Profit up 340PCT at Alibaba

[engine]

Top Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Ltd said on Tuesday its full-year 2007 profit grew 340 percent, boosted by a buoyant Chinese economy, increasing Internet access in the country and healthy growth in the firm's number of paying members.

Alibaba, an online business-to-business site connecting companies looking to import and export Chinese goods, was founded in 1999 as a bulletin board for businesses to post trade leads.

Last year, Alibaba had a 57.3 percent share of China's 3.9 billion yuan business-to-business market, according to local data firm iResearch.

Profit up 340PCT at Alibaba [uk.reuters.com]

[bill]

I remember looking at Alibaba's system years ago and thinking they had a long way to go to grow their community platform. There were all sorts of issues from simple site design, security to language issues. Today's Alibaba platform is quite a bit more polished. They've got an impressive community base now and look pretty unstoppable now.