Two weeks ago we introduced you to happn, an app which originally started in Paris and is now available all over Europe. With happn you can discover the people you’ve crossed paths with, you like, and would like to find again. It’s a bit too early to give you the first success stories from Berlin, but we spoke to happn’s founders to find out what has happened in Paris since the beginning of the year. We hope happn will help you find that someone you missed here in Berlin!

Why did you choose to build happn?

We started with a very simple observation: online dating is too far from reality. The experience is too abstract and has no real ‘magic’.The online experience needs to reconcile with the spontaneity of real life, and to achieve this, we needed to create a mobile service that accompanies the users during the whole day.This is when the idea of being able to find the people you’ve crossed paths with again, became evident: not only does it start from a known experience and from little everyday coincidences. It also answers a universal desire! happn completely twists the codes: the virtual becomes a little help to reality.

What is the difference between happn and Tinder?

The difference is very straightforward. On Tinder, you see a slideshow of random profiles that are between 2 and 130km away. On happn, it’s hyper proximity in real-time: every time you cross paths with someone, on the street, at a café, at a party… their profile shows up on your timeline! You don’t even need to open your app for it to work. You can just leave your phone in your pocket and when you get home at night, you can see the profiles of all the people you crossed paths with during the day.

How did the app develop in Paris?

The app was launched first in Paris, in January 2014. Young people between 20 and 25 were the first happn adopters. Then more and more age ranges started using it. Virality helped us achieve the rest, particularly on Facebook, which clearly helped the notoriety of the app! Today, we have about 90,000 members in Paris, and 150,000 in the whole of France.

Please share some of the stories from Paris and how people are met

We regularly receive messages from users who tell us how they found people they had encountered again, and who thank us. There’s this one girl for example, who met a guy on the bus, and they glanced at each other, but then he left at the next station. She opened her happn app and found the guy’s profile at the top of her list. Minutes later, they had a happn-Crush! They saw each other again and are now together!

When do you think the first couple will get married?

We also have an in-house success story, one of our happn team members! So why not wish them the best? No, seriously, with the number of new happn couples that met thanks to the app, it’s very likely to happen in the near future.

What is the most beautiful story that happened thanks to happn yet?

We get dozens of anecdotes and testimonies, but one of them is our favorite because it really corresponds to our promise: Adrian, 26, has finally been able to speak to his neighbour after weeks of hesitation and endless strategies. The young woman lived on the same street, they bumped into each other quite often, but Adrian had never dared to get in touch with her, not knowing if she was single or not.A funny detail: she later admitted that she was often hoping to see him, and for him to approach her. A good example of a situation where happn is useful!

You can download the happn app here.
Happn on Facebook.

This post is part of a series of posts about happn based on a cooperation between happn and BERLIN LOVES YOU to introduce happn to the Berlin and German market.