Glocals.com

Glocals.com is an English speaking online community created in Geneva, Switzerland in 2005. It allows members to meet, organize activities and share information. Formerly known as Genevaonline, it changed its name to Glocals in 2007 as it expanded its activities to several Swiss cities. It claims now more than 20'000 registered members.

History

Glocals was created in 2005 by two Israeli brothers, Nir and Oded Ofek, under the name genevaonline. They already had created a website, Sindy.com, through which they organized parties for expatriates of the Geneva [Expat communities united on “Glocals.com”, "24 Heures", 06.08.07] . As online communities grew in importance, they decided to create a English speaking website, allowing locals and expatriates of the Geneva area to meet, organize activities and share information. The beta website of genevaonline was launched in the summer of 2005, the official launch took place in March 2006 [Aude Markovitch, “Noueur de liens sociaux”, "Le Temps", 14.8.06] . In June 2007, the website hit 10’000 members, between Geneva and Lausanne. In August 2007, the founders decided to expand their activities to other Swiss cities: Zurich, Basel, Bern [Sophie Balbo, “Genevaonline s’étend à Lausanne et Zurich”, "Le Matin Bleu", 6.8.2007] . This led them to adopt a new name: Glocals, a combination of the words “global” and “local” [ Jean-Yves Clémenzo, Les expatriés de Genève vont fêter «glocals.com» à la plage de l’ONU, "La Tribune de Genève", 18.8.07] . In December 2007, Glocals was one of the 5 finalists of the Open Web Awards, organised by mashable.com, in the category « Niche or miscellaneous social networks » [ [http://mashable.com/2007/12/17/owa-voting-finalists-3/) YouTube Deletes 29,549 Videos after Japanese Complaints ] ] .

Members

Membership on Glocals is restricted to people over the age of 23. Membership itself is free of charge and there are no other conditions. As of July 19th, 2008, the homepage indicated 20'000 registered members.According to the website own statistics, members come from 91 countries, average age is 31.In September 2007, top nationalities were Swiss (11%), UK (11%), USA (8%), France (8%) and Germany (6%).

Website

The core of the website is the possibility for any member to organize an activity and invite other members [ Télévision Suisse romande, Mise au point, April 13, 2008, “Semaine de l’intégration, portrait des expatriés”, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36AqEmgTF2E] ] An average of 7,4 members activities are proposed daily, most of them in Geneva / Lausanne area. The website has other features:
* Market place, used mainly for housing, job and buy/sell adds
* Forums
* City guide, where members can review public places like restaurants, bar, shops…
* Events, listing events that are not organized by the members
* Pictures, allowing members to post pictures of member activities
* Special offers from partners to the members
* Tools allowing to create a friend’s network, send mails, etc

Business model

Glocals has been a registered society since February 2007. The business model of the website relies on the fact that people newly arrived need different services (insurance, garage, hairdresser…). Glocals has created a network of service providers that it judges reliable and able to deliver services in English. These partners advertise on Glocals, providing the company’s source of income [Cormon P.,“Glocals, le site Internet qui fait aimer la Suisse aux expatriés”, "Entreprise romande", 21.12.08] .

External links

* [http://glocals.com/ Official website]

References