REUTERS - July 7 - Grindr was approved for a $1M to $2M loan for small businesses suffering from the coronavirus outbreak. China's Beijing Kunlun Tech sold Grindr last month to an investor group called San Vicente Acquisition, after the U.S. government ordered the divestment amid concerns over the safety of personal data stored in the app. Grindr generated net profit of ~$31M in 2019, according to Kunlun's annual report.
287 posts categorized "Grindr"
Grindr Cleared for Small-business Loan
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Grindr Ditching the Ethnicity Filter Has Created New Problems
QUEERTY - July 3 - Last week, Grindr announced it was finally ditching its "ethnicity filter" after dragging its feet for over a decade. But as it turns out, removing the filter has actually created a new set of problems. Gay Black writer Otamere Guobadia explains how some BIPOC users actually used the filter to escape the overwhelming sea of white profiles. Guobadia argues that many BIPOC users have felt so abused by white gays that they are not particularly interested in engaging with them on the app and are instead looking to meet guys who share their experiences.
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Grindr's New Owners Want to Create a 'Positive Place for Everyone'
ADVOCATE - June 15 - Grindr officially has new owners. The popular LGBTQ+ dating app has announced Jeff Bonforte, Rick Marini, and Gary Hsueh as its new CEO, COO, and CFO, respectively. The trio is part of a group of investors that purchased a 98.59% stake in Grindr through San Vicente Acquisition Partners for $608.5M from Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese company that acquired it in 2016. As background, both Bonforte and Marini identify as straight and boast robust résumés in Silicon Valley. A former member of the executive team at Yahoo!, Bonforte helmed Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, and Flickr, among other key areas of the company. He also founded and ran five startups. Marini is the former head of Digital Innovation at Hearst Corporation and was the founder & CEO of BranchOut, the Facebook professional networking app. He was also named one of 2018's Top 50 Angel Investors by Forbes; as an angel investor, he has helped grow Snapchat, Reddit, Opendoor, Poshmark, PAX, and OutReach. "I don't think you have to be gay to want to have a strong, healthy, safe LGBTQ community," Bonforte said. "And so I think we see Grindr's role in that, and we hope we can further it." "It won't be a perfectly smooth road, there will be challenges in the future," Bonforte predicted. Priority on "day one," they said, is user safety and security. In this area, the company has already conducted a partial audit, and a full audit of these features is now under way. However, don't expect any sweeping redesign. "You have to be careful not to dabble with the core product," Bonforte said, adding, "We don't want to hurt Grindr. It's so good."
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Queer Dating Apps Partner for NiceAF Campaign
PRESS RELEASE - June 3 - In the first ever cross-site collaboration of this kind, Building Healthy Online Communities (BHOC) and dating apps for gay and bisexual men (Adam4Adam, Daddyhunt, Grindr, POZ Personals, SCRUFF and Jack'd) have teamed up to make their online communities kinder for everyone with the NiceAF.org campaign. The team behind NiceAF.org has compiled a number of videos featuring men telling stories of how they keep the online experience NiceAF. Starting June 3rd, the collaborating apps will invite their users to vote for the video that does the best job of embodying NiceAF's mission of promoting nicer, kinder interactions between users.
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Grindr Has Removed Its Controversial Ethnicity Filters
MASHABLE - June 3 - A Grindr spokesperson said that racism has no place in their community. "To help do our part, we have decided to remove the ethnicity filter from Grindr. Once the filter is removed, users will no longer be able to filter profiles by ethnicity," they said. Grindr launched in 2009 and has long had ethnicity filters. Ethnicity filters on Grindr and other dating apps have proven to be controversial. This decision to remove the filters comes after days of protests across the nation in response to killing of George Floyd.
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Winning Bidder for Grindr Has Ties to Chinese Owner
REUTERS - June 3 - An investor group San Vincente that got U.S. approval to buy Grindr has financial and personal links to the dating app's current owner, China's Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had cleared the sale of Grindr to San Vicente Acquisition for ~$600M. Grindr spokeswoman said: "The buyers for Grindr were selected after an extensive and unbiased bidding process that complied fully with all applicable regulations, as the receipt of all necessary approvals - including CFIUS - demonstrates." A regulatory filing shows San Vicente was incorporated on Feb. 19, just weeks before the deal with Kunlun. The company is named after the LA street where Grindr has its headquarters.
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U.S. Approves Sale of Grindr
WALL STREET JOURNAL - May 30 - U.S. national security officials have approved an investor group's purchase of gay-dating app Grindr that is being sold by a Chinese company after the Trump administration raised concerns about the potential theft of Americans' personal data. China's Beijing Kunlun Tech said that the buyer - San Vicente Acquisition - has secured approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Grindr could be sold for $608.5M. In 2016, Kunlun paid $93M for a 60% stake in Grindr. It acquired the rest of Grindr for $152M in 2018.
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Grindr Is Not a Cure for Coronavirus Anxiety
OUTSPORTS - May 26 - LGBT mental health researcher Jack Turban explains the vicious relationship between Grindr and mental health. He says Grindr works like a slot machine: once in a while you score, but more often, you fail. A survey of 2K iPhone users showed that 77% of Grindr users felt regret after logging on. "The big problem is, as a society, we have not created enough safe spaces for LGBT young people to explore their gender and sexuality in a developmentally appropriate way," Turban says. "As a young gay, lesbian or bisexual person, if you're closeted, you're probably not going to have a high school prom, you're probably not going to have a classroom valentine. Because kids don't have that place to explore, a lot of them go online. It feels safer and more discreet and more anonymous." Even for those who aren't struggling with their identities, the coronavirus quarantine can be an exceptionally isolating experience. Many LGBT people are closer to their chosen families than biological families, and it can hurt to not see them. Stuck without in-person socialization, it can be tempting to turn to Grindr for some instant gratification.
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Grindr Is Now Available on Desktop
PINK NEWS - May 4 - Grindr Web offers users an array of ways to keep their use of the service discrete. "It looks like a typical email interface so your business stays private, no matter who's looking over your shoulder," the website says. The interface style has an "office mode" option which makes all profile pictures invisible.
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Grindr Is the Dating App That Drains the Most Battery From a Mobile
GAY TIMES - Mar 30 - Uswitch has analysed the 50 most popular apps on major app stores and looked at how many battery-draining permissions an app used, and when it came to dating apps Grindr came out on top. Grindr had 28 battery-draining permissions, it was followed by Bumble which has 20, Tinder which has 18 and Hinge which has 13. Google has 72 battery-draining permissions, Facebook 50 and Facebook Messenger 46.
by Matt Moore
See full article at Gay Times
See the top news on Grindr See the top news on Bumble
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LGBT+ People Warned off Casual Sex
REUTERS - Mar 28 - According to Sensor Tower, Grindr downloads fell 19% in Spain and 8% in Italy. Gay app Scruff saw a drop of 7% and 10% week-on-week for Spain and Italy. But although the dating apps were down in terms of new users, operators reported higher usage by those on the site. Lesbian app HER had seen "a pretty heavy spike in usage". Over the weekend of March 14-15, HER reported its highest day of the year for "likes" on posts, with the overall number of likes rising by 16% over the weekend.
by Hugo Greenhalgh
See full article at Reuters
See the top news on Grindr
See the top news on Scruff
See the top news on HER
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Grindr Sale Finalized for ~$608.5 Million
QUEERTY - Mar 28 - The move came just four years after Kunlun bought the app from its original creator, Joel Simkhai. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S, a government watchdog group, ordered Kunlun to sell off a majority stake in the company last year. One of the new investors is James Lu, a Chinese tech mogul. A company called San Vicente Acquisition Partners was set up to make the purchase and allow the buyers to stay anonymous.
by Dan Tracer
See full article at Queerty
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
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The Top Dating Industry News for March 24th
OPW - Mar 24 - Dating on the Rise, Free Premium Features, POF Livestreaming, Dating.com VC Fund.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker , Google Podcasts
, Spotify
, Anchor
, Stitcher
, Overcast
, Radio Public
or Apple Podcasts
. Listen to the trailer for the channel.
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Grindr Has Increased the Number of Viewable Profiles for Free Because of COVID-19
THE TAB - Mar 19 - For a limited time, Grindr has made some premium features free. Acknowledging that many of their users will be working from home or self-isolating under new recommendations from the government to do so, Grindr has made the premium feature of being able to see up to 300 profiles in their area free.
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The Top Dating Industry News for March 17th
OPW - Mar 17 - IDEA Summit, The Meet Group Acquisition & Financial Results, Grindr Acquisition, OKCupid Covid-19 Survey, Tinder's Swipe Night on Hold.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker , Google Podcasts
, Spotify
, Anchor
, Stitcher
, Overcast
, Radio Public
or Apple Podcasts
. Listen to the trailer for the channel.
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