Glocals.com

Glocals.com is an English speaking online community created in Geneva, Switzerland in 2007, aimed at Switzerland's expat community. 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 Zurich, Lausanne, Bern, and Basel. It now has 53,000 registered members. In November 2010 the site expanded to include BuyClub.ch - a group buying site for Switzerland's expatriate community.
History
Glocals was created in 2007 by two Israeli brothers, Nir and Oded Ofek, under the name GenevaOnline. They already had created a website, Sindy.ch, through which they organized parties for expatriates of the Geneva. As online communities grew in importance, they decided to create an 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. 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. This led them to adopt a new name: Glocals, a combination of the words “global” and “local”. 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 ».
Members
As of February 23, 2013, there are 83 865 registered members on glocals.com, spread over Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, Basel and Luzern. Due to the quick turnover of expatriates, all are not active anymore. The minimum required age is 23 and the average is 32. The top nationalities are UK (11%), Swiss (10%), 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 An average of 10-12 members activities are proposed daily, with peaks at the end of the weeks, 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. The creation of BuyClub allowed the company to capitalize on its membership to feed a more directly commercial website.

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