WorldFriends Networks Announces US$2.5 Million in Venture Capital Funding

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.”