SINA.com
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SINA.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, run by SINA (新浪) Corporation founded in Mainland China in 1999. The company's global financial headquarters has been based in Shanghai since October 1, 2001 (and Silicon Valley before that).
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Background
Business coverage
As a site that mainly caters for Chinese population around the globe, SINA claimed that it has about 94.8 million registered users and more than 10 million active users engaged in their fee-based services (10,000 of who are overseas Chinese in North America). Given their focus on Chinese population, SINA.com has provided different subsidiary sites for people, especially Chinese, around the world. For example there are 13 access points within Greater China as shown from an extract of the index in SINA.com.China_banner.jpg
Image:china_banner.jpg
It has subsidiary tailored pages for overseas Chinese, which include SINA US, SINA Japan, SINA Korea, SINA Australia, SINA Europe and SINA Germany.
Recognitions
SINA.com is one of the four major business lines of SINA Corporation which the rest of the major business lines include SINA Mobile, SINA Online and SINA.net. SINA.com (Beijing) is the most popularly visited simplified Chinese website in 2003 in the "HOME website" category as pointed out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences[1] (http://www.cass.net.cn/webnew/show_News.asp?id=11818&key=sina.com/) based on the information from alexa.com[2] (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=zh_gb2312). In the survey conducted by the Gallup (China) Research Ltd in April 2003, SINA was the most popular website in China. It is estimated that the site has about 3 billion page views every day. Also, it has been awarded as the 'Chinese Language Media of the Year' by the Nanfang Weekend[3] (http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/southnews/zt/zztk/zgcm/200312310080.asp/).
History
(Information based on Xin, 2002)In March 1999, Stone Rich Sight Information Technology Ltd (SRS), established by SINA.com's former CEO and President Wang Zhidong, merged with SINANET.com, a US website company of Sunnyvale, California. The merging of the two largest Chinese websites formed into the later SINA.com. Since then the service had been extended across the straits and North America, before it extended to Hong Kong in July 1999.
SINA.com overtook the dominant role of Sohu.com for the first time in 1999 by its fast, continuous, and comprehensive reports on the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, according to CNNIC's survey conducted 2 months after the incident ([4] (http://survey.yam.com/cnnic/1999_7.htm), Xin, 2002).
SINA.com was the first to be approved for listing on the Nasdaq National market on 13th April 2000, followed by Netease and Sohu, two other web-based companies in China, in June and Jule respectively. It succeeded in raising US$68,000,000 before Nasdaq plummetted in May 2000. In July 2000, SINA.com was the official website for on-line coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney as selected by the government and the Chinese Olympic committee. (Xin, 2002).
Management
Key Officers
- Mr. Wang Yan: Chief Executive Officer and President. He received his bachelor's degree in Law from the University of Paris.
- Mr. Charles Chao: Chief Financial Officer. He received his Master of Professional Accounting from University of Texas in Austin, TX. and held an MA degree in Journalism from University of Oklahoma.
- Mr. Hurst Lin: Chief Operating Officer. He received his MBA from Stanford University and held a bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering from Dartmouth College.
- Mr. LC Chang: Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. He received his Executive MBA from National Taiwan University.
- Mr. Benjamin Tsiang: Executive Vice President. He graduated from National Taiwan University and received a master's degree from Stanford University.
[Source: http://corp.sina.com.cn/eng/sina_mng_eng.htm]
Partnership
Sina.com cooperates with other web-based companies such as People, Nanfang Daily, Lifeweek and Xinhuanet, etc. Apart from the media partners, its clients include some world-renowned companies such as Microsoft, DELL, IBM, Motorola, and Kodak.Recently SINA.com is developing its business in the field of wireless internet in the meantime collaborating with China Mobile, China Telecom, Ericsson and so on.
There are other examples in view of the constant expansion of Sina.com. Recently SINA.com and Yahoo.com - one of the largest searching engines on the internet - started to jointly provide online auction services in China.
With respect to this merger deal, EachNet (Chinese: "易趣網"), which cooperates with eBay, has lowered its registration fee since early February 2004 in order to keep its market share. This illustrates the impact of the expanding services of Sina.com. (Source: Beijing Entertainment News; EachNet's announcement (http://static.eachnet.com/fu/other/blackboard/new.php?which=1))
Marketing
To provide tailored internet services for local people, SINA.com has been conducting quantitative and qualitative marketing researches, including demographic research, psychograph, etc., on target audience in specific regions.
SINA.com's business status has been demonstrated in some reviews (http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200307/02/eng20030702_119278.shtml). In fact, many people were stunned to know the positive impact of SARS on SINA.com. While other businesses were heavily struck by the SARS, Sina was, and has been, thriving. For instance, based on the First Quarter 2003 Financial Report (http://wwwus.sina.com/news/press/2003/0424/press.html) of Sina.com, the net revenues were 41% over the same period in 2002. By July 2003, SINA.com has 421 online advertisers. Though, this number remained stagnant during the SARS outbreak, their advertising budget were mounting higher. Also, owing to the fear against SARS, people stayed, much of their time, at home and surfed on the net, boosting the online advertising and the use of short message services (SMS). SMS then became a proven cash-cow for Internet portals.
Features
Multiple services
Sina.com aims at providing internet services to the Chinese population around the world. In every localized website, there are more than 30 integrated channels covering various aspects, including news, sports, technology information, finance, advertising services, entertainment, fashion, travel and lots more.
Among all the services, Sina.com provides 50MB free email account which makes it prominent when compared to other major email service providers such as yahoo.com (http://mail.yahoo.com/?.intl=us) (4MB)and hotmail.com (2MB).
Sina.com is a mutiple-service provider. In its homepage http://www.sina.com, there is a list of its major services :
- SMS (http://sms.sina.com.cn/)
- Mail (http://www.sina.com/search/)
- Search (http://www.sina.com/mail/)
- Game (http://games.sina.com.cn/)
- Match (http://www.sina.com/match/)
And, all these services help Sina.com to generate profits.
Local content
Internationalized services from Sina.com were made possible with its common layout which consists of sections like news, information, infotainments and email services with content tailor-made for the locals.
One interesting aspect of localization involves political censorship. As with all internet content providers operating within Mainland China, the web pages which are geared toward Mainland China audiences have big mamas which censor the discussion for sensitive political content. In addition, the news from sina.com comes from local newspapers, which in the case of Mainland China are themselves subject to censorship by the government.
This censorship does not extend to pages and forums which are not intended for audiences within Mainland China.
Online News
Sina.com provides a lot of feature news as the focus of the lead story or the main photo. On the other hand its domestic political news is sourced from The People’s Daily or Xinhua News Agency. Compared to conventional medium for news distribution, Sina.com is a platform for news articles from the traditional media. That means, according to its CEO, Wang Zhidong, Sina.com would never hire journalists (Xin, 2000).
Network technology
According to the company's published information, SINA.comXpressTM and SINA.comPlusTM are Sina.com's two main exclusive technologies, which bring ease-of-use benefits and enable the audience of Big5 (traditional Chinese character), and GB (simplified Chinese characters) to view the webpages sourced from around the Chinese communities of the world. [Source: About SINA.com]
Prospects
- According to CNNIC (http://www.cnnic.net.cn/)'s report, by the end of 2003, the number of broadband users had reached more than 17 million in China, with an increase of 77.6% over 1997. Broadband can better meet the entertainment demands of the audience with the advantage of offering superior sensory experience. In the USA, Microsoft, AOL, and MSN have begun their business on broadband in succession. In China, some websites basing on broadband have been set up such as 互联星空（pinyin:Hu Lian Xing Kong; Chinavnet (http://www.chinavnet.com)) and 天天在线（pinyin:Tian Tian Zai Xian; 116.com (http://www.116.com.cn)). By the contrast, the websites basing on narrowband, including Sina.com, will face a big challenge. [Source:Xinhuanet]
- According to 新京报(pinyin: Xin Jing Bao (http://www.thebeijingnews.com)), SINA will continue to develop in various fields, but the main orientation is the internet, which is the focus in management of the corporation. On the other hand, some important fields such as music, broadband, and Search engines, won't be ignored.
Publication
- Collection of internet users
- Cooperative publisher
- 作家出版社（pinyin:Zuo Jia Chu Ban She) (http://www.zuojiachubanshe.com)
- 漓江出版社（Li Jiang Chu Ban She) (http://www.lijiang-pub.com)
- 清韵书院（Qing Yun Shu Yuan) (http://www.qingyun.net)
- 榕树下（Rong Shu Xia) (http://www.rongshuxia.com)
External links
- Official site (http://www.sina.com)
- Financial headquarter (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200112/04/eng20011204_85931.shtml) news
- Legal details (http://secfilings.nasdaq.com/edgar_conv_html%2F2003%2F03%2F31%2F0000891618-03-001563.html)
- Weblog on Chinese Internet Companies (http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/)
Localized websites
SINA, Greater China
- SINA Beijing (http://www.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Shanghai (http://sh.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Guangzhou (http://sh.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Taipei (http://www.sina.com.tw/)
- SINA Hong Kong (http://google.sina.com.hk/)
- SINA Macau (http://macau.sina.com/)
- SINA Chongqing (http://cq.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Fujing (http://news.fj.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Sichuan (http://news.sc.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Hunan (http://hn.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Yunnan (http://yn.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Guangxi (http://gx.sina.com.cn/)
- SINA Yangzhou (http://yz.sina.com.cn/)
SINA, International
SINA US (http://home.sina.com/) SINA Japan (http://home.sina.com/jump/?japan.sina.com) SINA Korea (http://home.sina.com/jump/?korea.sina.com) SINA Australia (http://australia.sina.com/index_b5gif.html) SINA Europe (http://home.sina.com/jump/?europe.sina.com) SINA Germany (http://germany.sina.com/index_b5gif.html)
References
Xin, H. (2002). The Surfer-in-chief and the would-be kings of content - a short study of Sina.com and Netease.com. In S. H. Donald., M. Keane. & Y. Hong. (eds.). Media in China: consumption, content and crisis. London: Routledge.zh:新浪