"I hope Chinese people will view Zhaodaola.com as a fashion model, a
very distinctive model," Ruby Yu, the company's general manager said. Founded in
February 1999, Zhaodaola.com is different from China's other Internet companies in many
ways and the most noticeable difference might be that the company is directed by a female.
In a male-dominated sector such as the Internet industry, Yu seems uniquely positioned
to respond to some concerns that male corporate managers might ignore.
"We aim to build Zhaodaola.com into a lifestyle portal. All our focus on the
Internet is on human lives, or in other words, how can people live a better life with the
Web," Yu said.
"Portal" is no longer a new thing in China's Internet arena as most websites
claim to be a portal in a certain way, raising a concern among many that such an idea may
be obsolete in the fast-growing business.
But Yu does not think so.
"The problem is not that there are too many portals but too few."
"We believe the Internet requires more portals, but the current dilemma is that
special portals are still small in number," Yu said.
Zhaodaola.com has launched many interesting channels to cater to people's specific
needs. Among them, female and male channels, a white-collar channel, and individual career
channels are quite popular.
China Internet Network Centre, the watchdog of China's Internet business, ranked
Zhaodaola.com the top lifestyle website in China in 1999.
Yu plans to engage in more "vertical" development with the website's contents
- adding more information and services.
Most of the web visitors to Zhaodaola.com are aged between 20 and 35. In Yu's eyes, the
young white-collars, who use the Web frequently, have large consuming capabilities, and
will constitute a large potential market for Zhaodaola.com when it adds more e-commerce
services to its website. E-commerce on Zhaodaola.com is limited at present.
It has recently entered into a partnership with Hewlett-Packard to build an e-commerce
platform that is expected to enable Zhaodaola.com to launch an open and wide-ranging
e-commerce services.
In China, Japan and the United States, Yu has worked in the IT sector for more than 16
years. But none of her previous jobs was as demanding as the current one.
"People sometimes get worn out because of fierce competition in the Internet
sector," Yu said.
However, as experienced as she is, Yu said, "I hope one day I may go to the United
States to pursue an MBA degree." |
