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Laiwang.com: Alibaba Group's social commerce experiment?
Social networking site Laiwang.com has many observers all excited about Alibaba Group’s next move. As I said in my last article, Jack Ma and friends aren’t stupid.
So I don’t expect Laiwang.com to be just another Google+ clone. It must somehow be part of the big plan that eventually ties back to its e-commerce core business. I was just speculating back then but perhaps that is indeed what Alibaba Group is heading towards to.
Over at Alibaba Group’s blog, Alizila, a recent article titled Taobao Mall Adapts To China’s Changing Online Market, talked about the recent Taobao Mall problem. That was refreshing but they didn’t reveal much. It was only in the last couple of sentences that I finally saw something that reveals a little about the company’s strategy next year. Here’s the excerpt:
…Taobao companies, including Taobao Mall, Taobao Marketplace, and shopping search engine eTao are looking to add social networking features to help connect 400 million registered Taobao users. “There is a good opportunity for us to build an e-commerce oriented social network,” [Taobao Mall President Daniel Zhang] said.
Yes, he just gave a pretty solid indication, i.e. building “an e-commerce oriented social network.”
So it is fair to assume that Laiwang is indeed an experiment for the Alibaba Group to test out how social networking could mix with commerce in the Chinese market. But it remains to be seen how the e-commerce giant can integrate social within its already established e-commerce sites.
I guess if Alibaba Group is looking to adapt to China’s changing online market, it’s about more than just keeping Tmall free from pirated goods. It’s also about making the entire e-commerce experience social.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
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