Pantip.com

Posted by WIko Setyonegoro, S.Si | 00.25 | 0 comments »

The start page of Pantip.com
URL www.pantip.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Thai-language forum and portal
Registration By subscription, national identification number required for posting
Owner Wanchat Padungrat
Created by Wanchat Padungrat
Launched 1997
Current status Online
This article is about the Thai Internet forum. For the shopping center, see Pantip Plaza.

Pantip.com is a popular Thai-language website and discussion forum. As of April 2008, Pantip.com was one of the top 10 websites in Thailand, along with rival Thai portal Sanook.com. Discussions about Thai politics and current events on Pantip.com's topic boards are often cited in the Thai press, particularly in such English-language newspapers as the Bangkok Post and The Nation, as a gauge of the public's mood about various issues.

At the beginning, the site gained its popularity from people's misunderstanding of its name which is similar (and identical in English spelling) to Bangkok's famous IT shopping center, Pantip Plaza, however it is in no way affiliated with the mall (The name is actually styled in Thai as พันทิป, meaning a thousand tips.) Nevertheless, there is a significant IT-related community there.

History
Pantip.com was founded in 1997 by Wanchat Padungrat, an electrical engineer. He holds directorship and ownership of the site. Along with the popular Thai-language portal Sanook.com, Pantip.com was one of the first websites established in Thailand when the Internet was being introduced in the country. As opposed to Sanook.com's lucrative buyout from MWeb, a now-defunct dot com company, Wanchat has no plans to sell the site

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