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Do you have what it takes to join The Inner Circle? The super-selective, Amsterdam-based dating platform has officially entered the US market with a launch in New York City.

The Inner Circle’s premise is not unlike The League, another elite dating service that vets potential members before allowing them to join. Both apps aim to create exclusive communities of “high-quality” users - singles who are smart, attractive, ambitious, and career-focused. To do so, new users must apply to join and all applicants are carefully screened before being granted access.

Let’s face it, the U.S. election was a polarizing event, and now that it’s over, people in both camps are weary of those in the other. This can make two strangers who meet via a dating app hesitant about each other. Should they talk politics or not? Will political party allegiance be a factor in whether or not the relationship moves forward?

More and more daters are wondering where their dates stand politically than ever before. For many, it’s not about playing politics, but about connecting over shared values. Conservatives and Democrats are very divided in what’s most important on a more personal level, so much so that it can affect romantic relationships.

Though the US Presidential Election is over, the nation remains deeply divided along party lines. Many Americans have made jokes about moving to Canada in the past, but this week, the Canadian immigration website’s server broke down because of all the traffic from unhappy American voters.

Enter Maple Match, a dating app which matches Americans and Canadians for potential romance. The company took an opportunity to make lemonade out of political lemons.

Maple Match was beta testing its service earlier this year, and this month seized the opportunity to launch its new app to help Americans feeling less than happy with their country’s choices. The app's tagline is “make dating great again,” similar to the slogan for President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.

Maple Match’s technology is straightforward. It offers the same photo-based profile that Tinder does, but there is no swiping. You indicate your citizenship and your desired citizenship, and then you can look through potential matches and start messaging whomever you like.

Dating app Momo, China’s answer to Tinder, has been a popular dating app among the country’s singles with a record 75 million users. But in recent weeks, Momo seems to be expanding out of the dating business and into something more lucrative.

For its latest update, Momo executives decided to supplement the app's location-based dating service that matches people through swiping and messaging. Now, the app offers a live-streaming function, catering to music lovers and even musicians themselves. The update allows users to watch their favorite musicians perform live, as well as giving them the ability to interact with the musicians.

Wear your politics on your sleeve along with your heart. In the wake of Brexit, a new dating app hopes to bring together British singles who voted to remain in the European Union.

"Why wait until you’re halfway through an evening before finding out your date voted Out?" says the site. “Better Together Dating is a unique dating service for the 48%; for those who know that Britain is stronger within Europe, for those who celebrate the diversity, joy, and love that our great continent provides, and for those with Bregret.”

Better Together has already been hailed as the Tinder take on Brexit. The service is the brainchild of M14 Industries, a Manchester-based startup founded by John Kershaw. Kershaw previously created Bristlr, a tongue-in-cheek dating app for singles with beards and those who love them. Though it was originally intended as a joke, Bristlr took off and how has about 20,000 monthly users.

Could Better Together become the same? Kershaw told The Atlantic that the site was designed to be a way to support the Remain cause, though it’s probably too late.

“We’ve got Europe in our DNA; half my family are French, we’ve got staff here on an EU visa, and some of us are the children of immigrants,” Kershaw said. “I wanted something to cheer us up.”

Several hundred users have joined the site so far, primarily from the United Kingdom. The gender split is 60% male and 40% female, numbers equivalent to Tinder. Better Together’s interface also resembles Tinder. New users sign up with Facebook, and can only chat with people when they have mutually matched or both starred each other.

When it comes to profiles, Better Together is slightly more extensive than its predecessor. Members are asked to answer questions like: “What is your favorite city to visit in the EU?” “What languages do you speak?” and “What countries have you visited in the EU? Tell your favourite story!”

Like many mobile dating apps, Better Together targets a younger market. It’s a smart move for the company, considering that 75% of British citizens between ages 18 and 24 reportedly voted to Stay, along with 56 percent of voters between ages 25 and 49, according to a YouGov exit poll. It could be a sign that Better Together will find the same unexpected success as Bristlr.

As for Kershaw’s favorite creation, he hesitates to choose. ““The beard is less of a deal-breaker,” he told the Evening Standard. “If you had someone with a beard who wanted to vote Leave, that’s probably a no. But someone who wanted to back Remain but didn’t have a beard, that’s maybe OK. But it depends on the quality of the beard and the conviction of the politics.”

For more dating services you can check out our UK dating sites and apps category. Of those Match UK is one of the most popular among singles.

To coincide with LGBT Pride Month in the United States, China’s most popular gay social networking app announced last month a major milestone. Blued, founded in 2012, has completed its latest rounds of investor financing and now has a value of $300 million.

Blued claimed more than 27 million registered users globally as a February 2016, with overseas users accounting for more than 20 percent of the total. Not only does that make it China’s biggest gay dating app and bigger than Grindr, it also makes Blued one of the top social networking apps on the App Store.

Geng Le, CEO of Blued, said the company has seen significant revenue growth, particularly in the first half of 2016 when it started to make a profit. The app primarily makes money from advertising and live streaming, where audiences can tune into live-streaming video broadcasts and send virtual gifts to the broadcasters.

"With the funding, we plan to speed up our international expansion, and localize our products overseas,” Geng said. “We will promote the marketing and branding, and set up more offices overseas. We also plan to hire more competitive staff, and we will pay them a considerable salary."

Blued currently operates offices abroad in the United States and Thailand. The app has been translated into nine languages and its users hail from more than 190 countries and regions.

What has made Blued so explosively popular? As one of the earliest Chinese-language, geo-dating apps for gay singles in the region, Blued got an early foothold in the market. And given that China’s population is 1.3 billion - 1.7 million of which are estimated to fall on the LGBT spectrum - that market is potentially enormous.

“The gay business is a piece of virgin territory in China, and we hope to become a leader of this lucrative market,” Geng Le told China Daily this week. “The substantial spending ability of gays and the funding support we got indicate the strong power of the so-called pink economy.”

For comparison, consider Grindr. As the world’s other best-known gay dating app, Grindr was valued at $155 million earlier this year when it sought its most recent investment in China. Grindr has more than two million daily active users, according to a factsheet from June 2015. Blued has over three million.

The numbers bode well for Blued, which is preparing to shift its strategy in light of the good news. Last November, Geng Le said that Blued was aiming for a stock market flotation within five years. China Daily reports that the company now hopes to achieve it within the next one to two years, though the location of the listing is not yet known.