He Yi: Sohu Auto new service platform helps

　　Editor's note: On August 14, 2010, the seventh China Auto Marketing Chief Brainstorm·Lhasa Summit that was sponsored by China Marketing Association, Sohu Auto and CCTV Advertisement Management Center was held at Lhasa. Following is the speech of He Yi, deputy editor-in-chief of Sohu.com and general manager of Sohu Auto Business Department. Theme of his speech is Sohu Auto enables you to succeed in the peak

　　Next, I routinely share with you some opportunities from Internet, Sohu.com and Sohu Auto. I hope my speech can help you forget some shortness of breath and chest tightness for the moment.

　　I want to divide my introduction on Internet into three parts:

　　The latest changes in Internet this year, new strategies of Sohu.com and new opportunities and ideas of Sohu Auto.

　　The latest changes in Internet

　　Considering that all you sitting here are marketing elite, so you already had some knowledge of changes in Internet this year. The number of net users continues to grow rapidly especially the number of mobile phone Internet users. The number of net users has surpassed 420 million and the number of mobile phone Internet users also reached more than 750 million. So what this means?

　　I want to do some analysis and judgment combining Sohu.com. Following I will use five parts to introduce, and I think the Internet has five trends:

　　Era of mobile Internet has arrived and the speed is accelerating. Mobile Internet combines mobile communication and Internet. In recent years mobile communication and Interne have become the world's fast growing, the greatest market potential and the most prospective business

　　Relevant data released by iResearch show that in the second quarter of 2010 the overall size of China's mobile Internet reached 4 billion, up 7% year on year. If this applied to business and commercial operations, the effect will be earth-shaking. Therefore, Sohu.com has been trying to access the mobile Internet field aggressively.

　　Second, reorganization of the domestic search engine market has begun. Google exited China during the first half of this year, which means that China's search engine market will undergo tremendous changes. Two days ago Alibaba Group announced the co-operation with Sohu. Sohu's Sogou will be split into independent companies, and investors including Alibaba Group Jack Ma will invest in it, which is a significant event since Google was out of China. Cooperation with Alibaba helps Sogou broaden its share in search engine market so that Sogou can have opportunities to rank second in search engine market. Combination of Sogou’s search technology with Alibaba's technology is supposed to create a new trend of search engine market in the future.

　　Third, Sohu.com put forward a comprehensive strategy to start micro-Bo. There is a significant trend for Internet in 2010, that is, prominent sites pay great attention to developing micro-Bo. Why develop micro-Bo? I think that because our Chairman and CEO Mr. Zhang Chaoyang said: blog is person-oriented and takes collective interest into account, but it is not real time.

　　I think as a senior Internet predecessor, comments by Mr. Zhang Chaoyang profoundly indicate the significance of micro-Bo. It means a huge spread function. I think this huge spread function is a great opportunity for our business and marketing. Of course there are other industry comments on the micro-Bo. For example, one industry expert said, when your fans are more than 100, you just publish an internal magazine. When your fans are more than 1000, you are a bulletin board. When your fans are more than 10,000, you like a magazine. When your fans are more than 100,000, you are a metropolitan newspaper. When your fans are more than 1 million, you are a national newspaper. When your fans are more than 10 million, you are a TV station.

　　Some auto marketing elite has begun using micro-Bo in daily business activities. For example, Dong Haiyang, Jiang Yubin, Li Chunrong and Mr. Yu Hongjiang are supposed to have some unique experience in using micro-Bo. Jiang Yubin took advantage of micro-Bo a lot in the past World Cup, so I received many daily reports from him. The effect is very great indeed.

　　Fourth, the online video is developing rapidly. Starting from September 2009, Sohu.com has launched an online video anti-piracy alliance. Genuine films and television series have become the direction for mainstream video since it can overcome the problems of previous rough shared video and bottleneck of can’t gain profit. Youku and Tudou found that grass-roots video upload is not profitable, because advertisers do not buy it. Sohu.com now gains profit through the introduction of genuine online video, and gets advertisement through genuine online video and have access to the normal cash flow.

　　Fifth, SNS become one of the Internet interactive marketing trends. The so-called SNS is the social network service, such as Facebook in the United States, China's white society, happy net, Renren net. SNS is also a huge network of relational features with huge spread function. By the end of 2009, the number of Internet users who use community sites exceeded 170 million and the penetration rate in Internet users reached 45%. But how the effects of its ads are? We can see that product placement is a very important form for SNS development. In 2009 there was Amway's interactive operation of green light in white society, and it is the first product placement. Subsequently, a number of distinctive SNS ads are becoming a trend gradually with big brands including BMW and Audi also decided to cooperate with the SNS websites.

　　These five trends will profoundly affect our economy and society, and will also affect Sohu.com and Sohu Auto that are important members in the Internet.

　　New strategies of Sohu.com

　　Next I am going to introduce new strategies of Sohu.com. We define it as TRMI strategies. After 12 years of development, Sohu.com has become the first choice for Chinese Internet users when surfing the Internet. The total revenue of Sohu.com exceeded 500 million dollars last year and daily visited was more than 1.2 billion people. We attribute such achievements to long-term strategic orientation, and we define it as TRMI.

　　Technology, it is technology-driven entrance. After implemented new strategies, we found a large number of users visited Sohu.com, but our products and services are interrupted. As a result, Sohu.com naturally expands its inputs in products, service quality and technologies. Thanks to sticking to that strategy, our technical innovation and technical breakthrough are satisfactory. The most typical example is the Sogou Pinyin input method. So far, Sogou Pinyin input method has covered 85% of China's Internet computers and desktops. Users of Sougou approach to 300 million. Such a product build on powerful technologies led to the independence of Sougou. It is possible to enter China’s search market and eventually ranks second in the search market.

　　Relationship, it is consumer products of relationship-driven. Sohu.com has built a huge group of network users, which include Sohu community, Chinaren community, blog community, auto community, community of 17173, new developed SNS white society and micro-Bo.

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　　Media, Sohu.com is an Internet company as well as media. We emphasize that Sohu.com should have characteristics of media organizations. The characteristics of our media organizations can be understood from two dimensions: On one hand, it is the communication pattern. On the other hand, as a media, Sohu.com shouldn’t focus on forwarding news reported by traditional media. .

　　Industry, it is industrialization-driven. As media form and interactive products tend to be mature, the next step is the integration of Sohu’s media operation experience and customer service capability in industries such as auto, finance and real estate. Under the guidance of such a strategy, Sohu.com had set up auto business department based on original auto channel, and also launched a series of new strategic direction at the same time.

　　New opportunities and new ideas of Sohu Auto

　　Therefore, next I would like to brief you on new strategies of Sohu auto business department and some small achievements made by us. Overall, new strategies of Sohu auto business department are to build two platforms: media platform and service platform.

　　Media platform, I talked about the characteristics of our media organizations, and we want to give Sohu Auto more meaning in essence. Of course, all of you here are familiar with our media form, but today I don’t want to take up more time to introduce the status of our media platform and development direction. I would like to highlight the ideas of our service platform. It has three aspects: the local station, member center and Cheshangbao.

　　Sohu Auto has established city station channels in 27 cities. Meanwhile, we established our local stations in five major cities in the first and second quarter of 2010. Our Beijing station was formally established on June 29, Shanghai Station was established on June 4, Guangzhou station was established on June 2, Chengdu station was established on May 28, and Shenzhen station was established on June 3.

　　In summary, because China has enormous growth of the Internet, Sohu.com put forward TRMI strategies. Based on this strategy, we formed own methods and mode of operation. All this means only one thing, namely to provide our auto, our customers, our auto users and auto advertising partners with more value. We together gain success in commercial operation. Ultimately win at the summit, thank you! (Translator: Qinghua/Wade)

　　See Original Chinese Report Please Clicks:

　　http://auto.sohu.com/20100814/n274207609.shtml