Very Social Network

Tencent's QQ Tests New Social Interaction Function for Close Friends

PANDAILY - QQ, a 23-year-old social networking platform operated by Tencent, is now trying out a new social function among close friends, allowing users to adopt virtual products and make them grow through chatting. This function has been tested and promoted within QQ, which has already launched a "Small World" video product focusing on short videos and live streaming.

See full article at Pandaily

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Tencent Net Profit Rises 46% But Misses Estimates

MARKET WATCH - Nov 12 - The company's net profit for the 3 months ended Sept. 30 rose to 5.68B yuan (US$927M) from 3.87B yuan a year earlier, but missed analysts' estimates for profit growth of 57%.Online games revenue grew 34% to 11.3B yuan from a year earlier in the quarter, but was flat from Q2. Analysts say Tencent's competitive advantage is in its hugely popular social-media mobile platforms WeChat and QQ, which the company uses to channel users to its mobile games. In Q3, there were 819M monthly active users of QQ and 468 million users of Weixin and WeChat.

See full article at Market Watch

New Site Sponsor, Viximo

SNW -- May 22 -- Viximo is a new Social Networking Watch site sponsor.  They offer a virtual goods platform suitable for social networking sites. Cyworld and QQ alone make hundreds of millions of dollars from virtual goods. Asia loves virtual goods, and Americans are turning on to them. Facebook and Hotornot are two success stories to reference in the U.S. market.  I'm told, two of the most important factors for a making virtual goods work on a site is in having  1. really great virtual goods, and  2. the right pricing and handling of money and virtual money. Viximo can help.  We're excited about virtual goods, and virtual currency and proud to have Viximo as a sponsor. As always, we vet our sponsors. No fluff is allowed on SNW. We recommend taking a look at Viximo.

Is China’s Social Network QZone The Biggest?

TECH CRUNCH -- Feb 24 -- Tencent, China’s largest Internet portal mostly known to us for its hugely popular instant messenger product QQ, published an updated report on the user numbers of its social network QZone last week. the report claims more than 200m registered users out of which 150m are active. (Facebook has 175m registered users). QQ has more social networks targeting various markets besides QZone. QQ Xiaoyou, a service targeting students in universities and high schools, has over 20m registered users and it only officially launched in January '09. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Many 'Friends' To Be Made Online, But What About $$?

THE CS MONITOR -- July 25 -- MySpace claims 73m users in the U.S. and Facebook has 37m, according to ComScore. "It's been a huge disconnect between traffic to SNS and revenue," says Debra Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer. "People are not particularly interested in clicking on the ads," says Mr. Brooks, who as editor of socialnetworkingwatch.com has followed the online industry for a decade. "Advertising needs to evolve, and social networks are forcing this change. People are really tired of being assaulted by ads, but they still love to buy." Two social network sites in Asia – qq.com, with 300m users in China, and cyworld.com, in South Korea – promote the buying and sending of on-screen items that can decorate a user's own home page or be sent as a gift to a friend. "It seems to be a distinctly Asian concept," Brooks says. Other ideas include selling online games or charging for different levels of access to a site. FULL ARTICLE @ THE CS MONITOR

Friendster Growing Fast

CNET NEWS -- Mar 31 -- According to latest ComScore data, Friendster is the 8th largest Web site on the planet and the 3rd largest social network in terms of traffic. In the last two months, Friendster moved from 12th place to 8th place, passing: Tencent (operator of QQ.com in China), Cyworld, NHN Corporation (operator of Naver, the top Korean Web portal) and Hi5. Over the last three months, Friendster grew a total of 8.7m uniques, or 31% -- more than any other social network. FULL ARTICLE @ C NET ASIA

Asia's Top Social Networks

READWRITE WEB -- Mar 30 -- Facebook has almost no presence in China, South Korea and Japan. In China, QQ dominates by far with 300m active accounts, Cyworld has close to 20m in South Korea while Mixi has 14m in Japan. Notably, QQ had 523m USD in revenues in 2007 and 224m operating profit, with only 13% coming from advertising. QQ and Cyworld make most of their money from digital goods - from background music to personalization, avatars or casual games. FULL ARTICLE @ READWRITE WEB

QQ, China's Largest Social Network

PSFK -- Mar 27 -- QQ which is run by Tencent, is the largest social network, instant messaging and gaming platform in China with over 300 million active users. The company recently announced their 2007 earnings. , including a whopping two thirds of revenue (344 million USD) coming from virtual goods and online games. Last year, QQ's virtual currency became so influential that the government looked into regulating.

QQ's 2007 figures
- Active accounts: 300 million (50% more than the number of Internet users in China)
- Revenues: $523m (close to 4x Facebook, at $150m)
- Operating profit: $224m

The most interesting is the split of revenues:
- Internet services (digital goods, games…): $344m (66%)
- Mobile services: $110m (21%)
- Online ads: $67m (13%)
FULL ARTICLE @ PSFK