China

Image: Match Group

Match Group has appointed former Plenty of Fish CEO Malgosia Green as CEO of Match Group Asia, who will now be based in Singapore. The company has said it will be targeting the growing Asian market in the coming months as well as focusing on AI development, and a huge step forward is having an executive in the region.

Green was appointed by Match Group CEO Bernard Kim, who has been under fire from shareholders about the fourth quarter revenue decline because of poor product rollouts from Tinder. He has named four main points of growth for the company, one of which is focusing on the Asian market.

In an interview with Fast Company, Green said: “Given the huge potential of the region, and how large it is . . . it made a lot more sense to have someone specifically dedicated to Asia itself, and to be based in the region.”

Tinder has become a pawn in some new intelligence tactics employed by Russian spies. They are using the app to woo German soldiers as informants, so they can obtain intelligence about Ukraine’s war strategy.

According to Insider, German newspaper Welt am Sonntag broke the story, reporting that Russian agents are specifically targeting politicians and members of Germany’s armed forces as sources of information, and they are using dating app Tinder as a tool to reach them.

Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) confirmed at a recent NATO meeting in the country that “members of other intelligence services (e.g. Russia) use social media to specifically establish contacts with members of the Bundeswehr,” or the German armed forces, according to Insider. MAD also confirmed that Tinder was the app most used.

China has launched a new state-sponsored dating app to boost marriage rates in the country. Palm Guixi is now available in the Jiangxi province and will use personal data on its single residents there to build its matchmaking platform.

The app itself differs from traditional dating apps like Tinder and Bumble in that the state-run operation picks your matches out based on tracking data, and sets matches up via the app’s blind dates platform according to Gizmodo.

Local governments in the province are organizing in-person matchmaking events as well, encouraging single attendees to wear traditional clothes and play games as a way to break the ice and to celebrate Chinese culture  according to The Guardian.

Match Group has named new key executives, including its first CTO and a new President and CFO, as well as a new focus on four key businesses – Tinder, Hinge, Asia and Evergreen & Emerging.

According to the company’s press release, Gary Swindler was named to the top position of Match Group as President and CFO, and Will Wu joins as chief technology officer, a newly created position, to oversee product innovation across all apps. Swindler was promoted from his position as CFO and COO and Wu joins from Snap Inc., where he oversaw the commercialization of Snap’s developer platforms and spearheaded the creation of its most famous features like “Discover” and the “Chat” messaging feature, as well as Snap’s social gaming feature. 

Match Group is betting big on Wu, who brings an impressive background with developing one of the earliest revenue streams for Snap, as well as developing Snap’s primary social engagement driver.

Grindr CEO George Arison

Dating app Grindr, which serves the LGBTQ+ community, named board member George Arison as its new CEO. He is scheduled to launch the company’s IPO this fall with a $2.1 billion valuation.

Arison is scheduled to take the reins on October 19th. He has long worked in the tech industry and been a board member of the company since May, according to NBC News. Prior to his appointment as CEO, he founded the car reseller app Shift Technologies, where he also served as CEO, and before that he headed a taxi-hailing app.

In addition to hiring a new CEO, Grindr also appointed a new CFO, the former CFO of Disney Streaming Service Vanna Krantz, who launched and grew the highly successful Disney+ product. Grindr’s outgoing CEO Jeff Bonforte and CFO Gary Hsueh will move into advisory roles going forward, according to NBC News.

Founder of Blued - Baoli Ma

Baoli Ma, the founder of BlueCity Holdings which operates Blued, China’s most popular gay dating app, has stepped down from his position as chairman and CEO after the company was privatized and delisted from NASDAQ. The company has not yet named a successor.

According to the South China Morning Post, Ma hinted that it was difficult to run a gay dating platform in the country’s current environment, where the government is cracking down on LGBTQ content online and removing gay dating apps including Grindr from its app stores. Last year, Chinese conglomerate Tencent erased over a dozen LGBTQ university groups from WeChat. Same-sex marriage is currently illegal in China as well.

The country has enforced new rules regarding privacy, data management and algorithmic recommendations for the past few years, which have especially affected gay dating platforms like Blued. But the app has run into controversies on its own, too. In 2019, Blued suspended new user registrations for one week after a report came out that some underage users contracted HIV on dates set up via the app.