Bae is the fastest-growing dating app for millennial African-Americans, and it’s seen so much success that it’s going global.
The dating app was acquired by if(we), the parent company of Tagged, and the Bae name will be traded out as users will be funneled into Tagged, which has a dating pool on a global scale. The ultimate goal is for Tagged to become the go-to place for black singles who want to date.
The app was created in 2013 by brothers Brian, 28, and Justin Gerrard, 30, and friend Jordan Kunzika, 22, when they saw that there wasn’t a space for their friends who wanted to date within the black community.
“For many of our friends of color, particularly black men and women, the experience on mass-marketing dating apps like Tinder and Match was unfulfilling, and at times degrading,” Justin Gerrard told Fast Company. “Black male daters typically had to send 10 times the number of messages as their white counterparts to receive one response and black women were fetishized for their looks and flooded with inappropriate comments.”
The Gerrard brothers said that the acquisition by Tagged will give their users access to features with Tagged that they have come to appreciate.
“While Tagged may not be the bright and shiny new thing, we have vast knowledge of our users and what they are looking for in new dating experiences,” Gerrard said. “It has successfully navigated the dating space in the U.S. and internationally for 12 years and remained profitable despite the emergence of hundreds of new players over the last decade.”
“If anything, the Bae community will have an even better experience with Tagged’s more robust features,” he added. “Now users can swipe and browse potential Baes from around the world, play the addicting Pets game, and chat directly with friends in our Feed experience.”