"The largest technology stock offering in history is looming, but few in Silicon Valley seem to care."
Zero comments on this article after an hour on the front page of HN seems to prove the author's point.
Zero comments on this article after an hour on the front page of HN seems to prove the author's point.
It's definitely news worthy that they're going to IPO here in the US and they have a HUGE market in China/Asia... Even so, will they be able to crack the US consumer market? Time will tell, but so far, their efforts haven't born fruit.
They have a stealth 'target vertical' shopping experience that's developing right now in the Bay Area, however, they're significantly behind schedule, having trouble integrating teams from several locals and their product is dubiously "useful" at this stage of the game.
All of that being said, eventually they'll find some combination to get a foothold of the US market and it will be interesting to see what happens then as competition heats up.
Can you provide any more information on this, or pointers to sources? I'm v curious.
I'd say the reason most don't care much is there is massive cultural differences in the way the US and Chinese markets operate. Successful US companies have failed to penetrate China and many probably expect the reverse to be true as well.
How many people here buy from http://www.alibaba.com/ despite it being 15 years old?
Alibaba does, though, run other sites as mentioned in the article that are more along the lines of an eBay or Amazon and you would be right that those haven't caught on outside of China.
Not much to say. Shipping overseas is slow. I would have preferred amazon if it was an option.
Sina (a 'Chinese' internet company) was recently the target of regulatory action (suspension of a key licence) because they fell foul of those censorship laws. Action isn't targeted solely at non-Chinese companies. However, non-Chinese companies are less likely to want to comply (either due to the cost/complexity of doing so, or because to do so would be at odds with their core mission).
As an example of a company with a different approach, look at LinkedIn, which recently launched a Chinese interface to target mainland Chinese users.
The government selectively cracksdown on Internet companies when it wants to make a point, and turns blind eyes on others, arbitrarily, porn is quite common in the China market and very available...and even necessary for these companies to make a profit. They just choose one to slap on the wrists occasionally to make sure they don't get out of control.
In contrast, you'll find less porn on Facebook, G+, and YouTube then you will on RenRen, YouKu, Sina, and so on. Heck, WeChat is well known as the hookup app (so my wife won't let me go near it). But then this is similar to how prostitution is ubiquitous in the PRC vs. how it is very much underground in the US.
How would a legalistic American company operate in such an environment? China is not yet very much governed by rule of (impartial, fairly applied) law, so it is just impossible to do much without being able to live in the grayness (as most Chinese internet companies are able to do!).
Hah what? This is the first time I've heard this, so I asked a male, mainland chinese friend, using Wechat itself. His reply:
"Ew nope,kinda of.but I think all the social media tool has this function of hookup it really depends on the intention of users"
It's pretty much the default messaging tool for my social group in China. Married people, university students, even a mid-50s government official. If you're not on Wechat you're missing out!
Also a lot of even educated professionals don't realize what is going on around them. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance as well as successful propaganda ("these western problems can't happen here") going around, but entire huge subcultures that are out of control (like the mid-50s government official with 5 mistresses).
If I was going to point out a Chinese app for basically hookups and nothing else, it'd be 陌陌。That thing is pure, 100% Tinder/Grindr.
I'm scared to install it!
1. Checking where a group of friends is meeting or telling them they'll be a few mins late.
2. Sending groups of friends photos they've just taken of themselves and/or food.
3. Ordering taxis, which they will later pay for using the wechat payment feature, as that way both the passenger and taxi driver get a small subsidy from Tencent.
Simply not true. Some companies, Google for example, choose not to comply to Chinese governments' requests (I agree that's quite a lot of work), because they don't think that Chinese market is significant enough for them.
> There is no such restriction for Chinese companies wanting to operate in the west.
Think about Huawei.