GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Sep 16 - Blued now enables users to join groups covering diverse topics and express themselves, similar to Facebook Groups. As of Jun 30, 2020, Blued had 6.4m monthly active users worldwide, up 11.2% YOY. ~Half are outside China. Each active user spends 60 mins and 16 sessions on Blued every day.
49 posts categorized "Blued"
Blued Introduces "Community" Feature
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BlueCity CEO Named Among Business Insider's 100 People Transforming Business in Asia
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Sep 9 - Baoli Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of BlueCity, a world-leading online LGBTQ platform, has been named among Business Insider's 100 People Transforming Business in Asia. BlueCity is best known for its dating app Blued. Entrepreneurs are classified into ten industry categories with ten winners for each in each region. Ma was awarded under the Consumer Tech category. Other winners in this division include Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify.
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Parent Company of Blued Buys Lesbian Platform
REUTERS - Aug 26 - BlueCity, the owner of China's biggest gay men dating app Blued, has bought a Chinese lesbian dating app LESDO, marking the first ever deal within the country's LGBT market. Launched in 2014, LESDO is an app for lesbians. It is believed to be the second most popular lesbian social app in China after Rela. BlueCity raised $84.8M in a Nasdaq IPO in July that valued it at $614M.
by Colin Qian & Brenda Goh
See full article at Reuters
See the top news on Blued
See the top news on Lesdo
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
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BlueCity Sees 32% YOY Increase in Total Revenue in Q2
CGTN - Aug 26 - BlueCity, China's leading online LGBTQ platform, saw a 32.2% increase in total revenue YOY, with its net loss significantly improved. The Q2 revenue was 247.4M yuan ($35M). Q2 net loss was 3.3M yuan ($479K), a significant improvement compared with a net loss of 12.2M yuan ($1.8M) in Q2 2019. Monthly active users (MAUs) on the Blued mobile app reached 6.4M, up 11.2% YOY.
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Blued Hits 50K Mark on Appointments for HIV Testing
CAPITAL WATCH - Aug 18 - Blued, Asia's top LGBTQ platform, has facilitated 50K online appointments for HIV testing at ~200 partnered testing establishments in China as of 2019. The company said it has recorded ~10M page views for HIV-prevention content on BlueCity's platforms.
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Dating App Stocks You Might Fall in Love With
CAPITAL WATCH - Aug 18 - High demand for dating apps is likely to continue even after the pademic. In the Q2, Tinder gained ~200K users, bringing its average subscribers to 6.2M. Also, direct revenue for Tinder jumped by 15%. In total, Match's revenue soared 12% YOY to $555.5M. Match is now projecting to generate Q3 revenues of ~$600M. Thanks to the strong earnings, the stock is now trading at an all-time high since it debuted on Nasdaq in November 2015. Another stock to watch is MEET (The Meet Group). In the Q2, Meet's revenues skyrocketed 74% YOY to $90.33M. Net income rose by nearly five-fold to $10.38M. On the international online dating stage, one company likely to continue seeing demand is Spark Networks SE. Based on preliminary financial results, Spark generated $114M in revenue, beating its previous expectations of $110 - $112M. Newly listed Chinese BlueCity might be worth some love. Its stock skyrocketed as high as 124% in its trading debut from its IPO pricing of $16 per share. The company's app Blued is the largest LGBTQ community in China, India, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
by Anthony Russo
See full article at Capital Watch
See the top news on Match Group See the top news on The Meet Group
See the top news on Spark Networks See the top news on Blued
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The Varying American Fortunes of Grindr and Blued
ECONOMIST - July 15 - America's government viewed Grindr with Chinese ties as a national-security concern. Can Blued that has just listed in New York expect similar treatment? Blued launched in China in 2012, 11 years after homosexuality was removed from the country's list of mental disorders. An international edition of the app was released in 2015. Just over half of Blued's 6M active monthly users are in China. The rest are mainly in other parts of Asia. BlueCity's revenues reached 207M yuan ($30M) in the Q1, up by 43% YOY. On July 8th its parent company, BlueCity, listed on New York's Nasdaq exchange, at a market value of over $600m. Blued has so far avoided the sort of scrutiny from American regulators that befell Grindr. Unlike Grindr, which was popular in America before Kunlun bought it, Blued is a minnow outside Asia. Its relative obscurity may shield it from examination for a while. If it starts to gain a foothold in America, regulators are likely to take a closer look.
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Why BlueCity Holdings Is Tumbling 15%
THE MOTLEY FOOL - July 14 - Shares of BlueCity Holdings, owner of a Chinese LBGTQ+ dating app, were tumbling almost 16% in midday trading Monday. BlueCity, which owns the Blued app, only went public last Wednesday, soaring 46% in its debut and raising $85M. It sold 5.6M shares to the public. Investors still might be gun-shy about small Chinese start-ups going public in the U.S.
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Chinese BlueCity Focused on Asia After IPO
REUTERS - July 9 - China's biggest gay dating app's owner BlueCity is focused on expanding in Asia, its founder said after it made its Nasdaq debut despite a U.S. securities regulator warning against investments in Chinese firms. BlueCity, which says its Blued app already has the largest market share in China, India, South Korea and Vietnam, raised $84.8M in an IPO which valued the Beijing-based company at $614M. Blued claims 49M registered users in 210 countries, and 6M monthly active users (MAUs), 49% of them outside China.
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Blued Gay Dating App Plans to Raise $85M in US IPO
STAR OBSERVER - July 7 - Last week, Chines gay dating app Blued revealed that it plans to raise ~$85M in an IPO of American Depositary Shares (ADS). The IPO scheduled to hit the market on Wednesday July 8 is planning to sell 5.3M ADS at a price of $15-$17 per ADS. The app claims ~49M registered users. For comparison, Grindr has ~27M users and Tinder ~57M users around the world. Blued said it was planning to use the IPO proceeds for geographic expansion, investment in technology and development, AI and big data capacity.
by Shibu Thomas
See full article at Star Observer
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Blued Gay Dating App Plans Nasdaq IPO
REUTERS - June 16 - BlueCity Holdings, owner of China's biggest dating app for gay men, aims to raise $50M from an IPO of American depositary shares (ADSs). The offer price for each ADS is yet to be finalised, and it will be traded on the Nasdaq global market under the symbol "BLCT". Founded in 2011, BlueCity says it has 49M registered users in ~210 countries. It added that it has 6M monthly active users, 49% of them from outside China.
by Colin Qian & Meg Shen
See full article at Reuters
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments
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Top Dating Apps in China During Coronavirus Pandemic
SCMP.COM - May 1 - The nine largest dating apps by China iOS app store ranking are Yidui, Tantan, Momo, Soul, Yimu, Zhenai, Hezi, Blued and Rela. ~622M people used dating apps in China last year, and the market is set to hit $290M in revenues by 2024, according to Statista.com.
- Yidui
Video-based speed matchmaking app, targeting singles in lower-tier cities, it later introduced a professional matchmaker in the app and added a live-streaming feature to speed up matches - Tantan
China's Tinder clone, launched in June 2014, raised ~$120M. In 2018, the company was acquired by Momo - Momo
Launched in 2011, evolved from a simple location-based dating app to a general social platform that, in addition to its original features, also includes group chats, live-streaming, short-video, and casual games. The company went public on Nasdaq in Dec 2014. - Soul
Launched in 2015, it matches users based on a personality test, targeting young users. Soul has closed a Series C round of an undisclosed sum last year. - Jimu
Released in late 2016, the app melds features of dating apps with youth social networking functions, targeting urban residents who like art, fashion, and music. The company raised "tens of millions of yuan" in June last year from a Series B round led by Bluerun Ventures and Sequoia Capital. In July 2019, Hong Kong-listed Chinese live-streaming firm Inke bought Jimu for $85M. - Zhenai
Founded as early as 2005, is one of the oldest and well-known matchmaking websites in China, which also offers offline services. Zhenai has made several updates to its app in a bid to reach younger users as well, adding features including personal assessments, live-streaming, and a status-posting section. - Hezi
Voice-based social app Hezi was launched at the beginning of 2019, founded by two senior executives from Momo. - Blued
Launched in 2012 by the Chinese LGBTQ community website Danlan, Blued is the top gay dating app in China. The company has raised ~$130 M. - Rela
Founded in 2012, the first location-based dating app for lesbians in China.
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How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet
NEW YORK TIMES - Mar 5 - Blued, one of the biggest gay dating apps in the world, has succeeded because it plays by the ever-shifting rules for L.G.B.T.Q. China - bringing together a minority community without activism. China is home to an LGBTQ population larger than all of France, ~70M people. But according to a United Nations estimate, less than 5% of gay Chinese choose to come out. Blued has a reported in-country user base of some 24M. Homosexuality was formally considered a mental illness in China until 2001. But in recent years, the government has neither expressed explicit support for the LGBTQ community nor sought to crush it. Whereas Russia has adopted a position "that LGBT rights is a Western conspiracy designed to weaken the nation," says Darius Longarino, a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. China's one-child policy further increased pressure on some gay Chinese to stay in the closet and enter heterosexual relationships, because parents pinned all their hopes on one child to provide genetic, legally recognized grandchildren to continue the family line. Blued app launched in 2012. The company, once kept alive by 50-to-500-yuan donations, received its first angel investment of $480K in 2013. It then raised a Series A round investment of $1.6M led by the VC firm Crystal Stream and in 2014 raised an additional $30M from another VC firm, DCM. In the last few years, having monopolized the gay-dating app market in China, Blued has expanded to Mexico, Brazil and India.
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Credit Suisse Halts Work on Chinese Gay Dating App Blued's IPO
BLOOMBERG - Jan 13 - Credit Suisse Group AG has stopped working on the upcoming U.S. IPO of Chinese gay dating app Blued. Credit Suisse joins other investment firms, including Citigroup and Bank of America that in recent months have dropped off the U.S. debuts of high-profile Chinese companies. It wasn't clear why Credit Suisse dropped off Blued's IPO, but it did so before the company filed publicly. Founded in 2012 by former policeman Geng, Blued has become an icon for the Chinese LGBTQ community and attracted ~$130M in venture capital as of March last year. Besides providing dating services to 40M users, the app also offers live streaming and connects men who want to become parents with overseas surrogates. Blued has said it's eyeing an IPO ideally in the U.S., which offers a simpler process and deeper capital markets.
by Julia Fioretti & Lulu Yilun Chen
See full article at Bloomberg
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