Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

WorldFriends Mixes Facebook With Match.com

TECH CRUNCH -- Nov 1 -- WorldFriends, the Tokyo- and Shanghai-based social network, which now has nearly 2m users from all over the world, did a soft (re)launch last week, mainly enhancing a number of networking features. WorldFriends is walking a fine line between being a platform for dating, language exchange and making international friends. CEO Dominic Penaloza says about 4% of WorldFriends members are paying for services, which certainly helped the site to reach profitability 3 years after launch. Currently the company is particularly active in Japan, where 33% of paid members are from. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Mark Brooks: I met with Dominic last year while in Shanghai for the Asian Internet Dating Conference. They are backed by the founders of Lavalife. This company is a rising star in the idating industry in Asia. Internet dating is dirty word in Japan, so WFN has taken the approach of letting users approach each other under the guise of language learning. This is indirect approach to idating greatly suits the Japanese psyche.

Dominic Penaloza, WorldFriends Networks CEO – Video Interview

OPW -- May 31, 2007 -- I interviewed Dominic at the Asian internet Dating and Social Networking Conference. He runs a white label dating service to help existing sites launch their own dating services. The equivalent of category leaders Vintacom and WhiteLabelDating, but for Asia. - Mark Brooks

What can you do for people who are interested in starting their own Internet dating site?
We help them with the greatest challenge they will ever face, which is (getting to a) critical mass of users.  There's nothing worse then an empty bar or an empty dating site. Our partners today instantly have 1.2 million users in their database by joining our network. In addition to that we provide customer service, and the technology as well.

What are your primary target customers? Do you mainly focus on Asia?
Yes we are very focused on Asia, Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. We are the only private label operator in Asia operating in the Asian languages and the Asian currencies. We have almost 300 partners now. So.net, which is Sony, japan-guide.com, japanzone.com, shanghaiexpat.com. Look at worldfriendsnetwork.com to see a list of our partners.

WorldFriends Networks Gets $2.5 Million Funding

PRESS RELEASE -- Mar 2 -- Shanghai-based Meta4 Group Ltd., which operates WorldFriends Networks, (private label multi-lingual personals sites, 200 sites, 1 million members, offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong), raised US$2.5 million in venture capital funding from industry veterans including the co-founders of Lavalife.com, Nicholas Paine and Bruce Croxon.  ~17 years ago, together with two other partners, they invented telephone personals, and grew Lavalife to US$90 million revenues.  Nicholas Paine is Meta4 Group's Executive Chairman.  Partner sites include: So-net (Japan), Eigotown (Japan), Japan Zone (Japan), Japan Guide (Japan) and China Times (Taiwan).

The full article was originally published at ADDPR, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: The Asian internet dating conference will be in Shanghai in May. Last year CEO's of Bharat Matrimony, YeeYoo, Baihe and other leading Asian sites were present. Small crowd, very high quality. I recommend attending it this year...and spending the ensuing weekend enjoying Shanghai. It's at the Four Points Sheraton in Shanghai, which is reasonably priced. Check out sidestep.com for the best pricing.