BV Capital

Location: Beijing

Company Description: Hoodong.com is the Largest “Chinese Wikipedia” and developer of HDWiki software, the first open source Wiki software in Chinese. Its Chinese name means interactive, a good method to build up knowledge. Although the concept of Wikipedia is still new to China, there were 1,562,034 items edited on the site by 257,521 global editors and 2.08 billion words until November 18th of this year. The site was established in mid 2005.

The team, lead by Dr. Pan Haidong, has been working hard to build an easy to use wiki software and create Chinese features that are specially designed for Chinese users. The site differentiates itself from ther Chinese Wikis by introducing entertainment aspects such as blog services and personal page creation as a social networking tool. CEO Pan explained that the entertainment content was added to accommodate the Internet population in China who was used to entertainment based sites and is just now starting to mature into using the internet as a source of information. Hoodong is carving out a niche for itself in the Wiki sector using its homegrown advantage.

The Chinese version of Wikipedia is still very popular in China although access to the site is often spotty for various reasons. Chinese users are still hesitant to add content and errors are often found. Recent statistics show that 50% of Chinese Wikipedia’s content is contributed to by Hong Kong and Taiwanese residents. Other competitors include Baidu’s Baike and Taiwan based Wikimania.

Hoodong was reported by CCTV, China’s national television news service, as a creative technology company.