Females In Entrepreneurship: Why No Love?
This is part of our coverage of the 2012 Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing. See our interviews and reports from the event here.In a discussion panel at The Global Mobile Internet Conference late this morning, three women - Gong Haiyan, CEO of Jiayuan.com; Tina Tao, COO and partner of Innovation Works; and Wang Hongyu, CEO of Panguso.com took to the stage to discuss women and entrepreneurship in China. The panel was moderated by Shen Yin, who is the founder of NTA Creative Communcations Agency -- and also a male. ...
Alibaba Confirms Some Taobao Staff Arrested For Accepting Bribes in ‘Recent Past’
Alibaba Group issued a statement this evening confirming reports that have been swirling for some time now, that a number of Taobao workers had in the past accepted bribes from e-commerce vendors.According to a report this evening by Bloomberg, Taobao has closed nine online stores from those vendors, and police have made some arrests. While this news has been making fresh headlines of late, our own inquiries with the company this evening indicate that the incidents go a little ways back. An Alibaba Group spokesperson elaborates:This issues raised are ...
Fujian Taobao Vendor Sentenced to Three Years for Selling Fake Converse Shoes
A Fujian woman who operated a Taobao shop selling fake Converse shoes was sentenced to three years in prison by a Fuzhou Drum Tower District court yesterday. The woman was also fined 200,000 RMB (~$32,000), in light of the fact that she had apparently earned more than 670,000 RMB (~$106,000) selling the fake canvas shoes.In 2008 Ms. Lin set up a business on Taobao with someone named Huang, and together they built a shop that specialized in selling "authentic" Converse sneakers, although they had no right to do that. ...
Chinese Scalpers Use E-Commerce Site to Sell Spots in German Consulate Queue
At the moment there’s quite a snarl-up of Chinese people waiting for a German visa at the nation’s consulates in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. That has inspired some enterprising scalpers to start selling a place in the queue for the mandatory face-to-face interview before a visitor visa is issued, offering the spot in the queue via the e-commerce site Taobao for between 500 and 2,000 RMB (US$80 to $320).The German visa waiting list is so long right now, that the WSJ China Edition found one woman who was told that ...
Mogujie: China’s Biggest Pinterest Clone is a Social Commerce Money Machine
The founder of China’s most popular Pinterest-like startup, Mogujie, has penned a blog post explaining his perceived formula for social media success on the web. Before hearing his idea, it’s worth noting that it sure is working out for Chen Qi (pictured below) himself, whose Mogujie site was revealed to be earning over 100,000 RMB ($15,900) per day in ad referral clicks to Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce site.Mogujie.com, according to its own stats, has quickly grown to have 9.5 million registered users by the end of last month, of whom ...
Taobao Launches Pinterest Clone Wantu
Everybody in China seems to be getting into the Pinterest clone business these days, so perhaps it was only a matter of time. This morning, Taobao launched its own social photo-sharing platform. Unsurprisingly, it looks and acts a lot like Pinterest:The site, which you can find at wantu.taobao.com, is called Wantu, or roughly: "Mischievous Rabbit." I'm not sure what makes the rabbit so mischievous -- perhaps it's his apparent penchant for copying other people's websites? -- but the name does follow in what appears to now be the official Alibaba ...
China’s E-Commerce Giant Launches its Taobao Browser
China’s e-commerce king, Taobao, now has a PC web browser of its own that’s aimed at - surprise, surprise - web shoppers and providing security when making online payments. In addition, it boasts mouse gestures, certain forms of ad-blocking, and a “dual-core” rendering engine that uses either WebKit or Trident - as used by Internet Explorer (IE) - depending on the task at hand.Taobao Browser came out a few weeks ago, and today got bumped up to v1.0.14. Its focus on enabling shopping means that the parent company’s product search ...
Gray Market iPhone Taobao Vendors Suddenly ‘On Vacation,’ Rumor Has MIIT Involved
Even though the iPhone 4S has been officially released in China, the gray market for Apple's pretty talking rectangle is alive and well. Suddenly, though, there are signs that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (which may be having its busiest week ever) may be stepping in to take a bite out of the online gray market in iPhones. Several major mobile phone shops on Taobao have suddenly posted "Vacation" notices and stopped selling anything.Specifically, popular shops like Very Mobile, Lanyou, Huayou Digital, Zhongyuan, and International Mobile have ...
Alibaba Targets Female Shoppers With Pinterest-Like Social Commerce Site
Alibaba’s product search engine, eTao, now has a Pinterest-like site of its own that’s designed to help with the shopping process. Called ‘Discover’ - at like.etao.com - it has just launched in beta, and has the usual array of images, options to ‘like’ and share, and all the other ephemera of a social pinboard site.But eTao Discover also has a buy button on every page (pictured below), indicating that this is putting the ‘commerce’ into social commerce. Focusing on women’s clothing and accessories, it’s clearly aimed at driving even ...
China’s Biggest Pinterest Clone Hints at Tie-Up With Alibaba’s eTao
Among the swarm of Pinterest clones in China in recent months, the largest independent/startup one is Mogujie with six million registered users. Its CEO and founder, Chen Qi, has hinted at a big development for his site in a recent tweet on his Weibo account. He says that Mogujie will tie-up with eTao, the product search engine run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, for what promises to be an interesting social commerce venture.Chen’s teaser (pictured below) says, in my rough translation:Excitedly, I can reveal a new product that’s ...
Meet Hedy, China’s Most Audacious Smartphone Cloners
Whoever works at the design department at Hedy (SHE:002027), a Chinese phone manufacturer, must have very worn-down Ctrl, C, and V keys on their keyboards because all their smartphone models are carbon-copy clones of devices by HTC (TPE:2498) and Samsung (005930:KS).Hedy is the English branding, while the Chinese name is ‘Qi Xi’ which is actually the official local brand for the soda drink 7-Up, so not even that is original.Ripping Off HTCThe Hedy H701 (pictured above) is a very blatant rip of the HTC Desire S. On Hedy’s own Tmall ...
QQ Users in China Pay For a Fake ‘Sent From My iPhone’ Hack
File this one under ‘people are vain’ and ‘not great publicity for Android.’ Some users of Tencent’s (HKG:0700) social network and IM service, QQ, are paying one of several dubious hackers up to 8 RMB (US$1.25) per month to have their status messages appear with a fake ‘Sent from my iPhone’ or ‘Sent from iPhone QQ’ tagline.The service is available only to Android users, as it requires usage of a modified version of the QQ for Android app which will transmit that fake tagline on your QQ IM profile, making ...
Chinese Vacation Home Rental Service Tujia Receives Series A Investment
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012
Indonesia’s Fimela Adds E-commerce to its Services With FimelaShop.com
May 15, 2012
Mixi Denies Nikkei Report that CEO Wants to Sell 55% Stake
May 15, 2012
Wolianxi App Helps you Organize Outings Fast
May 15, 2012
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