Alibaba Group Releases A New Social Network

Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company, is beta-testing a new social-networking-product called Laiwang, as the firm expands outside e-commerce to seek other revenue streams.

Alibaba Group, who acquired Yahoo China in 2005,  is mainly known for Alibaba.com, which is a marketplace for buyers and manufacturers with products like ‘Android tablets below 100 dollar, big red tourist buses and even software to start your own social network. Laiwang is not their first attempt for trying to enter the world of social networks…

Taojianghu is its first product with serious interest in social networking. It makes sense for Alibaba’s eCommerce business as Taojianghu is built around Taobao, in other words, it’s meant to be a social e-commerce platform.

Some people already say the Laiwang network looks almost like Google+. Here’s a leaked preview:

As we can see from the frontpage, Laiwaing will be available on Android and iPhone. Funny is to see that by taking a closer look at the frontpage image (rightclick & view image), you can also see that Laiwaing will be available on a Windows Phone as well. So it sounds like a social network for smartphones.

Laiwang, in Chinese means ‘in contact’. Also read from its About, it says Laiwang is to help everyone to keep in touch with the connections with their good friends, track your wonderful moment in your life, anytime and anywhere.

Are there any readers who are beta-testing their wonderful moments in life with Laiwang already? My Chinese has become a bit rusty lately, so we’re looking forward to your thoughts about this new network!