A good friend is hard to find. Enter Hey! VINA, a new app that matches women looking for female friends with like-minded locals.
The app works much like Tinder. Users sign in with their Facebook accounts and answer a simple six-question quiz sussing out schedules and interests. Matches are drawn from the friends of a user’s Facebook friends, and a right swipe lets mutually interested pairs chat. It’s currently available in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
While there’s no shortage of apps to connect potential romantic partners, Hey! VINA offers something many women want even more than a date: the chance to bond with a friend.
The benefits of female friendship are well-documented: lower stress, better health, the chance to appear as a fierce ensemble at the MTV Movie Awards. Yet moves, careers, children, and other major transitions can disrupt social ties just when they’re needed most.
Hey! VINA was conceived by founders Olivia June Poole and Jen Aprahamian, two women who met in Silicon Valley’s male-dominated tech scene.
“We built this app to solve for our own needs as women who have moved, traveled, changed careers, and shifted lifestyles and life stages,” Poole told Fast Company.