China’s location-based stranger networking app Momo earned itself mixed reception among mobile users, some adore it for its “hooking-up” utility while the others hate it for the same reason. The company’s latest product launch of version 3.0 took efforts to play down that part, trying to reimagine itself as a decent mobile social networking app. […]
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Dodo China Presents a New Way to Learn Chinese More Easily
There’s a quite interesting discussion on Quora about how hard it is to learn Mandarin, the irrelevance between the speaking and writing system, the hidden meaning behind four- and eight-character idioms called chenyu or suyu and then the dialects are all giving a hard time to non-native speakers of Chinese who thought naively they can conquer the language in […]
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Baidu Released Phoenix Nest for Mobile
Baidu finally released the mobile version of Phoenix Nest, its AdWord-like bidding system, to the all the customers in mid-December 2012 (previously it was only available to a small number of selected customers). It took a whole year for Baidu to launch the mobile version, as reported. Tailored to the mobile phones, the mobile Phoenix […]
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Startup-themed cafés in Beijing
The past few years have been seeing the proliferating of startup-themed cafés in China which serve as a platform where entrepreneurs exchange and sparkle their ideas. We’ve written Shanghai’s startups handout, including 6 startup-themed cafés. Today, we’ll bring you to Beijing and visit five cafés, including 3wcoffee, Big Bang Café, QianXun Café, Betacafé and Garage […]
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Chinese Online Video Sites Closer to Breaking-even
Gong Yu, CEO of iQiyi, expected online video ad rates to go up by 30% in the first half of 2013. At the same time, video copyright prices decreased by an average of one third in 2012 year-on-year, according to the same report. The Youku-Tudou merger that happened in last year stopped the competition in video […]
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Sequoia China Backed up Mobile Payment Startup QFPay
Chinese mobile payment startup QFPay just announced on its official website to raise a financing of undisclosed sum from Sequoia China to accelerate its growth as the company, Beijing-based, just launched its revamped solution for China’s 60 million local merchants, see our previous report here. QFPay, which was originally inspired by Square’s success story in […]
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Lashou Wakes up from a Nap?
After a string of unfortunates happened last year, like the massive layoff, delayed IPO, management shakeup and CEO Wu Bo resigning from his post, Lashou seemed to be in a downtrend, falling from the top spot to today’s No. 4 in Chinese group buying market. And now, the Beijing-based startup appeared to be finally waking […]
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EComm Downsizing before CNY Signaling Pessimistic
The Chinese Spring festival is around the corner, employees who labored for a whole year are expecting year-end bonus and a ticket to go home for family reunion, being laid off is the last thing they expect in this time leading up to the holiday season. However, some ecommerce companies just couldn’t cut them a […]
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Wechat ’s Monetization and Overseas Quest
After crossing the 300 million user mark within 2 years after launch, WeChat is going to launch the latest new version 4.5 with more features to offer. Interestingly, the team behind Wechat neither accepts interview requests nor reveals anything strategically about WeChat except for regular updates on user numbers and new functions. I guess they […]
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Let Xiaomi Box Tell You How Hard to Channel Online Videos to TV Screens in China
Turning to CNTV for A Comeback Xiaomi announced a tie-up of its set-top box, Xiaomi Box, and CNTV, the online video provider under the state broadcaster. The announcement has made clear that everything related to video content, the management of content, users and applications, is in the hands of the company behind CNTV. Xiaomi Box […]