Renaming of Baidu Youa was Brewing

By admin on January 13, 2012

After receiving millions of dollars of investment and operating independently, Baidu Youa step up its pace of independence and development on new products. As Cai Hu, CEO of Baidu Youa disclosed from microblog that the name for our new product was a question we have been thinking for a long time. He also exposed that the new product basing on local life service will be launched at the end of the month.

At the end of November, Youa under Baidu was known announced receiving millions of dollars as co-investment from IDG-Accel and Qiming Ventures. The money will be used exclusively on local information and life service, and the new company was established and starts to operate on its own. After the separation, the new Youa Company will still be hold by Baidu and cooperate with other Baidu product lines comprehensively, but it will have a Baidu Building.

Some opinions pointed out that Baidu Youa is planning changing its name and domain name, and now a few options are in the womb waiting for the reply of Trade Mark Office. People guess that “youa” market position is not very clear between C2C, B2C and living information platform, maybe this rename aims to abandon the “historical baggage.”

Cai Hu admitted that after the establishment of new company, renaming was indeed a question they have been thinking, but no result came out right now. he disclosed that the new product on the basis of local life information service, which has been developed for several months, will be launched at the end of the month. Another insider revealed that Youa new product has passed the closed beta last Friday, and will inform media once they have latest news.

Youa official said there will be a new product launched lately. Now it’s in the phase of closed beta. New domain and new name will only be used on the coming product. But they could not give more detailed information about the domain and name presently. More information related to new product will be disclosed at right time. The product comes from the idea of O2O.

Since 2011, the concept of O2O takes root in China. Many websites of group purchasing, categorized information and comments are related to this model and are about to take a piece of cake in local market that worth in million. After Youa’s separation from Baidu and receiving large investment from VC, it also formally entered the market.

Cai Hu introduced that “Online order and Offline paying” is the simplest interpretation of O2O. Its core idea is how to solve the problem of consumer decision. O2O model won’t have too many competitors because, from all aspects such as capital investment, operating ability and product R&D, it’s not as simple as establishing a group purchase website with only a few people and thousands in money. He believes that its requirements will be much more than group purchasing websites. It has more challenges but also better future. Competition in future will be most probably between giants. “O2O is half seawater and half flame”.

 

Posted in | Leave a response

Tsinghua Professor Sued Baidu and Won the Lawsuit

By admin on August 22, 2011

Yesterday, the famous judgment for the case of Professor Cai Jiming of Tsinghua University, the leading figure behind holiday reform, suing Baidu for infringement was amended in the final judgment. Beijing’s First Intermediate Court believe that Baidu didn’t fulfill its obligation of management causing netizens’ abuse at Cai Jiming amplified, and should pay Cai Jiming 100000 yuan in compensation for his emotional distress.

In the first judgment, the court said that since Baidu immediately deleted all the personal abuse posts and information in Cai Jiming Bar in Baidu when it received Cai’s lawyer’s letter on October 15, 2009 and also blocked new posts from releasing at last, it didn’t make any mistake. Though Cai claimed that he had complained and connected with Baidu through Mr Liang orally and by telephone before October 13, 2009, yet Baidu didn’t take any necessary action at all, which enlarged the harm of personal abuse, Mr Cai could not provide enough evidence to prove, so the court didn’t consider it.

Regarding the statement court didn’t consider in the first judgment, the First Intermediate Court of the second judgment believed that Mr Liang had complained about the insulting remarks in Postbar of Baidu, but Baidu didn’t take relevant action in time, and didn’t deleted those posts only until Cai’s lawyer sent a formal letter, therefore Baidu should be liable for negligent of its duty on netizens’ personal abuse behavior during the period from Liang’s complain to the sending of official laywer’s letter. The court amended the first judgment and requested Baidu to pay 100000 yuan in compensation for Cai’s emotional distress and 5080 yuan notarial fee.

Before, the head of holiday system reform research group, Cai Jiming as a member of Central Committee of the CPPCC Standing Committee has called for canceling of golden week of May Day and “if condition permits, could cancel the holiday of National Day” but disagreed by many netizens who insulted him therefore in the Internet. He said that when the State Council canceled the golden week of May Day, “netizens with different opinions treated me like an object of releasing anger and insulted me personally through telephones, text messages and e-mails”, even established a post bar in name of Cai Jiming on Baidu’s platform, in which some netizens insulted Mr Cai with extremely nasty words while some even cursed his family or harassed him saying that they will “find someone to assassinate him”. Therefore, Cai sued Baidu demanding it to delete those abusive posts, close Cai Jiming Bar and demanding an apology be posted on Baidu’s forum homepage for more than two years and personal information of those who have insulted him, meanwhile to pay 2 million yuan in compensation for emotional distress and 100 thousand yuan for lawsuit charges.

After hearing the case in the first judgment, the court believed that there wasn’t any requirements in the law asking Internet service provider to take responsibility of checking every post appeared in the post bar, and Baidu had fulfilled its obligation of reminding before hand and providing effective complaining channel after hand. They believed that Cai Jiming, as a victim, has the right to know personal information of those who insulted him, so the court request Baidu to give him information of all users in the Cai Jiming Bar who had insulted him, and meanwhile rejected Cai’s other requirements. Cai was not satisfied for the result, so he sued again.

 

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Withdrew from the War of Microblogging

By admin on August 19, 2011

In the fierce war of microblogging, Baidu withdrew first. Days ago, a message posted on the Baidu Shuoba, saying that due to adjustments in the company’s operations, Shuoba is accepting no new user posts thereafter, and on August 22 the entire Shuoba service will be suspended. Right now the website has suspended new user signups.

Baidu Shuoba was launched in September last year with almost the same positioning as microbloggings of four other big websites. It encouraged users to concern about friends and send messages within 140 words. Different from national SNS platform at the time, Shuoba required a real name registration and to bind users’ accounts with their mobile phones, which was disagreed by many Internet users.

However, due to the fierce competition in microblogging sector, rivals represented by Sina and Tencent took away a large group of users, making Shuoba stayed in the floundering and embarrassing state for a long term. In May this year, the whole Shuoba team was merged into Baidu Tieba Department.

When logged in Baidu Shuoba yesterday, journalist found that there was a marked announcement reminding all users to backup their personal data before closure, and Shuoba later will provide download tools for personal data. Meanwhile, function services such as signup, audition and real-time hot topics have all been shut down.

Baidu related person expressed that despite the closure of Shuoba, the company are working to add more social networking components to Tieba to catch up with the social media craze in China. In addition, the company is working on a free, licensed music listening and downloading service called Ting which will also have SNS features.

Posted in | Leave a response

CCTV Exlusive: Baidu Promotes Deceptive Websites for Profit

By admin on August 17, 2011

Through Baidu, Ms. Yao searched an airline ticket website. However, she ends up with being cheated out of both money and ticket. A glance at Baidu’s sponsored links（baidu phoenix nest ads）will make it clear that fraud airline ticket websites, maintenance-service website and pharmaceutical websites are everywhere to be seen. As more and more internet users have fell prey to such websites, many customers refer to Baidu as “Baidu it then you will be swindled”. CCTV reporter’s unannounced visits to Baidu found that Baidu’s bid ranking system, though having undergone a series of reform and transformation, showed little improvement: Baidu is still flooded by deceptive websites. The more they pay, the higher ranking they would get.

A Fraud Airline Ticket Website Ranks First on Baidu

In June, Ms. Yao, who lives in Hangzhou, planned to go to Chongqing. When searching for the “Qunar.com” on Baidu, Ms. Yao found another airline ticket website ranked first on Baidu, and the ticket on that website is nearly one hundred Yuan cheaper. She thought that as a major searching website, Baidu would not provide bad links to the users, so she purchased 2 tickets on June 25 through this website. But right after she paid, the order disappeared. Finally Ms.Yao found out that this website is nothing but a fraud.

CCTV exclusive coverage on baidu phoenix program loophole
Video source: Sina.com.cn

A month later, when searching for “Qunar.com”, CCTV reporter found that of all the new sponsor links on Baidu, only one is the real “Qunar.com”. And on another website named 20diy, the reporter bought a Eastern Airlines ticket from Wuhan to Guangzhou for 446 yuan. But according to the Eastern Airlines customer service staff, that booking was not at all successful. Reporter then reported this case to the cyber police, who said the 20diy was a fraud websites.

Baidu’s Sponsored Links Are Full of Fraudulent information and Fake PPC Advertisers

CCTV reporter found that in addition to the fraud airline ticket websites, Baidu’s Sponsored Links are full of other fraudulent information. Apart from home appliances products, the reporter found that although Baidu had cleaned up some of pharmaceutical keyword results that had been exposed by the media, some of the keyword results are still very suspicious. When entered “ the treatment of fatty liver”, the top 3 links turned out on Baidu page have been marked as “ sponsored links”, of which the third one was a website named souwu.com. Under state provisions, the approval number for health food and health food advertisement, health food labeling, and persons not suitable must be explicitly labeled on the products. However, on this website, no information can be found about the state approval numbers,

In addition to information about illegal health products, infrared perspective glasses , whose sale was prohibited by the state, are also publicized online through Baidu.

Baidu Staff Avail Swindlers with Loopholes

How do these swindlers make their websites to become Baidu’s sponsored links? CCTV reporter then contacted Baidu.

Reporters firstly asked people to make a false weight-loss product web site, and then took a counterfeited copy of business license and permits to Baidu’s Marketing Center in Hebei Province. Although a staff of Baidu correspondent has pointed out the documents provided is false, he later managed to figure out a solution to the “problem”.

The staff said that the website can get approval by its qualifications. And he also found a copy of a company in Shijiazhuang for the reporter to make reference to. “Make yours similar like this one.” Following his instruction, reporter fared smoothly in the application process. From signing the contract to the verification procedure, Baidu raised no objection, nor did it make any investigation. In this way, Two completely non-existent companies openly made their way to the Baidu’s sponsored link.

Reporters also asked internet professionals to transform the already registered website “bj-baojianjx.com” to one that sells weight loss products, which also succeeded.

Whoever Pays More, Ranks Higher

On November 15 and 16, 2008, CCTV’s “News 30″ program made a series of reports on the problems of Baidu PPC search. In December that year, Baidu launched the Phoenix Nest program to replace the much-disputed PPC system. Baidu claimed that Phoenix Nest system will help the companies to save more money. To find out the truth, reporters once again conducted a survey.

Reporter had registered beforehand in Baidu Beijing Branch and Baidu Marketing Center in Hebei province two Baidu promoted accounts under the name of two companies. In these two accounts the reporter had made exactly the same key words, ideas and other related settings. Then he clicked to find that one of the companies was the top on the page while another is in the third place. What kind of criteria does Baidu adopt to determine the ranking of two companies with exactly the same settings?

According to the Baidu Marketing Center in Hebei province, the ranking is determined by the quality of products and the bidding. But reporter found through experiment that the Beijing BaoJian Company, formally ranked the third on Baidu’s list, jumped to the first place with a bidding only one yuan higher than the formal champion Shijiazhuang Long Xiang Company.

Before, other customers’ bidding could be also seen on the PPC system of Baidu promotion, but after the transformation this was no longer the case. In this regard, Baidu’s officials said one can estimate the bidding by using some estimator tools. Through the estimating the reporter founder out as for the key word “CNC drilling machine,” one need to bid for 36 yuan for one click on the product to make the product to be first on Baidu’s searching list. A 10-yuan-bidding would only make it to the 18th. But when reporter tried to make a 10-yuan bidding, they found that they were already the top on the page, not in the 18th place. Seeing this, reporter continued to lower the price and found that the actual bid was only 6.4 yuan for its website to be the first on the list. In other words, if the reporter were to rank first according to Baidu’s estimating systems, he would spend 29.4 for nothing at every single click on its products. Baidu officials explained that estimating tool does not take other factors of the account into consideration.  Therefore, it can only be a reference.

Reporters also found that Baidu’s choice of key-words setting is almost without any restriction, including many well-known trademarks. Reporter set the world-famous Quanjude as the promotion keywords, only to found that, in his astonishment, the link for the non-existed machinery company flared up right on the top of the sponsors links on the right side of Baidu webpage.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Stricten Phoenix Nest Application Process: Over Half Request Rejected

By admin on August 17, 2011

Since the end of last year when Baidu launched a sunshine campaign aiming at cracking down malign information, it has been screening and supervising deeply upon search marketing information through continuous upgrading technologies and a more strict managing system. As Baidu’s latest data shows, in this half year, under its strict qualification screening system, among all new customers who seeking for marketing on Baidu’s searching platform, more than half of them were rejected for incomplete qualifications of suspecting violations of laws or regulations.

Immediately after the releasing of data, journalist has a secrete investigation connecting Baidu Marketing Department as a businessman of a flight ticket selling company, and expressing the need for search marketing, but was told should provide company’s full name, business license and related certifications such as Air Association Qualification Certificate first, and could open a marketing account only after passing the audition. The next day, journalist provide as required a fake company name and a business license that has been PSed, but soon was rejected by Baidu for the reason that there were something wrong with company information and certification.

Currently, the industry of Internet Marketing is in a booming stage. According to the “Core Data of China’s Searching Engine Industry in Q1 of 2011” released by iResearch, the market scale of China’s searching engine market has reached 3.21 billion yuan in the first quarter accounting for 37.5% of the total scale of China’s Internet advertising market. Due to the precise targeting of customers, low marketing cost, high cost performance and obvious marketing effect, search marketing is becoming more and more popular among enterprises.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Reached Cooperation Agreement with BMW

By admin on August 16, 2011

The largest searching engine in China, Baidu, expressed on 8th that they has reached a cooperation agreement with the famous automaker BMW on vehicle-based information system searching technology.

Baidu claimed that the two parties will try to expand Internet service onto the vehicle platform. Through the vehicle’s information system, drivers could use Internet services any time they want, including searching, receiving and sending e-mails, maps and navigation.

Zhang Dongchen, the assistant president of Baidu, indicated that in Baidu’s view searching should not be limited to PC terminals or mobiles, but could expand to vehicles, the new platform for Internet, as navigation and vehicle-based multimedia developed.

Not long ago, Baidu entered into a cooperation agreement with Wasu Digital Television Media Group to provide search services on TV in some 100 domestic cities. Its cooperation with BMW means Baidu’s search services will go beyond PC, mobile phones and televisions and expand to automobiles for the first time.

Private cars in China will break through 80 million in 2011. Baidu claimed other vehicle makers also invited it for similar cooperation and it has been talking to them currently.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Purchased 40% Shares from Fanshu.com

By admin on August 16, 2011

Baidu has recently purchased 40% shares from Fanshu.com, a digital publishing websites. The news has been confirmed by both Baidu and Fanshu. But regarding the cooperation, the two parties both said that no related information could be revealed.
　　
Insiders believed that though Fanshu owned copyrights, it was lack of the ability to make profit, while selling shares to Baidu could cut down a large amount of cost. At the same time, Baidu Wenku could also enhance its capability of realization through both the good-quality copyright resources it gained from purchasing and the support of a relatively mature e-commerce platform.
　　
Former Managing Team May not be Able to Lead
　　
Fanshu.com was launched in July 2009 mainly selling digital books and e-books with 40 million yuan registered capital. Before Baidu joined in, 60% shares were held by Shanghai Founder and 40% by Zhong Sou. In 2010, Fanshu’s revenue was 1.141 million yuan while net loss was 21.5824 million yuan, and its revenue of first half of 2011 was 1.9 million yuan, net loss 11.442 million yuan.
　　
It was learned that Baidu has kept communicating with Fanshu about the purchase as early as September last year, but came with no result.
　　
On July 6, this year, information from Beijing Equity Exchange showed that Shanghai Digital Publishing Technology sold 40% shares of Fanshu at 47.6 million yuan. To calculate according to this price, the estimated value of Fanshu reaches 120 million yuan.
　　
After the purchase of 40% shares Baidu tied for the biggest institutional shareholders with Zhong Sou. Now the shares proportion held by Baidu, Zhong Sou and Shanghai Founder is 40%, 40% and 20% respectively. The change of shares proportion caused a wondering from external that whether the former managing team could still be the lead in the new board of directors in Fanshu.
　　
Journalist called Fanshu for answers to the above question but was declined by Zhao Ge, CEO of Fanshu.
　　
It is worth mentioning that Baidu Wenku and Fanshu have reached a deeper cooperation, and Fanshu has joined in the platform of Baidu Wenku promoting 19 copy righted books, which helps Baidu Wenku to acquire more copyright.
　　
Sun Peilin, the analyst of Eguan International, expressed regarding two parties’ cooperation that Baidu may increase its investment on Fanshu.com. Though Fanshu.com possesses a large amount of e-copyright publications, it did not get permission for selling these publications. On the other side, even though after launching, Fanshu has developed in dependence on the large copy right database built by Founder Apabi, it was short of competence for making profit. Selling their shares to Baidu could cut down a lot of cost, meanwhile, Baidu will provide flow rate for them, which brings much more benefit to Fanshu.
　　
An anonymous insider indicated that the social networking sites (SNS) represented by FACEBOOK are becoming resources of information for users gradually, and Baidu Wenku was endowed with an obvious feature of social sharing. So the possibility of Baidu entering into SNS field through Baidu Wenku could not be excluded, while Fanshu’s role would be to make profit through copyright.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Mobile Map Released IOS application

By admin on August 5, 2011

On August, 1, 2011, Baidu formally released a map client based on iOS operating system platform. At the same time, it also issued upgraded versions of Baidu Maps based on Android and Symbian S60, two other operating system platforms.
 
The iPhone version of Baidu Maps highlights Baidu Maps’ understanding of iPhone users. To cite the “positioning” function as an example, the iPhone version of Baidu map can do positioning with a gentle shake of the mobilephone. Besides, the function “searching the neighborhood” is another feature of this map.

As for the Android version of the Baidu map, the new Android V12 version is equipped with voice search function, making the map “being able to listen and think”—the only thing the user has to do is to tell the mobile phone where he wants to go. Besides, as China’s first virtual map that supports the camera mode, the upgraded Android mobile map can further optimize the “Virtual Map”.

And the key feature of Symbian S60 V2.1 version of the Baidu map is that it boasts a fast action speed and occupies less mobile phone traffic. And the new version improves the interactive details, network strategies and the original maps on the mobile phone. Besides, the AGPS support function, another newly-added function, helps to reduce its GPS’s searching and positioning time to within 20 seconds.

Baidu claimed that new version of the offline map adopts a self-extracting mode, which can save over 90% traffic of the mobile phone and improve the browsing speed to a 80% extend. It is reported that both the website maps and mobile maps have a great variety of new products undergoing a series of R&D and testing, some of which will be released in the near future.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Reached an Amicable Settlement with Three Major Record Companies

By admin on August 4, 2011

Under the auspices of the Beijing Higher People’s Court, Baidu reached an amicable settlement with three international record companies—Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music. The three record companies will authorize Baidu to upload their complete music catalogs and their upcoming music catalog, so Baidu users will be able to play the music online or download them directly from Baidu server. Since then, long years of copyright disputes between Baidu and the three international records companies, involving 128 popular songs, and a total amount of 63.5 million yuan have been completely resolved. In the future, hundreds of millions of Internet users can get from baidu a lot of music with legal copyrights.

In August, 2010, Beijing Higher People’s Court accepted and heard the appeal from 3 international record companies accusing Baidu MP3 search of providing links services, which constitutes copyright infringement. With such a huge amount of money involved, this case has generated great impact on international society, making itself a typical case of Internet copyright protection in China.

After hearing this appeal, Beijing Higher People’s Court deem that though a directed verdict of this case would be a simple solution, the conflicts between the two parties not only cannot be thusly solved, but also may be aggregated, jeopardizing the interests of hundreds of millions of Internet users, for the obligee own the copyrights of tens of thousands of songs, and Baidu search provide countless links to the related songs. For this reason, the court entrusted to the Mediation Center of the Internet Society of China for mediation. After six months of unremitting mediating efforts, the two sides eventually reached an amicable settlement on this matter.

Posted in | Leave a response

Baidu Rencai Set Up Branches in Seven Cities

By admin on July 27, 2011

While planning to draw investment to put its youa.com into independent operation, Baidu also made new moves in developing its online recruiting system. Tencent Technology has learned that Baidu has set up an independent, wholly owned subsidiary to be in charge of the online recruiting business, and will adopt an independent domain name for this website in August so as to make an official debut of the new brand.

It is reported that Baidu’s initial investment in the online recruiting market exceed 100 million yuan. And its independent subsidiary will make investment in various search engines, which means that Baidu will officially enter the online recruiting industry, sending the top three online recruiting websites, namely, jobs.com, zhaopin.com, and ChinaHR.com into worrying about their upper stream traffic will be diverted to the new website. In this case, the competition will become increasingly intense.

Executive Team All Comes from the Top Three Online Recruiting Websites

Baidu Rencai was founded in January 2011 as an independently-operated subsidiary of Baidu. The company’s full name was Shanghai Baidu Human Resource Consulting Co., Ltd. and its executive team comes from China’s top three largest recruitment websites. Back in this April, Baidu had already quietly launched beta version of rencaibaidu.com, and set up application that enables the users to move their resume directly from other online recruiting websites, which poses a great threat to jobs.com, zhaopin.com, and ChinaHR.com, the 3 major online recruiting website in China.

Informed sources revealed to Tencent Technologies that after several months of development, Baidu Rencai has set up branch offices in seven major cities(first-tier and second-tier) around China, serving a great number of customers from IT, finance, real estate, FMCG, automotive and energy industries.

According to them now baidu rencai has nearly 400 staff and it is expected to adopt an independent domain name and make a formal debut of the brand around August. This also means that Baidu will officially enter the field of online recruiting website industry and compete with the other three recruiting websites with all the more intensity.

In fact, with the recruiting market shifting from the real world to the cyber world, Baidu has long coveted to split a share of the market, a fact of which the three giants of online recruitment has been fully aware. Baidu’s intention has already shown in as early as last September when it had launched an open platform. For example, when enter “UI designer recruitment” in Baidu search box, there will be a lot of recruitment related information, of which the content are from the 58.com, ganji.com and some smaller recruiting website. Whereas the top three recruiting website in China always took a step back or determined not to be involved

An expert has explained that as these 3 websites are already industry bigwigs, it is not necessary for them to meddle with Baidu so as to grab a slice of the already tight recruiting market. And to make matter worse, joining the Baidu open platform may eventually make themselves restricted by the others.

With Baidu Rencai officially unveiled itself, the relationship between three major recruiting websites and Baidu will be more strained. They would invariably worry that Baidu would give top priority to rencaibaidu.com and cut their traffic. Tencent Technology called Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin.com, but he made no comment in this regard. And as for 51job.com and ChinaHR.com, there were no comment at all.

Analysts pointed out that for now the three major recruiting websites need not to worry for before Baidu Rencai has been fully developed, Baidu would not give top priority to it. Before, when asked the same question, Li Yanhong, Baidu’s CEO also said that its top priority would always be given to the best applications. “If we offer our users something they do not want or something not of a good quality and lost them because of that. It is more a loss than a gain.”

Statistics show that in 2010, 51jobs.com, zhaopin.com, and ChinaHR.com’s online recruiting services revenues were 543.07 million, 401.00million, 264.40 million respectively, up by 63.1%, 67.1%, 30.5% compared with that of 2009, among which the rate of 51job.com’s recruiting services revenue has been over 50% ever since the second quarter of 2010.

Posted in | Leave a response

Next Page »

Archives

Recent Comments