In 1999, in view of the increasing Web load, he spun off the Website www.shanghaiexpat.com. The extensive Website provides "lost" foreigners with helpful tips on how and where to get visas, finding great food and living cheap. It even offers a match-making service.
It was not long before the online interaction carried over to offline meetings like the "Wednesday Night Mixer" and "Coffee Meetings" held every Sunday.
"I like it that the Website was set up to help people. There are areas in the Website that are fun and others that are serious," said one regular member who asked to be known only by her cyber name of "Magnolia."
In fact, she posted as many as 10,000 helpful messages in the past year. For her earnestness, she was honored with the title of "Most Love-to-Help" member of Shanghai Expat at the anniversary party.
The bubbly American said that most of the questions posted were about searching for lodging, schools, doctors and even large-size shoes. "A lot of the 10,000 were just having fun," she said with a chuckle.
Moreover, the Website provides an avenue for the more reserved contributors to discuss sensitive topics anonymously. "It (The Website) is a good tool for the city," she said.
Meanwhile, like Friday night's party, Shanghai Expat is bursting out of its seams. The Website now boasts a whopping average of over 90,000 page views per day, reaching a record high of 2.4 million page views last month created by 45,000 individuals.
Last year, Connolly decided to turn the Website into a business venture in order to manage the demands of the ballooning community. A former Internet business consultant, Connolly has also decided to turn to full-time managing Shanghai Expat.
"We have three servers running Shanghai Expat and it costs a lot of money," he said. "We want to build something that keeps it going."
The cost of running the Website and activities is estimated to be 50,000 yuan (US$6,173) a month. The Website now has 10 full-time staff and business is going strong. Connolly said that the Website is fully supported by advertisers and "even profitable." Next month, Shanghai Expat will launch three new Websites — MTO123, My6D and Sim6D.
MTO123, which stands for "Made to Order," is an advertising platform which sells commercial products like personalized T-shirts, while My6D is a structured bilingual networking Website that helps members keep track of their connections and strengthening them. "It's kind of an electronic guanxi (connection)," said Connolly.
Sim6D is a small world simulation game that tests how well-connected a player is. The player's task is to reach a target person using only his or her own connections. Both ideas came from the theory of "Six degrees of Separation" which states that anyone on the planet can be connected to another through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.
Who knows, with these Websites, the degree of separation may just go down to zero for many Shanghai expatriates.
