WOMENOFCHINA – Mar 11 – According to Tantan's recent survey of 4K women in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, dating apps have become an essential social tool for single women in metropolitan areas. The higher a woman earns, the more active she is in online dating. 40% used Tantan to become acquainted with their dates, 15% were in love more than once via Tantan, and 42% used Tantan to make friends.
by Xu Lin
See full article at WomenofChina
THE STRAITS TIMES – Feb 23 – The founder of Sugarbook has been charged at the Magistrate's Court in Malaysia over the publication of a post "Top 10 Sugar Baby Universities in Malaysia" with intention to cause public fear. The charge carries imprisonment of up to two years or fine or both. On Feb 15, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) blocked access to Sugarbook for allegedly breaching the law on the use of network facilities or services. However, Sugarbook's developer then set up an alternative site to enable its users to access the blocked webpage.
EXCHANGE4MEDIA – Feb 23 – Bumble has partnered with Ritu Varma, Abijeet Duddala, Alekhya Harika and Shreyas Mediratta, who will share their dating tips and tricks to help women make the first move.
MALAY MAIL – Feb 20 – Last week, Sugarbook's founder and CEO was arrested on suspicion of wrongfully confining persons for prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, making statements with an intent to cause fear or public alarm, and for improper use of network facilities or a network service. After the police announced investigations on women who are subscribed to the service, they said the exchanges between two consenting adults was not the authorities' business. Advance Tertiary College's academic director Daniel Abishegam said that Sugarbook was simple a "glorified" dating agency whose services did not expressly include trading sex for cash. Lawyer Fahri Azzat argued that Sugarbook was not fundamentally different from other dating services despite its premise of being "where romance meets finance".
by Emmanuel Santa Maria Chin
See full article at Malay Mail
MOTHERSHIP.SG – Feb 18 – Sugarbook itself is also being investigated for prostitution and the improper use of network services. Darren Chan's arrest comes about a week after the release of a survey by SeekingArrangement, which said that Malaysia holds the third spot in Asia for the highest number of sugar daddies. Separately, a statement released by Sugarbook at about the same time pointed out that the month of Jan. had seen a 40% increase in sign-ups on the platform among Malaysian university students. Access to Sugarbook's website was blocked on Feb. 15 by Malaysia's Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
by Rex Pascual
See full article at TradingPlatforms.com
This post also appears on VerySocialNetwork
FREE MALAYSIA TODAY – Feb 16 – Controversial dating site Sugarbook has been blocked by Malaysia's Internet regulator, days after creating a controversy over its claims of Malaysian women offering themselves as "sugar babies". Sugarbook had claimed last week that some 12,705 students from 10 institutions of higher learning in the Klang Valley, including two public universities, were currently registered with the platform.
EXPLICA – Feb 15 – The market for online dating services is expected to generate $ 3.2B in global revenue by the end of 2021. The estimate for Mexico is $ 35.7M, according to Statista. In 2020, 5.2M Mexicans confessed to having used an app service to find a partner. The most popular app is Tinder. Last March, 723K people downloaded Tinder compared to 299K in February.
YAHOO FINANCE – Feb 10 – Australians are set to spend $1.1B on Valentine's Day gifts and experiences this year, but while love is in the air, romance scams are everywhere. Aussies reported ~3,5K dating and romance scams in 2020, with 35% of those scams resulting in a loss, according to Scamwatch data. In total, singles lost $37.2M to these kinds of scams last year – a large portion of which occurred in February.
OPW – Jan 31 – The tagline for the grand Expo 2020 in Dubai is "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future." So you'd think with that focus it would now, surely, be possible for visitors to access their favorite dating apps.
Over the years I've posted news on OPW about the opening up of dating apps. Most were simply not available here. Here's the previously blocked sites and their current availability.
Previously blocked…
Previously open…
So all but the risque/super-casual products are now open. The U.A.E. is open for business.
