At the Tencent Partners Conference held in Beijing on June 15, Tencent chairman and CEO Pony Ma announced “Eight Choices” to stress its open platform policy:
1. If problems appear in our exploration on the open platform, we will not retreat, but actively seek solutions.
2. Our platforms will be totally open ones which have no closed parts. QZone is already open, Tencent Weibo, Q+, e-Commerce, search etc on the way to the open;
3. We have a zero tolerance policy to any behavior that impairs the users’ benefit.
4. Open platform policy doesn’t simply mean Tencent is selling the traffic. Tencent will provide a full range of services, such as logins, traffic, payment gateway etc;
5. There will be no restriction on Tencent‘s open platform. Tencent will not play as a referee and a player at the same time. We will make sure our policy transparent to anyone.
6. Our partners’ success has priority over our own achievements.
7. On Tencent’s the open platforms, we will support the innovative applications rather than the copies.
8. Our open-platform policy is not the transformation of business strategy, but the change of company mission .
Ma announced that Tencent aims for the its open platform partners to eventually take in a combined RMB 20 billion(US$ 3.1 billion) in annual revenue, the same as Tencent currently generates.
Ma also said the RMB 5 billion “Tencent Industry Mutual Benefit Fund”, which was set up in January and has to date used up over RMB 2 billion, would soon double in size to reach RMB 10 billion.
It all sounds good, and as some observers have pointed out, it is a great news for Tencent’s existing and potential partners, but will Tencent really put partners’ success first than its own achievements, as the 6th selection suggests, we will wait to see.
