TechNode

Baidu Integrates PC & Mobile Advertising Systems

Chelsea Dong — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:20:25 +0000

Baidu will release the integrated advertising system for both PC and mobile search marketing this weekend so that customers only need to manage one account.

Customers can put their ads on different screens as they wish. Bidding prices can be set different on the two platforms and customers can change the budget ratios between the two. Baidu also rolled out a package of tool for mobile search marketing, including tools for setting up mobile sites, online consulting, and app marketing, etc.

According to Baidu, with regard to search behavior, users do searches on PC mostly at working hours. And mobile search traffic would soar on weekends, which makes a good complement for the PC advertising.

One Third of Sina Weibo’s Ad Revenue Generated from Mobile in Q1 2013

Tracey Xiang — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:39:34 +0000

As of Q1 2013 76.5% of Sina Weibo users logged in through mobile devices and 34% of ad revenue was from mobile, up from 25% quarter-over-quarter, disclosed Sina management on the earnings conference call today. Sina Weibo recorded $18.8 million in advertising and $11.1 in value-added services; of the latter $2 million is from membership subscriptions and the rest from web games (or browser game), which is a 180% increase.

Fensitong, or promoted feed ad program, now has over one thousand customers that have deposited money. Currently most customers that place budget on Weibo are still brand advertisers who has been doing marketing with Sina’s properties, but Sina wants to popularize it among SMEs, according to Charles Chao, chairman and CEO of Sina Corp. Several agencies in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces are managing those customers for Sina.

As offering games is a proven way to monetize a large user base in China, Charles Chao said they’d continue to work on it.

When it comes to its partnership with Alibaba, Charles Chao hopes “over the longer term it will create opportunities in social commerce and mobile commerce which both companies believe are of great potential”, but currently what we have seen on Weibo is targeted ads from Taobao and Tmall. Alibaba has been doing targeted advertising on third-party sites with Alimama program. The ads shown are based on user behaviors such as searches on Alibaba’s properties. What makes those shown on Sina Weibo different is Weibo user behaviors’ may be also taken into account thus Alibaba can push more targeted ads. To Sina, what would be added is just more CPC/CPS-based revenues.

Earlier this month it launched the mobile-only-for-now Page that anything, a location, a topic or a good, can set up a webpage for other users to follow — it sounds like what Douban, an interest-oriented social site, has been doing. It is expected to have users consume more content and spend more time on Weibo by following Pages they like. It’s also possible that it can be used by advertisers to do content marketing.

Daily active users increased about 8% to 49.8 million. Sina Corp. reported $121.3 million non-GAAP revenue with $94.3 from online advertising and $15.9 million from mobile value-added services.

More Chinese Startups Are Moving to Second-tier Cities

Tracey Xiang — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:01:21 +0000

Chuangtouquan (ctquan), a startup investing network, released a report that shows second-tier Chinese cities are hosting more startups in terms of percentage. In 2011, 84% of Chinese startups were located in first-tier cities including Beijing, shanghai and Guangzhou. The rate decreased to 77% in 2012. Second-tier cities including Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan became the new startup scenes.

It’s driven by no more than cost and talent, according to the report.

1 Costs. The average office space rental rate in the first-tier is 3.5 to 4 times of that in the second-tier and is increasing at 30% to 40%.

67% of engineers who earn 10,000 yuan or more a monthly salary are in first-tier cities. The monthly salary range for an engineer in second-tier cities is 2000 to 5000 yuan.

2 No shortage of talents. Some second-tier cities such as Nanjing, Wuhan, Xi’an and Chengdu are full of colleges that can meet the talent needs.

3 Governments of some second-tier cities, like what some big cities began doing ealier, have set up funds to support entrepreneurship.

Earlier this year, Quwan, a social shopping site, moved its headquarter from Beijing to Chengdu. In an interview on it, Zhou Pin, founder of Quwan, says the major reason is his team cannot see a better life in Beijing; for instance, some of them cannot afford an apartment, “I want them to have a better life so that they can do a better job”. Also he wants his team to “settle down” in the next three to five years developing products and services. (in Chinese)

Some employees didn’t want to move. But what to his surprise is all the senior managers and most mid-level managers agreed to move. It turns out that young people would like to stay in Beijing where they think is full of opportunities and future returns will be high. But those middle aged managers know that only a small percentage of people in big companies like Baidu and Tencent can afford a home in cities like Beijing.

Average office rental rate is 1/3 or even 1/6 of that in Beijing. Average apartment price is 1/3. Local senior engineers earn 80% of the monthly salary of their Beijing-based peers’, but average local employees earn much lower a salary. Now Quwan is headquartered at Chengdu tech park, which is established by the local government, who offers them free office space for a three-year period.

But, Zhou Pin said, marketing and business development divisions must still be in Beijing. Fu Sheng, CEO of Kingsoft ijinshan, doesn’t think a Beijing-based Internet company should leave at all. He thinks that Internet technologies are changing too fast that you’d be easily lag behind if you leave an environment that everyone is exciting about and talking about tech, and pushed forward by it.

image credit: spencerinsurance.com

Meitu Kiss Phone Released. Will Meitu Be Another Xiaomi?

Tracey Xiang — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:08:45 +0000

We once introduced how the photography-focused Meitu Kiss phone came into being and it is backed by Cai Wensheng, a legendary figure in China’s tech industry. Today it is officially released, together with MeituAir, the built-in cross-platform photo management software.

With customized Android 4.2, quad-core MT6589 processor, 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 display and 8 mega-pixel front & rear camera, it’s priced at 2199 yuan (US$357) — the latest version of Xiaomi phone is for 1999 yuan (16GB) /2299yuan (32GB).

Meitu, the company behind the phone, started with PC-based photo editing software in 2008 and succeeded with a photo effects app, Mei Tu Xiu Xiu. It claims the mobile app has 290 million users, out of which 24.6 million are daily active. Cai Wensheng showed his confidence in the phone by saying “there are more than 300 million users if combing Mei Tu Xiu Xiu users and users of the PC software. It’s terrific even if one percent of them want to buy the phone” when asked about the phone recently.

With a plenty of photo-centered apps and PC-based tools, Meitu made revenues from advertising prior to the phone launch. Wu Xinhong, founder and CEO of Meitu, said earlier this year that the company was run “a little over break-even.”

Last year Mr. Cai said he, as an angel investor, hadn’t invested in non-mobile startups for quite a while. Today he said mobile phone would be the carrier of mobile Internet services, and the best structure for mobile Internet businesses is software + hardware + cloud.

The strategy sounds the same with Xiaomi’s — to gain users with comparatively good-value-for-money smartphones, build ecosystem with software and make profits from consumer-facing paid services and business-facing offerings. As Xiaomi is backed by Lei Jun, another classic figure in China’ s tech sector, it is speculated the two companies would be direct competitors in near future. Although Meitu Kiss claims it’s focused on photography, it’s safe to say its users would like to use apps Xiaomi users also like.

Also like Lei Jun, Mr. Cai has invested in a variety of tech companies, from gaming to Weibo content marketing agencies, that would help provide Meitu Kiss with content and services. They don’t, of course, have to be competitors if they can grab market share from existing big players like Samsung separately.

Mobile QQ Users Are Angry With the New Version’s Becoming A WeChat Knockoff

Charlie Sheng — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:44:24 +0000

Shortly afterMobile QQ 4.0 for iPhone released on May 9^th, tens of thousands of users flooded its App Store page with low ratings and negative reviews. Some even said it was the “the worst version ever”. Most of them are not happy with removing the function of showing users’ status like “online”,”busy” and not showing whether a user logs in through mobile device or PC.

Somehow the new version looks like QQ’s little brother Wexin. or WeChat. The status info is never displayed in Wexin, and the newly added social idea of “QQ FriendsCircle” is also pretty much same as the “Moments” in Weixin. Actually it is known that management of the company did intentionally want the two chatting tools be closer in function.

The new version of Mobile QQ looks a lot like WeChat .

Seeing the discontent growing unexpectedly, Tencent responded saying that the new changes were made based on an assumption that users are always online in this mobile internet age. “Recently we have been trying to figure out whether this change is unacceptable for the current market. We will surely modify according to the feedbacks.”

Not long ago on the GMIC Beijing 2013, Tencent’s CEO Pony MA mentioned this topic of Weixin replacing mobile QQ,

This is quite sensitive topic for us. Some people asked why Mobile QQ moved slowly back then even though we sensed the trend. The biggest problem is the former structure of Tencent. Back then QQ, Qzone and Mobile QQ were under three different BUs which made it difficult to do one thing that needed input from all of them. Finally on May 18^thof last year, we underwent the biggest restructuring in the past seven years. When problems emerged on our products, we can not just blame the product team. To go with the flow of the mobile internet, we believe it’s not just about setting up a department called mobile or appointing someone to take charge of all the mobile businesses. We should embrace all the aspects in a new philosophy. So later on, we grew more comfortable with the new structure and Mobile QQ also gradually found its way.

Actually active users on Mobile QQ are more than those on Weixin, which could be a surprise to most. People assume that Weixin’s user number is way bigger than mobile QQ’s, but the truth is the opposite, to be honest. The active users on Mobile QQ is twice the number of Weixin’s. Mobile QQ might be lagged behind in the past two years, however, after the restructuring and the new strategies, I believe it’s not going to disappoint us. This is not about the younger replacing the older ones, but a new round of self-updating.

Rumors: Aliyun Set-top Box, Xiaomi Laptop, Camera 360 Phone

Chelsea Dong — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:07:22 +0000

Rumors about hardware are flying. What’s for sure is 2013 will turn out to be a year of hardware to China’s tech industry.

Aliyun Set-top Box

It is reported that Aliyun plans to launch a set-top box. Different from what LeTV and PPTV do — partnering with license holders for content, Aliyun set-up box will run an operating system similar to that in Aliyun phones and content on a TV screen can be controlled by an Aliyun phone. Aliyun approached TV set manufacturers with the operating system last year. (via Sina Tech)

Camera 360 Phone

Camera 360, a photo app provider, is working with a smartphone manufacturer on a photography-focused smartphone, reads a Weibo post by CEO of Qinbei.com. The phone will carry 1.3MP rear camera and 8M front camera. Sounds familiar? Yes, it sounds look like the Meitu phone that will be officially launched later today.

Xiaomi Laptop

Xiaomi will release a laptop running Linux and priced at 3999 yuan in August, according to a post by Talkphone.cn.

image credit: gizchina.com

Baidu Finds Usage of Standalone Mobile Browser Decelerate

Chelsea Dong — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:57:35 +0000

Baidu Releases its findings on mobile usage as of Q1 2013.

Below are some highlights:

The gap between time spent on mobile devices and that on PC deepended to 29% as of March 2013.
Users spend more time on mainstream native apps while the rest apps have difficulty gaining traction. Reasons for the latter include 1) users don’t visit app stores often; 2) users seldom use some apps or even forget them. 60% of apps wouldn’t be opened in the week after being downloaded, and one third of them wouldn’t be used in a month.
The total time spent on native apps increased by 7% and some categories saw much higher growth rate; for instance, video/audio apps increased by 31%, online shopping & payments 34%, search 20%, and maps & navigation 16%.
The average time spent on mobile browsers increased only by 2%, much lower than the 7%. Not only do users click open them less frequently, but also standalone mobile browsers are less frequently fired up with link clicks in third-party apps — for mainstream apps including Weibo, WeChat and search apps have had built-in browsers.

TouchChinese Believes in Teaching One-to-one even in Internet Era

Tracey Xiang — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:10 +0000

TouchChinese, a China-based online Chinese learning service, believes in two things most Chinese always do when it comes to education: good teachers and teaching one-to-one. Agree on it or not, TouchChinese offers online Chinese language lessons with that in mind.

Learning with TouchChinese is easy. A teacher will be assigned for a student after the latter signs up to a program. The student can schedule lessons at his/her convenience so long as the teacher is awake and free. One-on-one live lessons will be conducted through video messaging software like Skype.

TouchChina said they’d focus on one-to-one teaching so far. With tools like Skype, teaching one to one is easy no matter how geographically far a teacher and a student are. One of the reasons,
however, that online education is regarded as disruptive is that one live or recorded course would benefit numerous people. Also, since it’s one-time cost, such a course cannot be very expensive if it’s consumed by a considerable number of people. Considering time limits and costs, one-to-one education may still be a luxury to many people around the world. Hope $15 or less charged by TouchChina for a lesson isn’t expensive to everyone who wants to learn Mandarin.

Only those who have received professional training in “Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language” have the chance to become TouchChinese teachers. When asked about whether it’s hard to acquire a large number of teachers with such a strict requirement, TouchChina said that actually the market is oversupplied with professional Mandarin teachers. TouchChina teachers are from across China with most working on a part-time basis.

TouchChinese started as a part-time project in 2009 and the team went on full-time in 2011. In 2012, the team moved into Media Dream Works, the incubator ran by Zhejiang Daily Media shortly after it had been established in Hangzhou where TouchChinese is based.

Local Portal Platform 19Lou Announced RMB60 million Series A Funding

Tracey Xiang — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:06:38 +0000

19Lou.com, a platform running local portal sites for Chinese cities, announced RMB60 million (US$9.7 million) in series A funding from two Hangzhou-based early-stage venture capital funds under NewMargin Ventures (announcement in Chinese). An angel round was raised in 2008.

Founded in 2006 by several local newspaper reporters in Hangzhou and only serving Hangzhou citizens then, 19Lou now covers twenty cities in Zhejiang province and a dozen outside it, including first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Chongqing and Wuhan. A total of more than 30 million users are on all those sites.

Local portals sites are everywhere. Some cities have more than one sites dedicated to them. But 19Lou stands out as one of the most popular and has become a brand speaking for itself. It has created some innovative services and a well-functioning business model.

Huatan is a sub-channel crowdsourcing local news. Citizens are allowed to submit news entries and they can subscribe to topics with entries contributed by others. Another sub-channel Haodian, or stores worth visiting, is a platform for local businesses set up their online presence and for citizens to share pictures and comments about those stores and services.

19Lou charges local businesses for setting up a mini-site there and other forms of campaigns. Its revenue sources also include online advertising and offline activities such as small trade shows. It doesn’t charge users for any services provided.

The new funding will be used for improving online-to-offline services, said Lin Yu, founder and CEO of 19Lou.

YY’s Interactive Live Show Business to Expand to Reading, Partnering with Cloudary

Tracey Xiang — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:19:29 +0000

YY and Clouday, the online literature business under Shanda, announced today to jointly launch a platform for online live reading shows in the near future.

The same with the YY Music model, the reading platform will have performers reading books to audiences. It sounds sweet if you picture a storybook lady living on the Web reading you stories. And it’s also perceivable to Chinese as China has a long history of oral storytelling performance.

But, sorry to tell you, you can only see beauties selected from existing YY Music performers reading novels from Cloudary, at least at the near future. It will even be called something like “beauties read you stories”.

Unsurprisingly, it will adopt the YY Music model in terms of monetization. What’s different is one more party, the novel writer, will take a revenue share too, apart from the performer/agencies and the platform. The synergy between YY and Cloudary is the latter also allows readers tip writers they like.

The two parties have experimented with a popular work from Cloudary. They held a storyteller contest that attracted more than ten thousand participants with more than forty thousand clips uploaded, according to Cloudary.

The live show business of YY’s has already expanded to live game streams. While there are a plenty of services in China that offer live or recorded game streams, YY is one of the few that make money from audiences. Apart from virtual gift sales and premium services, it is said game betting is another revenue source — there might be regulatory risks.