Category: Blued

Google Pulled Gay Dating App Blued From Indonesia Online Store

Posted on February 2, 2018

Blued logoCHANNEL NEWS ASIA – Jan 31 – Google has pulled one of the world's largest gay dating apps from the Indonesian version of its online store in response to government demands. Officials had called for the tech giant to remove 73 LGBT-related apps, including dating services, from its Play Store and urged people to shun apps that broke with cultural norms in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation. Gay dating app Blued – which boasts ~27M users globally – no longer appeared in the Google Play Store available to Indonesian users. Apple's online store still has Blued available.

The full article was originally published at Channel News Asia, but is no longer available.

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Indonesia’s IT Ministry Asking Google To Block Blued And Other LGBT Networking Apps

Posted on January 20, 2018

Lgbt-ban-flagCOCONUTS – Jan 18 – Indonesia's IT Ministry has filed a request to Google to block ~70 LGBT social networking apps from being available to download in the country through the Google Play Store. The ministry is unable to block the apps themselves as they are all available under Google's platform. One of the apps was Blued, a gay dating and social networking app that claims to have 27M users worldwide. Google has not released any statement on the matter.

See full article at Coconuts

Summarized by the IDEA team

The Dating Elite In China Are Caucasian, Not Asian

Posted on January 8, 2018

Picking people on dating appGLOBAL TIMES – Jan 8 – Lovoo, Badoo, Tinder, Grindr, Her, Tantan, Momo, Blued and LesPark have proliferated both in the West and the East. They have enabled people to meet across social milieus, increased intercultural marriages and has led to more marriage stability, according to the MIT Technology Review magazine. But does it benefit everyone equally? The short answer is no. The nature of the dating apps favors those who are considered "attractive" by society's terms. "Society has been conditioned to see Caucasian people as the standard of beauty" the magazine Study Breaks wrote. Data analysis by OkCupid from 2009 to 2014 proved that people of color and Asian men are marginalized the most in the dating market. To find out more about the role that race plays in online dating in China, the Metropolitan launched a social experiment on the Chinese dating app Tantan. The platform has mainly Chinese users. Surprisingly, the results were similar to previous findings in the US. The Asian man scored lowest with a 3% match rate, while his Western counterpart reached 12% match rate. Meanwhile, the Asian woman received 15% match rate, while the Western woman received 66%.

by Katrin Büchenbacher
See full article at Global Times

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

The Top 5 Chinese LGBT Apps In 2017

Posted on November 1, 2017

Gay-flag-ChinaTECHNODE – Oct 31 – Here are the latest networking apps catering to the LGBT community in China.

  • Blued – launched in 2012 and has since pocketed six rounds of financing; 27M registered users, 20% overseas; covers ~190 countries, and is available in 11 languages. Blued has made profits thanks to the thriving live streaming feature and its mobile marketing business.
  • Lesdo – launched in 2012, the largest lesbian dating app in China, 1.5M users, founded by a team of gay women. In 2014, the app got angel funding from GSR Ventures, and the next year landed millions of US dollars of pre-A financing led by IVP, SOSVentures, and Linear.
  • Aloha – a social networking app designed for gay men. Users swipe left for "nope" and right for "aloha" to get matched with other nearby men.
  • LesPark – the major rival of Lesdo. It is a dating app catering to gay women. The app is known for its live streaming feature and has millions of registered users.
  • the L – rolled out in Dec 2012, one of the major lesbian location-based dating apps in China.

by Timmy Shen
See full article at The Beijinger

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Chinese LGBTs Economy To Overtake America’s

Posted on June 26, 2017

LGBT_flag_map_of_the_People's_Republic_of_ChinaFORBES – June 23 – China's Communist government doesn't encourage LGBT causes or other social activism. Yet China lacks strong organized religion, so the LGBT community is tacitly accepted as long it don't stand in the way of authority. China's three-year-old pink economy is one-third the size of the more mature American pink economy. China is the world's third largest LGBT market after Europe and the US and worth $300B per year. Pink spending power the U.S. came to $917B in 2015. China's Blued app for LGBT services has 27M users, making it the biggest app of its type worldwide.

by Ralph Jennings
See full article at Forbes

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Meeting A Gay Pride Grand Marshal, Founder Of Blued

Posted on June 20, 2017

Blued ma baoli office smallNEW YORK TIMES – June 19 – The NYC Pride celebrations continue this week, leading up to the march on Sunday. Mr. Geng is a former police officer who set up one of China's first gay advice and networking sites, and later created Blued, one of the country's most popular gay dating apps. He was selected to be a grand marshal in recognition of his successful use of the Internet to raise awareness among China's gay community and of his passion for L.G.B.T. rights.

Q: What was it like growing up gay in China?
A: Until 1997, gay sex was considered a crime in China, and homosexuality was classified as a mental illness in the country until 2001. My parents still think being gay is a disease.

Q: What is it like being L.G.B.T. in China today?
A: Things have gotten better since, but the situation remains challenging. People who come out as gay risk losing their jobs.

by Jonathan Wolfe
See full article at New York Times

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

LGBT Dating Apps Blocked In Indonesia

Posted on April 22, 2017

GrindrINSIDE INDONESIA – Apr 19 – Several dating apps, including Grindr, Blued and BoyAhoy, have been blocked in Indonesia. The Ministry of Information said these apps were being used by paedophiles to pimp teenage boys.

by Dina Listiorini & Sharyn Graham Davies
See full article at Inside Indonesia

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Gay Dating App Blued Bags Investment From China’s State-run Media

Posted on February 8, 2017

Blued logoTECHNODE – Feb 8 – China's attitude toward GLBT community is improving. Chinese gay chat and hook-up app Blued has sealed eight-digit RMB strategic funding from the investment arm of The Beijing News, a state-backed newspaper group. Blued now supports 13 languages and has set up offices in Thailand, Vietnam, and the U.K. In December last year, Blued made a strategic investment with U.S. dating app Hornet in an attempt to make forays into North American and Latin American markets. The company is recording profits now thanks to thriving live streaming and mobile marketing businesses.

by Emma Lee
See full article at Technode

Update: YIBADA – Feb 10 – Blued raised $30M from The Beijing News.

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Building A Community, And An Empire, With A Gay Dating App In China

Posted on December 19, 2016

Blued Ma BaoliNY TIMES – Dec 16 – By day, Mr. Ma was a police officer in China with a wife. By night, he led a life as a gay man, running a website for gays. In 2012, his superiors at a police department uncovered his website and he resigned. He lost his job, his family was struggling to accept his sexuality, so Mr. Ma created Blued, now China's most popular gay dating app with an estimated value of $600M and ~3M active daily users. Blued is only beginning to make a profit; most of its services are free. Attracting advertising remains difficult. The company is trying to increase its revenue by expanding into gay travel and entertainment. The spending power of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China is estimated at $460 billion, making them the largest market in Asia, according to LGBT Capital, an investment-management firm. Mr. Ma has set his sights on foreign markets, hoping to take on Grindr and Hornet but analysts said it would be difficult for the company to build a large following overseas.

by Javier C. Hernández
See full article at NY Times

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Gay Dating Apps Hornet And Blued Enter Global Partnership

Posted on December 18, 2016

Hornet blued logosPINK NEWS – Dec 18 – As part of the cooperation, Blued will be participating in an extension of the funding round to help expand upon the momentum and growth rates Hornet has been experiencing. Hornet raised $8M earlier this year from venture capital fund Ventech China. Hornet, founded in 2011, claims to be "the world's second largest gay social network" with 15M users, and 3M monthly active users.

by Joseph Patrick McCormick
See full article at Pink News

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team