WangYou Media's Buddy Ye has experienced pain and gain for seven years guiding start-ups in China's burgeoning internet sector. Having struck out with MeetChina but struck lucky with ECantata - two similar business-to-business portals - the graduate of Chengdu's University of Electronic Science and Technology of China now sees a future in the emerging trends of podcasting, video casting, photo sharing, blogging and social networking. The company's internet portal - wangyou.com - combines all elements of user-generated content in a service WangYou Media calls 'lifecasting,' essentially a one-stop shop for any content that its 3.1 million registered users can dream up. 'Based on our research, we understand that users will get bored if we limit them to a particular form of content,' Mr Ye said in a telephone interview from Beijing. 'We help users promote their sounds and videos on our internet site, and are even partnering with 60 radio stations all over the country to broadcast the content and songs from our website.' Mr Ye said this tie-in with traditional media - the company plans to launch television shows based on video clips - was a key differentiator when compared with similar websites in China and overseas. He said mainland internet users often saw such portals as a way to achieve more long-term success in the country's relatively young entertainment industry. Four of China's 10 most popular songs last year are said to have been discovered on the internet. 'Chinese internet sites typically share about 70 per cent or 80 per cent of the characteristics that a western website has, but there are also unique features such as the integration with wireless. 'Many of those popular songs last year were discovered on the internet but really spread through their use as ring tones,' he said. 'Bringing our users to the attention of [radio and] television stations will increase loyalty,but, on the reverse side, will also bring consumers of traditional television and radio to the internet.' WangYou Media has a nationwide licence to provide value-added services on mobile phones with both China Mobile and China Unicom. Typical content is limited to photos taken on mobile phones which are then downloaded as wallpaper for a fee. But Mr Ye said streaming users' video clips could become a significant revenue generator once 3G services were launched across the country. 'We believe that by integrating our internet channel with wireless applications and traditional media channels, we will significantly increase the visibility of our users,' he said. He declined to comment on specific business models or to give the traffic numbers for different areas of the site, as the firm is negotiating a second round of venture capital financing. 'The entertainment concept is very sustainable from a business point of view. We are talking about the young people in this country, and they don't care about sensitive content at all - what they care about is the most popular singer and the most popular movie star. I do believe that this kind of thing can occupy over 70 per cent of their spare time,' he said.