Alibaba will get a seat on Tango's board of directors, and hold a minority stake
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is investing US$215 million to acquire a minority stake and a seat in the board of Tango, a mobile messaging app from the U.S.
The investment announced Thursday by the Chinese company follows investments by some other Internet companies in mobile messaging apps. Last month, Facebook announced it would spend $16 billion to buy WhatsApp, a rival product also out of the U.S.
Days before that deal was announced, Japan's Rakuten said it would buy messaging app Viber for $900 million.
As smartphone use is soaring, tech companies across the world are scrambling for products that can attract millions of mobile Internet users. In China, Alibaba has been making more of its e-commerce services available on smartphones and tablets by developing apps, and even its own mobile OS.
Alibaba did not discuss how it intends to benefit from its investment in Tango. 31 percent of the app's users come from North America, while another 29 percent are from the Middle East.
Over the last six months, Alibaba has been investing in U.S. Internet companies it believes are promising. These include ShopRunner, an online retailer, and Quixey, a search engine for apps.
In a statement, Joe Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman, said the e-commerce giant was "blown away" by Tango's vision and the quality of its team.
But according to a source familiar with the matter, one of the reasons Alibaba invested in Tango was because of its engineering expertise in mobile messaging.
Tango, which has 70 million monthly active users, works as an app that can enable video and voice calls, along with text messaging. Alibaba hopes to learn from Tango, and the company could even one day use its technology, although no such plans have been made yet, the source said.
In China, Alibaba has its own messaging app called Laiwang that competes against WeChat, a messaging app from local rival Tencent. WeChat already has 355 million monthly active users, and Tencent is spending millions on promoting the app outside of China.
The rivalry between Alibaba and Tencent has heated up recently. Earlier this month, Tencent announced it would join forces with Chinese online retailer JD.com, as part of a deal that could challenge Alibaba's hold over the local market. With Tencent's WeChat, the company has a popular app that can be tied to e-commerce functions such as making online purchases, or hosting advertisements for vendors.
Alibaba has been making its own investments in China to buttress its mobile business. Last year, it bought a stake in Sina Weibo, one of China's largest social networking sites, as a way to promote its e-commerce services. In addition, Alibaba is working to acquire one of China's largest online mapping providers for $1.1 billion.
While approaching a customer in a shop and asking what you can help them with is Retail 101, how many of us actually enjoy being approached? Generally, you have to give the forced, fake smile and say, “Just browsing, thanks,” while screaming on the inside, “just leave me alone!” Maybe it’s just me?
Not a day passes by in the life of business executives where digital innovation or the prospect of disruption is not front of mind. This in turn, drives an unrelenting flow of questioning, discussion and strategy papers.
Unless you’ve been marketing under a rock, you’ll probably have questioned whether your media agencies are offering you transparency.
In Episode 10 of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with Country Road GM of brand and customer experience, Col Kennedy, about how brands enabling teams to support the customer no matter what they want to achieve is vital to the engagement equation.
Nice post Brad! very useful information. The retail stores are really mean for every brand I am agree with you. Now Online Service Market...
Srialto
The rise of online retail marketplaces and what they mean for brands
Minor correct Nadia, just wanted to clarify that the "Marketo consultants" that did this work, were actually Hoosh consultants
Fab Capodicasa
What it's taking for Edible Blooms to grow a stronger personalisation strategy
Im not surprise though, been in the industry for couple of years and I feel and see it with my tow eyes how eCommerce platforms innovated...
Jason Smith
Australia Post earmarks $20m for Australian ecommerce innovation investment
For marketers that are "going Agile" I recommend using Ravetree. It's a really powerful suite of tools for Agile project management, reso...
Janice Morgan
7 ways to run your marketing department like a software startup
Over the years very part of our lives has become technological. That’s why I am not surprised to see that Australian home loans are going...
GreatDayTo
Why Aussie Home Loans is embracing digital transformation