OPW -- May 25 -- The Asian internet dating and social networking conference (a.k.a friends-making) was well attended with ~45 people, and increase of 25% over last year. Not a touch on the Miami conference which had 350+ attendees, but hey, this is a (very) emerging market. It’s a market with a lot of challenges. Here’s some keypoints from a couple of my favorite presentations. - Mark Brooks
51friend.net – Serious Dating
- 3 million couples divorced each year.
- Tens of thousands of offline events in China.
- From 1980, only one child per couple, so young generation tend to be well educated and choosy.
- Over 4 million students graduate from uni each year.
- 20% divorce. 10% marrieds not happy.
Yeeyoo – Social Network
- ‘Matchmaking’ and ‘dating’ is known as ‘serious dating’
- 114 million internet users in China; 2 or 3 people use each computer
- 414 million wireless users
- Yeeyoo offers an anonymous calling service which makes 1-2 RMB per min
- Meetic acquired Yeeyoo for $20 million
- Meetic made $100 million revenue last year and 8% was from mobile
- Mobile could be the same size as online dating in the next 5 years
- Yeeyoo won’t be charging for membership, not possible, lack of payment systems, will sign another deal like their China.com cobrand deal. No profit in mind. They have a lot of loss in mind. Meetic is being introduced to China on top of Yeeyoo.
- Text messages are 1-2 RMB. 15/85 split with China Mobile, 15% to the carrier
- Takes 2-3 months to get the payment
- 10% lost through bad debts or fraud
96333.com – Paid Dating Service
- Few Chinese have credit cards.
- But, 800 million have debit cards. However, there’s no auto renewals on debit cards.
- Billing available through mobile telecom operator billing partners with auto renews. Conversions are good because it’s very convenient. Cons: Capped at RMB 10 per month and only monthly subscriptions available.
- There are no credit rating services in China i.e. no Experian/Transunions yet
99Bill – Leading Chinese Billing Service
- 99Bill has 230 employees, 28 months old, has 16 million registered accounts.
- Can bill from 97% of credit and debit cards and 150 million prepaid cards and stored value card holders which are popular with the younger generation.
- 99Bill offers recurring billing, most others can’t, 99Bill has advanced risk mgmt system
- Economy Growth: 8-10% annual growth in GDP
- 71 banks offer online banking
- 760k merchants, 900k POS, 400k ATMs
- 3G coming in 2008
YeePay – Another Chinese Biling Service
- There are no personal checks in China
- Postal and bank wires available, COD. Prepaid cards.
- There’s virtually no protection for the consumers. No chargebacks!
- Lose your card and you are liable
- Another popular billing service is Alipay which is like paypal, used on Taobao (China’s ebay)
- Yeepay offers online and offline payment services
- Debit cards have passwords which are very sensitive and so debit card payments can only be entered at the banks website.
New online dating site please feel free to join as its free for the first 6 months and we have some really nice guys on there . Hope you can find someone special, www.lovetoasia.com
Posted by: Bruce Smith | Jun 05, 2007 at 05:03 AM
Hello,
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Posted by: Branson Lee | Jun 05, 2007 at 10:32 AM