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Web 2.0 - Thursday, April 26, 2007

OI Vei In Chinese: Oak Pacific's Mess

We have been reading for a few weeks about a Chinese language report which was suppressed that described a morass at well-funded Chinese Web 2.0 rollup Oak Pacific. This report has now been translated into English and put into context by Bill Bishop and others.

The report describes Oak Pacific's positioning as described as "the next Myspace + YouTube + Facebook + Craigslist". It has raised two rounds of funding totaling $58M. However, the report describe Oak Pacific's falling fortunes and concludes: "Although it may be premature to draw conclusions on the fate of Thousand Oak, there is little doubt that this uniquely Chinese story will, in time, be considered as one of the tragedies resulting from the Chinese internet start-up bubble circa 2005."

Says Bishop: "Oak Pacific has had three rounds of layoffs since September 2006, shuttered several sites, endured negative press about its malware business and started to see an exodus of its middle and senior executives. The company has now gotten into the online game business (the best Internet business in China now and for the foreseeable future) but has a fairly weak product set."