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China’s Dating App Momo Will Soon Chat-Up International Users in English [Updated]

The Beijing-based startup behind the flirty hook-up app Momo is preparing to take it international, with an English version of its iPhone app submitted to Apple last week. The dating app has been picking up users at an incredible rate; I notice it was at 500,000 last December, two million by this March, and 10 million by August. And now? Now Momo has reached 16 million users.

[UPDATED: It's now live. See final paragraph for details]. Of those, says Momo’s operations manager, Li Dihao, “about 10 percent are international users” already, despite its iOS and Android apps currently only being available in Chinese. Dihao adds, “We believe this number will skyrocket when Momo for English is available.”

Dihao explains that the Android version of the Momo app will be updated with English in a few months’ time. For now, the top ten areas outside of China using the app are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, the US, Australia, Russia, Canada，India, South Korea, and Japan. It’s pretty impressive to have apparently well over a million international users despite not supporting other languages in the app – and not doing any marketing in other countries. Or perhaps those users are mostly Chinese overseas students scattered across the globe. Either way, it’s good to see a Chinese startup move onto the international scene, where it’ll be up against other LBS dating apps like Skout.

Momo attracted $40 million in series B funding this summer. Grab the apps via the Momo homepage. UPDATE on Oct 29th: Surprisingly, the English version is a separate app, but it integrates with the Chinese app. A Momo staffer tells us: “You can see all Momo users, the English version and the Chinese version share the same user database.” Grab it now here on iTunes.