Chinese Blog Bubble Popped Before It Began?

from the well-that-was-fast dept

Over the summer we wrote about a bizarre story about a Chinese blogging firm that was getting attention for claiming that it was going to go public with a $1 billion valuation. There was no reality to back up the claim -- just a CEO saying it would be so. There were a lot of other problems with the article, as well (including misleading statements about how much money the company had raised and how much revenue it was making), but it should come as no surprise to find out that the company (which did, indeed, raise the $10 million it was looking for just a few months ago) is now laying off one-quarter of its staff, or about 100 people, claiming that maybe the Chinese blogging business isn't such a big business after all. Of course, the really bizarre part is that this blogging firm could actually already employ 400 people. That seems like an awful lot of people, especially considering that the company wasn't making very much money and (despite the misleading claims) hadn't really raised that much money either.
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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2005 @ 2:32pm

    No Subject Given

    Yeah but who wouldn't want to work at a 'blogging firm' it's the easiest job in the world.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2005 @ 5:45pm

    It's Asia

    I'm not surprised about the number of people at all. Companies in Asia aren't designed to make money, they're designed to employ people. Now putting my opinions of the philosophy aside, this generally means a lot of really incompetent people get jobs and not many ever get fired. It's a "problem" (as viewed from a western business philosophical standpoint) that is everywhere in asia. There's probably really just 10 guys who do work, about 100 people "marketing", HR could be about 50 people, and another 200 customer support.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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