SHANGHAI DAILY – Jan 29 – Microblogs have become the newest dating platform in China, attracting thousands of single young men and women. Different from online dating websites, microblog dating channels put women in the spotlight, giving them space to "advertise" themselves with real-time pictures, videos and blogs. On t.sohu.com, thousands of women have joined its dating channel, which built up ~220,000 fans within two weeks of launching. FULL ARTICLE @ CHINA.ORG
Category: All Worldwide (non UK/Euro/US)
BharatMatrimony Announces Facebook Integration
ONLINE PR MEDIA – Jan 25 – BharatMatrimony, based in India, is the world's first and largest matrimonial website. The site is now integrating its service with Facebook to allow social media users to select the perfect life partner for themselves, their friends and family members. Through this service, Facebook users will be able to search BharatMatrimony's database of 20 million profiles and recommend matches to friends and family. Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and CEO, BharatMatrimony says “Social media is the way forward in the way we communicate and interact.” FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE PR MEDIA
Asia: Falling Fertility Rates And Shrinking Populations
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Jan 15 – Taiwan's fertility rate, the average number of children born to its women in their lifetime, fell to 0.91 last year, far below the rate of 2.1 needed to sustain population size. Hong Kong has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and faces a population decline from 7M to about 6M by mid-century. Japan's population shrank by a record 123K people last year. From a peak of 128M in 2006, the Japanese population will shrink to under 100M by mid-century, by which time its over-65s will have grown from 25% of population to ~40%. Registered marriages last year were the fewest since 1954. In mainland China, population is still growing and will peak about 2030 at ~1.39 billion – 1.46 billion. Australians and Americans are keeping their end up in baby production, with fertility rates close to two children per woman, and high immigration rates. By mid-century we are likely to see 36M people in Australia (from the present 22.5M) and 439M in the US (from 310M). FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Chinese Women Want Guys With Apartment
CHINA.ORG – ~70% of Chinese women say Mr Right must have an apartment before they talk about marriage, according to a nationwide survey for The "2010 China Marital Status Report". Besides an apartment, 70% of women said a stable income and savings were a must-have for a man. 65% said a prospective husband should earn at least double their salary. However, 63% of men didn't have any requirements in regard to their future wife's income. FULL ARTICLE @ CHINA.ORG
China’s leading dating site to get listed on Nasdaq
GLOBAL TIMES – Nov 25 – Jiayuan.com, China's leading dating website, is preparing to get listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The company is expected to get listed in the first half of 2011 and plans to raise ~$100M. If the deal can be completed, it will become China's first listed dating site. According iresearch.cn, from 2008 to now, the market share of Jiayuan.com has maintained at ~50%. In 2007, the company's revenue was ~10M yuan ($1.5M); in 2009, it reached 80M yuan ($12.03M), and this year, it is expected to exceed 100M yuan.
The full article was originally published at Global Times, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: As soon as they list and start issuing quarterly reports, Online Personals Watch will provide summaries of their numbers. You can see links to financials of Spark Networks, Match, etc, on the right bar of OPW.
Divorce: Why The Big In China?
Online Dating In Argentina
LA NACION – Oct 9 – According to Match, there are more than 16M singles in Argentina; that's why online dating is an attractive business in Latin America. The number of Match.com's registered users grew 250 % compared to 2009. Zonacitas, the local player, has more than 300.000 registered users and hopes for 400.000 at the end of the year. Claudio Gandelman, General Manger of Match.com Latin America, says his site sees 50.000 new subscribers per month in Argentina and that 800.000 e-mails are exchanged each day in Latin America. FULL ARTICLE @ LA NACION
A Closer Look At The Turkish Online Dating Market
PR LOG – Sep 28 – Turkey's large youth population provides opportunities for dating niches to enter the market. For many years the first major player siberalem.com, established in 2000, enjoyed a monopoly. In 2004, Ersan Özer, a local internet entrepreneur, exited his popular site itiraf.com. Having realized a major opportunity in online dating services, he decided to invest. Ersan came up with the city-based local dating model. Partnering with local EBay affiliate gittigidiyor.com founders, they started acquiring city domains from global registrants. In late 2005, city-based Dating network was launched in top 3 cities under ‘Magnet’ name: istanbul.net, ankara.net and izmir.net. The system enabled users to find dating partners in their districts and neighborhoods. Magnet currently leads the market with an estimated 1M active users and over 5M subscribers. FULL ARTICLE @ PR LOG
Tech Will Transform Online Dating Market In China
GLOBAL TIMES – Sep 24 – The Western world has almost reached the saturation point for online dating. Chinese online dating is a bit different. The key problem here is technology. Most of the current sites simply do not use the features and technological innovation of Western dating sites. China is seen as scam-central, and so many payments from users get blocked. China still doesn't have the infrastructure to allow secure online UnionPay card payments. Launching an app is even harder. Once some of these technology problems are sorted, particularly if the large dating sites invest in them, then everything will change. This is why technology is the future of online dating in China.
The full article was originally published at Global Times, but is no longer available.
Online Dating In Turkey: Update
OPW – Sep 21 – After posting notes from the iDate Paris presentation: The Turkish And Middle Eastern Dating Markets, we received an email from Tarmer Kulmac claiming that his company, eCift.com, is the market leader in Turkey in matchmaking industry and Siberalem.com is one of the top casual dating sites in Turkey. eCift.com started 9 months ago and has currently ~820K registered members. They have recently closed a financing round led by international european VCs including BrainsToVentures in Swiss and Corporate Finance Partners in Frankfurt. They also have Konstantin Urban, the former founder of Parship as business angel on board.