EMERCE – Apr 4 – The Inner Circle is officially launching in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. In just a few weeks, ~40K residents of Sao Paulo have already registered. The Inner Circle was founded in 2012 in Amsterdam, and claims 1.6M members worldwide.
Category: All Worldwide (non UK/Euro/US)
Tinder and BuzzFeed Partners For a Show – Highs and Lows of Being a Woman in India
INDIAN TELEVISION – Apr 4 – Tinder and BuzzFeed India present GirlsFeed, a six episode variety show featuring a diverse group of women discussing the struggles, joys, highs and lows of being a woman in India.
Grindr Employees Fear That China Wanted to Access User Data Via HIV Research
NBC NEWS – Apr 4 – The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., an interagency group led by the Treasury Department that oversees foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies, began investigating Grindr in July 2018 because of concerns about the security of sensitive user data collected by the app, which included the HIV status. Grindr, which has ~3M daily users, was wholly acquired by China's Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. in Jan 2018. The deal immediately caused concern among national security experts who worried that China could harvest sensitive private data from the app for espionage purposes. Kunlun is now trying to sell Grindr under pressure from the Treasury's foreign investment committee over national security concerns. A spokesperson for Grindr declined to comment on the federal committee's investigation and said that the company "never disclosed any user data to the Chinese government nor do they intend to. Scott Chen was named Grindr's CTO shortly after the app's sale to Kunlun. He is currently president of Grindr. On July 3, 2018, Chen informed three Grindr employees that Yiming Shao, an HIV researcher for China's equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was interested in working with Grindr. To facilitate this project, Chen wrote an email to the employees that suggested putting a full-time "intern" in Grindr's West Hollywood, California, headquarters to do research and work on a paper about HIV prevention that would be co-published with the company. "They are attracted by our brand, reach and data," Chen wrote in the email. "We need to be extremely careful about their data request. Yiming is head of HIV prevention in China CDC. We can't let people say this is about 'sharing user data with the Chinese government." Company employees believed that putting a person from Shao's team in Grindr's headquarters would put user data at risk.
Grindr’s Chinese Owner Says No Deal With US Yet on Sale
SCMP – Apr 1 – Beijing-based Kunlun, which has owned gay dating app Grindr since 2016, say it is communicating with the US regarding its ownership. It has yet to reach any agreement with US authorities (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US – CFIUS) in response to reports that the firm has been forced to sell Grindr amid concerns that its ownership constitutes a national security risk. In August, Kunlun started preparations for an IPO. The CFIUS intervention, however, would put an end to that process.
Brunei Introduces Death by Stoning as Punishment for Gay Sex
THE GUARDIAN – Mar 29 – Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex and adultery from next week. Brunei, which has adopted a more conservative form of Islam in recent years, first announced in 2013 its intention to introduce sharia law, the Islamic legal system that imposes strict corporal punishments. It was a directive of the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, who is one of the world's richest leaders with a personal wealth of about $20B (£15B) and has held the throne since 1967.
Facebook Extends Its Dating Service to Mexico, Argentina
by Steven Musil
See full article at CNet
Rela, a Chinese Lesbian Dating App, Exposed 5M User Profiles
TECH CRUNCH – Rela, a popular dating app for gay and queer women, has exposed millions of user profiles and private data because a server wasn't protected with a password. Rela disappeared from app stores in May 2017 after it was reportedly shut down by Chinese regulators, though the government never confirmed it took action. But the app returned a year later, according to its app store listing, on a different cloud provider. Victor Gevers, a security researcher at the GDI Foundation, found the exposed database this week, containing ~5.3M app users. It's believed the database had been exposed since June 2018, a month after the app returned, Gevers said. Each record included their nicknames, dates of birth, height and weight, ethnicity and sexual preferences and interests. A company spokesperson confirmed the database had been secured.
Low Marriage Rate Sparks Worries Over Declining Population in China
GLOBAL TIMES – Mar 28 – Newly released figures showing China's marriage rate at 7.2 per thousand in 2018 (down from 9.9), the lowest since 2013, have sparked public discussion over the reasons why more Chinese are staying single as well as worries on how to deal with the declining population. Shanghai had the lowest marriage rate – 4.4 per thousand in 2018. The China Statistical Yearbook 2018 shows that there were ~240M single people in China. According to an online poll launched by the People's Daily, "not meeting the right people" was listed as the top reason why young people are staying single, with 29.5% of the 33K respondents choosing this reason. Other reasons include "being unable to share the family burden" (23.4%), "enjoying single life" (16.5%), "living an unstable life" (12.3%), "too much work pressure" (8.8%) and "pursuing academic development." An online survey conducted among 140M members of Zhenai.com, China's largest matchmaking site, concluded that the high cost of living represents the greatest source of financial pressure for single people, followed by difficulties in buying a home.
by Li Qiao
See full article at Global Times
U.S. Pushes Chinese Owner of Grindr to Divest the Dating App
REUTERS – Mar 26 – Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd is seeking to sell Grindr, the gay dating app it has owned since 2016, after a U.S. government national security panel raised concerns about its ownership. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has informed Kunlun that its ownership of Grindr constitutes a national security risk. Kunlun had said last August it was preparing for an IPO of Grindr. As a result of CFIUS' intervention, Kunlun has now shifted its focus to an auction process to sell Grindr outright. Grindr has hired investment bank Cowen Inc to handle the sale process, and is soliciting acquisition interest from U.S. investment firms, as well as Grindr's competitors. Kunlun acquired a majority stake in Grindr in 2016 for $93M. It bought out the remainder of the company in 2018.
by Carl O'Donnell, Liana B. Baker & Echo Wang
See full article at Reuters
Spotify Used Tinder in Their Ads in India
AFAQS – Mar 26 – Spotify launched in India on February 27 with 40M tracks to choose from and the advertising that followed in Mumbai and Delhi drew emphasis on their playlist offering. Spotify has taken special permission from Tinder to use the brand name for its campaign.
by Aishwarya Ramesh
See full article at afaqs!
