Monday was a holiday so it's no surprise that some people fired up the apps to set up some ... lunch dates! But, for more than a few bears GROWLr was playing cock block, with notices that many accounts had been suspended.
Founded in 2010 by Colin Cummiskey, GROWLr is one of the more popular non-Grindr dating apps. It was the app for bears, by bears, and reports over 200,000 daily active users. In March 2019 the company was bought for $11.8 million by The Meet Group (straights) who promised a ton of updates. There hasn't been much done yet -- that we can see -- except for these suspensions.
Users took to Twitter this weekend to share that they had been "suspended" from GROWLr via pop-up message. Emails by the users to the company went on answers (some say this has been typical over the last few months) and even the app's founder, who is no longer involved, was at a loss for what was going on.
\u201cWidespread suspensions on @Growlr tonight. Who else got suspended? My current count is eight.\u201d— Bryan Knight (almost) 47k Fllwrs! (@Bryan Knight (almost) 47k Fllwrs!) 1582003848
None— Targrus \ud83c\udf48 (@Targrus \ud83c\udf48) 1582060715
\u201cSo... did everyone\u2019s #Growlr account just get suspended for no apparent reason or?? Looks like myself and several of my friends accounts have been suspended without reason. I\u2019ve been a Pro member since it launched.\u201d— Brandon Ramm (@Brandon Ramm) 1582002801
"Apparently every GROWLr account is currently suspended (including mine)," Cummiskey wrote to his personal Facebook. "I have no further information. I have contacted the new owners and am awaiting a response. I wish there was more I could do to help everyone out. I sincerely apologize to all the users for the inconvenience." Well now, The Meet Group is giving out answers.
"Last night, GROWLr experienced an issue due to over-aggressive anti-spam settings that temporarily prevented some users from logging into their accounts and incorrectly marked the account suspended," the company said in a statement sent to Out. "User access has been restored and we are working to ensure this does not occur in the future. We apologize for the inconvenience."
The Meet Group did not respond to follow up questions.
GROWLr is The Meet Group's first acquisition primarily focused on same-sex relationships.
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