OutChat

OutChat (formerly Jeltee) is a location-based dating, social discovery application (using Facebook and Vkontakte) that promotes real life meetups over online interactions. The app was launched by BROgrammers LLC in 2015 in the Dubai, UAE, by two PhD students. By December 2015 it had already arranged 100,000 matches of which 10,000 resulted in meetups, and has over 30,000 ACTIVE users The number of OutChat users reached around 40,000 by August, 2015 making it one of the fastest growing social apps in the UAE. Originally, the app was introduced with the name Jeltee and then was renamed to OutChat.

Features

After signing up with facebook or other social media networks, users experience the following interactions/steps:

• Liking or Passing profiles to match. Users anonymously like or pass profiles. Mutual likes result in a match allowing users to chat.
• 24-hour chat with a match. Matched users start chatting. The chat expires in 24 hours prompting users to invite each other out.
• Invitation to local venue. After the chat expires, matched users have the option to invite each other to one of the local bars, clubs, restaurants featured by OutChat.

Reviews

Gary Shapiro wrote in his article on South China Morning Post that chat app developers from Asia could learn from OutChat how to build and sustain relationships. To the statement by one of the founders AbOUT OutChat not being an online dating service, Stepfeed commented-“That’s a great strategy for avoiding any regulatory issues in the UAE – but like everything on the Internet, we’re pretty sure we know what it’ll be used for.”