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Alibaba Launches New Website - “Alimama”
By Paul Midler | November 21, 2007
You just can’t make this stuff up! Alibaba has launched a new website - Alimama.com. This sister - spousal? - website is just further proof that the company doesn’t know what it’s doing. I’ve tried to figure out what the website is about and after two news pieces and some minutes on the website, I still don’t get it. It has something to do with selling advertising space to small websites and blogs?
“Alimama has signed up more than 150,000 small- and medium- sized web publishers and 135,000 personal blogs, covering more than 1 billion page views per day…Alimama is adding 4,000 small and medium sized websites and 10,000 personal blogs each day.
If they are really signing up 10,000 personal blogs each day, that’s 300,000 blogs a month. If that many are really blogging in China, someone should jump on the story.
One article has an Alibaba representative insisting that Alimama in no way competes with Yahoo’s advertising model, even though Yahoo’s primary income generation model relies upon online advertising. Whenever a company rep in China tells me not to worry, I tend to worry, and it sounds like Alibaba is very much moving into territory that Yahoo might have taken. Not bad enough Alibaba’s share price has languished following its high-profile IPO, its business model is now going to call into question Yahoo’s long-range income projections for China.
I went to “Wayback” to see what Alimama’s website looked like in the recent past. Alibaba claims to have been working on Alimama for some time, but just as recently as June the website was little more than a set of random net links. One offered: “Mama Mama Ringtone”.
There is little about the new business model that suggests it’s legit, and the biggest tip-off is Alimama’s logo - it’s a blatant rip off of Amazon’s. Even if you want to forgive copyright issues in China, this is not what you expect from a global company that is valued in the billions. We don’t expect Burger King ever to come out with a Burger Queen sub-brand, while borrowing a logo from a completely unrelated industry. And any number of consultants can explain to you why Coca-Cola never launched with Shmoka-Cola.
On the logo, I’m having problems loading up pictures here, but welcome to compare the logo in this link with the logo in this link. The Amazon logo shows an arrow that runs from “A” to the “Z” (Hint: We have it all “from A to Z”). In the Alimama logo, you have almost the exact same arrow, except it runs from “A” to “A”. That pretty much says everything to investors: In other words, if you’re lucky, we’ll get you right back to the share price we started out at for the IPO.
What Alibaba needs to do is take a solid portion of the billions it has raised and get on with some proper marketing. What they have just done with Alimama might work in China, but it is not up to the international standard, and its investor class is playing at that international level.
Topics: China |
November 21st, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Question is, how will middle easterners react to the cavalier play on words of such a sacred symbol (a thief)? ;^)
November 21st, 2007 at 10:16 pm
For “Alibaba”, it must seem natural that China would want to draw from a Middle Eastern tale. I’m guessing that no one cares that they’ve twisted it into “Alimama”. It’s a play no words that makes sense to Chinese.
Baba = father
Mama = mother
November 21st, 2007 at 11:32 pm
How about “AliTaMaDe”??
November 21st, 2007 at 11:37 pm
I thought AliAiYi.com might make a good domain name…
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:08 am
That’s true, the website looks like the one of Amazon but maybe Alimama may claim it is Amazon who copied Alimama.
For AliTaMaDe and AliAiYi.com, what kind of products will you market?
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 am
China and I - AliAyi could be a listing service for housekeepers?”
November 27th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Quite a bit of confirmation bias in this piece. A few quick comments:
* 1688.HK IPO’d at HK$13.5, went as high as $40.5 on the first trading day, and now settles at $35.0. Given the backdrop of global equity market turmoil in November, to say it’s one of the best large-cap IPOs globally since the post-Y2K bear market, can very well be an understatement.
* The Wayback snapshots clearly show the domain was owned by Network Solutions once. Likely it was a parked domain bought by Alibaba.com recently.
* As a native Chinese speaker, I tend to think the alimama moniker is kind of quirky and catchy, not dissimilar to my initial reaction to the name google.
* The leader of blogging in China is SINA. It’s a publicly tradable company. You can get a better sense of the scale in China if you read SINA’s recent quarterly reports and its conference call transcripts. Local customization sometimes turns out some weird metamorphosis, such as KFC selling rice soup — BTW Yum has done fabulously well in China and boosted its shareholder value tremendously. Blog has taken away partially what social network sites provide outside of China. There are a whole lot of bloggers in China… Nobody jumped on the story because maybe, *gasp*, they know better?
* “What they have just done with Alimama might work in China, but it is not up to the international standard, and its investor class is playing at that international level.” — Two words: Oh boy. If it works in China, it works.
November 27th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
JXie -
First of all, I appreciate your feedback. It’s nice that Alibaba has been able to acheive a high valuation. While the company provides many customers with a legitimate set of services, I simply doubt the value currently placed on the company. I’m entitled to my opinion, and you yours. On your points…
1. Most IPO share holders won, but the majority of people who picked up shares that day at $40 are under water today. There was too much hype and as previously pointed out, you have a stock that is still trading at high p/e ratios.
2. The Wayback webshots show a company that is clearly looking to capitalize on basic web traffic. It is hard to imagine anyone except for the smallest of Internet players trying to pick up a couple of bucks by placing web links for things like “Mama Mama Ringtone”. Most major corporations buy up Internet real estate around their name, but these companies do NOT then lease out the space in the hope of picking up a couple of hundred bucks a month in clicks.
3. I understand the joke behind “Alimama”, and I understand that Chinese will get it as a play on words, but from a branding perspective it is highly risky to bastardize your flagship brand in this fashion. As I have pointed out, there is a reason why companies like Coca-Cola don’t roll out “Shmoka-Cola”. It’s cute for about five minutes, and then it becomes tired, and when it becomes tired, that reflets then back on the primary brand. You will find some examples of major brands making a play on their primary company name, but it is not preferred. Consider this: Alibaba sounds a lot like Alimama. Does this mean then that Alibaba and Alimama should be *very* closely associated in the consumer’s mind? Or should Alibaba be more closely associated with a winner like Tao Bao?
4. I doubt the claimed number of bloggers in China, so sue me.
5. I have no problem with localization. This does not mean that *every* business in China should necessarily be localized. This idea that “China is different” is sold by every Chinese, as well as a number of consultants. In the end, people are people. And some of the successful MNCs have succeeded in China because the Chinese people simply recognized good marketing when they saw it - even if some products have missed the point.
6. Alibaba is not pretending to be a “China only” company, so you can’t say “if it works in China”. Its entire Alibaba business model relies upon a broad international customer base, and its model also has us believing that the company is going to help in ensuring an ethical standard for those who participate in their business models. How can we believe that Alibaba is a company to be trusted when they violate copyright themselves, when they facilitate illegal activities (rather than prevent them)? Here I am talking about the way in which they facilitate the brokering of counterfeit and contraband products.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Fair enough, Paul.
1. Who isn’t underwater if you bought almost any stocks on 11/6? If the Christmas rally finally comes, it will make a new high — that’s my read. BTW, I neither long nor short this stock at this moment. Trading IPO stocks can drive you nuts.
2. You don’t get it. The domain alimama.com as late as June 2007 wasn’t owned by Alibaba.com (the company). It was owned by Network Solutions, and likely was a parked domain. Look at the very bottom of the Wayback snapshots.
3. Dunno. Just thought the name was catchy. One man’s take… Maybe you are right. People may grow tired of it.
4. If you can read Chinese, you ought to take some time to look into how they blog in China. Blogging for many is kind of like social networking, and the so-called social networking sites like myspace, orkut aren’t very hot. Go figure.
5. I don’t think China is different but rather every country (or every company, every person) is different. I also think whoever didn’t insist Colonel Sanders’ secret recipes sacred was a genius.
Nardelli left GE to take over Home Depot. He flat out stated that they (the Home Depot staff) didn’t know what they were doing the first week he was there, and quickly started putting six-sigma on everything. He failed. On the other hand, McNerney, another GE finalist to succeed Welch but lost out to Immelt, went to 3M. He spent weeks to first understand 3M and listen to what long-time 3Mers have to tell him. He didn’t try to make 3M another GE but rather just make 3M better. Well, McNerney didn’t just succeed in 3M, but also in his next CEO gig in Boeing.
6. Alibaba.com isn’t but from my vintage point alimama.com seems to be a pure China play.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:59 am
Alibaba has rebounded to $37 HKD+ after touching a low of around 29 from its IPO high of 39+ on the 1st day of trading. I wouldn’t touch that stock now but it has been climbing following Baidu in the US and Baidu folows Google. Google goes up and Baidu goes up, Google goes down and Baidu goes down regardless of any news.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:12 am
Hi, the alimama.com website looks like an advertising exchange platform to link up publisher and advertisers. Another shameless attempt by Jack Ma to cash in on the ad exchange frenzy as wiitnessed by Google’s $3 billion offer for DoubleClick. http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=ad+exchange