Monday, June 11, 2007

QQ, bookmarks and Web 2.0

Regular readers will know that I am intrigued by the way that explosive growth of the Internet and mobile in China are opening opportunities for new media which B2B companies in particular have generally been slow to recognise. You will also know that I am particularly intrigued by Tencent's enormously popular QQ instant messaging service. We posted just the other day about its B2B developments.

So, I read with great interest this posting at Mobinode about QQ's role in the social bookmarking business. They point out:

I still believe that if there is anyone can take an easy action to train the Chinese web2.0 market, it must be QQ. QQ’s kingdom is built on over 200million users, which is the fact most of the Chinese startup hate it but have to face it. If QQ want to promote some new services, online or offline, either way could be huge impact on the market. E.g. Tencent’s portal site QQ.com now is ranked No.10 by Alexa.

An interesting insight was exposed in the piece about QQ's attitude to the rest of the world:

Talked to Richard, the Director of QQ Innovation center, I have been told that the English version of QQ Bookmark is also under development. As a foreigner, you may never use QQ messenger, but most likely in the future, you could be QQ-ed by Tencent’s web2.0 service. Richard said that they would not put too much effort on promoting this service in the oversea market, but they felt they should open the door to the global web2.0 market.

In these ways, China looks more and more like the US. "Hey, rest of the world, you're welcome in, but don't expect us to make too much effort to welcome you: we have enough to keep us amused at home".

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