With Weixin, Tencent finally has a product for white-collars, an objective that had eluded the firm for over a decade. With Weixin Lifestyle, it’s building a brand for white-collars too. We at TechRice thinks that’s a very big deal.
China’s second-most popular microblogging service, Tencent Weibo, launched their English version last week to target the international market. For the first time, non-Chinese speaking users can sample a little taste of Weibo, the Chinese social networking phenomenon.
Tencent Weibo, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings report, has reached 233 million users, and from June 115 million active users.
iResearch has published their July monthly research results for group buy sites in China, including rankings of top 10 sites in 3 main categories: 1) average daily uniques, 2) monthly visits, and 3) conversion rates. Overall, the number of group-buying users grew to 27 million users, a 1.4% increase from the previous month.
Taobao Ju is #1 in terms of daily uniques and monthly visits, further proof of Taobao’s pole position in e-commerce.
Tencent recently announced an international social network, with a beta version coming in early 2011. This follows the launch of QQi, the international version of the QQ instant messenger. So is Tencent going international? Not really. As with QQi, the focus of the new social network is to connect Chinese and foreign friends, with a focus on expats. It’s more “China-plus” than it is international.
PengYou.com is the newest entry in Tencent’s long line of SNS evolutions. In addition to local SNS providers, Facebook should watch out if it ever gains re-entry to China. Tencent’s PengYou will be there as a real competitor.
The next big thing will probably come from a merging of different cultures coming together, but from a Chinese point of view…
