Chinese Microblogging Startup, Zuosa is Looking for Buyer

By Gang Lu on July 22, 2010 · Filed Under China Web2

Back to May 10, 2009, I asked Mr. Zhang from a Japanese investment company, CyberAgent for his opinion on microblogging service. (read the full coverage in Chinese). He said he understood the real-time information generated by this type of service would be very valuable data, but he doubted that most of the Twitter-like startups would have enough resources to survive till they can really deal with the massive real-time data.

So no chance for startups in Chinese microblogging market?! I agreed with Zhang at that time, but we both forgot another key factor, the regulation from the government. Fanfou is gone, Jiwai was not lucky, Digu is alive but has tuned its strategy to focus more on LBS and Social games, sadly, another early adopter, Zuosa is now looking for buyer. In an email from Alex, founder of Zuosa, he told us the team is lack of funding and resources and therefore the only choice left for him is to sell it.

Alex told me Zuosa had over 160K users, 35K daily independent IP. It supports the IMs including MSN,Gtalk,MSN and QQ, and has a couple of phone clients on iPhone,Android, BlackBerry, Java and WAP. Several desktop clients for Windows,Linux and Mac are available too. It’s also interesting to know that in a report on the global microblogging market from QQ.com, Zuosa is even ranked 5, right after Twitter, Plurk, Digu and Sina.

Is it a sad story after Zuosa’s years’ trying in Chinese microblogging space? You might think it is. But reading from the replies to Alex’s open letter, most of them said: it’s kinda of RELEASE.

Please, if you are interested in talking to Alex, please ping me and I will do the intro. Whatsoever, 160k users are priceless, for sure.

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Releasing Startups Watch Report, a Must-Read to Explore the Local Web

By Gang Lu on July 11, 2010 · Filed Under China Web2, Startups Watch report

Over the past four years, the prominent bilingual tech blog MOBINODE has striven to provide insightful, detailed coverage of the Chinese IT sphere and its newest stars. With the introduction of MOBINODE.tv in 2009 and the NTALKS forums this year, we’re by no means just a blog, and we do cooperate with other popular local tech blogs and grassroots movements to bring together innovative, passionate, hardworking individuals for various causes and colloquia.

MOBINODE is growing, slowly but steadily. It started with an individual media with exclusive English, Chinese and video contents, then thanks to NTalks events it is one step closer to be a hub and a platform for local startups, experts, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Now, with the support from our respectable partners, we are very exciting to announce that the Startups Watch, a report focus on local industry analysis and startups. This report will be produced monthly and available in both English and Chinese version.

Startups Watch report

Our colleagues and friends are people who truly love the internet, and who are willing to share and contribute. Therefore, we work hard to bring them out and together to record their opinions, views, and innovations in the name of progress. With Startups Watch report we hope to:

highlight the most valuable content and opinions from local non-mainstream independent tech bloggers.
explore the local web industry and highlight the best newly founded startups
provide overviews and anaylsis on the hot and new sectors in Chinese web industry.
bring innovators, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the forefront to spark both conversation and original thinking.

Startups Watch (1st Issue) [free download: English version | Chinese version] - In this issue, we’ll be summarising the situation of the Groupon-like-services and Foursquare-like services sectors in the Chinese market, as well as the penetration of the iPhone and Android-based devices into China. In our startups recommendation section, we’ll be touching upon 9 different companies that have come online within the past month in China, or sites or services in China that have recently come to the forefront. In the recaps section, we’ll be talking about the internationalization of the development process.

This month’s Startups Watch is edited by MOBINODE’s Gang LU, Cindy Jiang, and web20share’s Watson Xu. Thanks to our translator Moy Hau. It is our first try, so please do contact us for any feedback and suggestions.

StartupsWatch

View more documents from MOBINODE.

Partners: OrangeLabs Beijing, BlueRun Ventures and TrilogyVC

We believe MOBINODE networks’ strength is that it has been in touch with the local industry for years and understand the truly local web; and it also has the advantage of great international connections which give us the opportunities to be a super hub connecting local web with oversea market as well as foreign fund. We want to contribute more to help on the local ecosystem. We’ve been trying for a long while, and now big thanks to our partners (Orange Labs Beijing, BlueRun Ventures, TrilogyVC), with their support and sponsorship, we are able to do more and grow faster!

More to Come…

With the cooperation with local tech bloggers, we are also working on some other exciting projects aiming at local startup ecosystem. Please stay tuned.

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