TAIWAN JOURNAL -- Feb 29 -- Vickers Venture Partners, a Singaporean equity firm that focuses on high-growth companies in Asia, plans to invest US$8 million in iParment in 2008. iPartment launched in August 2003, and to date as many as 1.4m "tenants" browse the site. iPartment targets career women, who could design their own virtual apartments, decorate them with virtual furniture, carpeting and wallpaper, chat with friends, invite roommates and keep diaries. Members have to pay for these services, which is an important source of revenue besides membership fees and renting advertising space. In 2005, the company expanded to China. Currently, iPartment boasts nearly 10m members across China. The annual revenues are estimated to be over US$3 million, and the company is set to open its second overseas branch in Japan.

Mark Brooks: iPart.cn is one if the most popular SNS among youngsters in China, And it actually makes money, unlike most of the other SNS in China. Hopefully they will be attending the Tokyo Internet Dating and Social Networking Conference in May. I'll be there. Ping me at mark@socialnetworkingwatch.com if you're planning on going as well. 

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