"While ZiaSun likes to hype its Web sites - 45 press releases last year"
"according to Mr Tobin"
"Anthony Tobin told Technology Post last year that the company no longer ran sex-related businesses."
"phone chat lines that promised Bangkok Babes and China Dolls."
Spirit of co-operation rules in Web business
scmp.com
Monday January 25 2000
Spirit of co-operation rules in Web business
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the Capital Growth Report when it arrived in Backspace's snail-mail box. Of equal parts financial jargon and hype, the report - which charges US$78 for a year's subscription to what appeared to be four badly laid-out pages per month - seemed a typical tech-stock newsletter.
What made Backspace choke on his morning coffee was the pick of the month: an obscure public Internet company called ZiaSun Technologies. ZiaSun was known as Momentum Internet when it was based in Hong Kong. Three years ago, a magazine called The Dataphile revealed that Momentum was behind a stable of porn Web sites and phone chat lines that promised Bangkok Babes and China Dolls. Thousands of spam messages advertising these services were sent from Momentum's free e-mail service.
While not admitting the spamming, Momentum and now ZiaSun president Anthony Tobin told Technology Post last year that the company no longer ran sex-related businesses. Instead, ZiaSun has latched on to other Web trends. It has an Asian search engine, a stock-trading portal, a financial news service, an advertising network and an auction site called AsiaForSale. It moved to San Diego in 1998 when it began trading over the counter in the US, while keeping most Web operations in Asia, mainly in Hong Kong and Manila.
While the company claims to be profitable on modest revenues - $9 million in the second quarter last year - it has been
criticised by day traders and investors in the US, who have tried to puncture those claims. Mr Tobin had ZiaSun respond by suing several day-trading and investment sites for alleged defamation.
While ZiaSun likes to hype its Web sites - 45 press releases last year - it doesn't appear to be making much money. Most of ZiaSun's revenues came from two off-line subsidiaries, a Philippine-based printing business called Momentum Asia and a US learn-how-to-day-trade seminar which charges $3,995 a head, according to Mr Tobin.
So Backspace was puzzled why the editor of Capital Growth Report would hold such an optimistic view of ZiaSun's
prospects. 'The company has a dominant position in the exploding Asian Internet market . . . We expect that ZiaSun
stock will soon be valued with that of profitable peers such as CMGI, now trading in the [US]$80 range.' A visit to Capital Growth's site (www.capitalg.com) shows it is designed and maintained by Momentum Internet and that Capital Growth offers ZiaSun's Swiftrade stock-trading service to subscribers. Isn't co-operation and alliance-building among Web companies heartening?
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