Dating & Social Networking
In November, I wrote down some of my thoughts on Social Networking Sites. At that time, I mentioned that I hate MySpace and I would never use it. Probably I am too old.
But, these websites and other relationship related websites (dating, business, recruitment) get more and more publicity and media coverage. Also, VCs invested a lot (and probably will invest even more in 2007) to similar websites and business. And the year is already started with a few interesting aquisitions.
- Hearst Magazines Digital Media, the online unit of Hearst Magazines, has acquired eCRUSH.com, Inc., a top entertainment/community network for teens and young adults. The announcement was made today by Cathleen P. Black, president of Hearst Magazines. (Hearts Press Release)
- European online dating and chat company MEETIC has acquired UK-based DatingDirect.com in a deal worth £27.3m. (New Media Age)
Paul Woodward, published an interesting article about Chines Social Networking Sites and VCs, according to his post 16 Chinese Networking sites received about $93 million funding between 2003-2006.
Let’s see if me and my team will be able to offer something new in this social networking industry. We will soon launch our business social networking site, Kugli.com, so stay tuned. Our recently launched dating & single website, OneLoveNet.com is getting to become popular, especially in my country, as we mainly advertised in local websites. But, international advertising campaigns have been launched as well, so we expect our international traffic to grow quickly as well, we already have many international members.
And something else. I noticed that Xing.com (formerly openBC.com) is advertising in Alibaba.com newsletters. I wonder what kind of deal do they have, as they are basically targeting similar niches. Probably Xing.com is need of more Chinese members.