China Digest: Douban series C funding rumor, Wei Search and more

Here are some interesting startup news from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) Douban, China’s homegrown social network, is rumored to have closed a “third, monster round” of financing for US$50 million. If true, it signals that Douban aims to play in the same league as the big boys. It’s still far behind the largest players (Qzone, Renren, and Pengyou), but probably it’ll continue to rise as Kaixin001 and 51.com declines. Unlike those latter two, Douban is far more than a flash-in-pan social network of games — it’s here to stay.

(2) With the new Sina Weibo version 4.0, users can access to some of their experimental features that are only accessible to beta testers. One noteworthy new feature is Wei Search, which completely overhauls the earlier version. Wei Search has a social-based search algorithm as well as a “Trending Weibos” section that will potentially serve advertising.

(3) According to the 8-K file Yahoo submitted to SEC, Alipay, an electronic payment service provider, will be listed within 10 years.

(4) Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, acquires 40% of Fanshu.com for RMB over 47.6 million (US$ 7.3 million), a digital publishing platform.

(5) NetEase CEO, Ding Lei recently announced that NetEase will release a light blogging platform called Lofter.com, to directly compete with DianDian, which is the clear market leader.

(6) NetEase, a large web portal and game vendor in China is reported to invest more than RMB 200 million (US$ 31 million) into its online video business, with special focus on copyrighted contents.

(7) Youku’s 2nd Quarter 2011 net revenue was US $30.6 million, a growth of 178% over the same period in 2010. In contrast, Tudou reported US $17.8 million net revenue, and growth of 94.5% over the same period.

(8) Rumors has been spreading about Baidu‘s potential acquisition of Tudou, the online video service which has gone a long and tough trip towards its IPO. Tudou was said to halt its IPO in the wake of Baidu’s proposal.

(9) In May, Tencent invested RMB 84.4 million (US$ 13.1m) in online travel service eLong and RMB 445 million (US$ 69.1m) in film production Huayi Brothers. As for June, Baidu invested RMB 306 million (US$ 47.6m) in another travel services aggregator Qunar. And in July, Alibaba Group led the US$ 50 million funding for group buying service Meituan. These three giants are investing more aggressively than before.

(10) A recent report from Analysis International, shows that for the second quarter of 2011, the Chinese online luxury goods market reached 3.45 billion yuan and is expected to hit 16 billion yuan total for the year. Luxury goods include jewellery, bags, clothes etc.

(11) Analysis International just released data that shows Youku, Tudou and Sohu share the top 3 positions for the online video advertising market for the second quarter of 2011.

(12) According to a report by Analysys International,  Taobao, a Beijing-based market research firm, 360buy and Joyo (Amazon China) sit atop a Q2 2011 B2C transaction volume chart. Suning Yigou, the online shopping initiative by the Chinese appliance franchise, unexpectedly replaced Dangdang, coming in fourth on the same chart.