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.
57 posts categorized "Blued"
BlueCity Launches Campaign for Greater LGBTQ Acceptance Among Families During Chinese New Year
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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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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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