Furry hook-up application Howlr to shut down by end of Feburary
On the 26th of February, furry hookup app Howlr will be shuttering its services, after delisting its service from the Apple and Google Play application libraries. This was announced by the mascot of Howlr Lab: Sushi. In this message he encourages furs to move to a new social application Barq.Social as a replacement.
This application, which was released in the middle of 2018, was based on the human hook-up app named Grindr.
Full statement from Sushi below the fold:
Hello dear users of Howlr! We are pleased to see a new alternative to Howlr emerging with Barq.Social, it is everything you like about Howlr but better and more actively developed. We encourage you to join the beta, report bugs and help make Barq the best app for our community.
As for Howlr, we came to the conclusion that it was the right time to put an end to it. Over the years we heard wholesome stories from people having their lives changed for the better by other furries they met on Howler: some found their loved ones(s) or their new best friends, and for that we are glad to have kept the app running for almost 4 years. But it was also a stressful adventure and we felt relieved to stop.
In the next few weeks the following will happen:
- We will soon stop accepting new users and unlist Howlr from the App and Play Store.
- On the 26th of February the service will be stopped.
- All our backups and every piece of data will then be deleted.
- Soon after we will publish the source code of the backend on Github so that anyone willing to make a Howlr clone can do it.
If Howlr was helpful to you and if you wish to thank us for our service over the years you can do it by buying us a coffee here
Thank you all for the great time we had! [source]
About the author
Sonious (Tantroo McNally) — read stories — contact (login required)a project coordinator and Kangaroo from CheektRoowaga, NY, interested in video games, current events, politics, writing and finance
Comments
I dunno, this Barq app seems like kind of a dumpster fire right now. It's still in early development and requires all kinds of hacks and questionable frameworks and connections to use on iOS devices. I think it definitely would have been better to promote Barq when it's a bit closer to production and not so iffy/wobbly.
I'm interested to hear what exactly made it so stressful (I believe them, just curious as to the particulars). I guess you can get a hint of it through this archived announcement (the old team referenced being led by former zoophile Stormy), but that was three and a half years ago, so it can't be all of it. Perhaps got tired of complaints over the new UI, or worried about pics being sent?
They said back in 2018 that they're a nonprofit, so hopefully if any money is left over it'll go to a good cause - though if Patreon barely covered 1/3 of costs ($69/$200), I doubt there's much in the pot. Source code for the app front-end is already available.
Maybe EARN IT related? Having to deal with those kind of laws and worry about having to be responsible for users behavior in the future. Or some people are just coders and customer service (especially on a service that you are not getting paid for) can be quite stressful.
I think they're a French organisation, so it's not clear how a US law would affect them (but then, maybe some of the staff are in the USA?). As you say, it'd be easy for the customer support side of things to fall apart if those still involved aren't focused in that area, especially if usage of the service grows.
They said they would release the full source code (I'm assuming that means front- AND back-end code) on GitHub if anyone wants to take their base and run with it to enhance it. I may have a look at it, and if it's setup reasonably well may put up a cloud server to host it under a new name or something. And extend it, adding some new features that it badly needed (like better reporting of bad images/accounts, etc.) If the codebase is a mess, it probably wouldn't be worth the trouble. I'd also like to see how Barq is once it's not a nightmare to try to get working on iOS devices.
Oh great so where are the people looking for local furs are supposed to go now? Ferzu is a nightmare with admins on a power trip and there still isn't any other alternative to pounced to this day :(
I guess you could just do the old-fashioned hanging out at local meets, regional groups and conventions... though only since you're in the UK, elsewhere, you're kinda screwed.
There's furriesxtreme.org though it's more of a 18+ hook up site and far from prefect but it's the only one I know of.
One of the mods doxxes people's porn and revenge-porns them. No, I'm not going to link receipts. Use at your own risk.
Thats an interesting one i never heard of it before also trying Barq it seems a bit more alive than Howlr but still a bit 50-50
Good riddance!
Already miss howlr but i understand the situation of stress take care to thoghs that had created it and wish them all a long and happy life
Phoenix delta wolfpaw
Grindr now has a "furries" tag to get your yiff on in front of the normies
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