Da Xing is a post-90s social network site (SNS) boss. After he graduated from Fudan University in 2012, he worked in an international management consulting company for a period of time. Da quit his job and started his own life plan— have a network site of his own.

Different from other domestic SNS that copy ideas from foreign SNS, Da Xing wants to do something original. 10years.me works like the Chinese Weibo, but people are all anonymous on the site, and all the posts they send are things about dreams. It can be as easy as “running 5 kilometers everyday,” or as ambitious as “having a successful enterprise.” People can show their everyday progress and comment on others’ as well.

Da Xing and his team keep working on bettering the website. How to improve the stickiness of the website, and differentiate itself from other social dating sites are all issues Da needs to solve. Now there are 972,000 users on 10years.me. According to Da, the daily vitality of the website is 13.9 percent, and the weekly vitality is 26.7 percent. The monthly expenses of 10years.me is now 250,000 yuan. Based on its current financing, the team can still be running for another five months.

Compliments comes with criticism. Some netizens comment on the website lacks of stickness, being too idealistic, and some even say a SNS like this is worth no value. Da Xing disagrees, but still expresses his gratitude: “I don’t think dreams are for the minority. I believe that a website like 10years.me which serves as a platform for young people to talk and share their dreams, would still be liked by a lot of people.” 

This article is edited and translated from 《十年后的梦想，值多少钱》，source: China Youth Daily