What is the mission of Friendfinder.com?

We believe that Internet is evolving from communication medium to a community support platform. Communities based on special interest groups, religious interests, ethnic and geographic based groups are using Internet to find and meet people. The people to people communication through the Internet has been embraced at a global level. This creates an opportunity for FriendFinder. Our mission is to create homogeneous communities and serve their needs on the Internet and to address the needs of various parties involved in the community based interaction and engage various parties in the communities that are interested in similar activities such as social interaction or dating.

How many communities do you serve?

At present we have fifteen web sites targeted to the communities along the ethnic, geographic, special interests, activities, and religious lines. We break out various homogeneous communities and address the needs of these communities as a separate site under the umbrella of FriendFinder.

How many people use your sites?

Each day in the FriendFinder network over sixty thousand people sign up. To this day we have over 20 million active users and sixty million registered users. We are active in the most countries and operate sites in ten different languages and lifestyles including European and Asian languages. Approximately 10% of the registered user-base pays access fees.

Why do people visit your sites and what is your strategy to keep them on your sites?

People are interested in building relationships through the Internet. If we can build Internet based tools to facilitate this relationship building process then we can enrich the user experience. The tools that facilitate this interaction are what we focus on. Chat rooms, focused content, open forums, message boards, search and profiles matching are some of the tools we have developed. While people conduct social interaction through the Internet, dating remains the anchor and the basis that attracts the people to these sites.

Where are you finding growth in the marketplace?

Among the fifteen sites we have in the FriendFinder network, both the adult site and Asian community are doing well for us. Selecting the community the ingredient is to have a certain minimal growth rate. We are looking to serve the needs of the homogeneous community. Recently we have developed sites for the Spanish language speaking community called amigos.com.


Why did you launch Amigos.com?

The Spanish speaking community meets our business criteria. There is a growing Spanish speaking community in the US and in Latin America and Spain. People across several countries are using the Internet to find and meet people across the globe who share a common cultural and language interests. Amigos.com will have Spanish and Portuguese language capabilities. We believe in building sites and provide a platform for the engagement at the level the community can interact and in the format that the participants can relate to. The site has been around for less than two years. This community is large enough to accommodate the costs that we incur for the ongoing site development and support.


What are the global and the US market size for these kinds of sites?

Currently U.S. market size for social interaction is around one billion dollars. It is hard to know the global market size. The US market has been growing at a rate of 30% per annum and is expected to grow at a similar rate for the next two years.

How do you market your sites and how do you acquire new subscribers?

To launch community based sites for social interaction require critical mass of users, which is not easy to do. The site has to create early and sustained visibility. We achieve this visibility through our affiliation program. Currently our affiliation program has more than 10,000 members. We develop collateral content with the long-term relationship and pen pal themes, advice relationship building tools. We have various economic models to work with various affiliates from around the world.

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