Interview: Word-of-mouth Network Li-State decryption classified web site development

Founded in 2004, and received the Alibaba Group Strategic Investment in 2006, the Word-of-mouth network has now grown into China's largest localized community and classified information Web site, with more than millions of members, including catering, real estate, recruitment and other areas, and the introduction of maps based on the function and classification information of local search.

"Local", "Search", "categorize", "community" ... When these keywords meet and blend perfectly together, the next gold mine in the internet world seems to have surfaced.

Then, the operation of Word-of-mouth network model, is the future development of classified information Web site is the only way? For the development of Word-of-mouth network, how to weigh the contradiction between "localization" and "expansion coverage"?

August 3, 2007 10 o'clock in the morning, the Silicon Valley power specially invited the founder of Word-of-mouth Network, CEO Li to visit the Silicon Valley dynamic live room, with netizens to discuss the development trend of community information website.

The following is a transcript of the interview:

Moderator: Everyone good friends, today we invited to the founder of Word-of-mouth Network CEO Li Zhi to communicate and interact.

Li Zhi: Everybody good friends.

Moderator: Word-of-mouth network reputation is very big, but also may have a lot of netizens are not very familiar with, please give a brief introduction.

Li Zhi: Word-of-mouth Network was founded on June 18, 04, we started the first day began to do classified information, local life of these content, mainly in the face of the local people to provide services. We had a strategic investment last year, and now we are in the area of local life, which I personally call local personal consumption.

Moderator: How many Members do we register now?

Li Zhi: Has more than 3.2 million, at the same time in a few months ago with Taobao cooperation, Taobao 40 million member of the register can be directly logged to the Word-of-mouth network.

Moderator: How many stations are there in the country now?

Li Zhi: It should be said that there are 2,862 counties and cities in the country that are technically open. All of our Silicon Valley Power users can go to the Word-of-mouth to find their home. However, we focus on the development of 30 to 50 key cities, the capital and economically developed cities as the main body.

Moderator: This content is provided by local partners, right?

Li Zhi: From several aspects, one is the provision of netizens, one is our own collection, in addition, there are partners and businesses to provide. In short, Word-of-mouth we understand as a living community, is a community can contribute content.

Moderator: now has been set up for three years, you want to make a website of Word-of-mouth, what is the planning of it?

Li Zhi: Yesterday when I was talking with my colleagues, we said that the future word-of-mouth can become what kind of a website, in the minds of ordinary people what kind of. He said that it was easy to obtain information at the same time, no matter what the message, or the direct access to government services and information. For example, some people mentioned the payment of water and electricity and other similar services, I personally think that this is the area of personal consumption, this is a very large market. Another point, in terms of industry, it belongs to the tertiary industry, all the clients are tertiary industries. This includes the shops, visits, bars and various laundries that we often talk about on both sides of the street, as well as government service agencies. People in a city life is the most important thing is to get these types of life service information, Word-of-mouth network is such a platform. The future people in the Word-of-mouth online can be very convenient to obtain information about the various types of life.

Moderator: You start your own business early, what is the factor that determines your entrepreneurial?

Li Zhi: It all comes from my own personal experience. I have been engaged in the Internet industry for seven or eight years, I often move to rent a house, go out to eat when also more trouble. I have been doing internet for so many years, so I know that the biggest advantage of internet is to solve the problem of information transparency and share. I believe this effort will make it easier for us to go out and find a house, so this is the original purpose of establishing such a website, and we have been walking around in this direction all along. We hope that through 5-10 years of efforts, so that people in every city can easily find houses, restaurants.

Moderator: Now there are a lot of websites are providing similar services, including the portal of the real estate channel, community, etc., what do you think of this competition?

Li Zhi: This information has been generated in many forums. But for a variety of reasons, many sites do not regard it as a major business, and the portal to the number of columns, they only think that this is a lively place of popularity. But it's hard to become a profit model if you really want to be bigger and stronger. Word-of-mouth network focus on this area, is that we have so many people and funds are spent in this area, our goal is to allow customers to enter the Word-of-mouth network can easily find this information. Portal has a lot of choices, I have news, mailboxes, forums and so on, so much more. We are telling users to find a simpler way to make it easier for users to get it.

Moderator: But in the beginning, they may have more advantages in terms of popularity?

Li Zhi: Popularity is an important factor in the development of the Internet for so many years. Word-of-mouth network itself has more than 3 million registered members of the accumulation, in addition, we have Taobao more than 40 million members, the future will be extended to Yahoo, Alibaba customer base, this is also our choice of Alibaba important reason. In the future, we will easily transplant all of Alibaba's e-commerce users to Word-of-mouth.

Moderator: What do you think of the market capacity of the domestic classified information market, especially the consumer category?

Li Zhi: You can see a lot of examples, classified information is now in the study of the total, but also included offline. China is now based on the classified information of offline newspapers, which has a size of tens of billions of. But really on the internet to make people more and more convenient access to and release of this information, I think also need to go through a lot of years of accumulation. Because a lot of people have no access to the Internet, there is the internet but did not form this habit, we have to cultivate their habits. In addition, we will break the routine, many people see this site looks are classified, everything has. But I personally think that the local search tool or the core engine will play a crucial role in the user's search for effective information. So Word-of-mouth network is now stepping up to do local search, is to enter the keyword after very easy to find the information around. Recently we have pushed a Word-of-mouth index, we will be based on the pros and cons of the order. This ranking is our painstaking efforts to condense out, so it is easy to help people to choose, we have been strengthening the basic research and development in this area.

Moderator: Will the future be published on this index some Consumer Reports?

Li Zhi: Just last week in Hangzhou, the first issue of Word-of-mouth Index Conference, we chose the top 50. There are more than 7,000 restaurants in Hangzhou, we first published the index in the restaurant industry. For example, Hangzhou outside home is a daily queue of restaurants, where is very popular. We combine its taste, environment, price ratio and so on, finally we use algorithm to calculate, and finally found that really and real society is very close. So those who are in the top 50 are basically going to have to queue up to eat there every day. We put this index to deal with, is to tell people in the future in the Word-of-mouth network can be sorted according to the choice of people.