Acquisitions

After purchasing a majority stake in Grindr last year, ​​​​​​a Chinese gaming company has acquired the rest of the popular dating app for gay men. The acquisition means a major payday for the company, but China experts and former intelligence officials fear it could spell privacy problems for users.

Kunlun Group purchased 60 percent of Grindr in January 2016 for $93 million. The Chinese firm has now acquired the remaining stake for $152 million, according to stock filings, which some believe puts the Chinese government in a position to demand sensitive data on the app’s users, including those who are not Chinese citizens.

Kunlun Group initially indicated that Grindr founder Joel Simkhai would stay on as CEO, but following the completion of the deal, Simkhai has left the company with no explanation for his departure.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of female-friendly dating app Bumble, was just named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list, and is featured on its December 2017 cover. This is no small feat – her dating app has amassed a large following with 70% year-on-year growth, according to the article, and has 22 million registered users. In comparison Tinder has 46 million registered users and last year saw growth at 10%.

The company is also being eyed by Match Group, owner of dating app rival Tinder, and is said to be in talks for over a billion dollars as an asking price. Herd turned down the company’s original offer of $450 million, according to recent reports.

Market analysts have a fascination with Tinder and Bumble, the two fastest-growing dating apps in the online dating industry. Rumors have been persistent that Match Group and Tinder was interested in acquiring the female-friendly dating app for around $450 million as reported back in August of this year, but the company turned down the offer.

Now it seems that Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, is reportedly still in talks to acquire Bumble, but now for a much heftier price tag of one billion US dollars, according to a recent article in Forbes.

Currently, Match Group has only $500 million in cash and a market cap of under $8 billion, according to website TechCrunch. So potential options would be to fund Bumble with some debt, or to do a cash/ stock combination deal, or even to acquire a portion of the company rather than all of it.

PositiveSingles recently acquired PozMatch.com a HIV positive community designed to match their members together. PozMatch.com has been online since 1998.

Of the 1.2 million members PositiveSingles has over 200 thousand members who are HIV positive. This makes it a good fit to take over the PozMatch community. PositiveSingles was founded in 2002 and has become the largest dating service for singles who have an STD. The service can be accessed via the website at PositiveSingles.com and by using iOS and Android apps (found on their respective stores).

For more information you can read the press release or check out our review of PositiveSingles.

Online dating corporation Match Group was reported to have made an offer to purchase dating app Bumble for $450 million this summer, according to a report by website Tech Crunch.

Match Group is the parent company to a number of dating apps, including popular Bumble competitors Match, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid and Tinder. It seems Bumble hasn’t accepted the offer, which is understandable since some analysts value the company at almost a billion dollars.

Bumble has a rocky history with Match Group as well, which could play a part in any decision about an acquisition. Bumble’s founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe sued Tinder and IAC in 2014, (when Match Group was a part of IAC). Wolfe was one of the co-founders of Tinder, and brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend Justin Mateen, who also happened to be one of Tinder’s co-founders and the CMO. Wolfe accused him of sending her “sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate comments, emails, and text messages” following their very public breakup. The two parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, with neither side admitting any wrongdoing.

After purchasing 62 percent of the gay dating app Grindr last year for $88 million, Beijing Kunlun Tech is shelling out another $152 million to buy the remaining percentage. The Chinese tech company is now the sole owner of Grindr, which reaches 27 million users in nearly 200 countries.

Unlike Taiwan, which recently legalized same-sex marriage, China affords few legal rights to LGBT citizens. Nevertheless, companies like Kunlun are beginning to realize the enormous potential of LGBT customers. Kunlun hopes to expand Grindr’s reach throughout Asia and take on China’s homegrown gay dating app, Blued.

“It is of strategic importance for us to fully engage in the daily operations of Grindr and make it our development milestone,” Kunlun said in a statement. “[With the deal], we also aim to be a world leading social media company in the future, and to expand our platforms into film, streaming and animation.”