Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

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.

by Coco Liu
See full article at Nikkei Asia

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Rela, Chinese Lesbian Dating App, Removed From Internet

REUTERS - May 29 - Rela, Chinese lesbian dating app, has been shut down, along with its website and main social media account. The app, that was set up in 2012, has ~5M registered users. The service was temporarily suspended due to an "important adjustment in service," Rela told users on its WeChat app account. It was not immediately clear why Rela has been shut down. It is not illegal to be gay in China, although the country regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder until 2001. In April, another gay Chinese dating app, Zank, was also shut down after operating for about four years.

See full article at Reuters

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Gay Dating Apps Battle For Supremacy In China

MASHABLE - July 21 - "Geng Le," the former policeman, founded one of China’s earliest gay sites. The site, danlan.org, was repeatedly shut down by Chinese government. Every time, he'd move his server to another city and launch again. But the times have changed. Geng's site is now free to cover gay news from around the world. Three years ago, he launched a gay-dating app called Blued, which he claims is the most widely used globally, with 15M users. After receiving $30M in funding last year, Blued launched an English version of the app in Feb and set up offices in the U.S., Thailand and Taiwan. In 2013, a new gay-dating app called Zank appeared. The app has ~8M users, and received $3.2M in private funding last year. Blued and Zank have done well locally but Grindr isn't giving up. Blocked by the Chinese government until June 2011, the app’s user numbers have been steadily climbing ever since.

by Justin Bergman
See full article at Mashable

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China’s Gay Hookup Apps Seen As Cash Cows

GLOBAL TIMES - Dec 8 - Blued, a gay hookup smartphone app, recently received $30M funding. Similar gay matchmaking apps have also attracted investment. Zank, an app similar to Blued, attracted a $3.25M investment this July. Zank has drawn ~5M users since its launch in 2013. Blued is the most popular gay app in China. The app has 10M users.

by Liang Chen
See full article at Global Times

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