Notes From Asian Friends-Making Conference

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.

Comments

[Bruce Smith]

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

[Branson Lee]

Hello,

I am currently running a dating site focusing on Singapore market. Check it out at date.sg