WorldFriends, a social network with a focus on connecting internationally-minded people, was established as early as 2003 but has flown under the radar of the American blogosphere since then. The Tokyo- and Shanghai-based site, which now has nearly 2 million 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. At first sight, WorldFriends actually looks much like a heavily internationalized version of your average dating site. The profile page, for example, features a member slide show (showing only female users if that is what you said you are interested in when signing up), a “New photos”-container (again girls only) and an “Your Ideal Match”-list.
But WorldFriends CEO Dominic Penaloza says the focus lies on cross-cultural networking, finding international penpals, getting travel tips and learning foreign languages (yeah, right). The site, which is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, boasts over 110,000 language teachers among its registered members. About 65% of total message traffic between members is cross-border.
Perhaps WorldFriends’ most interesting aspect is the business model, which isn’t solely based upon selling advertising space. The site charges users via three different kinds of upgrades that essentially enables members to interact with each other in various modes. For example, users have to pay $24.95 per month to be able to initiate contact (emails, instant messages, voice chat or video chat) to all members (initiating contact with friends and friends of friends is free of charge). It costs $244.95 a year to be able to initiate contact with all members and enable all members to initiate contact with you free of charge. By way of comparison, business network LinkedIn charges $199.95 a year for its so-called Business and $500 for its Business Plus premium accounts. Premium members of Germany’s business platform Xing have to pay about $90 annually.
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. Penaloza says his price system is fair, particularly considering the $25 to $80 people in this country have to pay for a 60-minute English lesson.
Consequently WorldFriends runs an office in Tokyo, which in July, almost unnoticed by Asian media, managed to close a significant partnership deal: Yahoo Japan agreed to become the first partner worldwide to adopt the new WorldFriends API (the site already has secured partnerships with over 200 websites, mostly through white label partnerships). Registered users of Nippon’s biggest web company can log into WorldFriends via their Yahoo Japan IDs and subscribe by using the Yahoo Japan Wallet payment service.
how ever odd it looks, this may actually work. Match.com is not just a social network, and as it relates to something serious e.g. relationships/marriages etc. , people may be interested to shell out some cash on things like this. I would say, this concept will work.
http://www.livbit.com
$24.95 a month is outrageous, and will not work work. Especially with people looking to cut their monthly expenses in tough economic times.
you’ve never lived in Japan, have you?
we used to spend $25 for a medium-sized pizza or club entrance fee in Tokyo. and that was a regular price. $25 in Japan for entertainment is nothing.
trust me
I shut down our social networking site which had tens of thousands of users last week.
There is no more CPC/CPM potential in social networking. No matter how large you scale the operation costs overwhelm the CPC/CPM income. You can use a spreadsheet to see this clearly.
Calculate the CPC/CPM revenue per employee-per work hour.
The only option on the free platform to make money is near to complete automation, and people don’t want to visit those sites. They expect new professional content daily and advanced support.
With that said, charging a fee is a good plan, except that the other free versions such as MySpace and Bebo which are subsidized by the operations of larger parent companies have ruined the “charge for social networking services” concept in the minds of most people.
With that said, companies can still bank on the past 3 years of web 2.0 failure by withdrawing from the end user market, and trying to grab a piece of shrinking CPC/CPM, and aim their resources at the enterprise market exclusively.
Shut it down, decided who would pay for such services and under what conditions and keep going.
International companies where the pay rate can be as low as $1.50 an hour have a difference situation. They can actually match or beat the CPC/CPM revenue for profit. I predict they will be the last of these websites to survive.
typo
“International companies where the pay rate can be as low as $1.50 an hour have a difference situation”
should be
“International companies where the pay rate can be as low as $1.50 an hour have a different situation”
Chris.. Contact me mike [@] mikediebel.com I would be interested in chatting about your socail network members.
Not sure how this is elsewhere in the world but it is big in Japan, as is other sites like Mixi. Japanese dating sites are also massive with other punters wanting to meet Japanese girls mostly.
I love the fake profiles. How do you tell? Hover over a non-Asian female on the landing page. The engrish on some of the tag lines should be a dead giveaway.
I’m a young woman who likes very much about sports (qym, running, horse back riding, aerobic, cycling etc.) and music(I play violin and I sing). I’m social and I would want to get international contacts from all around the world! Also I like shopping and having fun with friends. If you are nice and outgoing person and want to e-mal to glad 18year old girl, I’m the one.
“I’m attractive, interesting and have a lot of friends. That’s why I’m using a dating site!”
IS this article a joke? I won’t speculate too broadly, but dating online is a sure bet (albeit gross) if a company provides true value. Online dating people are interested in any new network. It’s never a great bis or anything. Dime a dozen, they make money, and hopefully have few founders/ employees. They are like the quitiseential :SEO expert’s” first product.
Not to mention that many people will put up profiles on any dating site that crops up. There is tons of user overlap in dating sites, which in a sense is a guarantee of registrations. Look at plentyoffish, with its vintage 1997 webmaster quality being just as popular as any other dating site.
quitiseential :SEO expert’s” = quintessential “SEO expert’s”
halloween has its drawbacks
4% paid users of 2 million user : 80 000 paid users
average 200 usd per user per year=16 M usd annual turn over
Assuming that none of the 2MM profiles are fake.
Looks they are still in 2003 mode with their design…..they can call it what they like but it’s just another glorified dating site from Japan.
I just love sites that can’t display pictures with the correct aspect ratio. If your picture is not square, we’ll do it for you! Even if you end up looking like flat roadkill. PoF has that “feature” too.
I like that feature…
Makes it easier to stand out from the crowd on POF. I do have correct aspect ratio images.
good one!
Serkan, I have issues with this article… First, the title is misleading, I read through the whole yawning article trying to figure out how they were interfacing with match.com and facebook.
Second, why would you promote a website that’s doing such a shady business? What a sham that TC would plug this outfit.
They aren’t “walking a thin line”, they are plowing through the legitimate world of language exchange partnership matchmaking with a bulldozer to shamelessly turn a profit.
I don’t say this as a competitor, I say it as a former customer and member of their so-called community who felt completely ripped off.
As a competitor, I run http://www.phrasebase.com, a legitimate international friendship and language exchange partnership matchmaking community.
We delete inactive accounts every 6 months rather than promoting pretty, sexy, fake looking people to lure in impulse buyers.
You can write a post about Phrasebase.com’s language exchange partnerships without having to say “(yea, right)” or “(Again, girls only)”.
Oh, but worldfriends has 1.9 MILLION members and Phrasebase.com only has 100,000 members… that explains the difference, right?
Well, take a look at this link below, and then explain how it’s possible that a site with supposedly 20 times more membership can have roughly the same amount of traffic?
http://siteanal...s.tv/?metric=uv
How about judging sites based on traffic rather than supposed membership, satisfied paid members versus people who feel they got burned, respectable business models versus the ole bait & switch.
I know Michael to have integrity, I’m suprised he supports your article.
@Jeff………compete shows U.S traffic only…….worldfriends are mostly from asia thats why the traffic figure looks similar…if you look at alexa it gives a completely different story and on that note considering you delete your user base every 6 months and have 100,000 active members why is your traffic so low ? i got a site with 13k members with 3 times the traffic of your site so something isn’t right somewhere or is it just a shameless plug ?
Alexa is easily manipulated, often skewed and favors certain types of sites, namely technical ones. Unless your site is about language learning, comparing it’s traffic with phrasebase isn’t apple2apples. Forget about my site, I’m not trying to plug it.
It’s disappointing for me to see the Bermuda based meta4group get plugged on TC and score a yahoo deal because they are not about education, dating, language learning, international friendship making, getting travel tips… or any such legitimate purpose. They are about making money… at the expense of their customers. They are an anti-service.
Through their affiliates, they say… “join FREE today” and “Register Free”: http://www.japa...panzonefriends/
They let the poor sap look at all the pretty models, try to contact one but can’t as they need to register first. So they register, fill out pages of info about themselves, upload photos and then there’s the “invite your friends” feature, allowing them to upload their outlook express addressbook for automatic emailing of an invite to all their real friends.
All of this takes place BEFORE they try to contact that model of their dreams picture that initially led them to signing up. Only THEN is it communicated to them that they have to pay up… and pay up BIG.
My guess is, the only money this company makes, is from people who just spent the past 2 hours building their profile and don’t want to waste that time, so opt to pony up for a month.
Oh, and then there’s the people who didn’t cancel their subscription on time, or forget or weren’t aware it’s reoccurring, so get hit up again each month until they figure it out.
Just imagine how you would feel if you had used their “service” and sent out a batch of email to all your real friends inviting them to join also… having been misled the whole time that it was for free.
Adultfriendfinder can get away with it because they are porn. LinkedIn has similarities in how they work, but the nuanced differences are large enough to keep them in the pool of reputability.
To use this kind of bait and switch tactic to exploit and prey on the language learning community is something I find to be particularly diabolical.
Seriously? *Another* one of these? Come on, you’ve got to be kidding. Next we’re going to see a site that manages profile info for all of your different social networking accounts (or has that already come out?)! Geez …
subscription fees??!! 25$ a month to initiate contact !!?
i think a fair fee would be $10…….$24.95 is just way to expensive at least with adultfriendfinder you get to see something for your $24.95
nothing to really see here they are just another dating site that has really taken hold in the asian market
One of the reasons that they do well is they actually have an array of domains and skins leading to the same user database
So some guy in clevland may goto http://www.paktology.com which is advertised as a site to meet asian girls . But some girl in Beijing will goto wordfriends thinking she is going to meet someone to learn english
I think a social networking site that can charge extra for perks. for example, hot or not used to charge to send gifts to people and they made money. If facebook can create a cash register portal and process payments, they can make money. That said, if Amazon was more social it could also generate more sales, but its doing a good job already.
I think it can work and will be a good way if they can monetize. All the detractors including Jeff of phrasebase are just jealous they can’t turn a profit. And adultfriendfinder giving you something for 24.95? Give me a break. Talk about fake profiles. All site owners want to make money and if people pay that shows the service is worth something. Those who run free sites should stop complaining if other sites try to make money
I’m not jealous, I’m just disappointed in TC for promoting an outfit that feeds on gullible internet newbies only to ravage their dreams, and in myself for having scruples.
Jeff, why pick on them? So many other websites that offer the same standard fare. You sound bitter for some reason. C’mon everyone, let’s visit Jeff’s website so we can all see how much better it is than anything out there. Dating, language exchange, social networking – its all the same deep down. You see a photo of an attractive person and you read the profile and and you want to make a comment.
I just signed up for phrasebase and yes, its free, but then got a couple of dodgy East European ladies asking me to send them money for language exchange. Yes, Jeff, you got scruples, you also got scammers and fake profiles on your site
A business that generates revenue and that ultimately is profitable is a good business. You don’t have to be the next Facebook or Myspace although that would be nice.
Isn’t sex the most profitable business in the internet? of course. Need: Everyone’s urge to be loved and be wanted, at least for a brief time. Solution: Set up a meeting place for people to promote their offers and needs.
This worldfriend , like many dating sites, is just another booty call meeting place business model – tailored to Asian market- with the pretense of “cross-cultural networking, finding international penpals, getting travel tips and learning foreign languages ” .
Good for whoever came up with the idea.
World Friends are well known in the online dating industry – they’re a white label player in Asia, doing something very similar to what http://www.whit...labeldating.com is doing in the UK and USA.
Although this article positions them as social network and dating, the reality is most people use the site for dating and the model works for that – if they position themselves too closely as a social network it will be more difficult for them to charge a membership fee.
“Social Dating” is a developing concept which I think we’ll see more of in 2009.
Ross
Wow, I’ve got to agree with you guys on that one — $25 is an utterly ludicrous amount to pay for the features they offer you.
I’m a regular on InterPals (http://www.interpals.net) which is basically the same — language exchange, penpals, cultural exchange, etc., but completely free (and I’ve got to say the design is a lot better).
As Ross points out, TC kind of misrepresented WF (it’s more of a dating site than a social network) — but this isn’t immediately clear even when you go to the site (they try to rope you in with the “sign up for free” bs). Still, I would definitely recommend checking out the legitimate free competitors out there (but hey, this is more controversial, which is always good!). Sites abound: interpals, italki, mailfriends, xlingo, etc.
Anyway, just my 2¢
Love the site and it works for entrepreneurs who want to join their network. Members are very real and it’s impossible not to meet several babes interested in western men.. Cullen
http://www.japa...riendfinder.com
The site is not bad — they do seem to have a decent user base, not too many fake profiles that I have run into. However, their CRM is shoddy — as a paying VIP member, they make it difficult to cancel your *recurring* monthly fee (they don’t respond to the online Help webforms to handle such requests), and they don’t list any contact phone numbers. Who would want to do business with a company that doesn’t provide a contact number? Even PayPal stated that WorldFriends as a merchant opted out of providing a phone number with their PayPal merchant account. This makes their CEO, Dominic Penaloza, look like an amateur — WorldFriends should leverage their mentoring and advising relationship with Ariadne Capital of London to come up with a better CRM approach. This surprises me and reflects rather poorly on both WorldFriends and Ariadne.