On the 10th, the 2011 Tencent Search Marketing China Tour kicked off in Shanghai. This was the first commercial promotion since the launch of Soso, Tencent's search engine. It was reported that this marketing promotion activity, totaling 10 events, would cover 9 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
Tencent's Chief Technology Officer, Xiong Minghua, mentioned that over the past five years, Tencent has invested 1.2 billion yuan in research and development for Soso, and plans to continue investing nearly 1 billion yuan next year.
"Currently, we do not have any performance indicators for Soso, but we hope that in 2 to 3 years, Soso can achieve profitability and rank among the top two in terms of revenue scale," said Xiong Minghua.
Xiong Minghua referred to this promotional campaign as "a landmark move for Tencent to achieve strategic transformation," which "initiates a new journey for Tencent Search to explore business models targeting commercial users."
According to Xiong Minghua, over the past decade, Tencent has been focused on business models targeting individual users and has achieved success; in the future, Tencent's exponential growth must be based on business models targeting commercial users. E-commerce and search-related advertising will become important components of the new business model and also reflect Tencent's strategic transformation.
"In several internet applications, search has already been proven to be a mature business model. Tencent will vigorously tap into these business opportunities and make it an indispensable part of all its businesses," Xiong Minghua described the company's motivation to strengthen its search business.
It is understood that the usage rate of search engines among Chinese internet users is 81.9%, with a user base of 375 million, and the scale of the Chinese search market reaches 4.32 billion yuan. Industry experts analyze that in the next three years, the economic scale of this market will continue to grow rapidly.
In fact, Tencent CEO Pony Ma himself has also expressed hopes for the search business on multiple occasions: "An increasing number of popular applications are joining our open platform. Soso serves as a natural link between these businesses, connecting fragmented user experiences into an organic whole, providing users with efficient one-stop search services."
However, compared to veteran search leaders like Baidu and Sogou, Soso still faces significant challenges.
But in Xiong Minghua's view, with more competitors entering the market, the market landscape may undergo subtle changes in the next one or two years.
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