Luo Yonghao (, b. 9 July 1972) is a Chinese

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and

internet celebrity An Internet celebrity, also referred to as an Internet personality, is an individual who has acquired or developed their fame and notability on the Internet. The growing popularity of social media provides a means for people to reach a large ...

. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

and founder of Chinese technology company Smartisan and founder of now defunct blogging website

Bullog.cn Bullog.cn () was a Chinese-language blogging website, created by Chinese internet celebrity Luo Yonghao. Before it was shut down, it was considered to be one of the most liberal blog portals in Chinese cyberspace. History Bullog.cn was foun ...

. On August 20, 2018, Luo's company Smartisan launched the messaging service Bullet Message, which gained 7 million users in its first three weeks.

Early life

Luo was born to a Korean Chinese family in Helong,

Jilin ) , image_skyline = Changbaishan Tianchi from western rim.jpg , image_alt = , image_caption = View of Heaven Lake , image_map = Jilin in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_al ...

, China. His father is the party secretary of Helong county Luo Changzhen ( Chinese: 罗昌珍). At age 12, his family moved to Yanji and he transferred to Beishan Primary School. In his second year of high school, Luo dropped out. Luo pursued various business endeavors, including selling second-hand books and reselling smuggled cars. However, after economic pressure he decided to study English and pursue a career teaching English.

Career

In 2001, Luo became a teacher at New Oriental in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. From 2001 to 2006, Yonghao prepared students for the GRE test. Because of his humorous teaching style and often off-topic tangents, a few of his students filmed him and uploaded some of his lectures online. The videos, titled "Lao Luo Quotations", became popular with young people. Luo, nicknamed Lao Luo by his students, became an internet phenomenon and was featured in Baidu's annual top-searches between 2005 and 2006. In June 2006, Luo Yonghao resigned from New Oriental.

Bullog.cn

On July 31, 2006, Luo launched

, citing dissatisfaction with the censorship of the major blog portals such as sina.com and sohu.com. The site was considered to be one of the most liberalLiberal Blog Site Shutdown by Chinese Authorities
, ''Boxun News'', January 9, 2009. blog portals in Chinese

cyberspace Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...

. Luo opened his portal in 2006. His words and recordings aimed to inspire independent thinking and sticking to life mottoes. Some excerpts that satirized or criticized unreasonable situations and misdemeanors aroused sympathy among netizens, and spread rapidly over the Internet. This became a topic of the year on the Chinese Internet.

References

External links

*
Luo Yonghao
on

Youku Youku Tudou Inc. (formerly Youku Inc.), doing business as Youku (), is a video streaming service and former video sharing website based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited. Youku has its headquart ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luo, Yonghao 1972 births Living people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople Chinese company founders Chinese computer businesspeople Chinese people of Korean descent New Oriental people People from Yanbian Businesspeople from Jilin