51.com Alliance Giants: Tencent faces severe challenges

Since last December, the six or seven-month-old 51.com third-round financing plan has finally come to an end. From the previous opinions to the current dust settles, as a heavyweight cooperation, the giant Shi Yuzhu and the 51-East hand to attract the industry's eyes.

July 1, giant network and 51.com announced that the two sides have reached a final investment agreement, the giant network will spend about 51 million dollars in cash to acquire the other 25% of the equity, and become its strategic investors and the single largest shareholder. In the future, the two sides will carry out in-depth cooperation in each other's business.

The two sides, the industry generally think it has a great impact on the development of the domestic Internet, marking the domestic online gaming industry and SNS social network industry appeared the first intersection, online games community and community to do online games has gradually been the industry's concern and recognition.

But more noteworthy is that after the cooperation reached, the 51.com and QQ "Blood spell" again opened the curtain, Tencent or will face serious challenges.

　　The wonders of the Internet

51.com reputation is not good, but never lack of news, from the so-called a hundred thousand of people registered digital hype, to the insider joke so-called "Miss concentration camp", and then to today's three times financing, 51.com rapid development.

January 28, 2008, Baidu and Peking University co-founded the "Chinese Search Behavior Research Center" officially released the "2007 China Space Community (blog) Research Report". According to the report, the space community developed rapidly in the 2007, and 51.com became the second largest community website in China after QQ. The report predicts that in 2008, the QQ space and 51.com will remain the spatial community site overlord, and 51.com has the potential to catch up.

51.com was founded in August 2005 by Pang East, positioning for the blog, Friends and other network application services. From May 2006 onwards, 51.com has been 2 times received by the Sequoia Capital, Haina (Asia), Intel, Red Point VC investment in the 18 million U.S. dollar injection. The information shows that the current site registered users from the initial operation of the 200,000 growth to 120 million. August 2007, 51.com leapt to the global Top 20 website and proposed 2010 landing on Nasdaq. Its astonishing pace of development is seen as a development marvel of the Chinese Internet.

With MySpace as an idol, to the domestic QQ for reference, Pang led the 51.com to make various attempts, from the beginning of the blog, Friends and other network application services, to announce the launch of the Open Platform program, open 120 million of registered user resources to a third party, and then to join hands with a number of record companies to create "51." COM Hall of Fame "Entertainment marketing platform, 51.com constantly refurbished." Now it is again to see the game of this big cake.

"We will launch the first leisure online game at the end of this year, while MMORPG (massively multiplayer role-playing games) is not considered for the time being." June 3, 51.com chairman Pang said to the media east.

Pang East In fact very early have to do the idea of the game, this is not the first time in the 51.com game, as early as the first half of 2007, 51.com and Shanda has a game-related cooperation, the two sides jointly promote and operate the "push-man" game.

According to 51.com, it currently has 120 million registered users, active users 30 million, of which two or three of the urban Internet cafes in the low-end users accounted for the majority. Industry analysis, casual games can be faster to meet the needs of this part of the user, and can quickly spread out in the community-class sites, at the same time, relative to the MMORPG, development costs and risks lower, shorter cycle.

However, some experts believe that 51.com as a large community of friends into the field of play (especially in the field of large RPG or casual gaming) advantage is not obvious, because, for the moment, the success of the operation of the game includes good products and good game operation capabilities. As far as the product is concerned, 51.com lacks the experience of acting as a game product or the experience of independent research and development; In terms of operations, although the 51.com team can stand out from the competitive SNS site, the key success factors for the operation of the community website and the game are very different. It needs a very rich experience of the game to join hands with the company. The appearance of giants makes the situation turn.

　　Complementary and mutually beneficial cooperation

In all respects, the cooperation with the Giants was deliberately and positively facilitated by both sides, with the words Pang East as "mutually complementary."

In the past two years, the community web site has become a hot spot in the Internet, a considerable number of Internet entrepreneurs have looked at the community site, and even asserted that the next Google, will be born in the community site. And in the community of online games, the online gaming company's community has also been put on the agenda.

The trend of the combination of network community and online games industry has already been reflected in China. For example, Shanda in order to improve the strategic layout of its online games, has been the beginning of the investment of Chinese network and literature original website Jinjiang original network. Nine city's new president Chen Xiaowei also said that the nine cities will build interactive gaming community, as a major part of their four-dimensional strategy. Giant network has long been planning to implement the community of online gaming deployment. At the end of May this year, Shi Yuzhu said publicly: this year will devote a lot of resources to the construction and acquisition of network community. He believes that the online gaming community and network Community gaming is an important trend of industry development since this year.