Hudong, China’s Wikipedia, Obtains US$15.6 Million Third Round

Pan Haidong, CEO of Hudong.com, announced on Weibo that the company has recently raised RMB100 million (US$15.6 million) in its third round of financing. The company intends to use the fundding to accelerate monetization and to enhance its presence in the mobile Internet sector.

Founded on July 18th, 2005 at Zhongguancun (Chinese Silicon Valley), as the world’s largest Chinese encyclopedia website, Hudong.com provides people with a Chinese online platform for knowledge. Hudong.com has amassed nearly 5.4 million entries, 5.53 billion words and 5.82 million pictures contributed by over 3.6 million users as of July 2011. Pan Haidong relates the site to a “fenceless university”. Hudong.com aims to provide an “Interactive Wiki Community”, which gets a lot of people who are willing to share their wisdom involved to make it grow and to popularize Chinese knowledge and culture across the globe.

In April 2011, Hudong.com officially launched Baike.com, a platform of strategy importance aiming at enterprise market for monetization. Baike.com is described as a “small” open encyclopedia platform that has infinite sections with independent second-level domain names that focus on a particular area, object, or skill in people’s lives. Pan Haidong claims that, Baike.com is another major move in the company’s business development strategy and is a further extension of Hudong.com’s “knowledge media”,  which will lay a solid foundation for Hudong.com’s overseas listing in the future.

In addition, Baike.com creates a powerful APP mobile media platform, allowing enterprises or individuals to immediately have a proprietary APP, without the need of code technicianss help. “Hudong.com plans to produce 10,000 mobile APPs in 2011, truly realizing the transition from an APP factory to the APP market.” according to Pan Haidong.

Hudong.com previously received two rounds of fundings from institutions such as the famous American venture fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006 and 2009, with a total financing of US$30 million.

Related posts:

1. Meituan Obtains Eight-digit USD Second Round Funding
2. China 3G Users Hit 86.97 Million Signifies Huge Market Potential
3. Digu Raised Several Millions Dollars First Round Fund To Boost LBS Market

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Ameba Pigg In Collaboration With GUCCI! Official Goods Sold

Cyber Agent’s [J] 2D virtual space “Ameba Pigg” has begun a collaboration with fashion brand GUCCI.  Presently within Ameba Pigg’s “Ginza Main Street Area,” GUCCI has opened a virtual shop.

This collaboration’s planned period is limited until GUCCI’s 90th anniversary commemoration on October 17th.  During this period, actual GUCCI items that have been sold until now are sold in the virtual currency “AmeGold”as a motif for virtual items used for avatars.  Presently the items being sold are as follow:

GUCCI hat / 2 colors 1,000 AmeG each
GUCCI T-shirt / wh  250 AmeG
GUCCI craft bag  1,800 AmeG
GUCCI sneakers  700 AmeG
GUCCI shoes  500 AmeG  *Ladies only
In addition, more item types are planned to be added.

GUCCI 90thAnniversary Special Relay Blog!
http://ameblo.jp/guccijp/

Ameba Pigg official guide book [J]

The Apple of Happiness - The True Story of Ameba Pigg [J]

Translation licensed by VSMedia [J]

Ameba Pigg In Collaboration With GUCCI! Official Goods Sold

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Japan Digest: New recommend engine Kita Kore, KLab on Tosho Mothers, and more

Here are some interesting startup news from Japan, not only from its capital, Tokyo, but also other startup hubs like Fukuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, and many more.

(1) A new web service called Kita Kore has sprung up in Japan that describes itself not as a search engine but a “recommend engine”. A new Japanese startup, Media Jump, is behind the service. The site can be described as a social media events hub that recommends different events to registered members based on preferences. What is interesting is that the more users use the site the more it learns about them and the better the recommendations can be.

(2) KLab, a social game vendor announced that they will be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers (market of the high-growth and emerging stocks) on 27th September 2011.

(3) DeNA just announced it will establish a joint venture with video game powerhouse Bandai Namco Games on 1st October. The new company, which will be called BDNA, will be based out of Tokyo and capitalized at 100 million yen (US$1.3 million).

(4) Apparently CyberAgent knows how to do some things right in the App Store: the company announced its restaurant management game Zombie Restaurant has hit the top 10 for iOS devices in the American App Store (iTunes).

(5) Now Japan mobile carrier KDDI is making it possible for users of their proprietary email system EZweb to automatically browse their cell phone email history to look up Facebook friends, on both smartphones and feature phones.

(6) Japan’s social gaming network giant Mobage became inaccessible around 9:20 am on 25th August (Friday), both on the mobile version, iPhone version and PC version jointly run with Yahoo! Japan. In the morning, DeNA’s company site was reportedly down as well. Other services by DeNA, who runs Mobage, such as mobile auction site Mobaoku were also affected.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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