Category: All Worldwide (non UK/Euro/US)

CHINA DAILY — June 26 — iResearch valued the Chinese online dating market at 37 million yuan (US$4.5 million) for 2004 and 91 million yuan (US$11.2 million) for 2005, and predicts it will grow to 653 million yuan (US$80.5 million) in 2008. 117 boys are being born in China for every 100 girls, far beyond the normal ratio of 104-107 to 100. For Marc Lesnick (of idate2006.com), the statistic means Chinese Internet dating will grow even more. One of the delegates most captivated by the two-day conference was Mark Brooks, a US-based online dating industry analyst and editor of Onlinepersonalswatch.com.  "I know the American market very well, and the European market somewhat, but the Asian market was a mystery to me," he said. "The US market is coming to a point of maturity now, whereas the situation in China now is how it was in the USA a few years ago. People are starting to trust it more, and seeing that it is a secure vehicle for finding the ideal match." FULL ARTICLE @ CHINA DAILY

STUFF — June 4 — Bebo.com is beating MySpace hands-down in New Zealand and giving it a run for its money in Britain. Other popular teen sites include WeeWorld.com, Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga.com and Orkut.com. Oldfriends.co.nz ranked at 8th position. Benchmark Capital just put $US15 million ($NZ24 million) into Bebo. Product placements on social networking sites which was too brash or uncool could risk destroying a community. The problem of getting younger teenagers to pay for online content – where they did not have access to parents’ credit cards – can be solved by rolling out pre-paid credit cards.

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL — May 25 — A telephone survey of 1013 Australian adults revealed 78% had used the internet, 13% to form online social relationships. Those forming online relationships tended to be students, young, single, comfortable with new technology.

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

OPW — May 25 — The world of social networking extends far beyond Myspace and Friendster. Case in point, Yonja, Turkey's leading social network, and Grono the leader in Poland, Yeeyoo, hot in China, Cyworld, South Korea's titan. Check out the Handy Little Lists on the left bar of OPW for more Popular Social Networks.

…Some more info on Yonja: Offices in San Francisco and Istanbul, launched Jan 2004, 2.2 million members, #2 most trafficked Turkish Website, ~600 million page views a month, 670,000 unique logins in last 30 days, profitable.  The Turkish market is the youngest and fastest growing population in Europe with more people between the ages of 7-14 than all EU countries combined. – Mark Brooks

YAHOO NEWS — May 19 — Friendster has new architecture and is preparing to launch an instant messaging service. With more than 27 million page views, the company nearly tripled performance and page views in about one month. The improved performance has also enabled increased advertising and revenue.