sarcle
19th May 2006, 04:47 PM
But what about the old China.com side of the business? I fear that side of the business is always going to hobble along. It's a division that has no focus. Yes, China.com is a decent-sounding domain name, but that really doesn't mean much when you have whacky names like Yahoo, Google, Sohu, and Sina grabbing all the users.
If anything, China.com should focus purely on the external China market. They have a good domain name that foreigners will recognize. They will never be a top site for Chinese, so they should focus on the millions of foreign eyeballs that are looking and visiting China. In the minds of investors it might not be so sexy for a Chinese website to target foreigners, but there's lots of money to be made.
The China.com website recently added some javascript to the header of their main page to check the language of users' browsers and then point them to either the Chinese-language side of the site or to the English side of the site. This is a bad idea, circa 1999, that just causes confusion among users. It's an idea that is based in good intentions, but it just causes frustration.
I bring this language example up because it points to the schizophrenic nature of what China.com is trying to do. Either they focus on Chinese, or they focus on foreigners with their domain name, but past business models show that targeting both does not work. They are trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
I have a solution for them. :)
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=3958
If anything, China.com should focus purely on the external China market. They have a good domain name that foreigners will recognize. They will never be a top site for Chinese, so they should focus on the millions of foreign eyeballs that are looking and visiting China. In the minds of investors it might not be so sexy for a Chinese website to target foreigners, but there's lots of money to be made.
The China.com website recently added some javascript to the header of their main page to check the language of users' browsers and then point them to either the Chinese-language side of the site or to the English side of the site. This is a bad idea, circa 1999, that just causes confusion among users. It's an idea that is based in good intentions, but it just causes frustration.
I bring this language example up because it points to the schizophrenic nature of what China.com is trying to do. Either they focus on Chinese, or they focus on foreigners with their domain name, but past business models show that targeting both does not work. They are trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
I have a solution for them. :)
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=3958