In China's dynamic, high-tech industry, Grace Zhou is one of the few female executives to head up a domestic Internet firm. Yet her level of ambition is by no means less than her male counterparts.
As chief executive of Daqi.com, a four-year-old start-up firm, Zhou's goal is to help to connect commercial firms with millions of their online users - some of them disgruntled customers.
The company collects consumer feedback and offers sellers a platform to monitor opinions from that group directly. That service, Zhou believes, will bring in billions of US dollars for Daqi over the next few years.
"What Google and Baidu have been focusing on in recently years is to make mostly static information searchable on the Internet. But what we are trying to do is collect and analyze information that is created and shared by Internet users themselves," Zhou said. "That is a brand new market."
With China's online population reaching nearly 400 million last year, bulletin board services (BBS), blogs, podcasts and social networking sites have become key platforms where users are expressing and sharing their opinions and ideas, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
That kind of information - called user generated content (UGC) - immediately goes live once it is submitted, and is not moderated by official knowledge experts.
In December, Daqi launched an online platform that sifts through millions of Chinese bulletin board service (BBS), personal blogs and chat rooms. The users of the platform can then check, using certain keywords, about what online users are saying about their companies and products and even respond directly to specific user inquiries or complaints.
She expects the revenue of this new business to surpass 100 million yuan this year.
Questions:
1. How big is China’s online population?
2. What does BBS stand for?
3. How much does Daqi.com expect to collect in revenues this year?
Answers:
1. 400 million in 2009.
2. BBS stands for bulletin board services.
3. Daqi.com expects to generate 100 million yuan in revenue this year.
(中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑)
About the broadcaster:
Renee Haines is an editor and broadcaster at China Daily. Renee has more than 15 years of experience as a newspaper editor, radio station anchor and news director, news-wire service reporter and bureau chief, magazine writer, book editor and website consultant. She came to China from the United States.