and Michael Birch, Exton moved the operation to San Francisco and changed the name from DAATCH to HER.

"Everyone actually thought it stood for 'dykes' and 'snatch,' which it didn't," said Exton. "The original meaning was supposed to be 'date catch,' but the site isn't just about dating anymore. I think half of us get insight into our community from such diversity of women, age groups and interests, but the one thing that connects us is we are all 'her' and we all want to meet 'her.'"

The look of the site was inspired by Pinterest, and features large images and big Pinterest-style boards for user profiles. The site also features a new social community section featuring events happening in your community, from lesbian exhibitions, to parties and festivals. Content is divided locally and internationally, and you can chat with anyone.

HER also gives you the news you care about, with daily lesbian articles written by journalists and users. Finally, you can enjoy a dose of lesbian pop culture with witty comments from users. The change has been so successful that Exton is just focusing on creating portals for cities across the U.S., to add to the existing sites here, in the UK and Ireland.

"The most important thing right now is growth," said Exton. "Before the end of the year, I want this to be available across the whole country, then Canada and Australia."

Upcoming portals for HER include Boston, Chicago and Austin. If you're looking for love or friendship in your city, sign up for HER now.