Diandian.com looks like Tumblr‘s little twin brother who happened to be raised in China. Four months after its launch, two months after its opening to public, Diandian this month announced its 1 million users, saying its goal number is 10 million by the end of this year.
Diandian is incubated in Kaifu lee’s Innovation Works with 1-2 million USD as kick-start fund. Its founder is Jack Xu, a longtime star in China internet industry and first time entrepreneur.
Jack says being an entrepreneur has been his dream, “I joined Chinaren.com in 1999 as a college student and on a part-time basis, working with big brothers, Joe Chen, Charles Zhang and Chen Tianqiao, to start a service; from them I learned a lot. 11 years later, I’ve became old but the dream of starting a business has never faded out. I’ve been hoping to take a venture on my own.”
An Impressive Resume
In 1996, 16 year old Jack Xu enrolled in Tsinghua Univeristy and majored in Computer Science and Technology.
In 1999, Jack joined Chinaren as an engineer and later on as a technology director for 5 years.
In 2005, Jack became VP of China InterActive Corp and took charge of Xiaonei.com — a Facebook clone which was later renamed as Renren.com and went public in NYSE in the past May.
From 2010, Jack took the position of COO of Shanda Online and President of Shanda Networking.
In January, 2011, Jack left Shanda, joined Innovation Works and founded Diandian.com in the subsequent month.
Diandian thought it was the first tumblr clone in China
Jack bought the domain name, Diandian.com, back in 2003 when he was with Shanda Online, since he believed P2P services were growing in popularity.
“We found out Tumblr was ranking between 80 and 90 worldwide, thinking how come there is still such a innovative idea left for business starter like us. I thought we were the first that adopted that idea, so we hurried up.” Jack says in an interview.
Kuantu.com was around and widely taken as the first Tumblr clone in China. It was launched in December of 2010, revamped and re-launched in this April as Kuandao.com.
Big players flattered Tumblr by offering similar new products or features. Shanda launched tuita.com not long after Diandian’s birth. Sina’s qing.sina.com.cn, qing means lite in Chinese, is in limited testing. It is said Tencent will soon add a Tumblr-style feature to one of its social networking services, or to more than one.
To burn 100 million USD first before coming up with a business model
Jack thinks internet industry is different from other sectors in terms of “benchmark for startup capital”, which means you need to have tons of money to start an internet business. He disclosed two months after Diandian was launched that it had had 10 million USD, from Innovation Works, Red Sequoia and Ceyuan Ventures, in its pocket.
“Before Diandian earns any revenue or becomes profitable we must have burned 10 million USD for it. It’s just like online video business. So there is a benchmark and you have to burn money.”
Jack also takes it as an advantage to startups that may resolve potential competition from big companies, “to public companies which are ‘group armies’, they’d not be willing to take out 10 million USD from their pockets, for Wall Street will ask them what happened to their financial results.”
Diandian is giving away movie tickets and Häagen-Dazs ice cream to encourage users to invite more people to sign up. Also it’s very easy for a Chinese user to come across Diandian’s display ads somewhere online.
Will localization and mobile strategy differentiate Diandian from Tumblr?
Jack says Diandian’s core is the same with Tumblr but points out two factors that he thinks will make Diandian different, localization and mobility. “Tumblr was built in the beginning of 2007. Diandian, which was born in 2011, must reflect what’s prominent these years — mobile internet.”
Not long ago Diandian gave users a choice to use a background color other than the original ones similar to those of Tumblr. You could also find some buttons became different from those on Tumblr — Tumblr has a new design of dashboard and messaging system, anyway.
As for its mobile strategy, Diandian launched iPhone app and Android app and is working on iPad, Blackberry and Symbian.
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