Announcement: Floods in Jakarta, Meetup Postponed

The current rainfall and flood situation in Jakarta has gone from bad to worse, and we have no choice but to postpone this evening’s meetup. We will announce a new date for the Jakarta meetup soon. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Obviously the most important thing is that everyone in the area stays safe. So far lots of people have had to leave their homes due to the floods, and we hope things get better soon so that those people can get back to their daily lives.

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Hungama launches Music Cloud – Sync (and stream) your desktop music across devices for free [PC, mobile, tablets]

Mumbai based Hungama has launched Music Cloud, which allows users to access their music anywhere on any devices (PC, tab, smartphones) at anytime without any cost.

Music cloud is primarily a cloud based service that enables users to have unrestricted access to their music library irrespective of devices and all you need to do is to subscribe to Hungama Music Cloud by creating an account with Hungama on web or on mobile/tab devices.

Hungama MusicCloud

The web version supports iTunes and Windows media player formats. After installation of Music Cloud, all the songs in user’s iTunes and Windows Media players will be added to their inventory automatically.

Users can sync their music (inventory) from their laptop/mobile/MP3 player etc.via Music Cloud without hassles of copying and transferring their music inventory to multiple devices. The service can be availed on web via Hungama.com and on mobile/tab  front it supports Android, iOS, J2ME, Windows and BlackBerry powered devices.

Hungama earlier launched its HTML5 site that allows users to stream free music as well as buy Indian and International content. During launch, the Music Cloud service was primarily about syncing music bought from Hungama and has now extended the service to desktop music. The company claims that Music Cloud uses smart scan technology for syncing and streams songs, create playlist, view music library by genres, artists and songs seamlessly on web and devices.

Music Cloud allows automatic mapping of purchased content and shows up on all synced (ported) devices with download history and credits.

Consumption of online music has seen consistent growth during the last 2-3 years and mobile presents itself as an even more exciting domain, which has grown incredibly well. The explosion of smartphones and high speed 2G and 3G connections in urban markets has largely contributed to this.

Currently, mobile contributes around 85-90% to the total digital music consumption in India. A study conducted by Nokia revealed that in India, music is the most downloaded  application and the second most used application after social networking. 34% of the smartphone users  like to download applications because they feel the need to download the latest music releases (Gaana launched its mobile apps yesterday).

Looking at increasing consumption of music over Internet via traditional PC/laptop including mobile and tablet devices, Music Cloud by Hungama, appears to be a deft move as it solves the pain of organizing one’s favorite tracks irrespective of devices.

Recommended Read: 2012 Recap: Digital Music Landscape in India [Digital music sold more than physical]

- Online Music Industry in India: A look at Past, Present and Future

Related posts:

1. Listen to Bollywood Music on Facebook – Hungama Launches MyPlay App
2. Music Stores: A R Rahman Got one, BIG Music, T-Series and Hungama Partnership
3. Unlimited Bollywood Music at Hungama Music Store [Review]

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Free financial planning for women by Investopresto in support of safety and security

Investopresto joins Indian women’s battle for safety and security, offers free financial planning to all women.

Responding to the calls of women in India for basic safety and security, Investopresto aims to support by helping the women of India achieve financial security and independence. As a result of such awareness, Investopresto is now offering free financial planning to women. Think of this as your personal financial advisor. Not only that, financial security is vital for women other than making them feel confident about themselves. Investopresto aims to empower women with the knowledge and the ability to achieve a financially independent status for the betterment of their own lives. In order to use these services, they just have to signup via Investopresto’s website and fill out the contact details via a simple web form. Later, the whole financial planning program will be handled over the telephone by Investopresto’s finance professionals who are mostly CFA charterholders, CFPs or possess advanced degrees in finance.

Investopresto helps people by controlling their financial future and achieving their financial goals. Surprisingly, according to Investopresto, there are actually many hardworking people out there who are struggling to make ends meet. Investopresto’s CEO Ashwini Anand also said that the team did some market research and they were surprised by the number of highly educated and well paid professionals whose financial lives were in total disarray. All these could be improved with the help of Investopresto as they help to organize their finances and introduce financial discipline.

A financially independent woman will feel more confident about herself thus expressions of concerns and opinions can follow suit. Being able to speak her mind out portrays a strong-minded woman and someone who can protect her own rights while speaking out against abuse or harassment. Therefore, Investopresto sees the need to help these women in India to be more outspoken and it is hoped that by achieving financial freedom, these women will be more confident about themselves.

Investopresto recently closed a funding round lead by Singapore-based Crystal Horse Investments.

Source : Investopresto

Image Credits : Silicon India

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Free financial planning for women by Investopresto in support of safety and security

Investopresto joins Indian women’s battle for safety and security, offers free financial planning to all women.

Responding to the calls of women in India for basic safety and security, Investopresto aims to support by helping the women of India achieve financial security and independence. As a result of such awareness, Investopresto is now offering free financial planning to women. Think of this as your personal financial advisor. Not only that, financial security is vital for women other than making them feel confident about themselves. Investopresto aims to empower women with the knowledge and the ability to achieve a financially independent status for the betterment of their own lives. In order to use these services, they just have to signup via Investopresto’s website and fill out the contact details via a simple web form. Later, the whole financial planning program will be handled over the telephone by Investopresto’s finance professionals who are mostly CFA charterholders, CFPs or possess advanced degrees in finance.

Investopresto helps people by controlling their financial future and achieving their financial goals. Surprisingly, according to Investopresto, there are actually many hardworking people out there who are struggling to make ends meet. Investopresto’s CEO Ashwini Anand also said that the team did some market research and they were surprised by the number of highly educated and well paid professionals whose financial lives were in total disarray. All these could be improved with the help of Investopresto as they help to organize their finances and introduce financial discipline.

A financially independent woman will feel more confident about herself thus expressions of concerns and opinions can follow suit. Being able to speak her mind out portrays a strong-minded woman and someone who can protect her own rights while speaking out against abuse or harassment. Therefore, Investopresto sees the need to help these women in India to be more outspoken and it is hoped that by achieving financial freedom, these women will be more confident about themselves.

Investopresto recently closed a funding round lead by Singapore-based Crystal Horse Investments.

Source : Investopresto

Image Credits : Silicon India

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Are you ready to kill some zombies? Try Cute Kill

Use a baby to kill zombies while having fun with TouchTen’s latest mobile game.

TouchTen, an Indonesia-based mobile games company has recently released Cute Kill, a zombie killing game by a baby. This Jakarta-based company released this game, marking it as the first released game for this year. Cute Kill is available on iOS and soon in Android platform as well. This game is definitely exclusive on its own as it lets you kill zombies with a super adorable baby character being piggyback by his sister.

This game is a reverse top-down shooting game where you play as the main characters, Sis and Baby as you fight your way running from chasing zombies while shooting them. Your goal is to reach the finish line before you get caught and eaten! This adrenaline-rush game will get you hooked on for hours to hours end while providing timeless entertainment. Just as levelling up suggests, the difficulty level increases with every level with introduction of new zombies, increasing spawn rate and more zombies chasing after you!  Be wary of traps as well.

TouchTen Games CEO, Anton Soeharyo mentioned that this is the cutest game they have produced so far and his team has worked hard to produce a high quality gameplay. TouchTen is the producer of a few popular games namely Sushi Chain, Castle Runner, War Mania and Free Kick Mania. Sushi Chain even managed to get into the Top 15 games on the Japanese iTunes Store and has reached more than 2 million downloads. It is hoped that Cute Kill, a zombie-apocalypse themed game will also be able to garner such positive response from users. After all, how often do you see a baby saving the world from zombies? Download Cute Kill on iOS now to experience the fun yourself!

Source : TouchTen

Image Credits : iFanzine

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Are you ready to kill some zombies? Try Cute Kill

Use a baby to kill zombies while having fun with TouchTen’s latest mobile game.

TouchTen, an Indonesia-based mobile games company has recently released Cute Kill, a zombie killing game by a baby. This Jakarta-based company released this game, marking it as the first released game for this year. Cute Kill is available on iOS and soon in Android platform as well. This game is definitely exclusive on its own as it lets you kill zombies with a super adorable baby character being piggyback by his sister.

This game is a reverse top-down shooting game where you play as the main characters, Sis and Baby as you fight your way running from chasing zombies while shooting them. Your goal is to reach the finish line before you get caught and eaten! This adrenaline-rush game will get you hooked on for hours to hours end while providing timeless entertainment. Just as levelling up suggests, the difficulty level increases with every level with introduction of new zombies, increasing spawn rate and more zombies chasing after you!  Be wary of traps as well.

TouchTen Games CEO, Anton Soeharyo mentioned that this is the cutest game they have produced so far and his team has worked hard to produce a high quality gameplay. TouchTen is the producer of a few popular games namely Sushi Chain, Castle Runner, War Mania and Free Kick Mania. Sushi Chain even managed to get into the Top 15 games on the Japanese iTunes Store and has reached more than 2 million downloads. It is hoped that Cute Kill, a zombie-apocalypse themed game will also be able to garner such positive response from users. After all, how often do you see a baby saving the world from zombies? Download Cute Kill on iOS now to experience the fun yourself!

Source : TouchTen

Image Credits : iFanzine

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The Mobile Messenger War: What’s the Score?

Line will soon hit 100M users

Yesterday we pointed out that Chinese chat application WeChat (known as Weixin in Chinese) had surpassed the 300 million user mark. And just yesterday evening, apparently not wanting to be outdone, NHN Japan’s Line put a teaser site online saying that it would soon pass the 100 million user milestone.

Both feats are astounding, considering that these chat apps have only been around for a relatively short time. Given that we now have reasonably up to date figures for many of the major chat app players, let’s take a moment to compare their progress as we head into 2013:

Chat app	Start date	Approx. users [1]
WeChat	Jan 2011 [2]	300M
Line	June 2011 [3]	99M+
Kakao Talk	Mar 2010 [4]	72M
Kik	Apr 2010 [5]	30 M [6]

Of course, WhatsApp is not included on this list. Its user numbers are tough to pinpoint, but word on the street is that they total between 200 and 300 million. It will be interesting to see if WhatsApp can continue as a paid service, with so many free up-and-comers. Many of these Asian players are expected to make a stronger push into Western markets this year, so I would expect the folks at WhatsApp are worried. I don’t use the application, but my colleague Willis also expressed some skepticism about WhatsApp recently.

There are other new players on the scene as well, including DeNA’s Comm which recently announced it had five million downloads as of this past December. GREE Messenger just burst onto the scene as well, although its offering is still sort of beta, and I expect a marketing blitz will come sometime soon, starting in Japan.

---

1. For the totals listed, this refers to registered users.  ↩

2. Based on App Annie’s rank history for WeChat, iOS, China.  ↩

3. Based on App Annie’s rank history for Line, iOS, Japan.  ↩

4. Based on App Annie’s rank history for Kakao Talk, iOS, South Korea.  ↩

5. Based on App Annie’s rank history for Kik Messenger, iOS, United States.  ↩

6. 30 million users strong, Kik Messenger reinvents MMS to take on WhatsApp | The Verge  ↩

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Startup Jobs Asia aims to make startup careers as attractive as mainstream jobs

Startup Jobs Asia is the brainchild of human resources expert Ben Chew, and he is looking to make startup jobs more attractive to job seekers.

Ben Chew is an angel investor and entrepreneur who is running his own human resources consulting firm. Motivated by success stories of local startups such as HungryGoWhere’s exit, he decided to explore alternative investing in startups here in Singapore. Over his past six months of angel investing, the startups that he has met have asked him if his recruitment business can help them to hire developer, co-founders and others. With a little encouragement from a media industry veteran friend, Ben decided to take the plunge and build Startup Jobs Asia.

With the goal of “Building world class companies in Asia, one talent at a time”, Startup Jobs Asia looks to be more than just a job portal for startups. The service looks to provide startups with more leverage when reaching out to talent. By combining the online portal with his recruitment skills, Ben hopes that he can help startups present their jobs in a more attractive manner in order to entice talent, even those that are in the corporate world, to think about joining them. The online portal is just the beginning, Ben is looking to combine this with offline engagements.

Ben is currently working with three other individuals to grow the human capital ecosystem for startups. As of now, Ben mentioned a member of the team is focusing on growing its Malaysia and Indonesia reach, while another is focused on China. The team plans to expand to Thailand soon as there is a potential local partner interested to carry out their operations there.

Ben commented on Startup Jobs Asia’s progress and Singapore’s talent pool for startups, “We view Singapore as an important country to ensure success before we even start offline engagements. Singapore is one of the great startup destination with all the infrastructure like funding, grants, mentorship, co-working space and others. We have plenty of talent here, just that the vibe and human capital ecosystem is not ready. Only when there is capable talent willing to join startups, like how they prefer to join the mainstream career options, then startups can scale further and venture overseas which will bring about more Singapore entrepreneurship success stories. A good example will be like Silicon Valley where people find jobs at startups equally or even more “sexy” than mainstream jobs. In short, we hope to close this gap and we like to think and believe this is the next biggest challenge after a startup is funded.”

Understanding that language is a major barrier for Southeast Asia, Startup Jobs Asia is looking to work with local partners to better understand the local culture, languages and expertise. According to Ben, “Personally, I don’t believe that we can achieve all this by ourselves. This is why we seek to work with partners like the National Research Foundation and iJam incubators, as well as media partners like e27.”

Startup Jobs Asia currently has about 50 job postings since it was launched, which took about two weeks of active work. The local startup community seems to be rallying behind this initiative as Ben and his team have not need to run any advertising and promotional activities so far.

Talking about his experience on Startup Jobs Asia, Keith Ng of gamification startup Gametize said, ” I think Startup Jobs Asia is great for targeting enthusiasts in the startup scene. So, when the applicants come through the door, we can be pretty much sure these are already guys who are don’t want to join the corporate world, a culture that is diversely different from the startup world. I’m sure it isn’t the first one in Singapore, but definitely the first free one I know of. I have met some very good candidates.”

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Startup Jobs Asia aims to make startup careers as attractive as mainstream jobs

Startup Jobs Asia is the brainchild of human resources expert Ben Chew, and he is looking to make startup jobs more attractive to job seekers.

Ben Chew is an angel investor and entrepreneur who is running his own human resources consulting firm. Motivated by success stories of local startups such as HungryGoWhere’s exit, he decided to explore alternative investing in startups here in Singapore. Over his past six months of angel investing, the startups that he has met have asked him if his recruitment business can help them to hire developer, co-founders and others. With a little encouragement from a media industry veteran friend, Ben decided to take the plunge and build Startup Jobs Asia.

With the goal of “Building world class companies in Asia, one talent at a time”, Startup Jobs Asia looks to be more than just a job portal for startups. The service looks to provide startups with more leverage when reaching out to talent. By combining the online portal with his recruitment skills, Ben hopes that he can help startups present their jobs in a more attractive manner in order to entice talent, even those that are in the corporate world, to think about joining them. The online portal is just the beginning, Ben is looking to combine this with offline engagements.

Ben is currently working with three other individuals to grow the human capital ecosystem for startups. As of now, Ben mentioned a member of the team is focusing on growing its Malaysia and Indonesia reach, while another is focused on China. The team plans to expand to Thailand soon as there is a potential local partner interested to carry out their operations there.

Ben commented on Startup Jobs Asia’s progress and Singapore’s talent pool for startups, “We view Singapore as an important country to ensure success before we even start offline engagements. Singapore is one of the great startup destination with all the infrastructure like funding, grants, mentorship, co-working space and others. We have plenty of talent here, just that the vibe and human capital ecosystem is not ready. Only when there is capable talent willing to join startups, like how they prefer to join the mainstream career options, then startups can scale further and venture overseas which will bring about more Singapore entrepreneurship success stories. A good example will be like Silicon Valley where people find jobs at startups equally or even more “sexy” than mainstream jobs. In short, we hope to close this gap and we like to think and believe this is the next biggest challenge after a startup is funded.”

Understanding that language is a major barrier for Southeast Asia, Startup Jobs Asia is looking to work with local partners to better understand the local culture, languages and expertise. According to Ben, “Personally, I don’t believe that we can achieve all this by ourselves. This is why we seek to work with partners like the National Research Foundation and iJam incubators, as well as media partners like e27.”

Startup Jobs Asia currently has about 50 job postings since it was launched, which took about two weeks of active work. The local startup community seems to be rallying behind this initiative as Ben and his team have not need to run any advertising and promotional activities so far.

Talking about his experience on Startup Jobs Asia, Keith Ng of gamification startup Gametize said, ” I think Startup Jobs Asia is great for targeting enthusiasts in the startup scene. So, when the applicants come through the door, we can be pretty much sure these are already guys who are don’t want to join the corporate world, a culture that is diversely different from the startup world. I’m sure it isn’t the first one in Singapore, but definitely the first free one I know of. I have met some very good candidates.”

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Weak Demand for Apple’s iPhone 5? Chinese Economic Data May Hint at Truth

There has been a lot of discussion in the tech media recently following a Wall Street Journal story that suggested Apple had halved its order for iPhone 5s from supplier Foxconn in response to declining demand for the handset. The predictable backlash in the tech media was almost immediate. The truth is that we’ll have to wait for Apple’s sales numbers to be sure of the truth, but economic reports from China’s Henan province may point to a slight decline in the growth in demand for Apple iPhones. What the Henan data doesn’t point to is a huge cut in Apple’s iPhone orders.

Henan province is the home of one of Foxconn’s major manufacturing centers, and Foxconn Henan is responsible for producing more than half of the iPhones on the market today. Given that, Foxconn’s impact on Henan’s economy is tremendous, and the company accounts for more than 56 percent of the province’s total imports and exports. Recently-released economic data shows strong growth in the province and suggests Foxconn and its subsidiaries did nearly $3 billion in import/export business over the course of 2012.

But it also suggests that growth in demand for iPhones may be slowing. In 2011, phone exports from the province grew at a rate of 310 percent, but in 2012 that rate dropped to 251 percent. Is this evidence of decreased demand for the iPhone 5? No. But since Foxconn accounts for such a gigantic percentage of the province’s total exports, it could suggest that perhaps Apple’s consumer base is not growing as quickly as it once was. If true, that could ultimately lead to a reduction in orders. But I’ve seen nothing that substantiates the claims that Apple cut its orders in half. Since that order was reportedly given around a month ago in early to mid December, it certainly would have had some impact on Henan’s economic numbers for the year.

Nor have there been, as far as I’m aware, reports of mass layoffs at Foxconn or other Apple suppliers in December, which would certainly be likely in the event that Apple halved orders on one of Foxconn’s biggest manufacturing lines.

So, while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that demand for iPhones has dropped slightly when Apple does release its own numbers, I rather doubt we’ll be seeing anything so dramatic as a 50 percent reduction. If that had happened, Apple would likely be unable to stop news of the aftershocks from leaking out from its China suppliers.

(China Business News via Sina Tech)

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Echelon 2013 looks for the next batch of Asia’s most promising startups

Echelon 2012 was a huge success, having featured some of Asia’s most well-known startups including winner Builk, South Korean App Between, and mobile customer loyalty app Perx. This year, Echelon 2013 will be happening on 17 and 18 June, and is currently on a brand new hunt for the next batch of startups that could possibly take Asia by storm. As long as your startup is incorporated in an Asian country, and your product has not been featured in any of the earlier Echelons, you are definitely most welcome to apply. 

Startups interested in being part of this event must first fill up an online application. Do note that this online application ends 31st January, 2013. Successful applicants will then have the opportunity to not only feature their startups and pitch at the Satellites and at the Startup Marketplace, but also get to enjoy valuable access to experienced investors for funding and partnership opportunities. The last stage of this event will see the final top 10 startups pitch for the Echelon 2013 Startup Award.

Register your startup here by 31st January, 2013.

The post Echelon 2013 looks for the next batch of Asia’s most promising startups appeared first on SGE.

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Alibaba CEO Jack Ma Call It Quits, Still Pulling Strings from Behind the Screen

Jack Ma, the legendary founder/CEO and spiritual leader of Chinese ecommerce conglomerate Alibaba announced to step down as CEO of Alibaba by May 10th of this year, citing his “not young anymore” and “opening up room for the younger generations”. He’ll remain as chairman of the group though.

The announcement came after Alibaba’s latest restructure in which Alibaba was reorganized into 25 business units. The third time over a time span of about a year and a half. In June of 2011, Alibaba spun off Taobao into three independent entities including Taobao the marketplace (taobao.com), Taobao Mall (tmall.com) and Etao.com, aligned with other entities like Alipay and Aliyun. Then in last July, Mr. Ma reshuffled Alibaba’s subsidiaries to form seven business segments in a so-called “One Company” strategy which didn’t last long.

Mr. Ma said that the group would find a new CEO and announce the appointment on May 10th, also the 10th anniversary of Taobao.com.

 

Still Pulling Strings From Behind the Screen

Even resigning his post, 48-year-old Mr. Ma was thought to be keeping pulling the strings from behind the screen. He’d still map out important strategies and make big decisions for the company. The speculation was kinda confirmed by Alibaba PR director Yang Leilei’s response to media inquiries saying that “Mr. Ma will remain as chairman and make corporate-level strategies and decisions.”

Related posts:

1. Salute! Jack Ma and Alibaba's Cloud Service
2. Alibaba Spins off Group Buying Platform with Big Ambition
3. DST, Silver Lake And Yunfeng Capital To Buy $1.6B Alibaba Stake At $32B Valuation

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Alipay Shares Insights into Chinese Online Consuming Behaviors

Alipay, the largest and most popular Chinese online payment service, just shared its insights into its users’ online shopping behavior over the past year, given the service’s de facto dominating position in Chinese online payment market – Alipay claimed more than 3 million registered accounts in 2010 while according to a fresh new stats released yesterday by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) that as of last December China crossed 564 million netizens – the insights literally reflect Chinese people’s online consuming behaviors in general.

According to Alipay, though economically developed Zhejiang (14.85%), Guangdong (14.06%), Shanghai, Beijing and Jiangsu topped the five spots by average annual spending, underdeveloped regions experienced fastest growth compared to the big guys as tier 4 cities grew 64% yoy in online payment users and 68% yoy in payment amounts.

The plethora of mobile devices also boosted mobile payments in last year, according to Alipay, mobile payments via the service saw a stunning 546% growth from a year earlier. An interesting finding regarding mobile payment is that, people in small cities preferred paying through mobile channel as the fact reflects that mobile devices is more prevalent than PC in underdeveloped areas.

Alipay CFO Jing Dongxian told us that in 2012 the service enjoyed a daily transaction volume of more than RMB 6 billion yuan (US$ 964 million).

Rumor has it that Alipay looks to ramp up its mobile app to ride on the trend of mobile payment, Mr. Jing partly confirmed the rumor, saying that Alipay has been working on some features to turn your mobile phone into a wallet. He believed that with the advancing of mobile internet, the line between online and offline payment would be blurred, mobile Alipay could become what dubbed on-the-field pay or cloud pay in the foreseeable future.

 

 

Related posts:

1. More Trouble For Alipay? Chinese Banks To Compete Into Online Payment Space
2. Alipay Reaches Acquisition Deal With OnCard Payment, Extending International Reach
3. ByeBye Alipay, 360buy Got Married With UnionPay

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360buy Spun off Group-buying Arm

Chinese group-buying sector has long in chaos, the once ‘prosperous’ Lashou backed off on the verge of a long-rumored IPO, 24Quan got shut down, others like 55tuan and Meituan declared turning a profit, with mixed comments. To some venture capitalists, the claims – especially 55tuan – are laughable though the courage to say so is applaudable. Take any chance to make noises, it doesn’t hurt. But no one knows where the sector is heading for.

360buy, the second largest Chinese B2C by sales made a new move to spin off its group-buying arm into an independent operation with a dedicated domain name and website. The company said they took the necessary step in an aim to strengthen its group buying operation, they wanted to make it bigger and better.

With regards to the future developments of the new arm, the company said that it would be ran like an independent business and open platform that be home to qualified and suitable 3^rd parties. New payment solutions would also be baked into the service to help streamline and smooth its online payment process.

Related posts:

1. 55Tuan Taking over Ganji Group Buying Operation
2. Group Buying Model In China
3. Report: China Group Buying Sales Hit $1.74B in 2011

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Baidu Builds Fort Against 360 Search with Kingsoft Tie-up

Baidu the Chinese search engine reportedly has made a strategic investment into local antivirus software vendor KingSoft as a follow-up of the Baidu-Qihoo360 fight, though neither party confirmed the news yet.

The two was in talks long while ago when 360 just launched its own search offering to challenge Baidu, multiple sources implied. The tie-up between Baidu and Kingsoft is more of a strategic cooperation in a response to 360’s expansion rather than just money-wise investment.

Qihoo’s flagship product 360 Safe Guard ruled over local PC market, while Kingsoft, the long-established orthodox anti-virus software company also has its own approach to the Safe Guard. Baidu calls for a partner like Kingsoft to curb 360’s threat at least from the aspect of security.

Some industry insiders have suggested long ago that Baidu should invest into Sougou and/or Kingsoft to form a solid fort against Qihoo’s rivalry.

Baidu wasn’t the only one that looks to partnership in striking competitors. Qihoo recently held Google China’s hands. Though neither party revealed any details on the tie-up, the rumor still sent Qihoo’s stock to above 30 dollars per share.

Qihoo secretly made its own search advertising platform e.360.cn, a service resembles Baidu’s Phoenix Nest.

360 search advertising system

Related posts:

1. Beleaguering Baidu: Qihoo and Tencent Eye Search Market
2. Baidu Teams up with Bing to Offer English-language Search Service
3. Tencent to buy 15.68% of Kingsoft

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Tencent Weixin Reaches 300 Million Users, But the Team Slows Down

 

It takes Weixin, Tencent’s mobile messaging app, no more than two years to reach 300 million registered users, as announced by Weixin team. Launched on January 21st, 2011, Weixin has become one of the most used mobile apps in China. And its international expansion is expected to be the first case of a Chinese internet product with a sense-making international presence.

With an English name, WeChat, Weixin started its international expansion not long after its launch. In October 2011, an English version was and services became available in the U.S., Japan and to users of regions that use traditional Chinese. In December that year, users in one hundred countries could bundle WeChat with their mobile phone numbers. Later it enabled Facebook connection to please overseas users. Now it plans to place servers in the U.S. and southeast Asian countries.

Slowing Down on Purpose

Growing too fast, Weixin was about to become a full-fledged platform, with Moments, a path-like sharing feature, for users to share content, Official Accounts for enterprises and media to interact with audiences, and Weixin Membership card for offline merchants to do customer relationship management.

Before long, Wexin became everything the public expected the mobile Internet to be, media platform, mobile entertainment center, mobile shopping marketplace, the one app connecting the online world and the offline commerce world, and so on.

Its monetization potential became one of the hottest topics. Online content marketing talent started studying the new platform. MFHUI, an online cosmetics retailer, successfully sold products through Weixin. Tenpay, the payment solution of Tencent’s, planned to enable direct payments within Weixin in early 2013. Rumor went that Weixin was testing HTML5-based mobile games, which echoes what Pony Ma, Tencent CEO, pointed out the the first money Chinese internet companies would make from mobile end must be mobile games.

Instead of allowing all the mentioned to grow out of control, Weixin team adjusted policies to restrict the growth. For instance, it reduced the number of messages that official accounts could send to audience from three to one a day, to be less bother to users.

On the other hand, third parties came to realized that it wasn’t an almighty platform. A journalist from a local print newspaper announced they were about to drop Weixin as a prime distribution channel, saying its system isn’t good for reaching more readers and good interactions — at least not so good as Weibo (article in Chinese).

As Dai Zhikang, who leads the Tencent’s lifestyle e-commerce service, put it, “Weixin developed too fast. How did you feel about Weixin one year ago? You cannot feel the same one year later. At first we used Weixin to save money as sending text messages costs money. Later it was for sending pictures. Now we use it for group-messaging and voice messages, and for the Moments. Your ideas, including some for building an O2O business on top of it, are different one year later.”

 

Related posts:

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UC CEO on China Startup Scene in 2012, Revealing How Much A Chinese Startup Is

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CEO of UC Web, Yu Yongfu, wrote an article summarizing 2012 startup scene in China and gave talks at a couple of events on the mobile Internet. The conclusion is like that 2012 didn’t turn out to be a good year for Chinese startups.

“At the beginning of the year, a lot of people were full of confidence, believing that the spring for entrepreneurship was coming finally. When reaching the end of the year, however, we didn’t find many startups standing out. Look at the download charts of app markets. There still are the old guys. The reason is its too risky that some friends of VC circle even turned to UC, hoping to make strategic investments together with a platform.”

Big opportunities become smaller, while the small become bigger.

“In one hand, China Internet industry has been through the times of grass-root heroes. There’s few chances for entrepreneurs who’d want to build the next Baidu or Tencent. On the other hand, investments or acquisitions by big companies became the new normal. The chances of selling startups to big companies are big. There are more exits for entrepreneurs.”

It wasn’t until 2011 that internet giants in China like Tencent started making investments in startups or even acquired them – Yes, previously Tencent was accused of simply copying creations by others, startups or not. From then, Tencent invested in more than twenty companies, and acquired or took controlling stake in a handful of domestic startups, covering e-commerce, online travel, mobile apps, games, etc. Other big players, such as Baidu, Alibaba, Shanda, Qihoo and Sina, have invested in or acquired many Chinese startups in 2012 alone.

UC Web has invested in more than ten startups in mobile sector and several of them were acquired by big companies, according to Mr. Yu.

He estimates that there will be further consolidation in 2013. To startups, he suggests them “don’t waver” that there are way more choices to exit although few chances to build big platforms.

Futrure Opportunities

He thinks future opportunities lie in “redefining” and technology. Redefining refers to revolutionizing traditional industries, “like how Joyo, Vancl, 360Buy and Xiaomi transformed and disrupted traditional book, garment, home appliance and mobile phone transactions.” He also points to Weixin, which, he think, redefines instant messaging that voice and picture messaging disrupted text communication.

As China is full of copycats, technology is what to help startups stand out, Yu believes. The factor of technology will become the differentiator between products of similar ideas. “What we compete will be whether you can make it happen over whether you can come up with the idea.”

How much is a Chinese startup?

“In today’s China, the acquisition price for a startup, with five to ten million users and less than one hundred employees, is about ten to fifteen million dollars”, Mr. Yu gives you an idea.

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Getting Weird Server Hits from China? It May Not Be Hackers…

Bob.

Today’s Register brings us an amusing story that also has a bit of a moral to it: although it can be easy to blame Chinese hackers for everything, sometimes the answer to your tech mystery is something a bit more simple.

When a US tech company first noticed strange activity coming from China on its servers, the IT folks figured it was likely the work of Chinese hackers using a malware exploit, even though the activity was all happening through the user account of one of the firm’s top programmers. But when they had their ISP investigate the activity, it turned out that there was actually no hacking involved. Instead, the top programmer — “Bob” — had hired a Chinese software firm and outsourced his own job so that he could spend his workdays surfing Reddit and shopping on Ebay.

This was actually a surprisingly profitable arrangement until Bob was discovered and fired. His outsourced work had won him company awards, and he was even outsourcing freelance work he took on from other firms, all for about one-fifth of his regular salary. After the freelance work, he often made more than his regular six-figure salary for doing absolutely nothing other than forwarding his work along to contractors in Shenyang.

It’s actually sort of a genius plan, except for the fact that it ended up being pretty easy to trace. Still, I imagine that Bob has moved on to a new software firm where he’s quietly doing the same exact thing, outsourcing his work to China for a fraction of his salary while he kicks his own feet up and relaxes.

So to the next foreign company that finds strange hits coming from China on its servers, don’t assume it’s hackers! Sure, it might be. But it might also be one of your own employees taking advantage of China’s deep programming talent pool to get a little bit of extra rest and relaxation.

(via The Register)

The post Getting Weird Server Hits from China? It May Not Be Hackers… appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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