Social constructivist account of the world’s largest gay social app: Case study of Blued in China

Abstract

Given China’s political conservativism and limited social acceptance of sexual minorities, it is paradoxical to find that Blued, a gay social app headquartered in Beijing, has become the largest app of this kind globally. Informed by the social construction of technology perspective and based on a yearlong ethnography, this article identifies three major factors that have shaped the developmental trajectory of Blued: (1) work with the Communist Party of China to employ Blued as a health education platform; (2) switch in orientation from a hookup app to a social app; and (3) push for the commercialization and internationalization of the app. This article spotlights that the voices of users were missing in the development process and argues that, for Blued to continue maintaining its success, it must stop relying on the “I-methodology” in its design and development. Lastly, it contributes to the SCOT scholarship and social app studies by deciphering the role of the state in app development in the Chinese context.

Keywords:

• App development
• Blued
• China
• dating app
• social app
• social construction of technology

Notes

Notes

1 We use “social apps” rather than “dating apps” or “hookup apps” to refer to communication platforms such as Grindr, Tinder, Blued, and Momo.

2 Mosemghvdlishvili and Jansz (2013) examine how app developers understand their role in the app development process and negotiate their power with operating system providers.

3 https://www.blued.com/en/index.html (accessed on October 15, 2018).

4 This is similar to a startup an incubator but incubator focuses on innovation while an accelerator focuses on growth.

5 Changping is a district in Beijing.

6 We keep tongzhi (literally meaning “comrades,” a generic term that refers to sexual minorities), as it reflects the legacy of communism (e.g. Chou 2000) in Chinese pinyin.

7 http://www.feizan.com/ (accessed on October 15, 2018). (While Zank went out of business in 2017, its website is still there and has not been updated since then.

8 “Cooperative marriage” refers to marriage between a gay man and a lesbian that is increasingly popular in China (Choi and Luo 2016).

9 Collective actions are what the Communist Party of China strives to curtail (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013). Accordingly, if Rela’s campaign had remained online only, it would likely have not been punished by the state.