NY TIMES - Dec 16 - By day, Mr. Ma was a police officer in China with a wife. By night, he led a life as a gay man, running a website for gays. In 2012, his superiors at a police department uncovered his website and he resigned. He lost his job, his family was struggling to accept his sexuality, so Mr. Ma created Blued, now China's most popular gay dating app with an estimated value of $600M and ~3M active daily users. Blued is only beginning to make a profit; most of its services are free. Attracting advertising remains difficult. The company is trying to increase its revenue by expanding into gay travel and entertainment. The spending power of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China is estimated at $460 billion, making them the largest market in Asia, according to LGBT Capital, an investment-management firm. Mr. Ma has set his sights on foreign markets, hoping to take on Grindr and Hornet but analysts said it would be difficult for the company to build a large following overseas.
by Javier C. Hernández
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team
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