Hudong.com Confirms Expansion into Overseas Market, Invading Wikipedia's territory

BEIJING, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Hudong.com, the world's largest Chinese encyclopedia website, today announced a strategic alliance with wenxuecity.com and other popular overseas Chinese websites that include sina.com, backchina.com and mitbbs.com, marking the first step in its strategy to expand into overseas Chinese market.

Hudong.com has rapidly gained popularity in overseas Chinese markets during the last two months. In early September, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales visited Hudong.com and accepted the donation of Wikipedia's Chinese trademark from the company. The Company's appearance on the Reuters' Times Square billboard in mid-October provided Hudong.com with an extra edge grabbing the attention of US media and helped promote the website's recognition within the overseas Chinese community. This represented the beginning of the company's long-awaited expansion initiative into overseas Chinese market.

As to the reasons for expanding into overseas market, Dr. Haidong Pan, founder and CEO of Hudong.com, pointed out, "First, it's very easy for overseas Chinese to accept Hudong.com as the 'Wikipedia of China.' Second, Hudong.com is well recognized by a large group of Chinese-American scientists. Third, Hudong.com has more and more visitors from North America, and obviously it has been the first stop for overseas Chinese to seek the most up-to-date China-related knowledge like 'Cheating Horse' and 'Lonely Generation II.'"

Prof. Dan Qun Fang, a Chinese-American scientist living in Los Angles, is an expert on noise control and also a heavy user of Hudong.com. "I'm very glad to contribute my expertise to Hudong.com, the Chinese encyclopedia website. It's very interesting to do onsite interviews at the company's Beijing office and answer other users' questions," Prof. Fang said.

"It's the right time for Hudong.com to reach the overseas Chinese community," said Haidong Pan, a Boston University graduate. "We think we understand the Chinese language and people better than Wikipedia. We believe we can do a better job."

According to authoritative data, Hudong.com was ranked 72nd among all Chinese websites, climbing nearly 80 notches within half a year. The website's plan to enter overseas Chinese markets will be closely connected to its IPO plan within the next two years. The capital injection of US$30 million earlier this year by DCM, a world-leading venture capital firm, provided strong support for Hudong.com's fast-paced growth.

As the world's largest Chinese encyclopedia website, Hudong.com has been committed to providing hundreds of millions of Chinese users with vast, comprehensive and updated encyclopedic information. In addition, the website continues to improve the ways in which users are able to create, access and share information with the help of its new wiki platform that complies with Chinese users' habits. As of early November 2009, Hudong.com contained 3.92 million articles, 4.34 billion words and more than three million pictures that have been contributed by more than 1.9 million users.

SOURCE Hudong.com