Chinese online comparison website MyETone.com has received a new round of funding.
The amount of the funding was not disclosed, but the company says funding come mainly from private and institutional investors in the United States, including the founders and executives of several of the most successful international shopping and comparison shopping sites.
MyETone provides product reviews on many topics including cosmetics, mobile phones, and children's toys. The reviews are written by users of the product, and the company says there is no influense from the manufacturers. People who read the reviews are invited to make comments of their own, which are then read by other users.
"The next phase of development will focus on building our traffic numbers and getting our brand better known," said MyETone CEO, Ker Gibbs. "Now that we have a significant amount of content, potential partners have been coming to us to use our content on their own sites. This is fine, but we also want to build our own brand."
Comparison shopping is a revitalized area in China's booming Internet market. While online games, portals, and other Internet businesses have been thriving, ecommerce has been slow to take off. The Chinese comparison shopping sites can be broken out into several categories. There are pure price comparison sites, like Askyaya.com, Smarter.com, Ding9.com, and others, and there are content sites like MyEtone.com, Dazhong Dianping, and C/Net. Some of the content sites use professional editors, but others like MyETone rely on user-generated content.
A company spokesman said that the company's original investors also participated in the new round and increased their stakes, indicating their satisfaction with the company's progress.
