China's leading blogger has NASDAQ ambitions
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-27 08:41

One of China's most well-known bloggers hopes to ride the current boom in personal online journals and transform his blog site into a U.S.-listed Internet giant.

"We are building a blog-based portal and we will be the first blogger ever to list on the NASDAQ," Bokee.com chairman and chief executive officer Fang Xingdong said.

Chinese mainland Internet veteran Fang Xingdong [baidu]

Fang, who previously made a living as an online commentator, or blogger, said the company would receive US$10 million in financing next month from three American venture capitalists, Hong Kong-based venture capitalist Softbank Investment International and a mainland investor. He declined to name the individual investors as the transaction has yet to be finalized.

The ambitious aim of Bokee.com, the country's most visited blog site ahead of Blogcn.com, was to become profitable by the end of the year and list on the NASDAQ at the end of next year, Fang said.

"My goal is to grow bigger than Sohu.com Inc. and Sina Corp. in terms of influence and number of visitors," the 36-year-old said. Sina and Sohu are China's largest Internet portals, with 101 million and 57 million registered users respectively.

Fang's project is a tall order. Of the 100 million Internet users on the mainland, only five million were bloggers and about two million had accounts with Bokee.com. Of those two million, only about 400,000 posted at least one new item a month, he said.

Besides, no one is making a significant amount of money from blogging -- either in China or overseas -- and currently there's no blog listed on NASDAQ.

Yet, analysts say Bokee.com is already well on its way toward establishing itself as the dominant blog site in China.

"Users' traffic and stickiness are the major indicators of future success," said Jim Sun, a technology analyst with Shanghai-based Evolution Securities who said he read Bokee.com everyday. "Blogs are still in the early stages, for them the most important thing now is to get traffic and Bokee.com is very popular."

According to traffic ranking Web site Alexa.com, Bokee.com ranked the 124th most visited Web site worldwide while its direct domestic competitor Blogcn.com ranked only 500.

On the same list, Sina and Sohu ranked fifth and ninth, respectively.

"A blog in China is not only a personal Web site but something closer to an online community," said Guo Liang, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Fang's personal experience mirrors the evolution of blogging in China. In the late 1990s, he became one of the country's first bloggers, writing about the need to make blogging available to the general populace and criticizing the dominance of big software companies like Microsoft Corp. He also invented the Chinese name for blog --- the onomatopoeic characters "bo-ke."

But after years of eking out a living writing online commentaries, Fang enthusiastically accepted US$500,000 from Softbank and Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. to start a commercial blog site last year.

The site, which was initially called Blogchina.com and only recently renamed a more memorable --- at least in Mandarin --- Bokee.com, offers blogging space for free to thousands of Chinese bloggers.

About 60 percent of its 2004 revenue of 2 million yuan (US$246.609) came from advertisers such as Nokia Corp., Samsung Corp. and Motorola Inc. and the rest came from paid blog services via mobile phone. In comparison, Sina and Sohu posted 2004 revenue of US$200 million and US$103 million respectively.

To boost revenue, the site will launch a new service allowing bloggers to purchase virtual decoration, such as 3-D flower pots and animated pets, for their online commentaries. Individual bloggers will also be able to charge for their content, with Bokee.com taking a percentage.

Fang forecasts revenue will jump to 30 million yuan this year, while the number of bloggers on the site will hit the 20 million mark by year-end.

Bokee.com is also hiring paid bloggers to produce for-sale commentaries as soon as major news break.

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