Many years later, Shanda would probably remember 2012 with much bitter. The company is in secular shake-up this year with exodus of execs and missteps in many so-called innovations. And according to a report by local media Donews.com, it’s Shanda Innovations’ turn to going through a major restructure with some switch-offs and refocuses.
Insiders revealed that the research unit ranked (see below for final ranking) all its 21 incubating programs at the end of this August in an internal appraisal. Out of all the programs, the top 20% would be entitled to more resource while the bottom 30% would be advised to either shutdown or merger. The last 6, namely from No. 16 cloud router to No. 21 Qiyu, would definitely be gone.
Here’s the rankings:
- MKNote (like Evernote)
- WIFI Key (free wifi hotspots aggregator)
- Tongtong (Free audio call)
- Lezhong ROM (customized Android)
- Tingting(Text to Speech)
- Shanda Input (Chinese input method)
- Smart Album (enhanced Android album)
- Image Enhancement Engine (image processing)
- Cloud Computing Front End system
- Shanda Voice 360 (like Siri)
- vku(video)
- Voice Note (Speech to Text)
- Daguan reading (mobile reading app)
- You mail (mobile email client)
- 17 startup (Chinese Crunchbase)
- Cloud Router
- muses.fm (like Shazam)
- Mpwc (social game)
- Quanloo (video aggregator)
- 18 guard
- Qiyu (mobile networking for strangers)
This knock-out round was said to be judged by Shanda COO Chen Danian and some senior execs of its investment arm.
Shanda Innovations was supposed to be a strategic incubator for the future decade in Shanda CEO Chen Tianqiao’s plan. However, it never really delivered on its expectation.
Rumors was spread back in a month ago that Shanda Innovations was subjected to a big lay-off with 3/4 staff being cut and the institute itself would be fell under Shanda Wireless arm’s control.
screenshot of MKNote homepage