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Founder of Chinese gay dating app Blued optimistic about overseas expansion after US listing
- BlueCity, best-known for its dating app Blued, made history as the world’s first gay social network to become a publicly-traded company on Wednesday
- Despite a global backlash against Chinese technology, the founder of China’s largest gay dating app said he is optimistic about its prospects overseas
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As a young man living in China, Ma Baoli thought he was the only gay person in the world.
“There was no internet … When I wanted to find a boyfriend, I had no way to go about it,” he said. “At the time everyone just wrote their dating information on public washroom walls. What a miserable era.”
But the rise of the World Wide Web changed things, bringing with it unprecedented access to information and new ways for LGBTQ+ people to meet and interact with each other.
In 2000, while still working as a full-time police officer, Ma founded one of China’s earliest and most influential online gay forums, Danlan.org, under his alias Geng Le.
This site, whose name means “light blue” in Chinese, paved the way for Ma’s later venture BlueCity, which on Wednesday made history as the world’s first gay social network to become a publicly-traded company.
Shares in BlueCity, best known for its dating app Blued, soared as much as 124 per cent during trading after its debut on the Nasdaq, closing 46 per cent up at US$23.43 per share after raising about US$85 million from its US initial public offering (IPO). The Beijing-based company had sold 5.3 million American Depositary Shares at US$16 per share.
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