BEIJING, May 30 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- On 30 May, MSN, China's most influential portal for white-collar workers, added another channel partner, Marry5.com, a leading dating website in China. This is yet another partnership, after the MSN Chinese website signed agreements with Eastday.com, Hexun.com, Ctrip.com and Yesky.com to jointly develop new digital, IT, stock, travel and picture channels on 10 April. The dating channel from the strong partnership will be committed to offering one-stop dating services for white-collar singles to further improve MSN's "white collar ecosphere" in China and reinforce the MSN Chinese website's brand positioning of "fashionable life, white-collar portal."
Accelerate IPO by leveraging a platform with tens of millions of users
The announcement on its profitability, earlier made by Marry5.com, stirred the industry. Insiders disclosed that in this partnership, Marry5.com paid high "rental fees" to become a content provider for MSN. The high-profile promotion initiative has resulted in speculation that Marry5.com's move is an omen of accelerating its proposed IPO in 2008.
For Marry5.com, the partnership will offer better value for the money. According to the 2006 China Online Social Networking Research Report released by iResearch, China's online social-networking market reached RMB175 million in 2006, up 169.2% from a year ago. At the same time, it is expected that the market will reach RMB1.2 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 84.7%. And the key to success is getting access to more user resources. MSN currently has a subscriber base of up to tens of millions of people. Undoubtedly, its rich white-collar resources and strong audience adherence made it the preferred choice for Marry5.com, which also targets high-end white-collar users. Now, Marry5.com has had 6 million subscribers. Data shows that since the dating channel under its partnership with MSN went online, the number of daily new subscribers has increased several fold, so Marry5.com's growth in earnings seems to be a matter of course. According to back-end data, subscribers of MSN's dating channel are very active now and seem to be more "generous" in purchasing products, almost 50% of whom are willing to pay for "love."
As a unique feature of the dating channel, the "true love" system seemed to become a breakthrough point for profitability in this partnership. The "true love" matching system was developed using breakthrough results from the first large nationwide study on dating psychology among Chinese people conducted by Marry5.com in 2006, together with Nankai University and Lingdian Research. It analyzes the matching degree between a man and a woman from 26 aspects, such as values and personality. As an authority in both China's dating website industry and social psychology, it leads the industry. From inside to outside, it is both "made in China" and used by Chinese people. What's more, it is leading and unique. Specific matching based on inner nature, combined with external factors such as income and educational background, helps users to more quickly find their Mr. or Ms. Right and achieve a really perfect matching. And now, over one million subscribers have obtained a report on their potential Mr. or Ms. Right from Marry5.com, tens of thousands of whom have been matched successfully. The first successful couple through the dating channel attended the press conference to introduce their experience, refuting the media's previous suspicion of the use of psychological tools in dating. The organizer even offered an insurance policy for their love as a guarantee of the matching. Having seen the extensive prospects of the matching system, MSN opened the dating channel from a forward-looking point of view for the industry development and unveiled it with the "true love" matching system as its feature. The decision not only enables a larger base of China's white-collar singles to enjoy rapid matching services, but also ensures that the website can further enhance its traffic and attract more attention. If you click on the dating channel on Windows Live Messenger, the "true love" matching system will appear. It can be seen that it is the focus of the differentiated marketing. As an academically authoritative product based on data from a large study on dating psychology among Chinese people in 2006, it has undoubtedly filled a gap in the market. And its monthly fee of just RMB50 has attracted a great number of singles. Before its cooperation with MSN, Marry5.com had a monthly income of RMB2.30 million, which now is estimated at more than RMB5 million. The senior leadership of Marry5.com showed good confidence in its objectives to realize profitability at the year end and go IPO in 2008.
A combination of vertical and comprehensive websites creates a win-win and their cooperative market is subject to development
The partnership between the MSN Chinese website and Marry5.com creates a win-win situation, since the comprehensive website MSN has an abundance of user resources while, as a vertical website, Marry5.com boasts its dedicated dating services. Known for its proactive development and application in China's IM community, MSN sees a larger traffic flow and subscriber base resulting from high attention to and high click ratio for the dating channel, enhancing its profitable point -- advertising income. When the dating channel went online, MSN attached great importance to its advertising and promotion. Continuing the wave of the "looking for love in the same office building" with a participation of over 200,000 people launched by Marry5.com in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen last year, the organizer held the same activity in nearly 20 office buildings in Beijing on the day when the press conference took place to bring information on MSN's dating channel to its core audience of white collars. In the coming two-year cooperation period, a range of initiatives on the dating channel will continue to be staged in China. With MSN, Marry5.com will drive its brand, enhance its brand image and win more subscribers to achieve profitability. This successful mutually beneficial model seems to be perfectly experienced between the both. Now, the partnership between Marry5.com and MSN is focusing on developing China's domestic market. Facing the successful partnership, Marry5.com doesn't deny the possibility of further cooperating on traditional Chinese and English versions of MSN to expand the white-collar dating market in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan or even the world. In addition to MSN, Marry5.com is also intending to join forces with other websites such as Vnet.cn to further extend and deepen the model.
About Marry5.com
Marry5.com ( http://www.marry5.com ), headquartered in Guangzhou city of China, is the leading dating service provider on multiple platforms (including Internet, mobile and offline) in China. In June 2005, SAIF ( http://www.sbaif.com ) invested US$12.50 million in ACT Technology Co., Ltd (parent of Marry5.com) for a minority stake.
Since its launch on October 28, 2005, Marry5.com had had more than 6 million active registered users with monthly revenues exceeding RMB2.3 million. The number of new members recently also exceeded 300,000 each month.
In addition to online services, Marry5.com provides wireless and offline activities to ensure integrated friends-making services for its members under the support of its parent company ACT. With such a system, Marry5.com has enhanced its awareness on the Internet and appeared in the top (based on ALEXA rankings) among China's dating websites. In the 2006, Marry5.com won many honors, such as a "Top 100 Commercial Website in China," the "Special Mention Award" at the China Internet Conference 2006, and the "Top 10 Creative Investment Awards 2006."
For more information, please contact:
Lincole Lam,
Marketing Dept.,
Marry5.com
Tel: +86-20-3879-9930
Fax: +86-20-3879-9905 x137
Email: Lincole.lin@m-time.com
Web: http://www.marry5.com
