COURIER POST ONLINE — May 16 — 1. MySpace 75.6% market share, 2. TheFaceBook 8.3%, 3. Xanga 7.3%, 4. MSN Spaces 1.8%, 5. Yahoo! 360 1.4%, 6. hi5 1.4%, 7. Tagged 1.3%, 8. Sconex 1.1%, 9. Bebo 0.7%, 10. Friendster 0.6%, 11. TagWorld 0.2%, 12. CrushSpot 0.2%, 13. Bolt 0.1%, 14. XuQa 0.1%, 15. VidLife 0.1%.
Category: All Worldwide (non UK/Euro/US)
MyYearbook Growing Fast
ASBURY PARK PRESS — May 16 — MyYearbook was launched in 2005 by a brother and sister, ages 17 and 16. Within a week of their start date ~200 people from their school joined. They are adding ~4,000 members a day from all over the world and have 700,000+ users. In February, comScore Media Metrix reported myYearbook was growing ~43% a month in the 12-24 age group. MyYearbook's membership drive consists of word-of-mouth marketing and an affiliate program that allows users to refer new members for $1 for each registrant referred. In April an investor purchased a 10% stake for $1.5 million.
Mark Brooks: Piczo and Hi5 are also strong in the teen market.
Worldfriends Networks Signs 200th Partnership
PRESS ZOOM — May 10 — WorldFriends Networks, a provider of private label multi-lingual online dating services signed up its 200th partner. WFN operates in 20 different countries, in English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. WFN signs up ~8 new partners each month and has 680,000 users with 275,000 photos. 1,000+ new members join daily. Partners include ESPN, STAR TV, China Times, Taiwan’s dominant ISP Hinet and Japan’s So-net, Japan.com, Mail.com, Fresheye.com, Japan-Zone.com, and Shanghaiist.com. FULL ARTICLE @ PRESS ZOOM
Australian Online Dating Sites
Online Personals Watch will now list the monthly top 10 Australian internet dating site rankings by special courtesy of Hitwise Competitive Intelligence. See the left bar. – Mark Brooks
Text-Messaging Changes Dating in Afghanistan
Text-Messaging Changes Dating in Afghanistan
Love Goes Mobile in New Text Date Game
MAITLAND MERCURY — Mar 20 — 19date, matches subscribers with a new single every 24 hours. It allows for six anonymous texts so that participants can decide if they are interested in their texting partner. After the first six messages, users are in open chat mode and can exchange personal details if they wish.
The full article was originally published at The Maitland Mercury, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: SMS is huge in Europe, but fledgling in USA. Other flirt/SMS apps include SMS.ac, Jumbuck and UPOC. More serious online dating applications include Webdate, Lavalife and Match. Webdate has the nicest mobile dating platform I've seen and are the only online personals company that links to their mobile dating prominently from their home page.
Brazil Tries to Seize Data on Users of Google’s Orkut
The full article was originally published at Yahoo, but is no longer available.
WestBridge Capital Partners Announces $8 Million Investment in Shaadi.com
Mark Brooks: Shaadi is a power house in matrimonials and is doing some very innovative work meshing online services with 'real world' bricks and mortar services which will eventually make waves in the US market 😉
Morgan Reluctantly Trades up to a Life in the Spotlight
THE AUSTRAILIAN — Mar 9 — When Morgan sold Trade Me to John Fairfax Holdings for $NZ700million ($620million) this week, the 30-year-old picked up a cool $NZ227million – and a lot of proposals on the site that dominates New Zealand's internet auction market. He came to the conclusion that New Zealand was in an online auction black hole. Morgan borrowed his father's laptop and, over a rainy weekend, designed what was to become – with more than a quarter of New Zealanders as subscribers – the country's most visited website.
Mark Brooks: eBay is huge and yet Trade Me owns the NZ internet auction market. Match is huge and yet… There are still lots of opportunities open in the international internet dating arena. Ever heard of Rate.ee? Huge in Estonia. How about Rande.cz? Huge in Prague. There's still (a little) time to find niches and own them.