91% of Jiayuan Registered Users Only Use Free Service
Shanghai Evening Post, 8/26/11
Rose Gong, CEO of Beijing-based online matchmaking site operator Jiayuan.com (Nasdaq: DATE), recently stated that 9% of the site's users paid for services on the site, while the other 91% of Jiayuan's 45 mln registered users only use free services. The majority of the paying 9% of users spend between several dozen Chinese yuan and more than RMB 200 per year to use the site, with the most expensive subscription (the "Diamond plan") costing RMB 498 per year.
Jiayuan expects to add a total of 20 mln new users this year, Gong said, and predicts that 2 mln Jiayuan users will change their marital status on the site. According to previous statistics, users who found their matches on Jiayuan spent an average of RMB 150.
Gong said that Jiayuan had only 600 or 700 users of its premium services, which are all offline services, but that the figure could grow to around 1,000 this year, with each user paying several tens of thousands of RMB. The offline nature of the services means that there is no conflict with Jiayuan's ordinary user services.
Jiayuan is currently designing and developing a new feature, "user ratings," that will allow users to rate other users' profiles, with overall ratings displaying on users' profile pages. "If a user has an unusually low rating," Gong said, "then other users will be more cautious, and will wonder if there's something wrong with that user." User ratings will help boost user trust, Gong said, and will be a mechanism for users to police themselves.
Responding to posts on Chinese internet company Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), Tianya, and other forums alleging that Jiayuan is a forum for one-night stands, cons, and prostitution, Gong said that Jiayuan's customer service department reviewed 200,000 user photos per day, and spent time screening for "sensitive terms" like "one-night stand." On average, customer service staff blacklists 0.3% to 0.5% of the profiles it reviews in a given day to filter out everything from prostitutes to insurance scams.
Jiayuan will step up reminders for users to be cautious, Gong said, with different videos for male, female, and elderly users explaining how to detect scammers.
Keywords: SNS Rose Gong Internet online matchmaking registered users customer service Jiayuan.com DATE scam
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