Currently, only in Shenzhen city opened this businesss. Sina found that tencent used the 2nd level domain named QQ tuan. Login from tuan.qq.com, Sina found default page was QQ tuan Shenzhen site, while Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing etc. have no this business yet.

QQ tuan business model is no difference from other main stream sites, all trade large orders with low price. Insiders analyzed QQ tuan would develop users taking advantage of its low dataflow, but before the end of this article, QQ tuan did not seem to be very hot.

Furthermore, Ganji Net launched group shopping web navigation page. News said domestic life classified site-Ganji.com announced to officially enter group shopping market, launching group shopping sites navigation rss page.

It is known that, Ganji’s Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou portal all have “group shopping navigation” entrance, which can be used to view all group shopping sites and goods information in each city.

NetEase forced the staff to use Enterprise IM which means that Netease’s intention to enter Enterprise IM Tool is gradually clear.

On May 28th, Netease IM tools-POPO launched Enterprise Edition; NetEase POPO in-house staff is starting to bind original account with the Enterprise account. NetEase provides in-house binding of corp account and the original POPO account and transfer of contact list.

Yesterday, stafff found enterprise net did not support common popo login, instead a corporate mail account was required to log, which also means since June 24, staff can only use enterprise version POPO. Enterprise POPO can only be used for internal communication, which creates inconvenience for the jobs that needs connection with outside.

IResearch Consulting announced early in January of the ranking of instant messaging software, in which Netease POPO has dropped out of the top 10 in market. Netease POPO has limited market-share and has not found a suitable model, therefore, turning to enterprise market become strategic.

Microsoft formed a joint venture with Shanghai Alliance Investment in 2005 to introduce MSN, an instant messaging platform and internet portal, to the mainland. But MSN has struggled to gain traction with Chinese users and compete effectively with homegrown titan Tencent Holdings? QQ platform.

Sohu IT news reported late yesterday, quoting investment community sources, that Shanghai Alliance had been looking to exit the joint venture since 2007 and that Microsoft was shopping around for new joint venture partners.

Microsoft and NetEase were close to completing a joint venture deal, sources told Sohu.

Source : Konaxis

Shenzhen-based Tencent, which popularized instant messaging in China and operates an online game portal and other Chinese Internet services, said it will invest about $300 million in Moscow-based Digital Sky, also known as DST. The companies plan to explore “new business opportunities” in the Russian-speaking Internet markets, said Tencent President Martin Lau in a joint statement Monday.

Digital Sky is known for its stakes in Russian Internet companies including Mail.ru, one of the country’s largest Web sites.

The step is the biggest commitment Tencent has made so far in taking its business outside of China, just as other Chinese online game companies are setting their sights abroad.

In addition to gaining entry to the Russian-speaking Internet market, Tencent may also benefit from Digital Skys stake in U.S. companies Facebook and Zynga Game Network Inc., the largest provider of online social games such as the games played on Facebook or on Apple Inc.’s iPhones. Last year, Digital Sky purchased a 3.5% stake in Facebook for $100 million, and has also invested $180 million in Zynga.

Through the deal, Tencent will get a roughly 10.26% stake in Digital Sky, as well as 0.51% of total voting power and the right to nominate one observer to Digital Sky’s board of directors.

Source : Konaxis

Since its spin-off from Time Warner, AOL has been trying to remake itself and is currently selling its non-core assets, including ICQ.

ICQ, whose name derived from the homophonic phrase “I seek you”, has 42 million active users. Among them, 18.5 million are from Russia, said Wednesday’s Beijing News.

Tencent’s QQ service, a Chinese answer to ICQ, is known for its reigning popularity on the Chinese mainland, which is reported to have over 300 million registered accounts.

Source : Konaxis

The important achievements by this Hong Kong-listed private enterprise in the field of instant messaging triggered a broad discussion inside the industry.

According to Tencent official data, on 19:52:58 of the March 5, 2010, the number of QQ concurrent users exceeded 100 million, and became one of the important tools for daily communication in China.
Tencent today produced specifically feature to celebrate for this, and interviewed dozens of Internet industry people to make interpretation of it.

Tencent released the first version in 1999, called OICQ, and later changed its name to QQ, and in rapid development in the following later to bypass the competitors to become the first major instant messaging software in China, and in 2004 was listed in Hong Kong.

Currently the largest shareholder of Tencent is media companies in Africa-Naspers, which owns 35.2% shares of Tencent.

Several sources said, ICQ’s bidding price was about 200 million U.S. dollars, but only one potential acquirer’s bid was higher than this amount. AOL spokesman declined to comment.

In November last year, there was news that AOL transferred its attention to content and advertising business, the company was planning to sell ICQ. Subsequently it was report that the bid for ICQ was by the traditional way, that is, the potential acquirer submitted bid to investment bank Allen & CO and Morgan Stanley hired by AOL.

The sources indicated that the potential acquirer had completed quotes, and AOL selected 4 buyers. It is said that a number of bidders were international Internet companies. ICQ has around the world 40 million to 50 million active users, outside the United States markets, especially in Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe and Israel and other countries and regions it is still popular.

Industry insiders speculated international companies which might bid including Russia Investment Group, Facebook’s investor DST, China’s Tencent, South African media giant-Naspers, the largest Internet portal Seznam of the Czech Republic and Russia’s largest search engine- Yandex. There are also people who think that Google is a major ICQ bidder.

No matter what price ICQ eventually will be sold at, it will be much lower than the price of AOL’s purchasing ICQ in 1998. ICQ was once the Internet’s most popular instant messaging tool, and AOL’s price then was 287 million U.S. dollars, moreover, the terms of the acquisition also included the extra fees of 120 million dollars offerred to ICQ team.

However, ICQ in the United States have failed to catch up with Microsoft, Yahoo and Google’s similar services. In addition, Facebook, and Twitter are rapidly rising in the Internet communications. AOL’s AIM and the performance is better than ICQ, and was once the most popular instant messaging services in the United States.

ICQ was originally developed by an Israeli start-ups company called Mirabilis. ICQ’s current headquarters remains in Israel, having about 100 employees and be able to achieve profitability.

In a statement over the weekend, China Mobile spokeswoman Rainie Lei said recent media reports that China Mobile is in talks with Tencent is “groundless.” Hong Kong-listed Tencent runs the popular Chinese instant messaging system QQ.

The statement came after local Internet portal Ifeng.com cited sources as saying over the weekend that a China Mobile delegation led by the company’s president Wang Jianzhou visited Tencent headquarters and the two sides held a discussion over the potential acquisition.

China Mobile launched its own instant messaging service, Fetion, in 2006, to attract more subscribers as part of an effort to increase its revenue.

According to the Xinhua report, by the end of September, Fetion ranked the third among instant message programs after Tencent and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN.

Source : Konaxis

Today, sources disclosed news to the world network that in June twitter Sina would also introduce twitter service which has a name of Sina Friends. Before this, Chinese domestic market has more than ten websites similar to twitter, such as, Shuo Shuo, Fan Fou, Ji Wai and so on. Their main advantages are good supports to the Chinese language, as well as the binding to domestic mobile communications service providers and real-time chat tools. The leading sites have not been involved in this business yet.

Reporters contacted relevant Sina staff on the matter, Sina said they did not know this news .

Twitter is a variant of instant messaging, which allows users to send the their latest updates and ideas in the form of text messages sent to cell phones and personalized Web sites groups, rather than the individuals. In 2006, a blog technology leader-founder of blogger.com-Evan Williams created a new company-Obvious-launched a Twitter service. Initially, the service was only used for sending text messages to the friends’ mobile phones. By the end of 2006, Obvious upgraded the service, the user need not to enter their own phone numbers but to receive and send messages by real-time information services and personalized Twitter site.

IResearch used Graveyard to carry out analysis for Ali Wangwang and found out: QQ and AliWangwang have the most extensive coverage, followed by MSN and Fetion.

IResearch report: QQ and Ali Wangwang are most extensively used IMs in China

IResearch report shows that in 2008 Q1-Q4 the number of users of Chinese IM products displays a three-level differentiation. QQ and Ali Wangwang have the most extensive quarterly coverage number: 0.17 billion, 70 million people; MSN and Fetion form the second echelon: 40 million and 50 million; other IM products, covering a relatively small number, into the third echelon.

The IM users growth for the whole year shows that Ali Wangwang has the the fastest growth: by the end of 2008, its number of users is over 100 million. Next to the QQ, it becomes China’s second IM which has more than 100 million users.