Lonely Bros Can Grow Their 'Wolfpack' With New App
It could be the salvation of the modern male heterosexual friendship.
— -- There’s a new app for bros looking for other bros to hang with, and it could be the salvation of the modern male heterosexual friendship.
It’s called Wolfpack and, yes, it does howl.
The brainchild of Nile Niami, a movie producer turned real estate developer, he said a recently divorced friend inspired him to create the app.
“A lonely guy that lost track of all his buddies because he was married for 20 years and when they got divorced he had … nobody to do anything with,” Niami said.
Women just seem to be better about keeping close friends around than men, he said.
“I think the women, they keep in touch or they have a group of women that they stay close with,” Niami said. “So if anything happens in their life, they would have somebody to talk to."
Here’s how the app works: After users log in, they list their hobbies, interests and a few other details about themselves. Then guys can either sign up to attend a Wolfpack event or create their own, basically a group man date, such as a pick-up softball game or bar meet-up for a drink or a movie night.
Just launched in January, Niami says Wolfpack has 4,000 users so far, mostly in the Los Angeles area. With Wolfpack, users can pick and choose friends, and discard ones they don’t connect with, not so unlike today’s online dating apps, but Niami said Wolfpack is not meant to be a dating app.
“We were very cognizant from the very beginning to make this a manly site,” he said.
One user named Kevin Thomsen said he was married for 10 years, and is recently divorced.
“I used to be on a bowling team... but the bowling team was literally my brother-in-law, and his uncle, and another co-worker of hers,” he said. “And at some point you just kind of had to slice that out and try filling the holes in other ways.”
Thomsen said he tried other apps, like Meetup, but felt that it was too broad to find others with whom to connect.
“There would be people there but not a whole lot that I had things in common with,” he said. “I like to hike, so I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll join a hiking group and make some new friends,’ and no offense to people, but I get there and there’s like a 65-year-old woman, which, awesome that she hikes, more power to her, but we’re not going to go hang out after.”
Wolfpack, which is available for iOS devices, narrows the interest field, letting guys bond over “guy stuff,” however they want.
ABC News' Nick Watt contributed to this report.