Unknown Chinese startup creates the world's most valuable Bytedance

Independent moves: Bytedance has become among the most successful major Chinese tech companies in creating an international base without the backing of giants Alibaba and Tencent. — Reuters

https://youtu.be/nhrmuyEsqrk
https://youtu.be/VKD3jt0KvhQ

Building a vision: Over five years, Zhang has grown the app into one of the most popular news services anywhere, with 120 million daily users. — Bloomberg

Said to be valued at over $75 billion in new round of funding.

Bloomberg reports that when Zhang Yiming first shopped the idea of a news aggregation app powered by artificial intelligence six years ago, investors including Sequoia Capital were skeptical.

Back then, the question was how a 29-year-old locally trained software engineer could outsmart the numerous news portals operated by the likes of social media behemoth Tencent Holdings. and extract profit where even Google had failed.

Zhang, now 35, proved them wrong. Today his company, Bytedance Ltd., is on its way to a more than $75 billion valuation -- a price tag that surpasses Uber Technologies. to top the world, according to CB Insights. The latest in a long line of investors who’ve come around is Softbank Group., which is said to be planning to invest about $1.5 billion. Bytedance now counts KKR & Co., General Atlantic and even Sequoia as backers. Much of its lofty valuation stems from the creation of an internet experience that’s a cross between Google and Facebook.

35-Year-Old Unknown Creates the World's Most Valuable Startup

News aggregation app evolves into a multi-faceted media goliath

WHEN Zhang Yiming first shopped the idea of a news aggregation app powered by artificial intelligence six years ago, investors including Sequoia Capital were sceptical.

Back then, the question was how a 29-year-old locally trained software engineer could outsmart the numerous news portals operated by the likes of social media behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd and extract profit where even Google had failed.

Zhang, now 35, proved them wrong.

Today his company, Bytedance Ltd, is on its way to a more than US$75bil valuation – a price tag that surpasses Uber Technologies Inc to top the world, according to CB Insights.

The latest in a long line of investors who have come around is Softbank Group Corp, which is said to be planning to invest about US$1.5bil. Bytedance now counts KKR & Co, General Atlantic and even Sequoia as backers.

Much of its lofty valuation stems from the creation of an internet experience that’s a cross between Google and Facebook.

“The most important thing is that we are not a news business. We are more like a search business or a social media platform,” Zhang said in a 2017 interview, adding that he employs no editors or reporters.

“We are doing very innovative work. We are not a copycat of a US company, both in product and technology.”

What’s remarkable is Zhang was able to do it all without taking money from the twin suns of China’s internet: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent.

It’s the first startup to emerge from the dwindling cohort of mobile players that hasn’t sought protection or funds from either of the two. In fact, it has often locked horns with them, in court and elsewhere. And it’s arguably more successful at engaging youthful audiences abroad.

The story of how Bytedance became a goliath begins with news site Jinri Toutiao but is tied more closely to a series of smart acquisitions and strategic expansions that propelled the company into mobile video and even beyond China. By nurturing a raft of successful apps, it has gathered a force of hundreds of millions of users and now poses a threat to China’s largest Internet operators.

The company has evolved into a multi-faceted empire spanning video service Tik Tok – known as Douyin locally – and a plethora of platforms for everything from jokes to celebrity gossip.

But as with Facebook at the same stage of its life, Bytedance now faces questions over when or even how it will start making a profit.

“The predominant issue in China’s internet is that the growth in users and the time each user spends online has slowed dramatically.

“It is becoming a zero-sum game, and costs for acquiring users and winning their time are increasing,” said Jerry Liu, an analyst with UBS.

“What Bytedance has created is a group of apps that are very good at attracting users and retaining their time, in part, leveraging the traffic from Jinri Toutiao.”

Despite its seeming isolation, it’s become the most successful major Chinese tech company in creating an international base, venturing via apps like Tik Tok into the US, South-East Asia and Japan.

Even Tencent’s WeChat had to pump the brakes on its own overseas initiative four years ago.

What Zhang perceived in 2012 was that Chinese mobile users struggled to find information they cared about on many apps.

That’s partly because of the country’s draconian screening of information. Zhang thought he could do better than incumbents such as Baidu, which enjoyed a near-monopoly on search.

The latter conflated advertising with search results, a botch that would later haunt the company via a series of medical scandals.

There was little Toutiao could do about censorship – in fact, the company’s been repeatedly excoriated by authorities for failing to filter content and been forced to clean up its services with alarming regularity.

But Zhang held fast to his early vision of delivering content that mattered to users through AI. The closest American equivalent was Facebook’s news feed.

After falling flat with the bulk of China’s venture capital stalwarts, Zhang eventually secured investment from Susquehanna International Group.

It began offering the news app in August 2012. The platform studied what users read and searched for, then referred information and articles based on those habits. The more people used it, the better the experience, and the longer people stayed.

By mid-2014, daily active users had climbed to more than 13 million.

Sequoia finally came to the table, leading a funding round of US$100mil.

“We push information, not by queries, by news recommendations,” Zhang said in the interview last year.

But it was video that really propelled Bytedance into the big leagues.

Streaming services have always been popular in China. Even during the desktop era, companies like YY Inc championed a model where people sang and danced in virtual showrooms to win online gifts from fans. Later, outfits like Kuaishou fuelled that penchant for zany showmanship.

Bytedance saw an opportunity, but made its videos much shorter: 15 seconds, to be precise.

Around September 2016, it quietly launched Douyin. The app let users shoot and edit footage, add filters and share them across platforms like the Twitter-like Weibo or WeChat.

That format appealed to shorter millennial attention spans and became an instant hit, so much so that WeChat later blocked direct access to the app.

A year after, Bytedance acquired Musical.ly for US$800mil. It saw synergy between the buzzy teen US social video app created by Chinese co-founders and Tik Tok, and is now in the process of combining them. Tik Tok and Douyin had a combined 500 million users as of July.

The challenge now is in translating buzz and viewership into dollars. The company is expanding its ad sales operations, particularly for Toutiao.

Several media buying agencies said its massive reach and the attention it draws is a natural lure for marketers. Many said Bytedance is even pulling spending away from Tencent.

Bytedance, which previously cut a deal with Cheetah Mobile to sell ad space, has brought most of its ad sales in-house, said Kenneth Tan, the chief digital officer for Mindshare China, an agency.

“From a pricing perspective, they are expensive for what they are. They definitely charge a premium,” Tan said. “But that has not been an inhibitor for the large brands.”

There’s a big caveat, however. Brands remain cautious about Bytedance’s regulatory issues, particularly given Beijing’s historic unpredictability around censorship.

This year, it had to shut down a popular joke-sharing app in April just as it appeared to take off. It also suspended Douyin and its bread-and-butter Toutiao around the same time.

That’s “a potential risk to brand collaboration,” said Sherry Pan, general manager for China at the agency Magna Global. — Bloomberg

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Take precautions on public wifi, hackers are watching you, travellers !

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/08/01/take-precautions-on-public-wifi-cybersecurity-firm-hackers-can-gather-sensitive-data-via-unsecure-co/

KUALA LUMPUR: If you are surfing the Internet on a public Wi-Fi, always assume someone is watching you out there.

Better yet, do not connect to any public Wi-Fi at all, said LE Global Services (LGMS) executive director Fong Choong Fook, whose private cybersecurity firm employs hackers to test the network security of the country’s major banks.

“I would never use a public Wi-Fi,” he said.

“Even an IT person may not be able to tell if the access point he is connected to is safe or if the activities are being watched.

“There may be signs like your Internet is slowing down but hackers can make it so elegant that you won’t even notice,” he said in an interview.

Malaysia’s national cybersecurity agency CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM) said hackers could position themselves between a person’s device and the Wi-Fi router and are able to record sensitive data that the surfer is keying into his device.

Hackers can also “create” their own Wi-Fi and trick people into thinking they are connected to a credible public access point like the one from a restaurant, airport or office – when in actual fact these devices are connected to the criminals’ hardware.

Thus, they would be able to remotely watch everything a person is sending out on the Wi-Fi like passwords, e-mails or credit card information.

As frightening as these attacks may sound, Fong said this had been going as early as the 1990s.

Demonstrating to The Star how a hacker could steal information, LGMS set up an “evil twin” Wi-Fi using a laptop and named it after a famous franchise restaurant just below its office in Puchong, Selangor.

Fong connected two devices to this Wi-Fi and proceeded to log into social media, e-mail and Government websites.

Within seconds of logging in, the hacker’s computer began recording the activities in both devices in the experiment – recording every e-mail address, username and password that was keyed in.

Though the demonstration was only meant for the devices in the controlled environment of the LGMS office, three other users got connected to the dummy Wi-Fi, thinking they were linked to the franchise restaurant’s Internet, during the experiment.

“Hackers can target one specific person or they can target everyone in a cafe to get their devices to send all their data through their dummy Wi-Fi

“When they have your information, they can steal your identity. They can pose as you on Facebook, or send out e-mails to your contacts under your account,” he said.

Fong advised users to avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi or to only limit their browsing to Internet searches if they must connect to one.

The firm also suggested users to subscribe to VPN (virtual private network) technologies to secure their traffic.

VPN encrypts data on devices, making it hard for hackers to spy on the user’s online activities. Most VPNs are available on a subscription basis, much like an anti-virus programme.

So far this year, CSM has recorded eight instances where private Wi-Fi networks were hacked and 1,462 cases of online intrusions have been reported, which is nearly double the number of incidents compared to the same period in 2015.

It advised users to keep their Internet browsers up to date and to disable the feature which automatically saves password in the cache –as it makes it easier for criminals to steal.

by Nicholas Cheng The Star/Asia News Network

82% of travellers would use public Wi-Fi

KUALA LUMPUR: You are on a holiday in a foreign country. Naturally, you want to upload pictures to your Facebook or send messages to your friends back home or trawl the Internet for places to visit.

Chances are there is no Internet data connection where you are and you would search for whatever free Wi-Fi there is at the airport, hotel or cafe to stay connected.

An estimated 82% of travellers would choose to connect with unsecured public Wi-Fi, a practice which could up risks of cyberattacks, said Kasper­sky Lab.

The cybersecurity company surveyed 11,850 people worldwide and found that people on holiday would be carefree when it comes to their personal data protection.

The study found that 42% of travellers said they were less likely to care about the credibility of the Wi-Fi when they were on holiday compared to on business travels.

A third (33%) admitted to visiting websites of sensitive nature using foreign Wi-Fi, while almost half of the respondents conducted online banking (48%), shopped online (46%) and made private calls (35%) when they were abroad.

In a separate study, it found that at least 22% of travellers who conducted transactions online had experienced money loss while 8% had had a credit card compromised while in a foreign country.

Most of the time, victims do not even know they are being watched.

CSM advised users to keep an eye on their devices’ firewall alerts. Any trigger may indicate that a third party may be trying to access their devices illegally.

A report by MasterCard estimates that 10.9 million Malaysians travelled for overseas holidays in 2014, with the numbers expecting to hit 15.2 million by 2020.

The Kaspersky study also found that people were more likely to throw caution to the wind while on holiday with respondents saying they were 18% more likely to let strangers handle their smartphones to take pictures, 28% more likely to leave their devices unsupervised, 18% more likely to contact strangers online and 6% more likely to engage in “sexting”.

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A booming WhatsApp posts mixed message as strong rivals emerge in Asia; War of the Apps heats up in China

 
 What's inside WhatsApp? 

WhatsApp: A booming smartphone message service

SAN FRANCISCO - WhatsApp was launched five years ago as a shot at doing to text messaging what Skype did to telephone calls.

If Facebook's move to buy the startup in a cash-and-stock deal valued as high as US$19 billion (S$24 billion) is any indication, the California-based WhatsApp may have hit the mark.

The firm founded by former Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 took its name from a play on the phrase "What's Up," according to its website.

They also devoted themselves to a credo of "No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks."

A note stating just that and signed by Acton remains taped to Koum's desk, according to venture capital firm Sequoia, which invested in the startup early and stands to cash in big time on the Facebook take-over.

The "contrarian approach" of gathering no information about users for targeting ads was shaped by Ukraine-born Koum's aversion to tactics of secret police in communist countries, Sequoia partner Jim Goetz said in an online note.

"Jan's childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped," Goetz said.
"When he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine."

Koum remained true to those ideas when, after working at Yahoo with his "mentor" Acton, he turned to building WhatsApp, according to Goetz.

The stated mission was to build a better alternative to traditional SMS messaging in a world where smartphones were clearly becoming ubiquitous.

The founders jokingly described themselves at the website as "two guys who spent combined 20 years doing geeky stuff at Yahoo! Inc."

WhatsApp is a platform for sending images, video, audio, or text messages for free over the Internet using data connections of smartphones.

The application is free, but after using it for a year, there is an annual subscription fee of 99 US cents.

"We feel that this model will allow us to become the communications service of the 21st century, and provide you the best way to stay in touch with your friends and family with no ads getting in the way," the startup said in a blog post discussing pricing.

WhatsApp is reported to have grown stunningly fast to more than 450 million users and said to handle 50 billion messages daily.

As of the start of this year, WhatsApp had 50 employees, more than 30 of them engineers. While the company has its headquarters in the California city of Mountain View, where Google has its main campus, most of the engineering work is reportedly done in Russia. - AFP

In Asia, WhatsApp posts mixed message for Facebook

Singapore: WhatsApp may be hugely popular but its forays into Asia, the world's biggest mobile market, have had mixed success, raising questions about whether it can sustain the explosive growth Facebook Inc cited to justify its $19 billion price tag.

Data from app metric company App Annie, for example, shows that WhatsApp ranks as the top communications app in only three of 13 Asian countries tracked - Hong Kong, India and Singapore.

"WhatsApp has been a strong player in Asia, but in the past year has faced strong competition from LINE and WeChat," said Neha Dharia, India-based analyst for Ovum, a technology consultancy. "WhatsApp has not been displaced by these players, but has seen stiff competition in growing its market share."

Facebook said on Wednesday it would buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, in a deal worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO. [ID:nL3N0LO52J]

For sure, WhatsApp has been phenomenally successful. For many users it has replaced sending costly texts, or SMS messages. Since its launch in 2009 it has built an active monthly user base of 450 million users.

A survey by marketing and research company Jana found WhatsApp to be the most used messaging app in all the countries it surveyed - India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico - beating competitors by a huge margin. 

The reason: users most prize the basic functions it offers - ad-free chat and photo sharing.

WhatsApp subscribers sent 18 billion messages a day in January. The overall market is growing rapidly: According to Ovum, 27.4 trillion such messages were sent last year; this year that figure will be close to 69 trillion.

CHINA CALLING

By hooking up, Facebook and WhatsApp may be able to take on those markets that have been elusive to Facebook so far. With Facebook blocked in China, and lagging Twitter Inc and Naver Corp's LINE in Japan, WhatsApp "is a potential avenue for Facebook" into those markets, said Vincent Stevens, a senior manager for telecoms consultancy Delta Partners.

Forrester, a consultancy, forecasts that China will have more than 500 million smartphones this year.

And in the fast growing smartphone market of India, says Neil Shah, research director of devices and ecosystems at Counterpoint Research, local users now account for almost 9 percent of total active WhatsApp users around the world - some 40 million of them.

But Facebook and WhatsApp face formidable foes. Where once messaging apps were simply about messaging, now Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk offer a slew of additional services, from icons and games to buying goods and services.

"LINE and the others are very different to WhatsApp. They're much more innovative in the business models they engage in," says Michael Vakulenko of VisionMobile, a UK-based consultancy. "They are innovating much faster than WhatsApp and going in a different direction."

This could prove decisive in Asia - the biggest battleground for social messaging apps - where no single player dominates.

Data from market research company Nielsen, for example, showed BlackBerry Messenger as the most downloaded messaging app in Indonesia last October, the latest data available, while Viber, bought by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc for $900 million last week, was the most popular in the Philippines, and LINE in Thailand.

WhatsApp was third in Indonesia, second in Malaysia and not in the top-10 in the Philippines or Thailand. And while locals say WhatsApp remains the default messaging app in Indonesia, some notice a shift.

FICKLE FORTUNES

Jerry Justianto, who runs a radio station network in Jakarta, says he's noticing fewer of his friends using WhatsApp than before. "I think it's reached a plateau in Indonesia," he said. "I see a lot of WhatsApp accounts in my list are inactive."

A survey by market research firm On Device Research late last year found that while nearly two thirds of Indonesians surveyed had installed WhatsApp, less than half used it at least once a week, compared to three quarters of Brazilians who had installed it.

Part of the problem, Justianto says, is that WhatsApp's approach of linking accounts to a phone number doesn't suit Indonesians who change their SIM card frequently. "Some of my early adopter friends are moving to Telegram messenger, where you can activate multiple devices with one number."

Telegram, which offers much the same features as WhatsApp, is evidence of the fickleness of users. The app is free and heavily encrypted, and is popular in some countries. In Spain, for example, it has risen from its launch last year to be the No.1 communications app in Google's Play store, at the expense of WhatsApp, according to App Annie data.

This, said one executive at a handset company in Spain, was partly because of a viral campaign among users to switch, and partly because many users dumped WhatsApp before they were charged at the end of their first, free year.

GETTING USERS TO USE MORE

Across Asia, the fragmentation is evident to users such as Martin Tomlinson, Asia Pacific director for On Device Research, who says he has installed at least six messaging apps for work: "I need to have at least three of these on my phone because that's how my clients communicate."

LINE, for example, considers its top markets as not only Japan but also Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Now, says Simeon Cho, general manager at LINE Plus, which handles LINE's ex-Japan business, the goal is less about winning new users than getting existing ones to use the app more frequently.

Kakao, which started the KakaoTalk messenger service in 2010 and has since grown rapidly to 130 million users, said it was also focusing heavily on Southeast Asia, where there is relatively low smartphone penetration and no dominant messenger service.

And for China's Tencent, KakaoTalk and LINE are more of a threat overseas than WhatsApp, as the company's WeChat expansion is focused on Southeast Asia.

WhatsApp would only pose a serious threat if the likes of Tencent were to expand farther west. "This means it's now going to be more difficult for LINE to win in North America and Europe," said Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based technology consultant.

 - By Jeremy Wagstaff Reuters

Facebook deal sends message to WhatsApp's Asia rivals

HONG KONG - Facebook's stunning US$19 billion (S$24 billion) deal for messaging service WhatsApp places the social network in an arena where competition is fierce, particularly in Asia, where fast-growing chat rivals dominate their home markets.

The multi-billion dollar valuation of WhatsApp is based on expectations that its 450 million monthly users will eventually pass one billion, powering the social network's drive into the fast- growing mobile space - particularly in emerging markets, where the simplicity of the messaging app can thrive on less expensive phones.

But it is not the only service gaining traction around the world, particularly in parts of Asia, where players such as WeChat in China, Kakao Talk in South Korea and Line in Japan dominate - and, according to analysts, show greater potential for making money given their different products and strategies.

While WhatsApp, which is free to download but charges users US$1 per year, is popular in some Asian markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore, services such as Line, WeChat and Kakao have also expanded around the region and beyond.

"Mobile-messaging apps are growing fast in Asia," noted Elinor Leung and Seung-Joo Ro in a report for regional brokerage CLSA.

"While Facebook dominates the US, mobile-messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Line and WeChat have rapidly taken over Asian SNS (social networking service) markets, especially in the emerging markets."

WhatsApp currently has a larger base than each of the three Asian services but they are growing fast, particularly when it comes to emerging markets, where smartphones or less expensive "feature" phones are seeing explosive growth.

CLSA noted that "Asian mobile-messaging apps like Tencent's WeChat and Naver Corp.'s Line should be valued at a premium to WhatsApp with their wider service offerings and higher revenue potential from games to e-commerce and payment."

WeChat is currently valued by CLSA at US$35 billion and Line at US$14 billion.

Global social messaging volumes are expected to reach 69 trillion and subscribers to such services 1.8 billion by the end of 2014, according to data from market research firm Ovum.

"In SouthEast Asia there is a huge tussle for market share," Neha Dharia of Ovum told AFP.

"WhatsApp will be able to claim the Facebook share of those markets as well, making it hard for these other guys to grow."

WeChat

WeChat, or "Weixin" in Chinese, is a free instant messaging and social media mobile application developed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent and officially launched in January 2011.

It has not only become a popular mobile communications tool in China - where Facebook is mostly blocked and WhatsApp usage is comparatively low - but has also attracted tens of millions of users in overseas markets.

The Facebook deal values active WhatsApp users at US$42 a piece. According to analysts with Japan's Mizuho bank, WeChat is worth twice that amount "on the back of its gaming, [commerce] and mobile payment potential".

WeChat's number of monthly active users worldwide reached 272 million by the end of September last year, more than doubling from a year earlier amid a drive to attract more users in countries such as India, Spain and South Africa.

WeChat provides text, photo, video and voice messaging services on major mobile platforms. It also offers games, online payments and taxi booking.

Line

Launched in 2011 as an instant message and free voice call app, Line - whose parent company is South Korea's Naver Corp. - has grown to 350 million users worldwide and aims to hit 500 million this year.

Its user-friendly interface and voice communication capacity have helped it become one of most successful apps in Japan, while also seeing popularity in Thailand, Taiwan, Spain and Latin America.

The app is best known for "stickers" - cartoon-like images purchased by users, sales of which are core to Line's revenues.

Kakao Talk

Launched in 2010, Kakao Talk is used by 95 per cent of South Korea's smartphone users and boasts 130 million users worldwide. It is reported to be preparing for an initial public offering next year that could value it at US$2 billion.

The free app allows users to send messages, pictures, soundbites and video via the Internet, either on WiFi or through cellphone networks.

Gifts can be bought using Kakao's online shopping facilities, a feature that helped push revenue last year to 230 billion won (US$215 million) from 46 billion won a year ago.

It is eyeing Southeast Asian markets including Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia where it is fighting for market share against Line and WeChat.

Viber

Developed by Cyprus-based Viber Media, which was founded in 2010, the service boasts 280 million users and was recently purchased by Japanese IT firm Rakuten for US$900 million - or roughly US$3 per user. It allows free text messages and phone calls as well as video messaging. It recently launched a service allowing desktop users to call non-Viber users' mobile phones, in a challenge to Skype, owned by Microsoft.

Analysts have questioned whether it can make more money from customers in the same way that the likes of Line and WeChat have, leading to Rakuten's share price plunging as much as 13 per cent on the first trading day after it announced the deal.

- AFP

War of the apps heats up in China

In the Battle between the two Chinese Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent, the consumers are the real winners.

 

RAISING a hand to flag down a taxi by the streets could be passé in China, or at least in the eyes of the taxi booking app developers.

Two popular mobile apps, Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache (“dache” means taking the taxi), make it possible for passengers to hail a cab without flailing an arm, but just tapping on their smart phones.

The war between the two apps, which are backed by Chinese Internet giants Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd respectively, has gotten more intense this week.

On Monday, Didi Dache announced that it was going to revive its 10-yuan (RM5.42) rebate programme for users who book a cab and pay via Tencent’s instant messaging app Wechat.

Every passenger is entitled to receive a subsidy of 10 yuan each trip, for up to three trips a day.

For taxi drivers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, a reward of 10 yuan awaits for up to 10 bookings they successfully respond to through Didi Dache.

Cabbies in other cities will receive 5 yuan (RM2.71) for the first five trips and 10 yuan for the next five trips.

To prevent users from cheating, Didi Dache said it would block passengers and drivers who reach mutual agreements to use the app only after the passengers get into the cabs, with the motive of earning the rebates.

Didi Dache reportedly poured in 1bil yuan (RM542.18mil) for this round of subsidy.

Kuaidi Dache was quick to follow up with an “always-one-yuan-more” reward.

Users who hail a cab through its app and pay via Alibaba’s mobile payment service Alipay Wallet were promised that they would always enjoy one yuan more than users of its competitor.

It is not the first time these two apps are using these tactics to entice users.

In January, Didi Dache rolled out the 10-yuan rebate promotion, prompting Kuaidi Dache to offer the same rebate in response.

When Didi Dache reduced the 10-yuan incentive by half on Feb 10, Kuaidi Dache seized the chance to announce that it would retain the 10-yuan offer.

Now that Didi Dache has readjusted the rebate back to 10 yuan, Kuaidi Dache has decided to have the upper hand by pledging “always-one-yuan-more”.

However, just a day after these announcements were made, Didi Dache upped the rebate once again. Passengers would now receive between 12 yuan and 20 yuan (RM6.51 and RM10.84) per trip.

Kuaidi Dache followed suit to offer a subsidy of at least 13 yuan (RM7.05) per trip.

While Didi Dache offered 10,000 free trips a day to lucky passengers, Kuaidi Dache pledged 15,000 free trips a day.

It appeared that there was no end to this intense price war.

This “war” between the two apps is only one segment of the fierce rivalry between the two Internet companies, Tencent and Alibaba.

Tencent owns Wechat while Alibaba has developed a similar app known as “Laiwang”.

Alibaba bought 18% stake of the popular Twitter-like service Sina Weibo last year, which is the contender of Tencent’s Wechat.

Last week, Alibaba offered to purchase mobile mapping app AutoNavi. Tencent, meanwhile, already has a mapping service that boasts a similar function to Google’s Street View.

This latest contest in the taxi-booking app was seen as a tactic to encourage smart phone users to adopt the habit of using mobile payments.

During the just-concluded Chinese New Year holiday, Wechat users went gaga over the electronic angpao.

They had to first link their bank accounts to Wechat before they could give or receive money among their circle of friends.

According to Beijing Times, from the eve until the eighth day of Chinese New Year, more than 40 million angpao were handed out in the activity participated by more than eight million people.

Even Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma described the phenomenon as a “Pearl Harbour attack”.

In a poll on finance.ifeng.com, 70.42% of some 5,600 respondents felt that the war of taxi booking apps between Tencent and Alibaba was not a vicious competition.

Almost half of them believed that what mattered most at the end of the day was the product experience.

They were of the opinion that the company with the better service would prevail, in contrast to only 23.38% of the respondents who predicted that the one with bigger financial capability would eventually be declared the winner.

With the two giants locking horns and trying to outdo each other, many believed that the consumers are the biggest beneficiaries.

The rebates did not have a reported deadline. Until the cash rewards are withdrawn, users can continue to enjoy the subsidies to save some pennies.

Contributed  by Tho Xin Yi The Star/Asia News Network

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WhatsApp deal dwarfs other high-profile Tech acquisitions

WhatsApp with Facebook's $19B offer?

 http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2014/02/19/t-facebook-whatsapp-19-billion.cnnmoney/

In a play to dominate messaging on phones and the Web, Facebook has acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion.

That's a stunning sum for the five-year old company. But WhatsApp has been able to hold its weight against messaging heavyweights like Twitter (TWTR), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Skype. WhatsApp has upwards of 450 million users, and it is adding an additional million users every day.

Referring to WhatsApp's soaring growth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call, "No one in the history of the world has done anything like that."

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app for smartphones, according to OnDevice Research.

Buying WhatsApp will only bolster Facebook's already strong position in the crowded messaging world. Messenger, Facebook's a standalone messaging app for mobile devices, is second only to WhatsApp in its share of the smartphone market.

Related: 5 key moments that changed Facebook
 
Similar to traditional text messaging, WhatsApp allows people to connect via their cellphone numbers. But instead of racking up texting fees, WhatsApp sends the actual messages over mobile broadband. That makes WhatsApp particularly cost effective for communicating with people overseas.

That kind of mobile messaging services have become wildly popular, with twice as many messages sent over the mobile Internet than via traditional texts, according to Deloitte. But most of the messaging industry's revenue is still driven by text messaging.

On the conference call, Facebook said it is not looking to drive revenue from WhatsApp in the near term, instead focusing on growth. Zuckerberg said he doesn't anticipate trying to aggressively grow WhatsApp's revenue until the service reaches "billions" of users.

WhatsApp currently charges a dollar a year after giving customers their first year of use for free. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said on the conference call that WhatsApp's business model is already successful.

That indicates Facebook bought WhatsApp to add value to its existing messaging services, as well as for the long-term potential of the company.

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 for similar reasons: As young social network users gravitated towards photo-sharing, Facebook wanted to scoop up what could have eventually become a big rival.

Like Instagram, WhatsApp will function as an autonomous unit within Facebook, with all the existing employees coming in as part of the deal.

Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) said it will pay WhatsApp $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in stock.

WhatsApp's founders and staff will be eligible for for another $3 billion in stock grants to be paid out if they remain employed by Facebook for four years. Koum will also join Facebook's board of directors.

-   By Adrian Covert  @CNNMoneyTech

Internet addiction taking toll on health !

Internet addiction has become a new threat to healthy living for Malaysians, depriving them of sleep and exercise, a survey by a global insurance group has found.

A whopping 73% of Malaysian adults who took part in the 2013 AIA Healthy Living Index survey admitted that their online activities and social networking were getting addictive, putting the country a­­mongst those with the highest addiction rates in the Asia-Pacific region.

The poll by AIA Group covered over 10,000 adults in 15 Asia Pacific markets.

Of some 900 Malaysian respondents, 81% stated that spending time online prevented them from getting enough exercise or sleep while 80% claimed that their posture was affected.

The survey noted that this addictive trend would continue to be fuelled by children growing up with the Internet as an integral part of their lives.

On healthy living, 67% of adults in Malaysia felt that their health was not as good as it was five years ago.
Overall, Malaysia scored 61 out of 100 points in the survey.

Malaysia also fared poorly in the area of healthy habits, with 32% of adults admitting that they did not exercise regularly.

On average, Malaysians spent only 2.5 hours on exercise a week, below the regional average of three hours and below the ideal recommended by most experts.

Sufficient sleep was rated the most important driver of healthy living in Malaysia and the region.

While adults in Malaysia desired eight hours of sleep, they only had 6.4 hours on average, leading to a sleep gap of 1.6 hours, the third highest in the region.

Spending time online was listed as one of the causes of this sleep deprivation.

The survey mentioned that these not very positive health habits were aggravated by a preference for sedentary ways to relieve stress, such as watching TV or movies, playing computer or mobile games and spending time online.

Spending time with family and children or friends was also a popular way to de-stress for Malaysians.

Meanwhile, healthy food habits were still limited to the basics of drinking more water as well as eating more fruits and vegetables, although 56% of Malaysian adults were also trying to eat less sweets and snacks.

There was also much concern about obesity – 64% of Malaysian adults said they wanted to lose weight, above the regional average of 53%. Further, 93% agreed that obesity among younger people was a worrying trend.

Cancer, heart disease and being overweight were the top health concerns in Malaysia, with the former two being above regional averages.

Despite these concerns, only 50% of Malaysian adults had medical check-ups in the past 12 months.

The study found that 89% of adults in Malaysia felt that employers should help employees live a healthy lifestyle, mainly by providing free health checks, not subjecting em­­ployees to undue stress and ensuring workloads were not excessive.

AIA Bhd chief executive officer Bill Lisle said the company was committed to helping Malaysians live longer and healthier lives.

“Through this extensive survey, we are keen to identify and enhance awareness of the key trends that impact the health of adults so we can actively work with the community and our customers to promote more positive attitudes.”

Contributed  by Lim Ai Lee The Star/Asia News Network

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Youngsters lured by power, money and glamour !

Peddling drugs: Crime offenders are not just getting younger but also more aggressive, preferring ‘high-risk, big-gain’ offences to petty crime.

Serious crimes are no longer just committed by hardened criminals. There has been a rise in the number of cases involving teenagers and youngsters.

BOON was only 16 when he was recruited by a gang. Within months, he was peddling the party drug “ice” at nightspots. “I rose up the ranks very fast and was given the nickname ‘Tiger’.

“The gang leader trusted me and I was even allowed to help ‘manage the girls’ (prostitutes),” recalls the school dropout who comes from a broken home.

Married at the age of 20, Boon decided to leave his life of crime and is now working as a dishwasher in the United Kingdom.

“My wife left me and I have a little daughter to think about now. I need to earn enough to ensure a good future for her,” he adds.

Boon believes that if he had not walked away as he did then, he would have “progressed” to heavier crimes and probably end up in jail.

Lured by power, money and glamour, more teenagers and other youngsters are getting involved in serious crimes and living on the edge. Boon is one of the lucky ones who managed to break out of the vicious cycle.

Crime offenders are not just getting younger but also more aggressive, preferring “high-risk, big-gain” offences to petty crime, psychologist and criminologist Dr Geshina Ayu Mat Saat observes.

“Influenced by the glamorous lifestyles of local and foreign celebrities, movies and social networking on the Internet, more youngsters are purposely exposing themselves to criminal activities. Their level of aggression (as seen in the severity of their crimes) is today almost on par with their adult counterparts,” adds Dr Geshina, who is with Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Forensic Science Programme.

Her interviews with juveniles indicate that they see involvement in serious crimes as more exciting because they get a sense of power and higher monetary reward.

“Their logic is, why get involved in petty thefts when distributing drugs provides more money? There’s also an element of ignorance as to the punitive consequences of their actions to themselves and their families.”

Why so violent? 

There are many reasons for aggressive and violent behaviour.

Research has shown that there are the psychological and biological aspects, family dynamics, peer pressure, economic reasons, lack of morality and religiosity and environmental cues at play, Dr Geshina notes.

“There’s no one single ‘formula’ to identify the reasons for violent actions but the dominant determinant is having an anti-social personality which has been shaped during childhood,” she says.

Psychologist and family therapist Datuk Dr Mat Saat Baki finds teenagers and young adults more violent and sexually aggressive these days. Society should shoulder some blame, he says.

“Teenagers are getting more difficult to control because nowadays, society accepts violence as a way of life and a means of getting what you want. Take video games, for example. What’s popular in the market are video games that send the message: the more you kill, the higher you score,” he says, citing the easy access to violent pornographic material as another example.

“Exposure to pornography that glorifies the forced physical act of raping a girl sends the message that the more you control and dominate, the better you are. This can even result in forceful sex in relationships.”

He adds that youngsters are more brazen when they are acting in a group as they reassure and encourage each other to behave in a particular way.

“For instance, in a gang rape situation, they could be daring each other to ‘do it’ or (as a group), they want to punish a girl who has spurned the advances of one of their friends. Add drugs or alcohol into the mix, and the violence just escalates without them even realising it – it can get very dangerous, very fast,” he explains.

Safety activist K. Balasupramaniam says young criminals are not a new phenomenon but the gravity of the crimes and modus operandi are.

Young criminals are noticeably more advanced these days because of their Internet-savvy ways.

Having trained over 260,000 women from all walks of life in urban survival skills to date, he notes that Gen Y criminals have unlimited technological know-how thanks to the World Wide Web.

“Everything is at their fingertips – the latest technologies are a click away.

“They can buy almost any weapon online while CSI episodes and movies show them how crimes can be committed creatively.

“Unlike in the old days, we are not dealing with bicycle thefts any more. Young criminals have moved on to serious offences because they are an IT-savvy generation,” he says, adding that even children as young as nine now have Facebook and are able to see and copy what the adults are doing.

However, unlike adults who may think twice before committing an illegal act, juveniles won’t because they know that the law will be lenient with them.

He says the trend of movies portraying bad guys as heroes is also a problem.

“We are dealing with fast learners who are savvy in committing knowledge-based crimes. If nothing is done to curb this breed of young criminals, I fear the worst when Gen Z comes along.”

Dr Geshina, who works with many agencies including the police, is currently doing a holistic study of juvenile behaviour.

Her research aims to determine the reasons for juvenile involvement in crime, their profiles and contri­buting factors, and to chart criminal pathways based on adult criminal behaviour.

“One element in our study is aggressive behaviour,” she says. “The levels (of their aggressiveness) are also higher compared with normal members of the public.” The study is slated for completion by the end of the year.

Nipping crime in the bud 

Education and family intimacy are ways to curb aggression, violent and criminal behaviour, Dr Mat Saat opines. For example, in the case of rape, teenagers must be taught to cope with their sexual desires and peer pressure.

“They must know how to express themselves and channel their sexual energy in a proper, non-violent manner,” he says.

Stressing on the importance of sex education, he says it’s a misconception to claim that it teaches students to sleep around.

“On the contrary, sex education is important because it shows youngsters how to love, care, respect and relate to each other. It is about the art of living and includes topics like fertility and relationships,” he says.

He says it’s not enough for parents to inculcate good values in their kids.

“You need to monitor your children’s behaviour and the crowd they mix with because, ultimately, no matter what you teach them, it’s their choice to act in a certain way,” he stresses.

“Parents are good at giving guidelines but enforcement is another thing. Teenagers will say ‘I know better’ and they will seek validation from their peers and check for themselves to see if what you’ve said is acceptable.

“Parenting now is very different from the old days so you need to change your approach.”

Balasupramaniam emphasises strong family bonds and civic consciousness to prevent a young breed of criminals from booming.

Describing civic consciousness as the “antibody to crime”, he says the police omnipresence is not a long-term solution.

“You cannot stop the Internet and you definitely cannot stop access to knowledge – good or bad, so we need to bring back the days when kids were trained to do the right thing,” he says.

Dr Geshina believes negligent and abusive styles of parenting also increase children’s risk of exposure to crime.

Older criminals and criminal gangs seek out vulnerable youngsters, she opines.

Children in the above situations are “willing to be involved in gangs either because it’s where they can get tender, loving care and acceptance or because their parents simply can’t be bothered with what they are doing,” she says.

Advising parents to play their part in not exposing their children to criminal elements, Dr Geshina says there are “potential criminal” signs and behavioural patterns parents should look out for in their children.

Look out for a drastic change in behaviour, bringing or hiding different sets of clothes that are inconsistent with the reason cited for leaving the house, she says.

“A common sign is withdrawal from family activities, playing truant or skipping classes. (Instead of being with the family) they prefer to spend more time, including at night, with their peers or older children.”

Another tell-tale sign is when the value of the child’s belongings are more than what the parents can afford.

Mood swings, abnormal sleeping and speech patterns, among others, may indicate drug use.

The way children behave with others can also indicate bullying and anti-social behaviour.

“If your children are behaving more aggressively and want to hurt others, don’t engage in aggressive confrontations and hurl accusations. It will only make them less likely to cooperate and want to rebel by getting even more involved in crime.

“There are better ways to address problematic behaviour but parents should have been more aware from the onset so that criminal involvement does not occur in the first place,” she says.

Mother-of-four K. T. Yew, 56, admits to being overly protective of her four daughters but believes she has no choice as more youngsters are in the news lately for serious crimes.

“Every other day, I read about serious crimes being committed. Many of those arrested are so young, some are still in their teens,” she notes.

She makes it a point to tell her daughters, the youngest of whom is 17, of crime reports and repeatedly warns them to be selective of the company they keep.

“I’m very strict but ultimately, it’s they who must differentiate between what’s right and wrong. I can only hope that the values I’ve instilled in them will keep them safe,” she says

By CHRISTINA CHIN The Star/Asia News Network

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Bloggers doing their bit to champion a good cause

BLOGGER Dr Angelo Nino M. Santos brought his eight-year-old son to visit three children’s homes so that the little boy would appreciate what he had in his life.



“My son Antonio Gabriel was so excited to come.

“He packed his old toys and clothes to be donated to the children here,” he said while at Ramakrishna Orphanage in Scotland Road, Penang.

The visit was in conjunction with the ‘Responsible Blogging 2013: Time To Give Back’ programme.

A total of 40 bloggers visited Rama-krishna Orphanage, Children’s Pro- tection Society and Shan Children’s Home to give away food and other items.

The programme was organised by Crowdpot Sdn Bhd, a social media marketing company.

Crowdpot director Leslie Loh said they planned to help educate bloggers about safe blogging and to achieve one million ‘responsible actions’.

“For example, if each blogger who posted about this event in his or her blog receives about 100 comments, we consider that we have generated responsible action,” he explained.

Dr Angelo, 36, a lecturer at the Allianze University College of Medical Sciences, said it was the first time he was taking part in such a programme.

He said he started blogging in 2007 and his blog mainly focuses on the 3Fs — family, food and fun.

Also present was Penang Health, Welfare, Caring Society and Environ­ment Committee chairman Phee Boon Poh.

Loh said Crowdpot was also giving away prizes for those who helped to blog about the homes.

“The prizes include three iPad Minis sponsored by Crowdpot and six Ninetology Black Pearl 2 dual-core Android smartphones sponsored by Ninetology Malaysia,” he said.

The contest is until March 23.

For details, visit www.responsibleblogging.my. - The Star

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