OPW INTERVIEW -- May 24 -- FriendScout24 is the top internet dating site in Germany and Switzerland and ranked #3 in Spain. See rankings. Here's our interview with the CEO, Christoph Mempel. - Mark Brooks
What is FriendScout24's founding story?
FriendScout24
was founded 1997 under the name People United by private founders in
Cologne. In 2000, People United was acquired by the Scout24 group, a
private finance company, and was renamed FriendScout24. The company
then moved from Cologne to Munich, where most of the Scout24 companies
are located. In 2003, the Deutsche Telekom Group, the largest
telecommunications group in Germany, which has an internet presence,
bought the whole Scout24 group, including FriendScout24.
How many people work at FriendScout24 now?
Right
now we have 90 employees, and we think by the end of the year there
will be about 110. We are constantly growing. To give you an idea of
our development: we started with 5 to 10 people after the acquisition
by Scout24.
How would you characterize FriendScout24 against your competition, and how is the service different?
In
Germany, we have with 7 millon members the largest database of singles.
FriendScout24 is the market leader and stands for reliable and first
class service. For example, we constantly work to secure the
authenticity of the user profiles. We want to offer our users
everything they need, to get the best chance of finding the right
partner by offering them a big variety of interesting singles. I think
this is the most important thing to know about FriendScout24.
I see
you're in Germany and Spain, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. With your
top 3 positions in Germany, Spain and Switzerland, how are things going
in Italy, which I hear is the emerging market for Internet dating.
This
year, we could add the Netherlands to that list. We launched our
service in the Netherlands at the end of January. Regarding the Italian
market, we're doing quite well. We entered Italy almost a year ago and
the market situation is similiar to Spain. The challenge right now is
getting more and more online traffic in Italy. We support our brand
with a lot of press work, furthermore we are working on identifying
different channels, which we can use to push the online traffic and the
business opportunities in Italy in general.
How have you reached out to users via mobile phones?
In
Germany, we launched a mobile application very early and we were one of
the first companies to implement such a service. However, this was no
focus for our business for quite a while, because the technical
development of mobile phones was not that fast. Now it is emerging
again. Therefore we will extend our mobile application features, and
will also implement new product innovations in this field.
Have you also considered launching applications on social networks such as Facebook and other local networks?
It's
interesting that you ask, as this is also on our list this year. We
believe, that this is not a big topic right now. In Germany, the social
network companies, including Facebook, are ready to start with a German
site and there are further popular sites, e.g. StudiVZ. We are
monitoring this segment of the market very seriously and will - based
on the developments - check the appreciation for such applications.
One of
the arguments that I hear time and time again is that social networking
is pulling people away from the Internet dating market. Is that true or
do you think the two can work together?
I
think they can work together. We don't see a shift in people going away
from dating sites to social network sites and I believe it's still a
different business. Two years ago, when the hype about social
communities started, we weren't sure if there would be an impact on our
work and if this would draw a lot of users from our sites. In reality,
we can't see a big impact of social communities on our work, because
the focus is quite different. Besides, social networks are successful
in Germany, and especially StudiVZ, in terms of page impressions, is a
very highly ranked site, regarding the younger target group. However,
our members are not only looking for a social network, but also for a
targeted search of a soulmate. We have 9,000 registrations daily, so
they don't appear to be a real threat.
What are your goals for FriendScout24 over the coming year?
One
of our main goals for this year is to secure and expand our market
leadership in Germany. We see a market consolidation right now in
Germany. For the last 3 – 4 years everyone expected a consolidation,
but it didn't happen in Germany. Therefore it is important for us, to
keep and to strengthen our position. There is a lot going on in the
German market. I'm sure you're informed about Meetic, which acquired
Neu.de, a big player in Germany.
A second goal is to expand our European presence. We have a few other countries on our list to launch our product this year.
Talking
about product innovation, we do have a lot of convenient features for
our users. It's our main focus, to offer a big variety of attractive
features which make it easy, fun and successful to find a partner.
PRESS RELEASE -- May 29 -- WhiteLabelDating.com has implemented
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