The very popular Taiwanese love channel,
LoveMatch, will re-launch with a new face next month.
Currently, LoveMatch has nearly 190,000 members with a healthy mix of
Chinese from not just Taiwan but many from Hong Kong, China and North
America.
“LoveMatch is a BIG5 only version,” said Steve Fox, a LoveMatch founder and
a principal in parent company Overseas Connections. “We have
avoided adding an English version,
frankly, to keep out desperate western men searching for Chinese women, and
which would have also spoiled our advertising demographics.”
“The site does attract all types though, from straight, gay, transvestite,
young, old, single, MBA (married but available), you name it,” added Fox.
“We take pride however in the fact that the site is 100 percent private, no one
knows who you are unless you explicitly spell it out on your profile page.”
Fox stipulated that the LoveMatch isn’t a sex site; members are heavily
screened and those that break the rules are ejected.
All messages between the site’s users are automatically filtered to prevent
messages with spam and foul language, said Fox.
The site is doing so well that Hong Kong-based China.com Corp. wants to get in on
the action. It’s Hongkong.com portal has a co-branded version of LoveMatch,
called e-match, on its love.hongkong.com channel.
China.com is using the 190,000 member database but developing its own
content for love.hongkong.com.
“LoveMatch provides a highly popular and enjoyable interactive
experience for Taiwan audiences,” stated Vicky Hung, vice-president,
product and business development.”Hongkong.com is delighted to make
available e-match on love.hongkong.com, extending the reach of our
co-branded service across the Greater China region and to Chinese audiences
globally.”
In addition to LoveMatch, Overseas has another Web property, LOOL4U, that has an even larger
membership database.
LOOK4U is, according to Fox, the largest and only exclusively Chinese
language people finder in the world with over 1.3 million Chinese people
listed.
Overseas Connections also owns Asiad Ad Network, the largest in
Taiwan, and Asiad Classifieds, a new
site that was soft-launched two months ago and is being co-branded with
such major sites as ChinaTimes
Interactive, Formosa Television,
Voice Of Taipei Radio, GigaMedia, and Microsoft Network.
“We aren’t making a formal announcement until we have a few more partners
online including some in Hong Kong,” said Fox. “We’re also in the process
of shoring up partnerships with leading regional human resource and real
estate content
providers.”
One interesting feature of Asiad Classifieds is a special
search agent which will allow a user to enter a query that will be answered
with daily e-mail updates regarding new ads that match the query.
