CHINICT 2010: Tencent

May 27, 2010 | Filed Under CHINICT |

In brief: Liu Yugou is Deputy Director at Tencent, China’s largest Internet service portal with over 850 million users, and was interviewed by CHINICT President Franck Nazikian.

This is a summary of tweets sent during the interview.

  • Tencent is actually the 3rd largest market cap on the Web, after Google and Amazon. Nothing to do with the two!

  • If it’s not innovation — what is? Liu lived in the US before.
  • Yuguo Liu, rather, not Tuguo Liu — apologies. Started at Microsoft in Seattle.
  • Bing, Google, mentioned.
  • Tencent is #1 in China, #3 worldwide, re: Internet companies. Over 60% of Tencent staff working in R&D.
  • Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen: Tencent’s there in China.
  • 1 billion registered user accounts, 500-600+ million user accounts. 100 million online at the same time. Wow.
  • QQ.com: largest portal site in China; into online media, news.
  • How do you distinguish QQ (#1 in IM, CN) from MSN? Tencent grew over 12 years. 10 years: many small players.
  • ICQ. Lots of small IM players about 10 years ago. Can’t monetize solely from IM.
  • QQ is pretty much also about young generation dressing up virtual rooms. This really exists in China.
  • Which innovation from Tencent could be replicable outside CN, like in the US?
  • Look at SNSs in CN: Kaixin001, etc. Facebook in US. There are some differences folks can see.
  • Kaixin001 — “Facebook-like” — fastest growing SNS in CN.
  • Tencent Research Institute. Liu’s favourite part. :-) 1st research institute in CN (BJ, SH, SZ) for net research.
  • Research: cloud computing, multimedia, product development centre within lab, etc.
  • Upcoming Tencent products? A big pipeline in terms of products research lab is churning out.
  • http://labs.qq.com — this is where new stuff’s coming out from Tencent.
  • Where’s QQ 5 years down the line? Look back 5 years ago first.
  • In the next 5 years, we’re continuing investment in Spaces, IM; 2 factors, though: provide value for users; continue innovation.
  • Tencent filed 2,000+ patents over the past years. Wow that’s a lot.
  • International strategy?
  • Tencent open look for int’l market; but we need to understand market, user; just trying to get into the market.
  • 5 years is still quite a long time as of today; lots of opportunities. Want to serve CN users well.
  • Tencent one of the biggest entrepreneur-minded companies (like Google “has” been).
  • Tencent at heart, core of entrepreneur system. Liu been with MS.
  • For folks watching on @TechCrunch TV or InformationWeek TV: Should I remain in Silicon Valley or go on to China?
  • Again, answer is: core is to look for customers. Where’s the value for customers?
  • Again, you need guanxi.
  • Thank you Liu Yuguo.

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