Activity on the mainland's top lifestyle portal Zhaodaola.com has ground to a halt in the midst of the Internet business meltdown and mounting labour disputes.
The portal was launched in 1999 with the help of US$3 million from US televangelist Pat Robertson and the Malaysian conglomerate MUI Media.
Zhaodaola (or 'I've found it' in Chinese) provided information on trendy lifestyles and various types of entertainment for the mainland's white-collar Web users.
Ruby Yu, the portal's former chief executive, told local media that the portal could not carry on because 'investors cut off the money supply right after the September 11 terrorist attacks'.
Some IT analysts had a different story, saying the site had failed simply because it had never generated enough page views from the urban white-collar sector it was targeting. And it was left behind in the fierce battle over a finite number of online ads with other portals, including Sina, Sohu and Netease.
Those three major mainland portals managed to raise millions of dollars on the Nasdaq in 2000, but Zhaodaola was left struggling for a dwindling amount of venture capital dollars.