Mister Wong

Mister Wong
Web address www.mister-wong.com
Slogan Wong the web
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Social bookmarking
Registration Yes
Launched March 2006
Alexa rank
 Negative increase 19,738 (April 2014)[1]

Mister Wong was one of the largest European free social-bookmarking web services.[2]

History

The website was a German startup, established in 2006. Kai Tietjen had been running an ad agency for nearly a decade, when, in March 2006, he entered the field of web entrepreneurship[3] with the idea to "take on Google". Investing mostly his own money, he created a website that allows customers to bookmark their favorite sites, and then uses those bookmarks as the basic data for its search engine : to find a popular site, a user can search all other users' bookmarks.[4]

The service is currently available in German, English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and French.

Origin of name

The website extols its users to "Wong the Web!", a reference to the practice of Wonging, often employed by card counters in Blackjack.

Controversy

Mister Wong's original logo,[5] depicting a "cartoonish, nerdy East Asian man", brought on protests from many Asian-Americans.[6] The website's creator subsequently issued an apology and removed the logo.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Mister-wong.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. ↑ Mister Wong company profile at CrunchBase
  3. ↑ "Kai Tietjen, CEO & Founder of Construktiv", 2006
  4. ↑ "Creating Buzz (Without Hate Mail)", Newsweek, October 27, 2007
  5. ↑ flickr.com stored image
  6. ↑ "Mister Wong Isn't Laughing Anymore", Der Spiegel online in German
  7. ↑ A Message from the Founder, Kai Tietjen, July, 27 2007
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