The guests for the month were the founders of alivenotdead.com. Previously, they founded rottentomatoes.com and sold it for $10 million USD. It’s interesting to see and hear what they have to say. Not many dotcom companies survive beyond 2004. These guys not only survived but cash out in the end. It awesome by my account.

Part of the conversation was a lot of flash back on the rottentomatoes.com. After they got funded, the dot bomb came. They have to cut 21 staffs/friends to 14 then to 7. The agony and paind of asking your buddies to leave.

Patrick – co-founder of Alivenotdead.com

Now, alivenotdead.com – an online community for artists and fans. They have 12,000 artists from around the world in this community and I don’t remembered how many signup fans. It’s an interesting mesh up between artists and fans. They never disclosed whether they are making money or not but it’s does not matter to me.

Stephen – co-founder of alivenotdead.com

They were very candid talking about their adventure and we all know the journey is long and ardous. I felt…their current model will need a lot tweaking and adjusting in the years ahead. They have all the ingredients but somewhere,somehow it’s not clicking in bucks. I mean megabucks. I don’t know which dot is missing…somehow I felt some dots are missing…

Juju Chan – Miss Chinatown USA 2009 Miss People’s Choice Winner. You can check her out at the alivenotdead – jujuchan site

The guy on the left is Michael Chan, Juju , Patrick Lee and Jen.

Anyway….it was interesting night. Web Wednesday is getting bigger and there is an entry fee of $100Hkd. An interesting observation came to me, when an audience pay money to an event, everyone somehow stayed very quiet during the guest and the host were conversing. No murmurs at the corner or far back at the bar. Damn interesting….

Do I mind pay the $100Hkd? Not at all. It’s a good thing. Napoleon put a lot of effort into his event.

P.S. Jen – Thks for the group pix correction. Appreciate it.

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“The Future of Online Advertising” with Adrian Toy, the APAC Regional Interactive Director for Universal McCann. That was the title.

Took this pix without flash but with higher ISO…does not comes out that good. (Adrian – far left, Napoleon – right)

After 15 minutes into the talk, I left. Why? Because I did not hear anything solid coming out from Adrian(maybe he does not know his stuff) or maybe the questions was not being ask right. I don’t know.

All I hear was comparison with Korea…I don’t want to hear about Korea because they are a different animal.

I wanted to know something Hong Kong specific. Like…their Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers, what kind of ads they position in the online medium. IE….Chinese portals, News portal or some other portals.

Next, coming into 2009, what kind of trend their advertisers might pursue. Is it more branding, game like strategies or others.

Very simple…that is all I want to know…All I get was general stuff. Well, maybe I am too demanding…I don’t know…or maybe the talks is not important and people just gather to networks.

Again..no flash.

Indeed, that night was very packed. Much more attendance than before. Probably because of the economic and everyone want to come out to network.

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One of the last event of the year and I thought I should stop-by. The guest was Chris from wanta.net. He talk about his journey from click to brick & mortar.

He started sell condoms and other sex stuff on the Net. Started early 2000 and still around in 2008. He shared some of his experience which I think re-affirmed the HK e-commerce environment.

Now, he complement his online store with a retail store across Times Square. A very high foot traffic area and high rental, too.

Let me put some pointers that I think I learned from him….

1. Banner advertising – be very selective. they want a lot money from you but will never bring the result you wants.

2. C.O.D. payment – in HK, you need it.

3. Addresses – if you are selling adult toys, your customers will not give the exact address. they want your delivery guy to call them when you are on that particular street.

4. Retail Store – at one point or another, you need to have a retail store in place.

5. Search Engine – in HK, yahoo is the predominantly search engine used by chinese users.

6. HK Consumers – they still want to feel and touch before buying.

Well…why I put such a long speech? Because I do think there is a space for e-commerce in HK. I can’t believe Hk is all about bricks and mortars. There must be some thing for the internet people.

Popularity: 12% [?]