Not to replace the noise of my fellow bloggers on this one, I thought I would just write a quick one. It seems absurd that many are attributing mediocre $7.8 billion evaluation to Alibaba based on its 17% IPO release of 1.3 billion shares of stock. Why? For one, Alibaba has a closer correlation with Western pricing due to its primary function as a b2b export platform - i.e. higher revenue margins. And judging by Baidu’s market cap (NASDAQ:BIDU) of 10 billion, the calculations are simply absurd. After all Baidu’s revenue is still 100% tied to Chinese yuan and China’s online advertising growth (which is behind U.S.), thus valuing each click at about 10-15 less that of Google’s. Moreover, whereas Baidu’s revenue for 2007 only reached around 400M, Alibaba already surpassed 1 billion–with Goldman Sachs’ prediction for 3.13 by the end of 2008. Finally, what is Alibaba? Alibaba is a b2b platform with over 1 million business customers that charges a base of $5,000 in addition to a range of other services (ranging from document translation to on-site photo shooting, etc). It is a leading SB2C/C2C platform in China through Taobao. And of course, it is a future PayPal of China with its new AliPay system.

Oh well, I always knew those stock guys are full of.. - I digress.

On a second note, 247RealMedia is making attempts to show how big it is on a China scene. All of this is nice but if they were really serious about that I would think their new office would be openning up in Beijing not in Seoul. Don’t they know better? They do–in fact know quite well how big (revenue-wise) search marketing will be in China within the next 5 years (everyone knows it). So why aren’t they there? Simply because the money they would like to be making now are not there yet. Unfortunatelly (or otherwise), by the time they money is there it might be already too late.

Update: Just found out about this: Alibaba.com Opens European Office In Geneva - right before IPO, interesting

Update 2 (Nov 06): at the close of trade Alibaba.com stock was HK$39.50 ($5.09). Market cap is now $25.17 billion.

Filed under: China Market | »

Tourist Hot Topic List, as it might be translated, is a summary of searches on Google of tourist destinations. It tracks most popular locations by categories: foreign travel, local, agents, access to water, relics, grassland, etc… Launched today, the project is still in the labs.

All of this is somewhat simillar to an earlier launch by Baidu of an Olympic channel, which combined a summary of web links and images from all major searches. Seems like Google is following the track but is trying to move into the space unnoticed.

Filed under: China Market | »

Note: Although I didn’t write this exactly about development of Internet in China, I’m posting it here because it was recently included in a future publication about global social networks.

Whether its myspace or facebook, there is enough talk about them worldwide for global brand recognition. Just the recent addition of 100K members from Hong Kong in one week is a point worth noting. U.K. on its own provides facebook with over 1 million registered users. So what does all of this really mean? Will facebook overtake every single foreign market? Will it become the dominant platform for personal connections, interactions and information screener—at least for some demographics? Will it perhaps become a leader for English speaking countries? Do foreign languages represented within fb mean anything in terms of future adoption? Finally, how to explain the growing rise of smaller social networking site – or are they simply following the hype?

The answer to many of these questions is a simple no. Why? Well, because facebook’s initial unique target audience is exactly what attracted college students in the first place. It created a network, a filter, a community – that had something in common. After all, that’s what brand is all about: central idea and theme. Sure there is myspace, the site that completely disregards this concept of “common” – but then that’s exactly why it appealed to a certain type of audience (and primarily) during the earlier years of www. It caught up because people who never knew how to reach out for information (whatever that might be) were finally given a remote control into the internet. While some of us were reaching out to use google and wikipedia, others simply chose to sail with the media—myspace, the company.

Yet, the world is changing and the amount of information out there is staggering. People make claims stating how much more “bad news” is happening globally, but then fail to notice how much more connected the world has become. The problem of yesterday is no longer the problem of today! The information is there, it is how we filter the rest that matters! There are thousands of blogs covering local city events – whom do I spare my attention? Editorship, Style, Language Use – do I use these to compare (on thousands of blogs)?

Or should I perhaps trust my friends’ judgment as a filter? Sure, sounds good! But then I’ve a variety of friends: some I know from birth, others speak only Chinese, a few live in Russia – surely their knowledge of each single issue is not the same. Do I really want to know about the sexual interests of a friend I know from work? Then perhaps I could specify limits to what information I’m willing to accept from others, right? Wrong! Internet allows us to expand our knowledge, why limit ourselves to what we already know?

That’s where the global facebook fails. It provides a filter based on my friends, not their knowledge of any particular subject. Global facebook no longer has a brand! That’s why Google exists and Yahoo is losing on revenue; whereas local social networks matter because they provide a specific central theme for a particular audience—however large that might be. On a Russian career network I will trust opinions about Russia’s job market. On dogster I will find the best information about dogs…

Sure facebook might integrate locales. I might even feel partly isolated from the outside world (i.e. other languages) - but all of that is only on the surface. Micro information can only be dealt with on a micro level.

So while most are trying to figure our how to build the next global social network, the answer is quite simple: find a solution to integrate all without replacing them! Perhaps that’s where the evolution of feed readers will take us – who knows?

Filed under: Leads, Generate Leads for Private or Small Business | 7 Comments »