The Shanghai Daily just ran a story entitled, “Alibaba expands into software“. From the article, Alibaba has set up another subsidiary named Alisoft that managed the software businesses for Alibaba. It is not the first time Alibaba has venture into software industry, prior to this, Alibaba has launched CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System version 1.2 in November this year. The establishment of Alisoft thus would help Alibaba further consolidated the software businesses under the umbrella of it.

On the Alisoft web page, one can observe the listed 4 steps of doing e-commerce in Alibaba, i.e. explore the business opportunity positively, establish the business connection effectively, tracking the business flow, and evaluate the performance of an organization scientifically (in Mandarin, I translated into English here). At the bottom of the page, one can download the software tool developed by Alibaba, i.e. AliTalk by clicking the blue button.

Alibaba is set to be China’s answer to eBay, and it seems that Alibaba is on the way building it right now.

According to a Chinese News (in Mandarin) in China, Google China has invested in Xunlei, i.e. Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology Ltd., a fast-growing Chinese P2P startup. Xunlei will officially announce this fundings investment from Google China on 5th Jan 2007.

Xunlei that founded in year 2003, started as a download site and recently switched its focus to P2P distribution market, mostly audio and video. For users, one only need to download and install its P2P (torrent) software, i.e. version 5.5.2.252 and run in their own personal PC, that’s simple is it. According to its product page, this software pre-installed Firefox 2 browser, support fast download, anti-virus, choices of skins, and etc.

Source: http://top.baidu.com/

I think Xunlei has caught the eyes of Google China is mainly due to its popularity. From the image listed above, Xunlei has ranked number 2, just behind qq in daily top 50 search in Baidu China. In term of product strategy, Xunlei has demonstrated some similarities with YouTube, and I also believe Xunlei has some comparative advantage to offer, especially it’s pure Chinese videos. I wonder Google China will capitalize this opportunity to explore the video advertising market in China? For Google, it seems that funding a potentially growth site in China is a good idea for them, at least it’s not the only strategy they can pursue with the dominant position they have in Internet, and money as well. But I really hope that Google will live up with their motto, i.e. “Don’t be evil” in China, and throughout the world.

According to an article on InformationWeek, Yahoo! has decided to close its news messages board temporarily, a message boards that allowed readers to comment on the Yahoo! News and participate in a discussion around it. In response this matter, the General Manager of Yahoo! News has left a message to the public and stated that Yahoo! News will plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for their readers in the coming next few months.

I strongly believed in the community commitment demonstrated by Yahoo! But I’m still a bit of surprise of this tactical move by Yahoo! I’m thinking on behalf of the users, Yahoo! could keep this existing message boards while in developing an upgrading version before it successfully go live.

I came across this social networking website for some time. It is run by a service provider namely, CondeNet, Inc. This service provider has produced some well-known magazines such as GQ, Men’s Vogue, House and Garden, Brides, Golf Digest, Wired, The New Yorker, just to name a few. Frankly, I was impressed by the magazines especially Wired and The New Yorker (my topic areas of interest) that they produced. Besides, I’m a bit of surprise why they go into the Internet and focused on the social networking area. I tend to believe that they’re more likely to succeed in traditional media especially magazine when they’ve been one of the leaders in this industry and also have some sort of resources in hands.

Flip, a new venture they found, still in beta version. I believed they’re not offer their services for free to the users eventually. As I read their user agreement, they might charged for a small fee to the users when it officially launched in next year. There is a good question arise when a new social networking site emerged on the web: A lot of people might lured to join this site, especially it’s free, but who’s going to bear the cost of web hosting and bandwidth? Is Flip going to pursue the advertising-supported business model? In other word, Flip could attained revenue as the advertising grew in order to cover their operational expenses in the future.

In term of strategy, I think Flip is targeting on the feminine market, especially the teenage girls market. But I think it’s unfair to compare Flip with other social networking sites, especially it’s still in beta version. In addition, I doubt that they’re going to pursuing the same type of strategy that executed by FaceBook and at one point offer the services to the public. FaceBook first launched as a social networking site that targeting students, later now they opened to the public.

In overall, this new venture reassures me that the social networking industry still has room to grow.

One of the websites that I frequently visit is Yahoo! Research. I admit that I was really impressed with the research projects Yahoo! was undertaking. One of the projects Yahoo! experimented with its existing search engine was Mindset: Intent-driven Search. In this project, Yahoo! used a new advanced algorithms in order to train an automated text classifier which determines whether any given web page is mostly “commercial” (e.g. it’s main purpose is to sell you something) or not.

As you can observe the picture (image) above, the slider moved in the extreme right direction which indicated Yahoo! regarded my blog, i.e. TagEdge.com as a “non-commercial” website. In other word, TagEdge is tend to be more informational on Yahoo! Mindset.

My sense is that many web readers are tend to visit informational websites, such as blogs, social networking sites, or subscribe to feeds, and etc. I’m not sure when Yahoo! going to integrate this mindset-based search with its search engine. However, it will be a great news if we know a particular web page whether it is an informational or commercial driven on the search results even before we click on it.

Kudos to Yahoo! Research.

Skype has released a new version of software, namely 3.0.0.1.9.8 on Windows platform. It is a software that included some important fixes when compared to the previous version. According to this article from SkypeGarage, some changes are made to these bugs, such as app2app incoming connections from non-authorized buddies, e-mail validation, SMS number verification, and etc. You can download this newest version of Skype software through this link provided here.

This software is widely believed by the market that Skype will continue its strategy in penetrating the corporate market. As you can see here, most of the features listed above are all cater to the daily businesses’ needs. While I visit their website, Skype has offered a cheap SMS and calls to phones worldwide. In addition, this new version will also allows system administrators to configure and control the use across a corporate.

My sense is that Skype has a strong impression that it’s a freeware in the market. I wonder how it is going to switch from a freeware product model to a business model that could make a huge money from the corporate. Since Skype has been acquired by eBay in 2005, I still guessing on how eBay going to integrate the Skype product with its existing eBay’s online marketplace. But I sincerely hope eBay could reinvent Skype’s business model and advancing its leadership in Internet voice communications.

Today is not a good day especially for most of the Asian Internet users including me. Bloomberg just published an article on the web, entitled, ‘Singapore Telecom, PCCW Say Internet Disrupted by Taiwan Quakes‘. The Internet service in Asia slowed down after three earthquakes hit southern Taiwan yesterday. Here’s are the official announcements from the several leading telecommunications company in Asian countries, i.e. Singapore’s SingTel, Malaysia’s TMnet, and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom (in Mandarin), just to name a few.

The situation could be even worse, according to the Bloomberg’s updated news pertaining to this issue, the disruption could not be solved instantly and this is mainly due to the fact that the repairs may consume up to two to three weeks. That brought a huge impact on the financial market because most of the trading are based on the web and the traders are having difficulties in accessing the Internet.

I believe the web (Internet access) has revolutionized the way people, including me when conduct the social lives. In fact, technological innovation has greater effects than most people could realized. I wonder when the social context is altered, the consumer’s behavior also changed. On the personal level, I also can’t access my Emails, blogs, news headlines this morning. It is also important to note that the Internet disruption will inevitably result in significant damage to an organization, and an organization’s reputation can be more costly in the long run. Put an example, a potential customer from Europe may not trust a particular Asian broker firm when he/she can’t even access the price of a particular stock or database of this broker firm. I came across such statement that stated major IT failure was not a serious concern for Asian companies, I hope companies in Asia will not only perform a postmortem of the incident, they will also plan the potentially remedies to dealing with such incident that might happen in the future.

Its Christmas today and I have pushed a new TagEdge site a couple of hours ago with a different header, and hence would make this blog a different look and feel. I will design a new style to the TagEdge and this is part of my plans in year 2007. Since this is a blog that tracking the new internet startups, and new software companies, I would very much like the idea to make this blog as one of the clear examples of what a ‘web 2.0′ blog design was about.

In reality, my focus on this blog is still the content and the linkings that would benefit the readers. I believed there is a theme design trap that happening amongst the web community. In real life, I observed some of my friends fall into this kind of trap, and hence they neglected the most important element of what a blog is, i.e. the good content. They spent month-by-month in designing a good theme, however, frustration led them killed the projects, and in consequence, they canceled the web hosting packages as well. However, I’m not concluded that design is not important, I still believe design is a one of the defining factors in the success or failure of any blog.

Bottom line: It’s become a norm that a blog with the good design and content will make readers come back and subscribe, but it’s also becoming harder and harder to find the content wise of a blog that make readers feel emotionally connected.