Breaking! Tencent Acquires Comsenz and Becomes the Dominator of Chinese BBS

Soon, you would see million of Chinese sites are Powered by Tencent (instead of Powered by Discuz!). Although the news has not been confirmed by both parties, it is today proved by the Whois information of Comsenz’s two domain: Comsenz.com and Discuz.net. Both domains are now registered under the name of Tencent Technology (Beijing) Company Limited.

If you do not know Comsenz, the development company of the most popular Chinese BBS system, Discuz, please read our previous coverage for more details. It is reported that ~80% Chinese sites are running its BBS and ~70% of the BBSs are built on Discuz system. Comsenz also developed some other free social software, such as UCHome with which you can easily set up a Facebook-like social network.

Tencent acquires Comsenz, in other words, Tencent is now officially connected with millions of local site owners which are in fact the core group of Chinese web market. Months ago, Alibaba acquired Comsenz’s competitor PHPWind to enter Chinese BBS space. Tencent’s movement on Comsenz does make sense.

What could we expect from this acquisition?

1. Soon, you would see million of Chinese sites are Powered by Tencent (instead of Powered by Discuz!)

2. All the search engine of the BBSs built on Discuz system will be powered by SOSO, Tencent’s search service.

3. BBS is always the most important social media channel, Tencent is now the ‘owner’ and might integrate its services such as QZone and even its microblogging service into the Discuz! platform;

4. All Discuz powered BBS can be login with QQ number; Technically, it might be a huge mission, but eventually, QQ number might become the truly ‘OpenID’ in Chinese web;

5. BBS where people always look for and exchange information about product, plays a very important part in Chinese e-commerce market. Will Tencent take advantage of Discuz! to promote its Paipai e-commerce platform, competing with Alibaba? Why not.

The rumor says the deal is valued at >$10million. It is definitely the highlight of China web 2010!