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Yahoo! China Makes An Abrupt Turn
(China IT Watch Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)BEIJING, Apr 05, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --Highly squeezed by Baidu.com and Google.com, Yahoo! China today readjusted its Chinese search service by casting away the "one-search-frame model" that takes the page from Google's playbook.
Tian Jian, executive general manager of Yahoo! China, says that the old version is lack of interactivity in the Web 2.0 era and it may be suitable for Internet users in the west, but Chinese.
Yahoo! China simplified its main page in November 2005. But merely six months later, it returned to its old style by reading channels of latest news, music, photo, community, and so on.
In early this year, Yahoo! China integrated contents, communities, instant messaging, free email, and personal websites into one platform in a bid to provide one-stop experience to its users.
The reversion is just part of its long-term strategy. Next, Yahoo! China will come up with a long list of new services such as traveling search, shopping search, and even entertainment search.
At the latest, Yahoo! China will formally launch its shopping search service, which will cover not only Taobao.com, Alibaba.com, but also eBayeachnet.com, Dangdang, and Joyo.
The front page of Yahoo.cn has more functions and links to news buried deep within the site. It looks more like its American counterpart at Yahoo.com and less like its previous incarnation that looked like Google's homepage.
Tian Jian explains that unlike their American counterparts, Chinese netizens prefer lots of content to be included on the website.
Mao Xin, director the Website Operation Department of Yahoo! China, has told local media that the company will launch three vertical search features focusing on information, entertainment and life in the coming weeks.
Analysts quoted in local media say that Yahoo! China is undergoing these changes to gain back users it has lost as a result of its last appearance shift after being acquired by Alibaba.com.
Alibaba.com shifted Yahoo! China, which it acquired in October last year, from a portal to a search engine. The completion of the shift is one month ahead of the schedule of Jack Ma, chief executive officer of Alibaba.com, according to insiders.
Yahoo! China has undergone tremendous changes in shifting the core business into search in the past five months. To achieve the object, it carried out a series of moves, including the stabilization of management structure, recruitment of search talents, rearrangement of the original services and contents, renovation of some of the original brands, adjustment of the organization framework of 3721 channels nationwide, reshuffling business modules of emails and instant communications, and debut of some new brands, such as Yahoo! Assistant, Alibaba.com Internet Real Name, and ks.cn.yahoo.com.
The moves are based on the deep understanding of Alibaba.com and Yahoo! China, and this is also the very reason why there are no big personnel changes to the two companies in the process of integration, insiders noted.
Clear strategy is of great importance to the final success, and this is especially true for Yahoo! China. In terms of new strategy, Yahoo! China has completed the integration successfully in the past five months, which is considered a long shot in the industry. In addition, some new information is concluded and put forward in the process. For example, Yahoo! China will debut the new brand slogan in a high profile, The first Living Brand in China, according to Tian Jian.
[USD 1 = CNY 8.04362864]
From Beijing Morning Post, Page 1, Tuesday, April 04, 2006
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