Couple months ago, I reviewed Jijija, a social network that matches content with the users. Husband and wife founders and Silicon Vally veterans, Kevin Chiu and Amanda Lau took the time to answer a few of my questions on their service as well as looking at the web landscape here in Hong Kong.

1. What is your service about?
JiJiJa pioneers Match Engine, which is like a personal concierge! It understands each user personally in a user-friendly way, so that he/she is matched up with interesting content and users. On JiJiJa.com, we apply this technology to make discussions and social networking personal.

2. How did you come up with the idea?
Well, my wife and I met through a social BBQ event organized over the Internet. I never thought the Internet can create such powerful relationships, but then it did! We met many of our friends online, too. Still, we felt that the Internet does not understand users personally, which is crucial to relationship building and user-friendliness. Hence, we came up with the Match Engine…

3. What is your business model?
Merchants can participate on JiJiJa.com to support, poll, interact and gain new clients from our user base. We also license out our Match Engine to online businesses who want to convert, up-sell, cross-sell and retain their customers. In other words, we help our customers make money!

4. My first impression of Jijija is similar to the existing discussion forums, how is it different?
JiJiJa.com should be seen as a social network where users interact with each other through meaningful discussions rather than a discussion forum. With quality discussion, candid users and Match Engine being able to understand user interests and match them up with other users with similar interests, we are creating a social network with tight-bonding among users.

5. I know there are two versions of Jijija, a US and a Hong Kong version. If you could, can you share some stats between the two sites?
They are doing much better than we initially expected (laugh), especially in Hong Kong, where we have done a string of promotions. Our user base is growing in many multiples every month. We are seeing many extremely avid users, too, and it sometimes makes us busy-monkeys envy how they can have so much fun time on JiJiJa.com (laugh).

6. Any funding or plans to look for funding?
We already have funding, but we welcome funding to help further accelerate our growth. If you know investors who want to make a fortune, please let us know (smile).

7. What are your plans in 6 months time? And the next phase of Jijija?
We are expecting to ramp up our business, make partnerships with other online businesses, grow JiJiJa.com’s user base and sign up more merchants as customers.

8. What’s the toughest challenge so far?
It probably is on telling people in Hong Kong that they should invest more on the Internet. The Internet has already revolutionized and created tremendous value on how people make purchases, entertain themselves, meet each other, communicate and smoothing out all too many aspects of their daily lives. Foreign companies are grabbing those opportunities in big ways. Look at the recent acquisition frenzy by Newscorp, Google, Microsoft, EBay and so forth. Look at those price tags. Look at those multiplying company profits. It’s big money.

9. How would you describe the state of the web in Hong Kong?
Compared to the USA and even Mainland China, Hong Kong is a bit slower in high-tech development. I see Hong Kong people using websites and technologies built by foreigners. Why can’t there be Hong Kong companies
developing technologies for the Hong Kong market? Money is flowing to foreign companies. It’s odd…

10. Any advice for people looking to starting their own services in Hong Kong?
Every business has different needs and objectives, so its hard to give a generic answer. I think several things to keep in mind are that Hong Kong has good legal system, strong Government, reasonable cost and close to Mainland China. Anybody reading have further questions, you are welcome to ask me at kevin.chiu at jijija.com (smile).