Duowan reportedly acquired photo-sharing app Tuitu at RMB tens of millions. Both parties didn’t comment on the matter when being approached. Guangzhou-based Duowan is a gaming portal site that provides industry news, game downloads and so on.
Tuitu rose to the scene amist the Instagram heat last year. With the app, you can take and beautify a picture before syncing it into the mainstream Chinese social networks including Sina Weibo, Renren, Kaixin001 and so on.
It’s powerful photo beautifying functions allow users to one-click enhance pictures by using filters, create personal photo diary by collaging pictures and add text bubble and frame etc.
Currently there’re many similar apps in China, like PhotoWonder (acquired by Baidu), Camera360, Camera+, Meitu Xiuxiu and so on. Though sharing a dream of becoming the Chinese Instagram, brutal reality tells them it’s not happening anytime soon.
They all failed to curate an engaging photo-sharing community in addition to just being a tool, even though some like Meitu Xiuxiu claims more than 100 million users on PC front and 40 million on mobile.
While its siblings are still in the living struggle, being acquired could be a positive thing for Tuitu, it could be further developed or integrated into Duowan’s services. Duowan also owns a very popular real-time video and audio service dubbed YY.