Malaysiakini.com, which went live on Nov 20, 1999, celebrates its eight anniversary today.

The independent news website kicked off with three journalists but now publishes in three languages, attracting over 100,000 unique visitors per day who collectively access one million pages and 15,000 video downloads daily.

Over 20 educational, public and government organisations, including the Prime Minister's Department, Foreign Ministry and Parliament, are among those who are paid subscribers of Malaysiakini .

"It's been a long journey, peppered with many challenges. I am happy we've persevered," said Malaysiakini chief executive officer Premesh Chandran.

"We would like to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers, advertisers, donors and investors as well as our contributors - columnists, opinion and letter writers - without whom we wouldn't be here today," added Premesh.

Malaysiakini was founded by Premesh and fellow journalist, Steven Gan, with the vision of using new technology to support the development of freedom of speech, social justice and democracy in Malaysia.

From six staff eight years ago, Malaysiakini has grown tremendously - there are now 24 in editorial - English, Malay, Chinese and Video sections - six in technology and eight in business and marketing.

"I am proud to say that the Malaysiakini team - news, technology, business and marketing - has worked miracles to produce news and views that matter, while keeping ourselves financially afloat," added Gan.

"Right from the word go, we believe independent media must be supported by independent financing. When advertising income alone cannot support the website in 2001, we had to bite the bullet and opted for the subscription model."

Thanks for your support

Gan recalled the painful decision of having to ask readers to fork out a subscription fee to access the website.

"But thanks to their loyal support, we're today one of the handful of subscription-based news websites in the world that continues to thrive," he said.

"Being the country's most influential website means nothing if at the end of the day, Malaysiakini is unable to survive as a viable business entity," argued Gan.

Although best known for its independent news, Malaysiakini has grown into a diversified new media organisation over the years.

The company has three major subsidiaries:

• Manage4me.com , an online subscription and payment management system with over 10,000 members and processing over RM1 million per year

What's in store for the future? Nobody knows. But Malaysiakini plans to grow aggressively in order to better serve our readers.

"We want to expand our reach beyond the Internet - into mobile phones and homes. We are also aiming to expand overseas with a new global video news portal that combines social networking, news aggregation and user-generated content," says Premesh.

But all these will not detract Malaysiakini from its original mission - to provide independent news and views to our readers.