Kaixin001 Ramping up Open Strategy, Isn’t It Too Late?
Chinese SNS site Kaixin001 seems to be too conservative and slow in its open strategies. The company announed open efforts in 2010, but did not really open it until early 2011, which is not a prompt move at all compared to its competitor Renren, whose open platform was launched in 2008. Yesterday the company shared with media the latest score of its open platform: 132 open APIs and 40k 3rd party apps.
Since late last year, Kaixin001 has put forth a revenue share strategy in which 3rd party developers can have favorable share terms especially for those small ones. The latest move is to allow ad network like Google Adsense and Alimama on conditions that user experience will not be interrupted.
CEO Cheng Binghao said, “We are doing this for 3rd party developers’ sake. By doing so they can easily locate the target users, thus earning more revenues.” Some successful stories include the9, Happyelements among others. Both the9 and Happy Elements developed games on Kaixin001’s platform.
The opening up of SNS sites has turned from a trend to a must. A recent report on the open platform situation and trend by 51CTO.com pointed out that, a SNS open platform should tout to more 3rd party developers with resources and revenue sharing planning. Offer them the best and they will be coming.
The new report card of Kaixin001 did show its determination to open up, but isn’t it too late? In the summer of 2007, Facebook pioneered in opening its platform, which marked a new developing model. Very soon, Chinese companies headed to join or were forced to join the open warfare. People said that 2011 was the first year of the Open Era in China’s tech world, with big names like Tencent, Shanda, Alibaba and even B2C sites like 360buy and Amazon China followed the trend.