Tencent launches new portal to sharpen its competitive edge

Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's largest Internet company by revenue, introduces a new version of its QQ.com portal on Tuesday, as Web portals are being overshadowed by the latest Internet services, such as micro blogs.

QQ.com has incorporated its micro-blogging and online video services to diversify its text and picture displays.

It also has a greater plan to provide a different Web page for each user tailored to their individual interests and Web habits.

"Web portals are all alike, providing similar services to users," said Chen Juhong, editor-in-chief of QQ.com, adding that this is not wise as social networking services have changed the way Internet users access information.

In the United States, Web portals took up 16.7 percent of the time Internet users spent online in December, compared with 16.6 percent for services such as Facebook, according to the research company comScore Inc.

It forecast that social networking sites will "soon declare supremacy over portals".

In China, there is a similar situation.

Tencent's micro blog surpassed its portal at the end of 2010 in the number of times searches are made for it on Baidu.com, according to figures from Baidu Inc.

Tencent is not the first company to make changes to its portal in response to challenges from other Internet services.

Yahoo Inc earlier introduced My Yahoo, enabling users to combine their favorite features, content feeds and information on a single page.

"Efforts like My Yahoo failed, as they were just like mending and repairing a traditional Web portal, which cannot beat social networking services such as Facebook," said Xie Wen, a Chinese IT critic and former president of Yahoo China.

Traditional portals have to try different ways to fend off competition, even though they may fail, he added.

Dong Xu, an analyst with the domestic research company Analysys International, said portals can better translate their traffic to revenues if they manage to do well in providing tailor-made Web pages for users.

"Different users may see different advertisements, based on their interests, and this will be good news for advertisers," she said.

In the first quarter, Tencent generated $85.8 million in revenue from online advertising, according to its financial report, ranking first among all Web portals in the country for the first time.

Sina Corp followed with $78.5 million.

chenlimin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/03/2012 page15)