Sunday, March 30, 2008

Baidu Hi in public beta

Baidu Hi has features such as voice/video
chat, file transfer, IM group and interface
personalization. It is bundled with
Baidu Space with over 920k concurrent users
already. All other Baidu community
products will also be integrated with Baidu Hi
down the road. Only users who have invited at
least 30 friends successfully can create
IM groups.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Susquehanna positive, street.com negative

Susquehanna believes Baidu's community product,
Baidu Space, has made substantial progress,
with concurrent users reaching above 920K+
last Sunday. Baidu Space was recently redesigned
to be a community networking site to better
integrate with the upcoming Baidu IM.

The firm said this data suggests that
Baidu Space may have exceeded 51.com
and become the second largest personal
space and social network service provider
in China, after Tencent's QZone.

The firm also said they have become more
bullish on Baidu's upcoming IM product,
Baidu Hi.

The firm concludes, "a stronger Baidu
community will enhance user stickiness
and lead to better monetization down the
road." They are maintaining their Positive
rating on BIDU.

In the meanwhile, Street.com reduced its
rating on Baidu to a sell from a hold.
Street.com analyzes stock momentum, with
ratings depending more on stock price
movements than on company fundamentals.

Monday, March 24, 2008

5fad expects to lose MP3 case against Baidu

This is a Chinese company, so nationalist
favoritism isn't at work.

The ruling is expected in May. The second
hearing was on March 2nd. Mr. Wu Duanping,
CEO of 5fad.com, expects the ruling to
be unfavorable for his company. 5fad will
try to sue Baidu in the US, though it is
unclear why US courts would be involved in
a case involving two Chinese companies
registered outside America. Neither does
business here. The only link is that Baidu
is listed on Nasdaq.

5fad press release

Sunday, March 23, 2008

New CFO

Jennifer Li (Lǐ Xīnzhé: 李昕晢) joins Baidu
from GMAC, where she served as Controller
of GMAC's North American Operations. In
that role, she led a staff of 200 in the
US and Canada and was primarily responsible
for financial accounting and reporting,
business planning and forecasting,
performance analysis and strategic
development.

Prior to that, Li was chief financial officer
of General Motors China where she was
responsible for overseeing finance functions
of GM's wholly owned and joint venture
businesses. Over the years Li has held
several other finance positions at General
Motors in China, Singapore, the United States
and Canada.

Li holds a Master of Business Administration
from the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver, B.C., Canada and a Bachelor of
Arts from Tsinghua University in Beijing,
China.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Baidu in the top 10 Chinese brands

The well-known British newspaper, Financial Times,
selected Baidu, along with other bigger companies
like China Mobile, China Telecom, Haier, Lenovo.
All leaders in their respective industries. Their
almost 80% search market share, fast growth, and
solid earnings cited as supporting the selection.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Baidu space updated

By default new users get a style of
interface similar to Myspace, called
the "Networking style". Existing users
can convert to it with a single click.
The style includes space for your interests,
background, comments from others,
background music, multimedia-enabled
"about me", and a Facebook-like newsfeed
called "What's new". Blog posts are not in
by default but can be added in later.

The idea seems to be to make this a social
networking platform used in conjunction with
the upcoming Baidu IM.

Baidu launches SMS search with China Netcom

Lingtong Zhidao, the new service, integrates
Baidu Zhidao (Q&A) database and the
database of China Netcom's proprietary
information. PHS users type in and send
their questions via SMS to 106569114 and receive
text answers.

Comscore data for February shows Baidu slipping

from 4.6% global share in February to 4.5%
global share in January. Comscore's Chinese
data have not been reliable in the past. Both
Susquehanna and Piper believe Chinese traffic
has rebounded, and Baidu share has either
steadied or grown.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Ogilvy partners with Baidu

Neo@Ogilvy has partnered with Baidu to
provide a keyword management tool that
will allow existing clients to launch
and track Chinese language search
marketing campaigns much more
effectively.

The integrated platform will allow
marketers to consolidate and streamline
data collection and analytics,
eliminating independent engine
systems and third party analytics to
allow for more cost effective digital
campaigns.

Marketing Interactive

Monday, March 17, 2008

Analysts: Piper reiterates buy with target $430

Sees normal rebound in traffic after
the Chinese New Year holiday and the
snowstorms. Believes they will maintain
70% market share having improved search
result quality and customer service
successfully recently. Believes baidu.jp
will contribute revenue in 2009.

Analysts: Wall Street Strategies bullish

Interview by bellwether with David
Silver of Wall Street Strategies
on March 13th 2008.

Q: What's your current take on
Baidu.com?

A: We continue viewing shares of
Baidu quite positively as we believe
traffic during the first quarter will
allow for strong first quarter results.

Q: So, what would you tell investors
looking to position themselves in this
stock?

A: As it stands, it is very likely that
BIDU is winning market share away from
Google so far in the present quarter.
Consequently, we are recommending shares
of BIDU for the long term, and we do not
believe this stock has much of a downside
risk at its current price level.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Baidu Japan to accept ads for Baidu China from Japan

The international business division in Baidu's
Japanese office will let Japanese businesses
place ads on its Chinese-language search
engine. It will also offer translation of
ads from Japanese into Chinese. Payments
in Yen will be accepted. As of now Japanese
companies have to contact Baidu China and pay
in Yuan to places ads in Baidu's Chinese
search results.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Baidu ranked no. 4 in Japanese search

Behind Yahoo Softbank, Google and MSN, and
ahead of all the many local search players.
According to research data from an
independent Japanese polling organization,
Video Research, from Jan 23rd when baidu.jp
officially launched, to Feb 22nd, their
pageviews have steadily increased. They are
the #1 in image and video search in Japan
now.

Baidu's biggest advantage seems to be raw
speed, orders faster at the initial search
than both Yahoo and Google. Probably due
to fresh new hardware for the servers, and
better support for dualbyte character
coding widely used in CJK (China, Japan
and Korea). In these systems, a character
is 1 byte if from the Latin alphabet, and
2 byte if from the local alphabet.
Many Western international companies
prefer to develop Unicode (flat
16-bit encoding for all characters for all
languages) based systems. None of the
search companies release hard facts on
exactly how their character coding systems
work, though.

A secondary advantage is a clean search
result page with no ads. Baidu plans to
attract traffic and loyal users this
way, before deciding how best to include
ads.

Users also say Baidu's website is simple,
user-friendly and search results
fast and comprehensive. This has to be
considered a severe blow to Google's
long-term future.

Marbridge Daily report

Fortune names Baidu outstanding employer

Fortune Magazine and Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc
ranked companies based on their ability to attract
and keep employees. Awarded companies are chosen
according to survey of employees and their
satisfaction degree.

Statistics show that Baidu has a staff of more
than 7000, and ranks high among other
enterprises in such fields as employee commitment,
satisfaction, and material benefits.

Baidu's score on leaders' management efficiency
is 18 percent and six percent higher than the
average scores on Chinese market, and of the
IT industry, respectively. On employee development
and training, the two figures are 12 percent and
seven percent respectively.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Analysts: Susquehanna positive on Baidu

Ming Zhao sees a major traffic increase in end
February for Baidu, probably from traffic
picking up after the snowstorms and New Year, and
searches related to the Edison Chen sex scandal
(real nude and sex act photos of various Hong Kong
actresses and Mr. Chen - the actresses/singers
definitely look better with their clothes on).
In the dry words of Mr. Zhao:

"While the search for sex-scandal photos should
be one-time in nature, and should not lead to
monetization, such events always teach new Internet
users how to use search engines."

Most importantly, Ming believes Baidu has gained
search market share from Google again. Reiterates
'positive' rating. Susquehanna has a policy of
no target estimates.

The last rally in Baidu was sparked by Ming Zhao's
accurate prediction of blowout revenue for Q2 2007.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Baidu IM and online trading service to launch this year

per Li Yanhong (Robin Li) speaking at Piper's
conference in Shanghai. Individual Internet users
will be invited to participate in testing Baidu
IM in a month or so.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Analyts: Oppenheimer sees 36% downside risk

Oppenheimer says the primary issue with
BIDU is that revenues are unpredictable;
and given slowing growth in 1Q and margins
under pressure from its Japan investments,
investors do not know how to model or
value the stock. With Olympics incrementally
benefiting display and higher local
advertising, they think '08 will be a
more difficult year for BIDU. While BIDU
shares are down 41% from its 52-week high,
they note the shares are trading at a 250%
premium to its peers. During 2007, we saw
the share trough at a 160% premium,
suggesting 36% downside on a relative basis.

Li Yanhong (Robin Li) to present at Piper Jaffray conference

Baidu's CEO will be presenting at
Piper Jaffray & ChinaVenture Investment
Conference 2008 at JW Marriott Hotel
on Tomorrow Square in Shanghai, at 9:20AM
Beijing Time, March 11th, 2008.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Analysts: Sterne Agee initiates coverage with 'buy'

Price target $350. Believes Baidu will
capture both search and brand ad dollars
with its large young user base. Firm
believes branding will become more
important in China as the government
deregulates more key industries.

Baidu voice search no longer free

One yuan per minute for the service and
0.1 yuan for the result message
afterwards. To use the service, users
need pre-paid cell phone cards. The
service is manned, with results sent
back as a message.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Baidu tops China's online ad market in 2007

Overtakes Sina, with a market share
of 24.5%, as per iResearch. They
believe China's search market
grew 85% in 07 to 2.92 billion
yuan. The online ad market is
projected to be 11.2 billion yuan
this year, up from 7 billion
last year; an increase of 60%.
Growth rate in 07 was 51.5%,
which means growth is
accelerating.

Baidu has 65% of the search market
as per iResearch (Analysis thinks
it is 60.9%). Along with 84% share
of MP3 searches.

SinoCast report

Omniture, Baidu tie up

Business software company Omniture
is tying up with Baidu to provide
technology which allows advertisers
to monitor the success of their
online marketing campaigns.
Omniture's Genesis network is also
inking a deal with Adobe to
incorporate flash and AIR.

Press Release

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Baidu launches security software center

Domain an.baidu.com. As of now, it
provides a vulnerability checker and
virus scanner. Being ActiveX plugins
they work without any downloads, but
only on IE and Maxthon. Firefox, Opera
and Safari (the MAC browser) are
virtually unheard of in China anyways.

Baidu has a link to its anti-virus
channel at the top right corner. Local
security companies can place ads there,
for both offline and online products.
Qihoo 360safe and Yahoo assistant are
similar products. They have more
features but require download and
installation on a PC. The Baidu
version is definitely more user
friendly.

The security software itself is from
Kingsoft, China's leading online
security services firm.