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SAO PAULO: An upmarket, invitation-only social network with a French touch expanded into Brazil this month and is setting its sights on Asia, one of its founding partners told AFP.
French Tuesdays, as the network is known, aims to claim the Internet space between more established niche sites such as jetsetter clique A Small World and all-business LinkedIn, Gilles Amsallem said.
The name reflects the background of Amsallem, 44, and his partner Pierre Battu, 43, two Frenchmen who live in the United States and who thought up their website/party enterprise at the height of anti-French sentiment in their adoptive country around the 2003 start of the Iraq war.
"Back then we (the French) were seen as monsters because we didn't agree with the reasons for invading Iraq," he explained.
An initial gathering of some 40 French partying against their ostracism soon snowballed into hundreds of other lovers of champagne and "freedom" fries of all nationalities joining in, including like-minded Americans.
Today, frenchtuesdays.com counts around 19,000 members worldwide and its parties -- always on a Tuesday evening -- are held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Paris with renowned DJs and enforced dress code.
Sao Paulo is the latest addition, with the opening party this week attracting the same sort of crowd: professionals in their 30s and 40s with disposable income -- and who appeal to the advertising sensibilities of the network's sponsors, which include a big French retailer, a French champagne firm and a British recruitment company.
The network is deliberately keeping its number of members restricted, unlike the public social network Facebook, which on Tuesday said it has 300 million users.
"We don't want to get too big because the idea is based on the understanding that the sponsors want to keep the exclusive element to the events," Amsallem said.
Brazilian corporate publicity company For, run by another expatriate Frenchman, Frederic Junck, is partnering to handle the Sao Paulo operations.
The business model also extends beyond the social networking part of the enterprise, to organising corporate events -- some of them clinched through the well-heeled members who attend the regular parties.
According to Amsallem, the company -- with a staff of 14 -- has revenues of two million dollars a year, drawn evenly from the parties, the sponsors and the corporate events.
Next up are plans to open in Shanghai, and maybe French Tuesdays's own nightclub in New York.
"We don't have any rivals," Amsallem said, claiming his outfit is the first to profitably straddle the social networking and events-coordination spheres.
- AFP/sc
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