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.