It has been over a month since the earthquake off the coast of Taiwan, during the time which access to non-Chinese hosted websites were largely unavailable due to slow Internet speeds. Over two weeks after the widely quoted January 15th date (from IHT, from China Daily), I am happy to announce that Internet speeds are finally back to normal in Beijing!
Maverick China Research - Maverick China Research
Will Alibaba Move into Offline Advertising?
In August 2007, Alibaba launched its online advertising platform, Alimama.com, marking its entry into online advertising. The business model of Alimama is similar to that of Taobao, Alibaba's C2C/B2C online auction site, though with online advertising space being sold. Once a price is decided upon, advertisers can make payment through Alipay, Alibaba's payment arm.
Alimama is not the only evidence of Alibaba's interest in advertising. On Alibaba.cn, there is a link to a "Media Supermarket" (媒体超市) on its home page. The Media Supermarket is a platform where media providers -- grouped as magazine/newspaper, TV, radio, outdoor advertisement, or new media/internet -- seek out advertisers and sponsors. (See the screen capture below; the picture, along with those of all the major Chinese websites, is in gray and white in honor of the victims of the recent earthquake in Sichuan.) Unlike Alimama and Taobao, there is no charge for this Craigslist-style service; perhaps the company intends to again follow Craiglist's example and eventually start charging for the postings.
Recently, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma stated that he wants his company not to be a purely internet company but to be a "service company" targeting small and medium-sized businesses. The "Online Supermarket" may offer an example of how Alibaba plans to use its online auction and sales expertise to enter the world of offline advertising.
Click here to read the second part of this two-part series.
Can Eachnet Regain Its Market Share?
On May 5, Eachnet, which just a few years ago controlled 90% of China's C2C online auction market, announced a permanent shift to free services for its users. One of the main reasons Taobao overtook Eachnet several years ago was by offering no-fee auctions. Eachnet has been charging for its services since 2001. Interestingly, it was only last month that Taobao launched a B2C platform and started charging fees to some merchant B2C sellers on it.
Will Eachnet regain its market share through the no-fee services? I think it's unlikely. When Alibaba came on the scene several years ago, the main need was to build up the habit of online shopping in consumers and ensure a wide selection of products online. These days, China's e-commerce sector continues to show strong growth, and trust and security have become key concerns for the tens of millions of Chinese netizens who already shop online. The success of C2C auction sites depends largely on how well they can keep consumers' trust.
With such a strong position in the market, Taobao should be able to hold onto its lead. Eachnet's announcement may produce marginal gains in users, but the company is unlikely to regain its previous position.
QQ for Mac?
According to some reports circulating in the Chinese media, Tencent is rumored to be launching a Mac version of their popular instant messaging service and social network - QQ.
I am not sure if this is true or not, or whether there is enough demand for QQ services on the Mac. I would like to hope, however, that they can first get QQ to work properly on an English version of Windows XP before starting to work on the MacOS.
We have previously covered QQ in our report titled Virtual Currencies in China: Q Coins, Gold Farms, and Real Money Trades.
We have also covered Tencent's payment arm, Tenpay, in one of our latest third-party payment profiles titled Tenpay - Riding the QQ Freight Train.
Cuijian, Nine Inch Nails, and Baidu scalpers rock Beijing's Pop Festival
I was out at Chaoyang Park this weekend for the Beijing Pop Festival, headlined by Brett Anderson and Public Enemy on Saturday and Cuijian and Nine Inch Nails on Sunday. The rock-focused lineup attracted an enthused crowd of local Chinese and foreigners, while the high ticket prices (RMB 250 for one day and RMB 380 for two) attracted a slew of ticket scalpers looking to cash in on those looking for a discounted path into the concert grounds.S-L-O-W Browsing in China
According to an article published on USA Today’s website on December 31, 2006 , Internet was supposed to be "back to normal" by today. I wasn’t holding my breath on this report, and it’s a good thing because access to websites originating abroad on my 1 Mbps ADSL service remains at remains at ISDN-like speeds of less than 150Kbps.
China Daily reports today that it could be two more weeks until the fiber-optic cables will be repaired; let's hope they are right this time.
Malware on Baidu
I recently did a search on Baidu, China's top search engine, for the name of a Chinese song I heard earlier in the day (I usually use Google for web searches, but Baidu is well-known in China for finding free mp3 music steams and downloads so I thought I'd give it a try). Today, I scanned my laptop using Ad-Aware and found 35 new spyware, 30 of which were BHO's coming from Baidu!AOL to drop charges for many services
AOL, one of the Internet service providers that first brought the world wide web and instant messaging to the mass market, has been struggling with a decreasing subscriber base since 2000. Since then, when AOL reached a peak of over 30 million subscribers worldwide, the company has merged with media conglomerate, Time Warner (2001) and in the subsequent five years has seen its subscriber base dwindle down to under 25 million subscribers worldwide.
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