Socializing in our current world can be difficult to navigate, especially as interpersonal relationships continue to evolve. When Justin Haar both invented and founded the Eden App, he did so with the intent to move fluidly with those changes. The result is a multi-tiered user experience, as people from all walks of life and intimacies can open the app and find their ideal companion. Eden is a place where anything can happen, from love and beyond.
Born and raised in Bergen County, New Jersey, Haar endured a lot growing up. After surviving cancer while losing his mother to the same disease, Haar often found it difficult to connect with peers, in addition to maintaining his Tourette Syndrome. His only sense of community came from playing tennis—both in high school and as a Business major at Lafayette College—though later on in 2015 he took a coding boot camp, which led to his exploration in app development.
Recognizing the often disjointed dating app community (especially for LGBTQIA+), he began the building blocks for Eden, a place where everyone is welcome and dating isn’t the primary focus. The app began its beta journey four years ago, though now with tens of thousands of members worldwide, Haar is geared to elevate Eden to the next level.
The Eden app is clean by design, operating on Mac, iPhone, and iPad, where users can seamlessly navigate across the platform to truly create an individualized experience. While skewed toward the LGBTQIA+ community, everyone is welcome, with the user experience catering to all predilections. With “masculine” and “feminine” tags that do not exist on the binary, along with a detailed list of sexual preferences, Eden succeeds in its middle ground—a haven for creating meaningful interactions and connections that can span from romantic relationships to even plutonic relationships and deeply connected friendships.
The “no swipe” app allows for all users to communicate with each other, filtering to find friends, emotional partners, and dates—with added filters across sexualities and genders. There is also a feature to simply chat. Beyond just identifying and connecting with new people, there is also a space to communicate directly and immediately (through both audio and video, as well as with photos and file sharing), where users can even share playlists through Apple Music for added music discovery.
Users can also stream the playlists while they navigate across the platform. There is a hiding feature for profiles, where not all information is made visible, and a verification option using Biometrics and facial recognition that comes complete with a verification badge.
The Music tab is Eden’s social music discovery feature where users can follow others and discover new music to play and control right in Eden by connecting their Apple Music or Spotify accounts. Music is the language of intimacy and connections and so Haar felt it made perfect sense to add a fully developed music player right in Eden so people can express themselves through music and have the abliity to control their Apple Music or Spotify account playlists right from Eden.
At its core, Eden is the app that puts the emotional intimacy back into social apps. Oftentimes in a transactional world, we lose sight of meaningful contact, with dating apps being at the core of instant gratification. There’s a place for that too at Eden, though there is also a well thought out space to understand the complexities and diversities of socializing in our current world. Everyone has a place in Eden.