Word-of-mouth Network Li Zhi: Based on a fair ranking of the whole market

Local search is an important tool for the localization of living communities, through the classification of information and the yellow pages and other content, in the United States has accounted for more than 1/4 of the search market in South Korea has more than 30% markets, but in China, this area has just begun.

On June 8, 2004, Mr. Li Zhi and several other start-up team members established a Word-of-mouth network with more than 3 million existing members. Word-of-mouth Network is committed to do the people's life a good guide, is currently China's largest localized "Eat, live, play" one of the living community. Recently, Eric Net exclusive interview with the Word-of-mouth Network CEO Lee, ask him to share the local search website operating experience.

advertising is the simplest and biggest market right now.

Eric: First of all, would you like to talk about some ideas about future profitability?

Li Zhi: First of all, our core is local search, it can achieve geographical and industry accurate positioning. I personally think that the advertising industry in the future will be a great revolutionary change, that is, we will be more accurate advertising business positioning. The first is a local search and consumer services Web site in the advertising of an innovation, and this innovation in the future advertising industry will be a great breakthrough.

Advertising is the first major breakthrough in this industry, advertising is currently the simplest and largest market, I just attract users to come, it is easy to attract businesses to advertise. This model is very simple, so we do not think that the market is very small, in fact, as long as the ultimate, then the user is a long tail of the market. I believe that in the future it will have a great impact on the advertising industry.

We are more focused than other search engines because we are targeting local life search rather than the entire Internet search, and dedicated industries can do more. Moreover, I believe that there will be many new patterns in the future in this area that we are concerned about.

Another point is that the Word-of-mouth model at the beginning shows a charm, in the long run, this local consumer-led site will play an important role in the entire E-commerce chain, all these things are based on a long-term consideration, I believe that the industry is very large. Like the food we're doing, the traditional catering industry last year has done 1 trillion of the total, and the size of the property is bigger.

Broader positioning and search applications are the biggest advantages

Eric: What are the advantages of business models compared to the public comments or other life search sites?

Li Zhi: From now on, we are concerned about a more comprehensive life consumption industry, at present we have two important industries, one is food and leisure, one is real estate transactions, and through the local search through, community interaction. In addition, there are flight inquiries, train inquiries, booking and other tools to integrate the services, so we have a broader positioning.

The second is that I just mentioned the local search, it runs through the catering, real estate two core business, its application in our website played a greater role. Open our website, you will find the top of the page is a search box, through which you can find a restaurant, you can rent a house, there are a variety of classified information, we provide a more extensive information than the public comments. For consumers, they also want the site to target the local life service is to provide a one-stop, so they do not need to go to different sites for registration, and the service is comprehensive, and more convenient. Our philosophy is to serve the entire life consumer industry users.

a fair sort of way to be based on the whole market

Iris: Now Word-of-mouth Network and other life search sites have introduced a model of membership restaurants, restaurants pay a certain fee to join members, the site will help promote it, do you think this has an impact on the search rankings? Will it be contradictory?

Li Zhi: Word-of-mouth users in the search, you will see a ranking based on Word-of-mouth index page. Word-of-mouth index from the members and users of the shop browsing, reviews, scoring, and ranked the list of food and beverage shops, for users and people for reference. This ranking is completely objective, even if the merchant is willing to pay to upgrade the rankings, we will not go to the promotion of them, because we want to provide a fair sort of information for everyone valuable reference. In the field of local life, we have to stand in the consumer's perspective to guide, if I lose the consumer, then I will lose the whole market in the future. Therefore, although I can make a lot of money in this way, but this way is not long-term, our position is long-term and fair.

In fact, I personally think that this is not inconsistent with the charges, on the one hand, Word-of-mouth index and charges are not necessarily linked, but if the business more attention to the promotion on the Internet, I believe that users will be more recognition of him, on the other hand, we can mark the merchant, but we will not follow this to sort, such as he is a public praise card members, We will show users a few fold of the mark, the user will choose, is to choose to discount the business, or choose the best word-of-mouth? The user decides for himself. These two questions are not contradictory, sometimes if the user chooses the merchant is not the Word-of-mouth card merchant, the user may judge according to the Word-of-mouth index. Like Google, he made a neutral, fair ranking on the left, on the right to do a promotion bit, or in the above there will be two to three positions, we can also learn from this, we do in the promotion of business when we just tell users this is enough to promote, must not camouflage, this does not affect the whole market of the main , but it is very beneficial to market promotion. Provide objective content, is our business way.