Internet Next rich gold mine: serving local life

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

Baidu, Google, Yahoo, Alibaba? Oh, those stories have become a thing of the past. Now more people are targeting the new Internet gold Mine: local life services. New Internet myths and Giants will be born in this billion-dollar market

At the beginning of December, in an office building in Xihu district of Hangzhou, the Li Zhi, named "Litsea Teeth", was distressed about money.

However, his distress but let a lot of people beat their chests, envy unceasingly. Because his problem is not to make money, but to spend money-starting next month, he must spend 100 million yuan in 12 months of cash!

Li is the founder of the Public Praise Network (koubei.com), spent 100 million yuan is the chairman of Alibaba board President Ma Yun issued the "Death order." October 2006, the Word-of-mouth network by Alibaba to buy millions of dollars in the bag, became after China's Yahoo second Alibaba acquired by the website. But Li Zhi Headache is, 2007 Alibaba in Word-of-mouth online investment tens of millions of yuan is still useless, Ma Yun again the New Year's "Burn money" task to increase to billion level.

"The popularity of the Word-of-mouth network has shown that Alibaba Group is very optimistic about the prospects for local life services," he said. In the next few years, the group's investment in the Word-of-mouth network will only increase and not decrease. December 5, Li Zhi in an interview with the Financial Times, revealed that next year's investment will focus on nurturing the market to encourage netizens to use and enjoy the benefits of Internet local life services.

In fact, in addition to the newly listed Alibaba, more capital is pouring into local life to serve this immature new industry.

Baidu former CTO Jianguo created a Love Network (aibang.com) has won the world's three investment institutions, one of the matrix company millions of U.S. dollar venture capital; Zhang created a public comment network (dianping.com) two times to obtain the investment including Red Bin Fund and other international famous venture capital institutions; Chen, Wu Shichung founder of the Cool News (kooxoo.com) received a joint venture with SIG two period of 12 million U.S. dollars financing. In addition, 58 with the city Network, 263, ebay's classified site visitors (kijiji.cn) and other established classified information sites are also to the local life services at all levels of rapid expansion.

Although the local life service market is still in the cultivation stage, each of the Web site business model is different, the profit model are immature, the whole market distance harvest. However, many internet people believe that the local life service will be the next Internet gold mine. New Internet myths and new giants like Baidu and Google may be born in this market.

"In my opinion, this field even allows any miracle to happen, the general trend, not to be missed, the rest is the question of time." Internet analyst Liu Xingliang the Financial Times.

Tens of billions of gold deposits

The huge business opportunities in the local life service market are not mirrors. In this regard, the success of classified information sites and a number of foreign search giants has confirmed this.

The most famous is the American classified information website craigslist.org. The site is now synonymous with the most successful online business. The 20-person Web site has a revenue of tens of millions of dollars a year and changes the way people live on the west coast of the United States. Now, the traditional American newspaper classified advertising revenue is due to the site and the sharp decline.

Search companies are also tapping into local life services with their search technologies.

A study last year showed that if the yellow Pages and local search were added together, Yahoo, Google would be the top two in the U.S. local life service market. Not long ago, Microsoft launched its own local search service, 411, aimed at strengthening the local network search and related services market to challenge rivals Yahoo and Google's leading position. In addition, AT&T, the telecoms giant, offers the yellowpages.com, the most popular yellow page service on the U.S. Internet.

An earlier study showed that in July 2006, 60% of the United States had used local search services, membership groups reached 109 million, search volume accounted for 1/4 of the internet search. Among them, 40% netizens are searching the surrounding information, and 59% of the netizens are searching for restaurants, cinemas and other information related to entertainment consumption.

The Kelsey report, an authoritative U.S. agency, predicts that local life search services are growing at a rate of twice times faster than universal search. The market 2006 market size of about 4.1 billion U.S. dollars, 2011 will reach 11.1 billion U.S. dollars, annual growth rate of 22.3%.

The potential demand for domestic users to search for local living suits is also enormous. CNNIC's findings show that in general search engine query demand, the content of a large number of Internet users is related to local life, but the general search engine does not specialize in this aspect of product optimization and development, can not fully match the public's search for life information needs.

Jianguo told the Financial Times that, with his previous experience in Baidu, 50%-60% of the search for universal search was local life search, where 10% of local searches contained direct business intent. Therefore, the value of local life search is much higher than that of universal search.

"Once the market breaks out, its size may even reach tens of billions of dollars," he said. "Li Zhi said. His argument is that the number of tertiary industry enterprises in China in the 2006 is close to 40 million. Among them, catering enterprises alone contributed 1 trillion yuan of GDP, accounting for 5% of the national GDP, catering industry has been for 16 consecutive years to maintain double growth. "Local life service is to meet the needs of people's basic necessities, all belong to the category of tertiary industry." There is no doubt that the potential business opportunities in this market are staggering. ”

Three kinds of website Prairie

Around the local life service, domestic search companies, classified information and other Internet companies from different directions launched the "Nuggets" movement. Under the catalysis of capital, the local life service market is in smoke and competition is on the verge of war.

However, due to the different understanding of local life services, the respective business models and features are not the same. At present, the domestic life service categories are mainly divided into three categories: one is 58 with the city Network, 263, customer gathered as the representative of the classified information model, these sites were born earlier, mainly to learn the current United States classified information mode, mainly to information dissemination, do not provide yellow pages content.

The other is Word-of-mouth network, the public comment network, such as community reviews, yellow Pages of local life service model. In addition to obtaining local information, this kind of website is more important to realize the communication and sharing of the "folk opinion" online.

Another category is the local Life search service offered by traditional search sites. Baidu, Google, Sogou in this field to go earlier, mainly using map search technology to achieve and local information collection. Then, love Help network, cool News network and other emerging sites further. They achieve "intimate contact" with people's daily life by means of search technology.

These three types of local life service sites are all around people's daily necessities, but the emphasis and advantages are not consistent. With the gradual deepening of the application of the Internet, these three types of websites are also in the situation of blending.

For example, 58 with the city network, has been to provide housing rental, dating, carpool, second-hand trading, job seekers and many other information mainly, but recently, they began to intervene in the Yellow Pages services, launched the "famous shop recommended" and other columns, by region, the industry contains a large number of outstanding corporate data.

According to Li Zhi, Word-of-mouth network at present in the real estate, catering industry and other fields have some basic advantages, in the food and beverage life of the Yellow Pages has accumulated nearly 1 million, the listing information has accumulated 1400多万条 information, registered members have been 4.5 million. However, they also emphasize search capabilities. Recently, the Word-of-mouth network was selected as the best classified information site, and Sadie was named the best local life search engine.

By contrast, Jianguo's love network is somewhat fresher. This just launched the site through the map search technology and a large number of yellow pages of data, to provide users with local life "one-stop" search services, currently providing beer and skittles, travel accommodation, real estate shopping, home economics convenience, health care, such as 15 categories, 156 small categories of life services information. At the same time, the site also through the search Word-of-mouth network, 263 and other page content, to provide users with indirect comment services.

The giant's strike.

The great temptation of local life services has also made many internet giants itch.

Mr Ma apparently has long realised that there is a huge bond between local life services and Alibaba's own business. Alibaba last year bought Word-of-mouth net, at that time this is known as Ma Yun's most "special" move, now seems to have no lack of wisdom.

"Business-to-business and Business-to-consumer are bridges between buyers and sellers, as are Word-of-mouth networks." "Li Zhi to the Financial Times," recalls, "when I started a business, I stood at a microscopic point of view, MA always later talked to me after a while, I realized that the local life services can be perfect combination with Alibaba, but also with the help of the entire group of resources to achieve greater development." ”

The same is true. This year, the Word-of-mouth network and Alibaba under the same focus on the tertiary industry Taobao and Yahoo Web site for large-scale integration. At present, Taobao 50 million members can not register to the Word-of-mouth network to query information. At the same time, Yahoo members can more easily enjoy the web of Word-of-mouth content platform.

Google (Google China) is also eyeing it. At present, Google's life search is divided into housing, work, train tickets, goods, catering five columns. Not long ago, Google and the wireless service website 3G Portal announced the cooperative WAP Search service, one of the focus is the local search content and mobile phone to meet the needs of local life service users.

Although Baidu has not officially announced its foray into the local life search field. But cool news, love help network entrepreneurs are not lack of Baidu background. Therefore, some people in the industry forecast, relying on the same Baidu background, cool news and love help in the future may grow into a localized search engine with Baidu characteristics, "Baidu is more likely through easy acquisition of the way to form a local life search Baidu Department of search camp." Liu Xingliang said.

Local life services are also attracting the influx of other giant capital.

Data show that from 2006 to 2007, domestic and foreign capital investment enthusiasm in this area has been heating up. At present, as many as hundreds of related sites, the total capital operation around this area has reached hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars.