Growlr, which has been a pioneer in the world of gay dating, especially for the bear community, has been sold to a straight social app company for $11.8 million dollars.
Bear World Magazine reported the news on Thursday, March 7. The app, which has been around for close to a decade at this point, was acquired by a company called Meet Group. Their existing portfolio includes MeetMe, Skout, Tagged and LOVOO. It will be the group’s first entry into the same-sex market.
“I’m excited to announce the acquisition of Growlr, which provides a meaningful step into the large same-sex dating market and expands the base of users to whom we can deliver our live video product,” said Geoff Cook, the CEO of Meet Group.
“Similar to what we have done with our other acquired properties, we plan to be aggressive in bringing our video model to Growlr,” he continued. “We expect to begin rolling out live video on Growlr in the fourth quarter of 2019.”
The Growlr app boasts over 10 million followers from around the world. It’s designed for the bear and bear aficionados in mind and has slowly grown into one of the biggest same-sex dating apps for close to a decade.
Instinct Magazine did an exclusive interview with its founder Coley Cumminskey in November of 2017.