“Grindr,” GPS-based gay hook-up app crashed in London due to massive influx of gay Olympic athletes trying to use service

If you were one of London’s estimated 350,000 Grindr users trying to log into the GPS-based gay dating App last week, you may have encountered some difficulty, due, according to some, to the influx of Olympic athletes trying to use the service.

In a July 19th post on the Grindr blog, App founder Joel Simkhai issued an apology to users who had experienced “service disruptions,” and explains, “when we discovered that [Grindr wasn’t working], we immediately set to work fixing the screw-up. The service disruption was a challenging thing to address, but our tech team worked around the clock to solve the problems and to whip Grindr back into shape.”

Simkhai doesn’t address the cause of the disruptions, but London tabloid “The People,” attributes it to the influx of Olympic Athletes in London. The publication reports:

A gay dating website crashed within minutes of the first Olympic athletes arriving in London — due to the volume of demand, say experts… Technicians believe the arrival of Olympic teams on Monday sparked a flood of new customers — and loss of the service in East London.

One Londoner told The People, “It happened almost as soon as the teams got here. Either loads of athletes were logging on to meet fellow Olympians or were looking to bag a local.”

Read more from the Huffington Post HERE (although we don’t recommend it).

Publisher’s note: GrindR subsequently denied that the influx of Olympians caused the collapse of its app, but provided no specific reason for the system’s collapse.