Very Social Network

Queer Spaces Raised $1M Through Crowdfunding

QUEER SPACES - Four months after its incorporation, Queer Spaces, incubated and spun out of Hornet, has closed its crowdfunding campaign. ~100 investors invested $1M in the company to create safe digital spaces for queer people. Among Spaces' high-profile tech industry investors are individuals including Mark Suster (Upfront), Sean Rad (Tinder), Tim Howes (Netscape), Max Burger (APAX), Niklas Lindstrom (Skout, Meet Group, UnitQ) and Sam Altman (YC, OpenAI). The investment will go towards accelerating the app's growth, building an in-demand Android version by year’s end, and kicking off a marketing spend to follow the app's launch in March of this year.

See full article at Queer Spaces website

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Hornet Ceases Monetization in Russia, While Remaining Available

HORNET - Hornet, the world's queer social network with 35m users, will continue serving queer users in Russia, while ceasing all monetization through advertising and subscriptions (resulting in a 7-figure impact on revenue). Hornet is the largest queer app in both Russia and Ukraine, and is one of very few ways for queer people in both countries to connect to their community amidst increasing anti-LGBTQ sentiment in militarized and authoritarian environments.

See full article at Hornet website

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch

Christof Wittig - Communities Are the Future of Online Dating

LTR CONFERENCE - Feb 2 - High churn, customer acquisition costs, and short user lifecycle are several challenges faced by dating services. According to Christof Wittig, CEO of Hornet, building communities in online dating is an excellent way to improve user experience. He believes that community is the future of dating. Creating places where users can interact around common interests can facilitate long-term user engagement and increasing retention. Christof Wittig explains the benefits of building communities in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.

LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.

The November LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group & Utopia Analytics.

Hornet Launches Video Stories

PRESS RELEASE - Oct 10 - Hornet, the gay social network with ~30M users, is launching its Version 7 with ephemeral video short stories that feature funny memes, flirtatious presentations, musings about life’s challenges, and encouraging gym workouts. Every user can post video short stories but remains in full control over the audiences. Also new in Version 7 is an option for users who prefer not to be presented in nearby searches of online profiles to be "off the grid."

Mark Brooks: Video shows life, and is entertaining and real. Exactly what people desire most right now. We saw a massive media shift from web to mobile. I think this shift from text+still images to video+stories is no less significant.