Lots of meetings and talks last week when I was in Beijing. Here I wrap up some good ones (rumors and facts) to share with you.
1. Joe Chen, CEO of Oak Pacific Interactive, the owner of Xiaonei which is the leading SNS and the most successful Facebook clone in China said in the iResearch VIP dinner, its Kaixin.com is now bigger than the super hot Kaixin001.com. I am not sure what metric Joe is referring to, but at least Alexa says it is not true.
2. On the other side, the rumor about Kaixin001 is that it will secure its $20 million second round fund very soon. So will that prove that the winter in China web is not that cold?
3. The time for Chinese microblogging is probably coming soon. Reason: a). Recently I found some Chinese VC friends are on twitter, and I guess you do not need me to tell why they are there; b). Digu was launched two months ago and Maopao, a new twitter liker founded by a co-founder of Xiaonei is currently in private test; c). The big news is that some friends said China Mobile was planning its own microblogging service. Yep! Chinese twittersphere is getting hot!
4. Although Netvibes was suffering some complain from blogosphere and people question whether personalized homepage can work in the end, Baidu seems working on a similar project: http://220.181.6.16/.
5. How many SNSs do we have in China? The answer does not really matter. Another Chinese portal will join SNS war: Sohu’s SNS is in private test.
6. It is confirmed that AOL China will be closed soon. Another failure for foreign internet service in China.
[image from closet-inc]
