2010-07-17 15:53

Liu says he made "a lot of friends" after the tournament.

"I will continue to shop through online team buying because it brings people with similar interests together and it saves money."

"We provide personal consumption goods for local white-collars workers rather than real goods," said Meituan founder Wang Xing in a recent magazine interview.

Meituan and its counterparts have sold coupons for Karaoke singing classes and laser-gun battle parks.

"We want our clients to get out of their home and enjoy something they have not tried before," said Wen Zhenhua.

Wang Xing attributed the success of his website to accurate market positioning and the development of the Internet itself.

"We could not have survived five years ago because of the lack of a mature online payments system and the limited information dissemination back then," he added.

According to the latest CNNIC report, about 128 million people have used online payment systems and 122 million have used online banking services.

But veteran Chinese Internet users still remember an Internet-based life experiment in 1999.

The experiment involved 12 volunteers spending 72 hours connected to the Internet and trying to get food and clothing online.

One of the volunteers with little knowledge about the Internet was forced to leave after starving for more than 26 hours. None of the volunteers were able to persuade people to accept their electronic currency as payment. They had to pay cash for everything.

One of them tried to pay with electronic currency at five or six websites but failed.