In a Starbucks shop in Beijing at the end of 2004, a 30-something man named Yang Bo could be found working on his laptop every day with a cup of coffee at hand. A few months later, he launched a website called Douban.com, which now many Internet users consider China's "coolest" site.

Douban is a Web 2.0, or second generation, website that has survived the "bubble" that caused the demise of many others, and it has thrived because of some unique features for a Chinese site.

"I found that I really liked Douban," said an American named John (he declined to disclose his last name) who has spent six years in China and is now a graduate student in applied linguistics in Shanghai. "The site allows you to share [information on] what books you are currently reading, what books you have read and what books you'd like to read. Obviously, the real value is in the 'sharing' aspect of it."

In contrast to most mainstream sites at that time, the newcomer had a fresh and unusually clean look, which impressed people at first sight.

"I'm so into this site because of its clean and simple style and fast accessibility, and because it has few dynamic links and no floating ads. In addition, it has a broad horizon and rich content," said an Internet user known as Rain.

"The first time I came to Douban I found I liked it. It feels so free and unlimited when you navigate the site and I think it's the coolest Web 2.0 site in China!" said one of the "doubanners," a nickname applied to Douban enthusiasts.

Launched in March 2005, Douban is a site in which users can share and find books, music and movies. It is also like a community where users can form various groups and discuss anything they wish. The introduction on the homepage of Douban's English version had the most apt description of the site: Douban will recommend to you other titles you might like; publish your review or join a free discussion on any title; discover those who share similar tastes and browse their entries; join or create a group and contribute to its collections.

"I developed Douban for my own interests in the first place," said Yang, who had spent 10 years studying and living in the United States, obtaining a doctorate, and later working for IBM as a consulting scientist.

"Though I studied sciences in college, I'm more interested in reading literature and social science works. Unfortunately I couldn't share my reading experiences with my classmates because we didn't have much in common in terms of reading. Thus I wanted to design a program that could help me find those who have the same reading interests and explore what other books these guys are reading," Yang said in explaining how he came to develop Douban.

"The core value of Douban is to help our users find products, services and people that are valuable to them," the founder said.

An original path

It's clear that most of China's websites are clones of their successful American counterparts but Douban claims to be an original. "There was no website exactly like Douban in foreign countries before it was launched. Of course we have borrowed some elements from other sites but the overall model is original and I guess the foreign websites might learn from Douban instead," said Yang.

He confessed that his site has borrowed elements from Flickr, the world's biggest picture-sharing website, and from online bookstore giant Amazon. The simple, concise style was inspired by Flickr and Amazon, providing some reference points, including its system of user comments and recommendations.

"We are not like the usual Chinese websites that are trying to add as many items to their pages as possible, which makes their sites look so crowded and unruly. We like to subtract. All functions should be helpful to 90 percent of the users; if a function is useful to only 10 percent of users, then we don't want that," said Yang.

Unlike the prevailing BBS system, Douban doesn't support a picture-posting function. "Comments and critiques of books, music and movies are expressed in words, not pictures. Pictures only make up 5 percent of usage. And I'm afraid picture posting will ruin the clean atmosphere of Douban," he explained.

Since its launch, Douban use has spread on the Internet like a virus, not as a result of advertisements or promotions, but basically through word of mouth. Someone finds the site useful and writes something about it on his blog. Others read the blog and try the website, find that they like it too, and these people introduce it to their friends. Thus, the impact snowballed.

According to statistics from the website, Douban had nearly 10,000 registered users in July 2005 and by the end of 2006 the number had risen to 350,000. "Now the number of registered users is growing at a steady pace, over 1,000 every day," said Yang.

A survey by Douban found that the majority of users are between the ages of 20 and 30. Most are college students and white-collars, who have a strong consumption capacity.

"We seldom put money into advertising our website," said Yang. "One reason is that we don't have that much money, and the other, which is more important, is that the word-of-mouth way is more efficient and suitable for our site. Our money is mainly put into developing our products and services, not ads," Yang said.

The success of Douban has triggered a rash of clones in China's Internet world. Similar websites have popped up one after another almost overnight and these imitators have expanded the subjects to a broader range than just music, books and movies to include food, travel and shopping. Some of the copycats have taken Douban's structure and made some small changes, but others have just copied Douban without even changing the website introduction!

"I'm not afraid of these followers and they won't bring much competition to Douban," Yang said. "Many people are studying what Douban is doing and by the time they understand what we are doing, we have already developed something else."

Yang Lei, an IT commentator, said he does not think Douban's imitators will pose a big threat. "Douban's cohesiveness and influence have built up as time goes by and the number of users increases. Besides, Douban targets a special cultural market, which is limited even in the country with the world's largest population, and such a market can be saturated more easily. So the latecomers will wind up in a disadvantaged position."

Too Simple?

But Douban does have a problem that has bothered Yang for a long time. "Someone who first looks at the Douban homepage may think the website is too simple and may not have much content in it because he is used to the traditional websites such as sina.com that look so dense and crowded. As a result he leaves the site and may never come back," said Yang.

"It does take time for Internet users to get used to websites with our simple style," he added.

Douban currently is more like a public service website for readers, music fans and moviegoers: registration is free and not a single ad appears on the website. "In the long run, we will carve out a business model, not just [run it as] a hobby. We want to make money. But the present priority is to cultivate users," Yang said.

In November 2005, Douban released its English version in an effort to gain traction in the foreign market. The move was hailed by Keso, a renowned IT critic, saying Douban might be the first such Chinese website to make its way into the foreign Internet world if the English version performs well.

However, Yang told Beiijng Review that the English-language version had not been as popular as the Chinese one. The first reason is that Amazon.com already dominates the online book market, and the second is that the Douban website is not unique among foreign websites. "So now we have put aside the English version and are focusing on the domestic market," said Yang.

Douban's expenses so far include the cost of operating the domain name, a server trustee fee and staff salaries. The current Douban team has 11 persons: nine full-time employees and two part-time workers. "Web 2.0 websites are small and nimble companies. We only have to have a dozen workers to manage the site's tens of thousands of users," Yang said.

Douban now has a fixed income, which just covers its expenses, from its cooperation with China's online bookstores, including the two leading online book sellers, Joyo and Dangdang. Each book in Douban's database has been linked to these book sellers, and users can compare the prices between them. Once a user buys a book from one of these book sellers through the link from Douban the latter receives a portion of the profit.

According to Yang, Douban currently is negotiating with some publishing houses in China on cooperation agreements but a final decision has not been made. "It's a very healthy business model for the Web 2.0 sites," said Yang. "Douban is of value to both buyers and sellers and this is the basic business model for our site. In the future, when the number of users reaches a certain level, we'll have other profitable forms under the basic model aside from cooperating with book sellers and publishing houses."

Douban has already attracted the attention of some venture capitalists. They came to talk to Yang but all were turned down because he said he wanted to find a far-sighted investor who can see the future value of Douban instead of a short-term collaborator.

"Just like the successful Flickr and Google, I think idealism and commercialization can coexist with each other. I know some have been calling us a maverick website, so let's be a maverick," he added.