GAYSTAR NEWS – Nov 12 – The CEO of Blued, the world's biggest gay dating app, says he would like to see his company make a stock market launch in the next five years. Based in China, Blued has 3M daily active users. By comparison, Grindr has 2M daily users. Blued soon expects to close its third fundraising round. The fundraising is expected to raise $50 to $100M.
by David Hudson
See full article at Gaystar News
NYTIMES – Oct 20 – Scruff, a gay dating app, got inspired by Tinder's passport feature. Scruff's users can now taps on Venture, a list of two dozen cities and see profiles of locals, people currently visiting and people who will be visiting the city soon. Users can set up their own trips in advance and make contact with others before they visit.
TECH INSIDER – Oct 13 – Joel Simkhai is a single, gay man living in Los Angeles, and he’s the CEO and founder of Grindr. He started Grindr out of a “selfish desire” to meet more gay men, and he’s still a very regular user of his own app.
NEW NOW NEXT – Oct 9 – Marchant, co-founder and chief product officer of Scruff, revealed the app's next update will allow users to filter their searches by safer-sex practices, including condoms and PrEP. And while Scruff is the first to plug PrEP into its app, Grindr has partnered with Gilead on studies and education awareness, and the app Mister says it is adding hashtag functionality that will allow users to search for profiles with #prep.
by Dan Avery
See full article at New Now Next
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BUSINESS INSIDER – Aug 27 – This month, hackers of AshleyMadison.com began to leak internal company data online, which also includes sensitive documents and the emails of CEO Noel Biderman. Included within Biderman's email correspondence is a "Management Presentation" for Grindr, created in June 2015. Accoring to the presentation, Grindr is expected to generate $38.1M this year. By the end of 2018, it predicts annual revenues ~$77M. Grindr claims that the average daily time its users spend on the app is 54 minutes daily, compared to Facebook's 42.1 minutes.
by Rob Price
See full article at Business Insider
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 20 – Earlier this year, trans people reported that they were getting banned from using Tinder. What seemed to be happening was that transphobic people were reporting those transgender users on the app. "Everyone is welcome on Tinder," said Tinder spokesperson. Still, Tinder only offers two options for gender identification: male and female. Thurst, which is currently in beta, hopes to launch early next year.
NOWTORONTO – Aug 8 – Her, the lesbian dating app that first launched in London, is coming to Canada. It is not just a dating app, it also functions like Facebook or Pinterest. Users can share articles and other content about their interests. Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit and Michael Birch, founder of Bebo and Y Combinator, are both investors in the venture.
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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USA TODAY – July 16 – OneGoodCrush is a new dating app that is aimed toward people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. This app is now available on iOS and Android, and recently raised $500K in seed funding. Co-founder of the app, Frank Mastronuzzi, said OneGoodCrush is for people looking for serious relationships, not just casual hookups. Users are offered a roulette of profiles, and they can swipe right if they are interested and left if they are not. If two members match with each other, then they can freely message back and forth.bThe app is connected through Facebook and Instagram. The app has attracted ~100K users (70% of whom are active) since its soft launch three months ago.
FAST COMPANY – July 16 – Her, a lesbian UK based dating app, is launching in US. The app was founded two years ago under the brand name Dattch. Her was designed to encourage conversation between users until they know enough about each other to meet in person. While Dattch was a pure dating app, Her expanded to become a digital place for queer women to converse. While Her raised $1M in March, they’ve yet to nail down a monetization strategy.