93South - Thoughts on New England Web 2.0

MySpace.com founder Brad Greenspan announced today that he has launched and provided initial funding for BroadWebAsia (BWA), a new company that partners with and powers social networking, entertainment and Internet search properties across Asia. BWA has already signed agreements to invest in and partner with more than 20 rapidly growing Chinese Internet companies. Combined, these companies have more than 20 million unique visitors and approximately one billion page views per month, with tremendous opportunity for growth.

“The launch of BroadWebAsia will allow me to implement my proven U.S. Internet strategy in China, where there are more than 120 million Internet users, making the country second only to the U.S. in terms of online users,” said Greenspan. “With less than 10 percent of the Chinese population online, there is vast potential for growth. By partnering with early leaders and working with local management, we will dramatically increase traffic and revenue potential for our emerging online Chinese
partners.”

BWA’s first portfolio company, BMAO.com, is the first meta-search engine focused on China. BBMAO was just named one of the 100 “most promising companies in all of Asia” by Red Herring Asia magazine. Greenspan helped the founders of BBMAO strategize and launch the Web site more than nine months ago. Today, BBMAO has over 70,000 unique users a day and is continuing to grow quickly while rolling out new features.

BWA is also seeking to raise up to $50 million dollars for other acquisitions, investments and transactions in the Chinese Internet marketplace. Greenspan serves as BWA’s chairman of the board. Greenspan previously served as founder, CEO, and chairman of eUniverse (later renamed Intermix Media), where he led the creation and launch of MySpace in August 2003. eUniverse owned 100 percent of MySpace — and Greenspan through his ownership of eUniverse — owned approximately 30 percent of MySpace, effectively making him the largest historical individual shareholder of MySpace. At MySpace’s inception and launch, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson were eUniverse employees that managed MySpace under the direction of Greenspan.