世界中に友達が作れる、モバイル版「ワールドフレンズモバイル」（ベータ版）のサービス開始

ソーシャルネットワークサービスを提供する「ワールドフレンズ」の運営会社、メタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ）は10月21日、携帯端末から利用できる「ワールドフレンズモバイル」（ベータ版）のサービス提供を開始いたしました。

「ワールドフレンズモバイル」http://m.wfn.jp/

「ワールドフレンズ」は、現在世界200以上の国や地域から170万人以上が利用し、国際的な背景を持つユーザーを中心に、月平均約4万人の登録者がいます。PC版の「ワールドフレンズ」は多言語に対応していますが、モバイル版は携帯サイト利用者の多い日本市場のみに導入し、移動時間やプライベートな自由時間などに、気軽に世界中に友達を作ることが可能です。

「ワールドフレンズモバイル」では、新しく翻訳ツールが搭載されました。外国語が苦手でも、翻訳ツールを利用すれば、海外の友達とメールのやり取りが可能です。自分が習得したい言語を話すネイティブスピーカーと友達になって、気軽に語学を学ぶことも可能です。携帯端末から世界の友達につながるようになり、言語や文化を超えた交流ができるようになります。

◆ワールドフレンズについて　http://www.worldfriends.jp
ワールドフレンズは、「世界の友達がすぐそこに」をコンセプトに、言語や文化を超えて世界中に友達が作れるサイトです。国際感覚を養い、旅行や語学など、共通の興味を持つ国内外の友達を見つけることができます。サイトは多言語に対応しており、日本、アメリカ合衆国、イギリス、カナダ、オーストラリア、中国、韓国などをはじめ、世界200以上の国や地域から170万人以上が利用、その内11万人以上が語学を教えています。

◆メタフォーグループ株式会社について　http://www.meta4-group.com
メタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、設立年月日：2000年1月1日、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ）は、世界の友達を探せるサイト「ワールドフレンズ」の運営、無料で英語を学習できるメールサービス「ハングリーフォーワーズ」を提供しています。

◆本件に関するお問い合わせ先
メタフォーグループ株式会社
広報担当：長井 愛子
E-mail：press-jp@meta4-group.com

ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークスの世界中に広がるパートナーのネットワークとユーザー基盤にアクセスし、独自のソーシャルネットワークサービスを構築、そして有料会員登録により収益を得ることが可能なAPIを公開しました。

ソーシャルネットワークサービスを提供するワールドフレンズ・ネットワークスの運営会社、メタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ、以下、WFN）は7月30日、API（アプリケーション・プログラム・インターフェース）を公開しました。本APIをご利用になると、第三者ウェブサイトのディベロッパーが、自社ブランドによるソーシャルネットワークサービスを構築し、有料会員登録によるレベニューを得ることが可能になります。

また本日、ヤフー株式会社（本社：東京都港区、代表取締役社長：井上 雅博、以下、Yahoo! JAPAN）とサービスにおける連携も開始しました。Yahoo! JAPANのIDを使用して、WFNのサービス「ワールドフレンズ」に登録が可能です。ワールドフレンズの有料サービスの決算手段に「Yahoo!ウォレット」も導入され、より安全で簡単に有料サービスを始めることができるようになりました。

WFNのAPIは、有料のソーシャルネットワーク業界史上初めての公開となります。このAPIを使用すると、独自のソーシャルネットワークサービスを開発することができ、ユーザーの有料会員登録による収益を得ることが可能になります。例えば、パートナー企業がWFNのAPIを導入になると、カスタマイズされたインターフェースや機能で、独自のブランドでソーシャルネットワークのコミュニティを作ることが可能です。サービスの開始当初から、世界中から150万人以上の会員のデータベースにアクセスでき、有料会員に登録する動機付けの高いサービス内容となっております。

＜WFNのAPIの特徴＞
●プロフィールの作成
●ユーザーの検索
●ユーザーとのメッセージやチャットのやりとり
●写真などのメディアアルバムの作成
●独自の決済システムが利用可能
●ワールドフレンズユーザー名とパスワードの認証
●お気に入りプロフィール、旅行先などのリスティング

このAPIを公開したことにより、ユーザーの皆様がさらに楽しく交流できるソーシャルネットワークを提供することが可能になりました。また、ワールドフレンズのサービスを自由にカスタマイズして、プライベートブランドでワールドフレンズを提供することが可能です。WFNは、すでに300以上のパートナー企業と契約しています。今回公開したAPIがパラダイムシフトとなり、パートナー企業の皆様に、より収益のあるツールとして今後もサービスを提供していきます。

【ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス】http://www.worldfriendsnetworks.com
メタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、設立年月日：2000年1月1日、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ）は、多言語に対応した語学交流と旅のコミュニティを提供する世界有数のサイト「ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス」を運営。国際感覚を養い、旅や文化、語学など共通の興味を持つ海外の友達を見つけることができます。「世界の友達がすぐそこに」をコンセプトに、世界中の人たちが言語や文化を超えて交流する場を提供。ワールドフレンズが既に運営しているサイトは多言語に対応しており、日本、アメリカ合衆国、イギリス、カナダ、オーストラリア、中国、韓国などをはじめ、世界237の国や地域から150万人以上が利用、その内7万人以上が語学を教えています。

◆本件に関するお問い合わせ先
ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス（担当：長井）
press@meta4-group.com

語学交流、ペンパル、旅の話題などを目的に、世界中から気軽に友達を見つけ国際交流ができるグローバル・ヴィレッジ「ワールドフレンズ」のサービスをYahoo! JAPANでも利用できるようになりました

 
 
ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークスを運営するメタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ、以下、ワールドフレンズ）と、ヤフー株式会社（本社：東京都港区、代表取締役社長：井上 雅博、以下、Yahoo! JAPAN）は7月29日より、インターネットを通じて世界中から気軽に友達を見つけることができるグローバル・ヴィレッジ「ワールドフレンズ」サービスにおいて業務提携を開始いたします。

「ワールドフレンズ」は、外国語（英語、中国語、韓国語、その他の言語など）を学びたいユーザーに対して、世界中から気軽に語学交流の相手や先生、ペンパル（文通相手）を探すことができるコンテンツを提供するサービスです。旅や趣味や文化交流など、共通の興味を持つ海外の友達を、日本、アメリカ合衆国、イギリス、カナダ、オーストラリア、中国、韓国などをはじめ、世界237の国や地域から登録する150万人以上の会員の中から探すことができます。また、登録者の内7万人以上が語学を教えている先生のため、世界の多種多様な中から、いつでも気軽に語学の先生を見つけることが可能です。

またワールドフレンズでは本日、新開発の「API」（アプリケーション・プログラム・インターフェイス）を発表しました。このAPIをご利用になると、プライベートブランドでワールドフレンズのサービスを提供しているパートナー企業が、さらに自由にサービスをカスタマイズすることが可能になります。Yahoo! JAPANでご利用になれるワールドフレンズも本APIを導入しており、将来は有料でパートナー企業に順次提供していく予定です。

また下記サービスにおいてもYahoo! JAPANとの連携を開始いたしました。

● Yahoo! JAPAN IDで「ワールドフレンズ」に登録可能
Yahoo! JAPANのIDをそのまま使用して、「ワールドフレンズ」で登録をすることが可能になりました。

● 決済手段に「Yahoo!ウォレット」を導入
ワールドフレンズの有料サービスの決済手段に「Yahoo!ウォレット」導入することにより、より安全で簡単に有料サービスを始めることができるようになりました。

ワールドフレンズでは、このサービスを開始することによって、より多くの日本のユーザーの皆様が気軽に楽しく国際交流を体験して頂けるよう願っています。
 
 
■ サービス概要
　「ワールドフレンズ」は、世界中から気軽に友達を見つけることを目的とした国際交流サービスです。無料で作成できるプロフィールをベースに、国際交流してみたい友達に求める条件（語学交流、旅行、音楽、趣味や興味のあることなど）を登録することで、趣味趣向に合った世界の友達に出会う機会を提供します。

■ 使い方
自身のプロフィールを作成し、希望する相手の条件を登録すると、全ての会員のプロフィールや70万件以上登録されている写真を閲覧することが可能になります。メールやチャット（テキスト、音声、ライブカメラに対応）送受信機能を使ってコミュニケーションを重ね、世界中から友達を見つけていくことができます。
 
 
日本の英会話学校（プライベート・レッスンも含む）の市場規模は年間8000億円以上にも及びます。近年では、中国語や韓国語も人気になってきていますが、残念ながら語学学校、書籍、音声教材から満足のいく成果は得られていないようです。「ワールドフレンズ」に登録すれば、学びたい言語を話すネイティブ・スピーカーを、いつでも世界中から探すことが可能です。また、サイト内にビルトインされているチャット機能（テキスト、音声、ライブカメラに対応）を使えば、すぐに語学交流を始めることができます。
 
 
【Yahoo! JAPAN】http://www.yahoo.co.jp
ヤフー株式会社（市場名：東証1部/JASDAQ、銘柄コード：4689、本社：東京都港区、設立年月日：1996年1月31日、代表取締役：井上雅博）が運営するYahoo! JAPANは、1か月あたり約5111万人のユニークカスタマー数※と、1日16億1000万ページビューのアクセスを誇るインターネットの総合情報サイトで、検索、コンテンツ、コミュニティー、コマース、モバイルなど多くのサービスを提供しています。
※2008年5月のNielsen Online「NetView AMS JP」における家庭からの視聴率88.2％、職場からの視聴率92.9％というデータをもとに、家庭、または職場からのインターネットユーザーを約5775万人（Nielsen Online「インターネット基礎調査」より）としてYahoo! JAPANのユニークカスタマー数を算出。
 
 
【ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス】http://www.worldfriendsnetworks.com
メタフォーグループ株式会社（本社：東京都渋谷区、設立年月日：2000年1月1日、代表取締役：ドミニク・ペネローザ）は、多言語に対応した語学交流と旅のコミュニティを提供する世界有数のサイト「ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス」を運営。国際感覚を養い、旅や文化、語学など共通の興味を持つ海外の友達を見つけることができます。「世界の友達がすぐそこに」をコンセプトに、世界中の人たちが言語や文化を超えて交流する場を提供。ワールドフレンズが既に運営しているサイトは多言語に対応しており、日本、アメリカ合衆国、イギリス、カナダ、オーストラリア、中国、韓国などをはじめ、世界237の国や地域から150万人以上が利用、その内7万人以上が語学を教えています。
 
 
◆ 本件に関するお問い合わせ先
ワールドフレンズ・ネットワークス（担当：長井）
press@meta4-group.com

SNS – You can Enjoy International Exchange at Home

Many people want to be friends with other people around the world! Now that dream can come true easily through the Internet. If you are interested in skiing, just click ”ski enthusiasts,” and you will see a list of ski enthusiasts by region, with photos. In order to take advantage of this site, you are required to create an Internet profile, however your privacy will be protected and no registration fee is charged.

Once you become a member of the site, you can enjoy exchanging e-mails and chatting with other members. The site system is being developed and promoted by Meta4 Group K.K. The company was launched in 2000 by Dominic PENALOZA, so it is still a young company. However, it has already attracted approximately 1.5 million members and about 40,000 more people join every month. At this stage, it has grown into an enterprise that has the world’s largest member network.

Their offices are located in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo, with 42 staff in total. Penaloza is a Canadian who has Chinese grandparents who have immigrated to the Philippines. Due to this, he has grown up with more than one language and culture. He expected that Japan would be the country that has the greatest demand for the English language, and with that in mind, he started creating a mail-magazine for learners of English as a type of advertising media in Hong Kong in 2000.

Later, he launched an international exchange party in Japan that became so popular that all the tickets sold out whenever the party held. Looking at the situation in Japan where every foreigner is surrounded by approximately five Japanese, he observed that many Japanese are very eager to learn English and do not hesitate to pay a lot of money to go to language schools.

After considering the situation further, Penaloza concluded that more and more people would join the network if he created a website, and also that it is more enjoyable to learn a language through communication. So, as a matter of course, the online international exchange site “WorldFriends Networks” was created in 2003. In the world of SNS (Social Network Services) people all over the world can start new friendships.

At present the site uses four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. The site will enable you to practice a foreign language and find friends with the same interests from among the members who come from 22 countries. Japanese make up the biggest group of users with 350000 members, followed by Americans and Chinese. Among female Japanese users, those aged between 25 and 26 form the biggest group and which interestingly, place emphasis on language study and travel. Of course, the group also has older members. More than 360000 e-mails are exchanged among members each month.

“Sometimes some users misunderstand the purpose of our site and think it is simply a dating site. However, we are focusing on international exchange as a means of learning foreign language and exchanging information. Recently, due to the influence of Japanese manga animation, the number of foreigners who want to learn Japanese language has been increasing. We are very pleased about this,” says Business Development and Marketing Director HARADA Ken.

In the three years since they started the WorldFriends business, the company went into the black. Three years on, management is planning to increase the number of Japanese users to one million, and to add Arabic to the existing four languages. They hope the site may make it possible to help enemies become friends by adding a language used in the violence-prone Middle East. “People using our site will be able to experience excitement they do not feel in their daily lives. And it would make us happy to be able to contribute to world peace,” Harada says.

Meta4-Group K.K. is entering into tie ups with many companies in order to spread this network. In the Hiragana Times website, their service is installed as “Hiragana Times Friends” and many people are currently using it. SNS is expected to continue to expand on the wave of globalization and IT systems.

Dominic Penaloza, Meta4 Group CEO
Transcending the language barrier with the help of the Internet

Relying on strong conviction and tireless energy, after surviving the original Dotcom crash, the creator of the WorldFriends multi-lingual social networking service made the business profitable within three years.

Dominic Penaloza at his Shanghai office, holding a giant match symbolizing the ‘match making’ bridge between people (of common interests.)

Dominic Penaloza Jr., born in February, 1970 in Toronto, Canada, 37 years old. Graduated from the University of Western Ontario in Canada with an Honors Business Administration degree. After graduation he worked in Hong Kong as an investment banker at Smith Barney Inc. (now part of Citigroup) and private equity investment company PAMA Group. In January, 2000 he founded HungryForWords and assumed the role of CEO. He moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai in 2005.

A unique online service named WorldFriends is attracting people’s attention. From its main office in Shanghai, WorldFriends achieved profitability three years after its launch. It now has 1.5 million registered members from all over the world and mainly from Asia. Japan is the source of 70% of WorldFriends’ earnings. WorldFriends is an Internet social networking service (SNS) operating in four languages: English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

Dominic Penaloza is the founder and CEO of WorldFriends. Early in 2000, he started started Meta4 Group, the company that operates WorldFriends, and a few short months after launch the Dotcom bubble burst, leaving him to struggle to keep the company growing within the difficult business environment. Penaloza seems to be Asian but looks somehow exotic and tall at nearly 180cm, wears smart casual clothes and speaks native English. Anyone might guess he is an overseas Chinese, but perhaps few would correctly guess his origins. So, we directly asked him. He started to tell us with a shy smile “well, it’s a bit complicated”. He was born in 1970 in Toronto, Canada. Penaloza’s grandparents are from Fujian, China; they moved to the Philippines before World War II and changed their surname to a Filipino name. His parents emigrated from the Philippines to Canada in the 1960s. This is how a Canadian entrepreneur with a Chinese face and Filipino surname was born. He was born and raised in Canada, where English and French are the official languages, and lived there until he graduated from university. French was a mandatory subject in school, (but although he spoke English with friends,) the language he first spoke with his parents was ‘Hokkien,’ Fujian’s Minnan dialect. When visiting the Philippines over the summer holidays, his relatives spoke to him in Cebuano and Tagalog. Mandarin and Cantonese were added after he started to work in Hong Kong. “My whole life has been a series of cross-cultural situations, feeling at home everywhere, yet nowhere, at the same time. I always tried my best to overcome cultural and language barriers. WorldFriends was born from my own experiences,” says Penaloza.

Becoming Friends with Native Foreigners

Although the Internet is a global communications technology without borders and geographic boundaries, surprisingly few companies have truly exploited this to provide a robust international service to users of different nationalities and languages. For example, the users of Japan’s largest SNS, Mixi, are almost entirely Japanese people. The world’s largest SNS, Myspace, does provide multi-lingual services in languages including English, Spanish, and Japanese, but each site is managed as a ‘national silo’ and there is little inter-mingling of the various sub-communities. In contrast, Penaloza’s vision is that due to the pace of globalization, the global village is becoming reality and the emerging ‘global culture’ is already larger than most people realize. Despite the trend in creating mono-lingual SNSs, Penaloza created an online community where users of different nationalities and languages can enjoy chatting with each other, and find friends. With the quadrilingual WorldFriends service, users can find other users who match with their interests from all over the world. For example, a user could set a requirement such as as men in their 20s who speak English and live in Japan, and get plenty of search results. However, WorldFriends does not provide a translation service. Penaloza developed the service as the best place to experience ‘social learning,’ the ideal way to improve foreign language ability, appealing to anybody who has an interest in learning foreign languages and new cultures. The most effective and fun way to learn a new language is to become friends with native speakers of that language. However, in reality, it’s difficult to find frequent opportunities to socialize with such people. In fact, unless you work in the company where you deal with foreigners on a daily basis, such chances are rare and finding them requires a lot of effort and expense. Some of the readers may have browsed through the classifieds section in exchange program booklets, looking for a penpal, or posted an advertisement with hopes in finding one. As a person who had lived in seven different countries, Penaloza had the insight that the real world demand for cross-culture friendship and language exchange far exceeded the supply, and believed that a big business could be built by bridging the demand-supply imbalance using the Internet.

WorldFriends was launched in July 2003 and its member base of internationally-minded people steadily grew. Penaloza devised a flexible distribution platform by partnering with websites for Japanese and other Asians who study English and websites that introduce Japan and other Asian countries to Westerners.

“WorldFriends has tremendous growth potential, and 1.5 million members is just the beginning. With the acceleration of globalization, 10 million is very achievable.” says Penaloza.

Since profitability is just as important as growth in the member base, Penaloza initially focused on the Japan market. While English is the most studied language all over the world, in Asia demand for learning English is very high. Asian people are willing to spend significant amounts on English learning to boost their career prospects. The reason he decided to focus on the Japanese market was that Japan is Asia’s largest market for English learning.

“I was inspired by the fact that millions of Japanese people take private English courses and pay tens of thousands of yen every month. I was sure that people would be interested in brand new ways and opportunities to learn English using the Internet, (especially if it would be more fun and effective, yet less expensive, compared to English conversation school or study abroad.)” says Penaloza.

WorldFriends reached profitability in July last year. WorldFriends’ revenue comes from member subscription fees and about 4% of all members purchase premium service subscriptions. Registering, creating profile, and searching the member base are all free of charge. But in order to initiate communication with another member, you need to be a “VIP” service subscriber. There is another kind of paid membership, “Open Club”. With Open Club, users cannot initiate contact with others, but anyone can contact Open Club members free of charge, including regular members. There are many people in Japan and China who want to study English, but feel embarrassed to send poorly written messages to native English speakers. Open Club is designed for such people who want others to initiate the contact. “I am also Asian, I have experienced the embarrassment and challenges of learning languages and cultures myself, and so I understand users’ feelings.” says Penaloza.

Winning the hearts and minds of Japanese people who study English.

Subscription fees are different based on the market, currency and length of subscription. A 3-month VIP subscription is 7000 yen and a 3-month Open Club subscription is 7500 yen. It is not cheap compared to general online services; however, 70% of revenue comes from Japan.

Penaloza found an untouched market in the Internet space which was blocked by the language barrier. Even after identifying a need demanded by consumers, it is not easy to make it a successful business, especially a complex need such as international friendship, culture exchange and language exchange. Partnering with many distribution partner websites from various countries whose business practices, and languages are different, and providing a service that is attractive to a very diverse group of users is a large operational challenge. Penaloza won hearts and minds of Japanese who study English and got his business on track.

WorldFriends operates from three offices in Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong and one of its competitive strengths is its “international DNA” provided by the melting pot of its internationally-minded staff from China, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, and several other countries. The business got on track due to Penaloza’s personality and capability.

“Dom has excellent skills in picking what is necessary and unnecessary from the many ideas from our employees and decide which direction the company should go,” praised Ken Harada who joined WorldFriends as business development director after starting up various Internet companies in Japan such as DoubleClick Japan.

“Dom has excellent skills in accurately understanding the important points, even if the subject of discussion is outside of his field. He is a responsive boss, thus employees feel inspired to work hard,” said Jim Yao, WorldFriends’ IT director in Shanghai who has extensive experience in technology management and development in both USA and China at IBM.

Penaloza’s grandfather was an entrepreneur who started his business trading spare parts with US forces in Philippines after the war. Later, he started a successful business importing ball bearings and roller bearings from Japan into the Philippines. Penaloza’s father is a serial entrepreneur who was a pioneer in opening up a series of shops and restaurants in the original Chinatown in Toronto. Penaloza started his first business venture early, when he was five years old. He opened a lemonade stand in front of his home in Toronto (photo, right).

First entrepreneurial venture at age five; a lemonade stand in Toronto

Penaloza was raised in an entrepreneurial family, and he experienced first-hand the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life. Penaloza’s father started businesses in the Philippines, the USA and China. Regardless of success of failure, building companies in foreign countries has been the daily life of the family for at least three generations. “Becoming an international entrepreneur was the natural choice for me. My grandfather was an entrepreneur, and my dad is an entrepreneur, even my grandmother and mother are entrepreneurs,” says Penaloza.

Penaloza majored in business administration and after graduation he headed to China for one year to help establish his father’s company in the market. He then became an investment banker with Smith Barney Inc.’s Hong Kong office in 1994. Later, he joined PAMA Group, a prominent pan-Asia private equity investment company, and worked on investment deals in across Asia including Japan and Greater China. It was an ideal training ground for Penaloza, whose goal was to become an entrepreneur.

Penaloza’s entrepreneurial turning point occurred in autumn 1999 when the whole world was focused on the so-called Internet bubble. Countless investment propositions had been sent to PAMA, but PAMA was very cautious and passed on all of them. However, one day Penaloza came across a business proposal that grabbed his attention. It was about permission email advertising, which he deemed to have profitable potential. PAMA passed on this one as well, but he kept it in his mind for future entrepreneurial plans.

Inspiration came suddenly. As a finance professional struggling to master Mandarin, Penaloza traveled with handmade flashcards with English on one side and Chinese on the other side for him to study new investment terminology. After accomplishing the IPO of a PAMA investee, he took a holiday in Italy, and when he was flipping through the flashcards at his hotel room, the idea suddenly bloomed in his mind; personalize the flashcards and send them daily free of charge inside emails, supported by advertisers who would pay to reach a white-collar, highly educated audience.

7 days test policy

“I can provide free education to help millions of people around the world who are trying to learn languages. It’s not just a substance-less dotcom, but can surely be a profitable business. This is the work I should pursue.” thought Penaloza.

He tendered his resignation at PAMA when he returned to Hong Kong and started to prepare for the business. Fortunately, Penaloza’s bosses and partners at PAMA agreed to invest as individuals. The flashcard service was named “HungryForWords.com” and launched in February 2000. However, the happiness and thrill of launching the business was short-lived, as the Internet bubble was burst a few months after the launch. His hope for further financing was extinguished and he faced near bankruptcy. Penaloza reduced the scope of the business and skated on thin ice towards profitability and financial self-sufficiency. Two years later, HungryForWords.com became profitable, but investors were still not interested in Internet businesses. But Penaloza never gave up and established WorldFriends, making use of his marketing know-how, business networks and a little excess cash from HungryForWords. In order to reduce operating costs and to move closer to a future major market, he moved the main office to Shanghai in 2005.

Mr. Makoto Yasuda, director of Li and Fung Ltd., the leading trading company in Hong Kong, a WorldFriends shareholder who was also Penaloza’s colleague at PAMA describes Penaloza, said “Dom has a tremendous drive to succeed and a huge spirit for challenge which are crucial for an entrepreneur, and also calmness and patience which are crucial for investors. If he was just an average entrepreneur, he might given up a long ago.”

In fact, it’s common for Overseas Chinese businessmen to give up on businesses at the first signs of challenge and look for a new business opportunity. However, Penaloza never gives up until he succeeds. The driving power to make WorldFriends become a profitable business was his daring spirit which survived years of hardship after the bubble burst.

Asked if he had ever thought of giving up, Penaloza replied “I have my own ‘7-day rule’. I consider myself an ‘ideas person’ and I think of new business ideas all the time, perhaps once per week on average. I have many ideas about business opportunities, but after examining the ideas from various angles, I still feel strongly about few of them after seven days. Only HungryForWords and WorldFriends passed the test. I was so sure of the success, so I never thought of giving up at all.”

(Shinji Tahara, Nikkei Beijing branch)

Let there be light

Editor’s note:

Based on the complete implementation of the five criteria for selecting a BOCOG Olympic torchbearer, Lenovo Group along with China Daily has launched the “Lenovo-sponsored Olympic torchbearer nominee selection among foreigners living in China” program to seek out people who embody the Olympic spirit of constant exploration and striving for excellence and who have made contributions to the building of a harmonious society.

Starting on September 7 and concluding at the end of October this year, this campaign will select eight foreign torchbearers, providing foreigners living in China with an opportunity to participate in the Beijing 2008 Olympic.

In order to attract more public attention to the selection campaign and better spread the spirit of the Olympic movement, The Olympian is highlighting some of the candidates’ stories during the selection process.

Dominic Penaloza
Nationality: Canadian
Birthday: 1970/02/12

I am the founder and CEO of WorldFriends.tv, a website with over 1.3 million members from 200 different countries. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and I am ethnically Chinese-Filipino. I have lived in Shanghai, Toronto, Hong Kong, Manila, Sydney, Jakarta, Nanning and Xiamen.

If I am given the honor of being an Olympic torchbearer, every step I run will be with the passionate Olympic spirit, representing both foreigners and Chinese in China who are internationally-minded and want to “be global”. Each step will represent striving for a harmonious society, and for international friendship.

I love China. I first arrived in China at the age of 23 in 1993 and lived in Nanning and Xiamen. I did not speak and Chinese when I arrived and I found that learning Mandarin is like snowboarding. It’s very easy to get started, but difficult to master and easy to have an accident. My most embarrassing moment in China was when I was making a public speech at an inauguration ceremony and I said that the company’s warehouse was full of chun huo (idiots), when I was supposed to say cun huo,(inventory). Everybody in the crowd laughed-except me.

My Mandarin rapidly improved and I began making my own flashcards to help me remember my vocabulary. Language exchange became a lot of fun; never in my life had I felt like a rock star until I went to Chinese people so eager to learn English and “be global” especially at the English Corner in Nanning University where every Thursday night we would gather to shyly practice English conversation in the dark. In early 2000, the hunger to learn English that I witnessed in China inspired me to start my own business called HungryForWords.com, enabling Chinese and Japanese speakers to get their own personalized flashcards via email, providing language education free of charge.

Seven years later, I am living in Shanghai and still running the same company, which has launched my new website to promote international friendship. Every day, thousand of members are “meeting their neighbors in the global village”, for example, Japanese exchanging travel notes with Koreans, or Spaniards doing language exchange with Chinese.

Brief Summary:

The article describes the dramatically changing USA-led Internet business in the world with the rise of China. It mentions how Chinese companies, Alibaba and Baidu, are doing so well despite the fact that they launched in the China market later than Google and Ebay did. It also discusses the ambitions of Alibaba and Baidu whose Japan market entry has not been smooth and still mid-way. In contrast to them, WorldFriends Networks is cited as the sole example of a China-based company actually having Japanese members in volume and especially paid members and moved into profitability.

Main statistics and points:

Estimated Internet population in China is 150 million and expected to exceed that of USA in 2010.
Pie chart indicates the market share of following 3 categories in China:

1. Search engine: Baidu 66.3%, Google 18.1%, Yahoo 6%, others 9.6%
2. E-commerce: Taobao 48.1%, Ebay 25.6%, others 26.3%
3. Internet Advertisement: Sina 15.8%, Baidu 14%, Sohu 10.8%, Netease 5.2%, Tencent 2.8%, others 45.8%

*Source: iResearch

Main Internet companies in China:

*Unit price: USD, as of December, 2006. Alibaba is not listed company.

About Alibaba:

1. Alibaba established auction site Taobao in 2003. Taobao became popular largely due to its chat system which enables buyers and sellers to chat online (Ebay did not have this) and a secure online payment system. Its market share in 2006 (total buy and sell) was 48.1% as compared to that of Ebay 25.6%.
2. Providing a convenient (IM) and secure environment (escrow and trust pass: 3rd party verifies the conditions of the company, etc.) is the key of Alibaba’s success in China.
3. Alibaba succeeded in B2B transaction by helping medium and small sellers/companies to make money as compare to B2B in the west who have been focusing on the large buyers/companies.
4. Alibaba launched Japanese website in 2002 focusing to help Chinese companies to expand their presence in Japan, but it is now trying to help Japanese companies to expand their presence in China.

About Baidu:

Baidu was established in 2000 and became popular with its accurate Chinese language search engine and music file search service. Baidu’s market share, access to the top page, is 66.3% and that of Google is 18.1% in December, 2006.

About WorldFriends Networks:

WFN successfully entered into Japanese market in 2003 with its global and multilingual SNS and its member base has grown to 1.2 million. It is popular among the young East Asians who are interested in learning English and cultural exchange and the member base is increasing 40,000 to 50,000 monthly. WFN is based in Shanghai and also has an office in Tokyo to actively acquire Japanese members. Registration and search are free, but in order to send emails to other members, you need to become a paid member, but it is still free to reply to a message from paid members. Multilingual SNS is popular among Japanese: the one month service fee is 3500 yen. Japanese members account for 30% of the total member base, and 70% of 40,000 paid members. Due to increase of Japanese paid members, WFN moved into the black three years after its launch. According to Dominic Penaloza, “the language business market in Japan is huge. Our service is good value for money when you think of paying 3,000 yen for only one hour of language lessons”. There are many markets in China and Japan that American Internet businesses failed to succeed or find. Japan-China cross-border Internet business is coming out of the box and freshly developing.

SHANGHAI, March 2, 2007 – Shanghai-based Meta4 Group Ltd., which operates WorldFriends Networks, the world’s leading provider of private label multi-lingual online personals announced US$2.5 million in venture capital funding from industry veterans including the co-founders of leading Internet dating service Lavalife.com. WorldFriends Networks will use this capital infusion to greatly accelerate its rate of growth in parallel with the rapidly expanding Internet socializing and advertising markets, particularly in North Asia. WorldFriends Networks currently serves over 200 website partners and 1,000,000 registered members.

Aside from expansion capital, the financing also brings valuable management experience to WorldFriends Networks’ leadership team. The investor group is led by Nicholas Paine and Bruce Croxon, both pioneers of what ultimately became the Internet dating industry, having co-founded Lavalife.com around 17 years ago. Together with two other partners they invented telephone personals, and then grew Lavalife.com from a start-up to a top tier online personals business with US$90 million of annual revenues.

Nicholas Paine has joined Meta4 Group as Executive Chairman, helping to optimize the Company’s strategies, organizational development, and financing. In addition to his role at Lavalife, Nicholas Paine has been a seed investor and director of a number of start-ups and rapid-growth early-stage businesses over the past 10 years such as The Franchise Company that has grown from under US$100 million in revenues to almost US$1 billion while he has been on their Board; Open Cola, a revolutionary peer-to-peer search engine web service that pre-dated Napster; AIS, a medical software company; and Airtrax, a revolutionary omni-directional forklift truck technology company.

“The innovative unique distribution strategy and technology behind WorldFriends Networks, combined with the management team’s expertise and thought-leadership proved to be an ideal investment opportunity in the fast-growing Japan and China markets.” said Nicholas Paine, co-founder of Lavalife.com.

“Coming from industry pioneers, this capital funding provides a strong endorsement of our market opportunity, management team and business model,” said Michael McNabb, director of Meta4 Group. “This financing will solidify our position as the premiere choice for website operators who wish to enhance visitor loyalty and the profitability by adding a robust self-branded friend-finder channel to their sites. WorldFriends Networks is proud to be delivering high quality friend-finder services to leading website partners, and also helping many registered members to form valuable new friendships and relationships.”

About WorldFriends Networks

WorldFriends Networks is the world’s premiere provider of private label multi-lingual online personals. WorldFriends Networks enables each of its website partners to have a best-of-breed online personals service using the partner’s brand, while enjoying the combined user base of the entire network. WorldFriends Networks operates from offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

WorldFriends Networks’ 200 partner sites include:

So-net www.so-net.ne.jp (Japan)
Eigotown www.eigotown.com (Japan)
Japan Zone www.japan-zone.com (Japan)
Japan Guide www.japan-guide.com (Japan) and
China Times www.chinatimes.com (Taiwan).

For more information please visit www.worldfriendsnetworks.com.

Press Contacts:

Simon Pan (Shanghai)
WorldFriends Networks
Tel.: +86 21 5175 9800
simonpan@meta4-group.com

Ichiro Shiraki (Tokyo)
WorldFriends Networks
+81-3-5728-3608
press@meta4-group.com

Tokyo, November 29, 2006 — WorldFriends Networks announced today that it officially reached a historic membership milestone with the addition of its one-millionth registered member. Yoko K., a 25 year-old woman from Yokohama, Japan, became the one-millionth person to become a member of WorldFriends Networks, the premier international friend-finder service on the Internet, located at http://www.worldfriends.tv.

a photo of Yoko K, 25 years old, of Yokohama, Japan
the one-millionth person to become a member of WorldFriends Networks.

“WorldFriends is very happy to reach the one million member milestone, and we extend a warm welcome to Yoko K, the one-millionth member to join WorldFriends, and all of the thousands of people who visit WorldFriends daily.” said Dominic Penaloza, Chief Executive Officer of WorldFriends Networks. “We are dedicated to continuing our rapid growth and fulfilling our vision of helping many millions of people to enrich their lives by making new friendships, and we are dedicated to serving many millions more.”

Yoko K, said “Joining WorldFriends and being the one millionth member is very exciting. Now, I’m eager to make new friends from around the world.”

With rapidly growing membership currently standing at one million registered members living in 191 different countries, WorldFriends Networks is the world’s premiere place to find internationally-minded new friends. WorldFriends serves its members by providing an easy, convenient, comfortable and quality-controlled environment to find and build new friends with common interests. Within the WorldFriends environment, users can search detailed member profiles, photo collections, and invite other members to communicate using their choice of email, instant messaging, voice calling or video calling.

About WorldFriends Networks

WorldFriends Networks is the world’s premiere provider of private label multi-lingual online personals. WorldFriends Networks enables each of its website partners to have a best-of-breed online personals service using the partner’s brand, while enjoying the combined user base of the entire network. WorldFriends Networks operates from offices in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. For more information please visit
www.worldfriendsnetworks.com and www.worldfriends.tv.

Press Contact

Simon Pan (Shanghai)
WorldFriends Networks
Tel.: +86 21 5175 9800
simonpan@meta4-group.com

Ichiro Shiraki (Tokyo)
WorldFriends Networks
Tel.: +81-3-5728-3608
ichiro@meta4-group.com

Hong Kong, May 10, 2006 – WorldFriends Networks (WFN), the world’s leading provider of private label multi-lingual online dating services, announced that it has signed its 200th partnership agreement. This important milestone highlights WFN’s position as the premiere choice for website operators who wish to enhance visitor loyalty and the profitability by adding a robust self-branded dating channel to their sites.

WFN caters to partners and end users internationally by operating in 20 different countries and in five different languages – English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. WFN signs an average of eight new partnership agreements each month.

WFN creates value for all partners and users by pooling the user base and enabling end users who enter the service via any particular partner to access the user base of 680,000 users. Thus, every partner is able to offer a robust online dating service with a constant flow of new users and content. Users can browse through user-created content including 275,000 photos, get weekly personalized two-way matching recommendations, and communicate using their choice of email, instant messaging, voice call, and video call. Over 1,000 new members join each and every day, and WFN predicts that this will rise to 5,000 new members per day in the near future.

WFN’s 200 partners include well known media brands such as ESPN, STAR TV, and China Times, Internet Service Providers such as Taiwan’s dominant ISP Hinet and Japan’s So-net, a unit of SONY group, leading websites such as Japan.com, Mail.com and Fresheye.com, and also popular blog sites such as Japan-Zone.com, and Shanghaiist.com.

“If you want to socialize, there’s nothing worse than an empty bar or empty website. Our partners know this and see the significant value created by our network approach. The private label nature of our operation allows partners to have their cake and eat it too, in the sense that they are able to enhance their branding and traffic while simultaneously adding a popular new service to their total offerings. We’re happy to reach our 200th partner and look forward to welcoming several hundred more. The more partners we can add, the better it is for the entire network.” said Dominic Penaloza, CEO, WorldFriends Networks.

About WorldFriends Networks

WorldFriends Networks is the world’s premiere provider of private label multi-lingual online personals. WorldFriends Networks enables each of its website partners to have a best-of-breed online personals service using the partner’s brand, while enjoying the combined user base of the entire network. For more information please visit www.worldfriendsnetworks.com.