GLOBE NEWSWIRE – Dec 3 – Blued's Q3 revenues reached RMB298M ($43.8M), up 47.3% YOY. Net loss was RMB138M ($20M), compared with net loss of RMB7.1M in Q3 2019. Monthly active users on the Blued mobile app reached 6.3M, up 7% YOY. Total paying users on the Blued app reached 494K, up 43.8% YOY. Revenues from live streaming services reached RMB255M ($37.6M), up 42.9% YOY. Revenues from membership services reached RMB18.2M ($2.7M), up 56.4% YOY. Blued is currently the largest gay social network app in the world. Launched in 2012, the free app now counts 40M users with the majority still in its country of origin, China.
Category: Blued
Chinese Gay Dating App Blued to Acquire Finka for $36.5M
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BlueCity CEO on His Journey to Creating the First Publicly Listed LGBTQ+ Social Network
BUSINESS INSIDER – Oct 27 – BlueCity is the owner of Blued, the first LBGTQ+-focused social network to go public. It was at a market value of ~$600M. CEO Ma Baoli began his career as a policeman in China before creating his own social network in 2000.
Q: Your first job was as a policeman. How did you make the transition into the tech industry?
A: When the Internet boom hit China in 1998, I started to search for answers. Through the Internet I discovered that homosexuality was not an illness or a disorder. The predecessor of Blued is the website Danlan.com, which I founded in 2000, and was one of China's first and most influential LGBTQ online forums. In 2012, when I saw the big shift from the PC internet to mobile Internet, we launched the Blued app.
Q: How do you plan to expand Blued in the future?
A: We hope to refine and expand our current health services, and feel confident that they will eventually reach users around the world. We also plan to serve different subgroups within the broader LGBTQ+ community, as seen in our recent acquisition of LESDO, a leading Lesbian social-networking app.
Q: What has been the impact of growing restrictions on Chinese companies in the US and other countries?
A: Our staff are working closely with external consultancies and stakeholders to make sure that we are fully compliant with local laws and regulations in markets where we operate.
Q: What impact do you think Blued has had for the LGBT community in China and beyond?
A: We are more than just a social network, dating app or a live streaming platform. Blued is a safe zone for people in the LGBTQ+ community to obtain public health information especially about HIV testing, prevention and education.
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.
Blued Introduces “Community” Feature
GLOBE NEWSWIRE – Sep 16 – Blued now enables users to join groups covering diverse topics and express themselves, similar to Facebook Groups. As of Jun 30, 2020, Blued had 6.4m monthly active users worldwide, up 11.2% YOY. ~Half are outside China. Each active user spends 60 mins and 16 sessions on Blued every day.
BlueCity CEO Named Among Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business in Asia
GLOBE NEWSWIRE – Sep 9 – Baoli Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of BlueCity, a world-leading online LGBTQ platform, has been named among Business Insider's 100 People Transforming Business in Asia. BlueCity is best known for its dating app Blued. Entrepreneurs are classified into ten industry categories with ten winners for each in each region. Ma was awarded under the Consumer Tech category. Other winners in this division include Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify.
Parent Company of Blued Buys Lesbian Platform
REUTERS – Aug 26 – BlueCity, the owner of China's biggest gay men dating app Blued, has bought a Chinese lesbian dating app LESDO, marking the first ever deal within the country's LGBT market. Launched in 2014, LESDO is an app for lesbians. It is believed to be the second most popular lesbian social app in China after Rela. BlueCity raised $84.8M in a Nasdaq IPO in July that valued it at $614M.
by Colin Qian & Brenda Goh
See full article at Reuters
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BlueCity Sees 32% YOY Increase in Total Revenue in Q2
CGTN – Aug 26 – BlueCity, China's leading online LGBTQ platform, saw a 32.2% increase in total revenue YOY, with its net loss significantly improved. The Q2 revenue was 247.4M yuan ($35M). Q2 net loss was 3.3M yuan ($479K), a significant improvement compared with a net loss of 12.2M yuan ($1.8M) in Q2 2019. Monthly active users (MAUs) on the Blued mobile app reached 6.4M, up 11.2% YOY.
Blued Hits 50K Mark on Appointments for HIV Testing
CAPITAL WATCH – Aug 18 – Blued, Asia's top LGBTQ platform, has facilitated 50K online appointments for HIV testing at ~200 partnered testing establishments in China as of 2019. The company said it has recorded ~10M page views for HIV-prevention content on BlueCity's platforms.
Dating App Stocks You Might Fall in Love With
CAPITAL WATCH – Aug 18 – High demand for dating apps is likely to continue even after the pademic. In the Q2, Tinder gained ~200K users, bringing its average subscribers to 6.2M. Also, direct revenue for Tinder jumped by 15%. In total, Match's revenue soared 12% YOY to $555.5M. Match is now projecting to generate Q3 revenues of ~$600M. Thanks to the strong earnings, the stock is now trading at an all-time high since it debuted on Nasdaq in November 2015. Another stock to watch is MEET (The Meet Group). In the Q2, Meet's revenues skyrocketed 74% YOY to $90.33M. Net income rose by nearly five-fold to $10.38M. On the international online dating stage, one company likely to continue seeing demand is Spark Networks SE. Based on preliminary financial results, Spark generated $114M in revenue, beating its previous expectations of $110 – $112M. Newly listed Chinese BlueCity might be worth some love. Its stock skyrocketed as high as 124% in its trading debut from its IPO pricing of $16 per share. The company's app Blued is the largest LGBTQ community in China, India, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
by Anthony Russo
See full article at Capital Watch
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