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FRIDAE.COM - ASIA'S LEADING GAY AND LESBIAN INTERNET
PORTAL TURNS ONE
March 8, 2002 (Hong Kong) - A year into its
launch and almost 8 million visitors later, Fridae.com,
Asia's leading gay and lesbian Internet portal has successfully
built a highly recognisable gay brand in the Asian region
and beyond. Its main focus, which has been to deliver
a broad range of products and services to the gay and
lesbian community with an online presence assuring anonymity
and freedom of expression remains unchanged.
When first launched, Hong Kong based Fridae.com was
the principal sponsor and official portal of the Sydney
Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2001, sharing the grandstand
with the likes of Telstra and Qantas Airways.
To date, Fridae.com, which boasts over 100,000 visitors
and 1.2 million page views a month, is easily the largest
English language gay and lesbian portal in the region.
"Fridae is serving the gay and lesbian niche community
in the best way it can, by delivering quality products
and services tailored specifically for the community's
needs. In this era of suffocating dotcoms and a floundering
economy, it is companies that succeed in meeting the
specific needs of their target markets well that will
survive," said Dr. Stuart Koe, COO of Fridae.
Key features of the portal include a 'Magazine' section
which is updated daily with relevant news concerning
the community and an extremely popular 'Personals' section
- which showcases pioneering technology allowing users
to send replies using SMS, and also real-time chat,
all of which were developed in-house. The 'fotos@fridae'
section hosts an extensive archive of pictures from
parties and events in the region, with exclusive coverage
of Asian gays and lesbians at the recently concluded
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2002 being the latest
update. Other popular features include online 'Forums',
'Shout!' (a regional calendar of events updated by users),
and 'iso?ads' - Fridae's classifieds section.
Fridae's main offline activity has been organizing
a series of parties in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore,
with 'Nation' being the largest party to date. 'Nation',
the annual rave event held on the eve of National Day
in Singapore, garnered such broad coverage by the international
media last year and was so hugely successful that this
year's rave promises to be bigger and wilder.
Fridae is now recognised as one of the most effective
ways to reach a very desirable, yet difficult to reach
demographic group. Gays and lesbians are well known
to be web savvy trendsetters with high disposable incomes
and have received a high level of education.
However, given the conservative nature of Asian society,
this community has traditionally been hidden and difficult
to reach. Still, the company's activities in the past
12 months have created such a tremendous amount of brand
awareness that many in the gay and lesbian community
regard Fridae as the authority on pink-related interests,
activities and more.
To this effect, Fridae has recently concluded the
1st comprehensive market survey of gays and lesbians
in Asia, with results to be announced soon. Fridae thus
serves as a unique and effective conduit between interested
businesses and the gay and lesbian community.
Fridae will celebrate its 1st anniversary on March
9th with The Black Party to be held at Dbl0 in Singapore,
featuring guest DJ Jojo, who produces the extremely
popular 'Frisky' parties in Sydney.
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