Xici Hutong Breakthrough: How does a BBS trade popularity for money?

"Elong is still investing in the areas it should, and at least the normal operations are still invested by Elong, which is also a huge cost." Liu Hui, General Manager of Xici Hutong, tried to explain gently to The First Financial Daily about the current attitude of the "boss" towards "Xici".

Since Elong acquired Xici in 2000, there have been many doubts about Elong's motives for that acquisition and its "stingy" subsequent investment. Because until now, whether BBS has the potential to become a "money-making tree" is still uncertain.

The biggest selling point of Xici is that it owns 20,000 BBS communities and over 7 million users. Since the second half of last year, all attempts to convert "popularity" into money have been within the consideration range of the Xici Hutong management team. They are trying to create a new type of online bond relationship with visible benefits.

In 2006, this "popularity" brought in 10 million yuan in revenue for Xici Hutong last year, but more than 90% of it was obtained through simple website advertising and mobile text messages.

Let netizens get rich first