Popular feminist dating app Bumble is preparing for an initial public offering early next year, and is reportedly talking with banks about the plan.

The timing is still tenuous, but it was reported by Bloomberg News that the company’s valuation could be between $6 billion to $8 billion dollars. Bloomberg also noted that private equity firm Blackstone Group bought a majority stake in Bumble last year, when it was known as MagicLab. Blackstone valued the company then at $3 billion.

MacigLab was recently rebranded as Bumble by its new CEO and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who took over after Andrey Andreev resigned. Herd has made some changes including significant rebranding and folding in gay dating app Chappy to its signature Bumble dating app. Popular dating app Badoo, also founded by Andreev, is part of the Bumble suite of apps.

Pakistan has banned five apps on the grounds of having “indecent and immoral content,” including popular dating app Tinder and gay dating app Grindr.

According to CNN Business, the country’s oversight agency for Telecom services, The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, also blocked Tagged, Skout, and SayHi, noting that these apps had violated local laws. The Authority said it had given notice to these companies to remove the dating services and to moderate livestream content on their platforms. When the companies didn’t respond in enough time, it blocked them.

Campaign staffers working for Democratic candidates were warned this week that they could be targeted by bad actors through dating apps. According to CNN who broke the story, the staffers were told to “swipe carefully” because any personal information they share through profiles, photos, or even their messages could be hacked in order to get information on them or their campaigns.

"We're received reports that opposition groups may be trying to 'sting' or infiltrate Democratic campaigns or organizations through dating sites," the warning read.

BlueCity, parent company of China’s largest gay dating app Blued, has just announced its acquisition of popular Chinese lesbian dating app LESDO, marking the first-ever deal within the country’s LGBTQ market.

LESDO is an app created specifically for Lesbian users and one of the most popular lesbian social apps in China along with Rela. No financial information was disclosed about the deal. 

"We can see the scale of existing lesbian apps are not big enough to meet the demand of a sizable market," BlueCity's founder and chief executive Ma Baoli said in an interview with Reuters. He added that BlueCity could offer algorithm support, marketing, and financing to boost customer retention and visibility as well as increase new subscribers of the app.

Popular dating app Hinge crashed on a Thursday late in August, and when users were once again able to log in, they found that some of their matches were gone. Many took to Twitter to voice their complaints.

The app crashed Thursday morning August 20th according to Insider, and the Hinge team worked to fix the problem and make it available again only 30 minutes later. However, when people began to log back in, some noticed problems – especially that their matches were no longer appearing in their queue.

Bumble on TikTok

Bumble has turned to TikTok to help drive new subscribers, and has seen its installs increase five times between March and May when their campaign took place. The dating app has also seen its costs per subscriber decrease by 64% since running its direct response ads on TikTok’s platform, according to Mobile Marketer.

Bumble employed influencers to raise awareness of its app, creating content that would attract new users, specifically the younger demographic that gravitates to video-based social media like TikTok. The partnership was a success, with Bumble reporting revenue last month that was second only to dating app Tinder.