BUZZ IN CONTENT - May 7 - BuzzInContent caught with Sanyam Sharma, Marketing Director, Blued India, the world's largest gay dating social media app, to discuss how content is helping the brand break stereotypes and normalise conversations around the LGBTQ community in India. Launched in 2012, Blued, the world's largest gay dating social media app. Sharma said it becomes quite challenging to associate with key opinion leaders and influencers for various campaigns as they shy away collaborating with brands that primarily focus on the LGBTQ space. The app believes radio has a huge potential to reach out to deeper pockets in India. Marketing budget is no bar for the brand. "If it is reaching out to a newer audience, creating more brand awareness and generating goodwill, we at Blued are always happy to spend more," concluded Sharma.
63 posts categorized "Blued"
Many Influencers in India Shy Away From Associating With a Brand Focusing on LGBTQ
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Video Launch Highlights BlueCity and UNAIDS' Joint Campaign for Ending Discrimination
PR NEWSWIRE - Apr 23 - BlueCity and UNAIDS has launched a jointly produced video entitled "Would You Discriminate against Me?" on major Chinese social media platforms. The video highlights their joint campaign to tackle discrimination, which kicked off March 1st with a series of awareness-building events aiming to end inequalities across societies in Asia-Pacific. Within 48 hours of going live, the video has been played more than one million times and related stories have reached 5M views on Chinese social media such as Weibo and WeChat.
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BlueCity CEO to Speak at Leading Global Tech Conference Collision
PR NEWSWIRE - Apr 22 - Today (Apr 22), BlueCity Founder, Chairman and CEO Baoli Ma will appear at leading global tech conference Collision 2021, speaking about his inspiring mission to unite the LGBTQ community in China and overseas. Known as the fastest growing technology conference in North America, the Collision Conference is also one of the largest and most influential technology events in the world. Paying subscribers to Collision Conference 2021 can tune in to Ma's interview on April 22, 13:20 - 13:30 (ET).
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BlueCity's He Health Obtains Internet Hospital License
PR NEWSWIRE - Apr 20 - He Health, the BlueCity's health service platform for men, has officially obtained an Internet hospital license in China, presenting great prospects for the brand's nascent, yet fast-growing health business. BlueCity can now offer a complete set of health services from men's health consultations. Since its launch in March 2019, He Health has promoted awareness of men's health and HIV prevention, and its services have gradually expanded from sexually transmitted diseases to the field of men's everyday wellbeing. BlueCity's mobile app Blued enables users to conveniently and safely connect with each other, express themselves and access professional health-related services. BlueCity's portfolio of brands of apps also includes Finka, a leading gay social networking app for a younger generation in China, and LESDO, a leading lesbian social networking app in China.
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BlueCity's Q4 and Full Year 2020 Financial Results
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Mar 24 - Total Q4 revenues reached RMB278.8M ($42.7M), up 24.2% YOY. Net loss was RMB73.1M ($11.2M), compared with net loss of RMB7.2M in the Q4 of 2019. Monthly active users reached 7.6M, up 20.3% YOY. Total paying users on the Blued mobile app reached 518K, up of 38% YOY. Total 2020 revenues reached RMB1.03B ($158M), up 35.9% YOY. 2020 net loss was RMB221.9M ($34M), compared with net loss of RMB52.9M in 2019.
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What Dating Apps Get the Most Press Coverage?
OPW - Mar 2 - We published 956 posts during last year on OPWS.news, featuring 257 dating industry brands. Here is who got the most press coverage on OPW.news.
- Tinder (137 posts)
- Match Group (96 posts)
- Bumble (93 posts)
- The Meet Group (58 posts)
- Grindr (46 posts)
- Hinge (40 posts)
- OkCupid (39 posts)
- PlentyOfFish (28 posts)
- Match.com (27 posts)
- Blued (18 posts)
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BlueCity Launches Campaign for Greater LGBTQ Acceptance Among Families During Chinese New Year
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Feb 12 - BlueCity, a world-leading LGBTQ community platform, launched the "Let Love Go Home" campaign, which pushes for greater LGBTQ acceptance and understanding among the families of community members in China as the country celebrates. According to a recent poll, 70% of respondents still have not come out to their families.
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Blued Rolls out "Voice Chat Room" Function
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Feb 5 - Blued, a world-leading online LGBTQ platform, is launching a voice chat room function on its app in mainland China, allowing users to join chat rooms based on language, friends and interests.
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BlueCity CEO Recognized on INvolve's 'OUTstanding 100 LGBT+ Executives List'
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Jan 19 - Baoli Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of BlueCity, a world-leading LGBTQ community platform, has become the first person from the Chinese mainland recognized on the 'OUTstanding 100 LGBT+ Executives List' from INvolve, a global network and consultancy championing diversity and inclusion in business. First launched in 2013 and supported by Yahoo! Finance, INvolve's OUTstanding Role Model Lists "showcase and celebrate the global business leaders who are driving change in the workplace and inspiring the next generation of diverse talent." 43-year-old Ma was formerly a closeted policeman known online only by the alias "Geng Le," who founded one of China's first and most influential LGBTQ online forums, Danlan, the predecessor of BlueCity back in 2000. After coming out in 2011, he resigned from the police force and wholly dedicated himself to raising awareness for the LGBTQ community, founding BlueCity in the same year along with the launch of mobile app Blued in 2012. Blued now connects ~58M people worldwide with nearly half of them outside China.
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The Ex-cop Behind China's Largest Gay Dating App
TECHXPLORE - Jan 8 - Browsing the Internet as a young policeman in China, Ma Baoli recalls the sheer volume of web pages telling him he was a pervert, diseased and in need of treatment - simply because he was gay. Two decades later, the softly spoken 43-year-old now helms Blued, one of the world's largest dating platforms for gay men. The app went public last July with an $85M debut on Nasdaq. Ma's journey to the apex of China's tech industry began in the early 2000s when he began publishing Danlan.org, a blog about his life as a gay man. Ma's blog gradually expanded into an influential online forum for LGBTQ people in China. Increasing local media coverage of the website outed Ma to his coworkers and prompted him to leave the police force in 2012. He launched Blued the same year. The app today says it has 58M users. It has yet to turn a profit but company figures show losses have narrowed since the platform began paid memberships, livestreams and ads in 2016.
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BlueCity Q3 Results 2020: Revenue up 43%
GLOBE NEWSWIRE - Dec 3 - Blued's Q3 revenues reached RMB298M ($43.8M), up 47.3% YOY. Net loss was RMB138M ($20M), compared with net loss of RMB7.1M in Q3 2019. Monthly active users on the Blued mobile app reached 6.3M, up 7% YOY. Total paying users on the Blued app reached 494K, up 43.8% YOY. Revenues from live streaming services reached RMB255M ($37.6M), up 42.9% YOY. Revenues from membership services reached RMB18.2M ($2.7M), up 56.4% YOY. Blued is currently the largest gay social network app in the world. Launched in 2012, the free app now counts 40M users with the majority still in its country of origin, China.
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Chinese Gay Dating App Blued to Acquire Finka for $36.5M
CGTN - Nov 25 - BlueCity, the parent company of Blued will acquire Finka, a leading gay social networking app in China targeting younger generations for 240M yuan ($36.5M). It's the second acquisition BlueCity has initiated since the company listed on Nasdaq in July. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions that are expected by mid-December. The company also bought LESDO, a dating app focused on China's lesbian community, in August. Finka had ~2.7M registered users in 2019. The majority of the app's users are born after 1995 and are from China's first-tier cities. The app allows users to establish social contact and share their daily life through features like matching, private message, posting moments and lifecasting. Blued now has 54M registered users.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
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BlueCity CEO on His Journey to Creating the First Publicly Listed LGBTQ+ Social Network
BUSINESS INSIDER - Oct 27 - BlueCity is the owner of Blued, the first LBGTQ+-focused social network to go public. It was at a market value of ~$600M. CEO Ma Baoli began his career as a policeman in China before creating his own social network in 2000.
Q: Your first job was as a policeman. How did you make the transition into the tech industry?
A: When the Internet boom hit China in 1998, I started to search for answers. Through the Internet I discovered that homosexuality was not an illness or a disorder. The predecessor of Blued is the website Danlan.com, which I founded in 2000, and was one of China's first and most influential LGBTQ online forums. In 2012, when I saw the big shift from the PC internet to mobile Internet, we launched the Blued app.
Q: How do you plan to expand Blued in the future?
A: We hope to refine and expand our current health services, and feel confident that they will eventually reach users around the world. We also plan to serve different subgroups within the broader LGBTQ+ community, as seen in our recent acquisition of LESDO, a leading Lesbian social-networking app.
Q: What has been the impact of growing restrictions on Chinese companies in the US and other countries?
A: Our staff are working closely with external consultancies and stakeholders to make sure that we are fully compliant with local laws and regulations in markets where we operate.
Q: What impact do you think Blued has had for the LGBT community in China and beyond?
A: We are more than just a social network, dating app or a live streaming platform. Blued is a safe zone for people in the LGBTQ+ community to obtain public health information especially about HIV testing, prevention and education.
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How Blued Blazed Trail to US Stock Market
NIKKEI ASIA - Oct 16 - The Founder of Blued was police officer by day and online activist by night. Ma Baoli built a business that runs from livestreaming to health care and family planning and made to the U.S. stock market. In July, Blued's parent company, Beijing-based BlueCity Holdings, raised $84.8m in its Nasdaq IPO. Ma founded BlueCity in his Beijing apartment. It is not illegal to be gay in China, but homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until 2001. Ma poured 50k yuan ($7,400), his savings, into building Blued which went viral with 500k users the following year. In 2020 the market valuation is $335m and has DCM Ventures, Xiaomi's investment arm Shunwei Capital and Hong Kong property group New World Development as backers, and has 500 employees. Zank was Blued's chief competitor and was shut down by Chinese regulators in 2017. Lesbian dating app, Rela, was temporarily removed from the Android and Apple app stores in 2017 to undergo an "important adjustment in services."
The global LGBTQ community spent $261B online in 2018, and is expected to double by 2023, according to Frost & Sullivan. BlueCity remains unprofitable reporting a net loss of 3.3m yuan in Q2 2020. Shares trade 40% below their IPO price. BlueCity has piggybacked on the rise of online celebrities, generating 210m yuan, 85% of its revenue, in Q2 2020.
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Blued Introduces "Community" Feature
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.
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