Bridging virtual and real lives
The internet's rise to near ubiquity has brought with it a new lexicon and influenced social behaviour, a fact not lost on a new generation of entrepreneurs who regard interaction over the Web as natural as a drink at the bar.
'It's been a paradigm shift that young people in their 20s and 30s have embraced the internet and have made interacting on the internet a natural part of their life,' founder and chief executive Jonathon Lee said.
'There's a gap between their virtual lives and their real life activities - what we would like to do is bridge those two existences.'
Ba8ua's founders developed their social networking site as a link between online and offline worlds, where basketball tournaments and parties complement increasingly popular internet chat rooms and online dating.
Accountant Joe Yeung said their recipe was unique in Hong Kong and would give them a significant advantage over existing online dating sites.
'Meeting people on Ba8ua
.com is not contrived. Meeting people on an online dating site you are thrust into the situation. We'd like to make a comfortable place where people can come together to communicate, interact and keep in touch with friends,' Mr Yeung said.
In technology-friendly Hong Kong, Ba8ua's plan to blend cyberspace chatting with real-world socialising appears to be paying off. Since launching in January the founders now claim a user base of more than 25,000, about 5 per cent of whom are paying members.
The challenge, of course, remains how to turn a profit, and Mr Lee acknowledged that offline parties offered a valuable alternative source of income.
'With offline activities it gives you an opportunity to monetise things immediately ... we've always found that you're more likely to spend $100 at the bar ... than you would to pay $100 to talk to people online,' he said.
Wheresmydate founder Toby Jones said finding people willing to pay for online services remained a 'global issue' and that social networking sites as opposed to pure dating plays might prove more popular in Hong Kong because the stigma of online dating still loomed large.
'They're coming across on the angle of being friends-based, and I think that's been a better cushion [in] the Hong Kong culture. By making a site friends-based ... they've softened the blow. It still is essentially dating, but in a different form.'
Ba8ua's founders said their site was about much more than online dating. But they would not rule out a potential money-spinner. Competitions to find the site's 'hottest member' generate significant traffic.
It had also created the opportunity to collaborate with The Interactive Channel on a new dating show called iFriends, combining Ba8ua's user database with the new trend of interactive broadcasting. Mr Yeung said the television show was just another example of the importance of hosting the company's services across as many media channels as possible. 'Everyone watches TV, everyone uses their mobile phones, most people get online and we just wanted to bring all these aspects together,' he said.
