Alibaba completes $3.5 billion takeover of South China Morning Post to dominate the Chinese media sector
South China Morning Post has removed the online paywall from its site following the completion of its takeover by Alibaba. Its PDF editions and physical newspaper will remain subscription based.
Earlier, SCMP imposed a limit on those stories, which non-paying users could read on its site monthly; but currently, that cap has been removed in a measure “paves the way to grow its readership globally,” as revealed by Editor-in-Chief Tammy Tam.
Tammy further claimed that people need “insightful and trusted news” from China – a line similar to what was heard from founder of the Chinese e-commerce company. In December, the online retailer announced plans to purchase the 113-year-old publication. Companies purchasing media always express concern. Executive chairman of Alibaba, Joe Tsai, told at the moment that the company won’t interfere with the methods of the newspaper to work, but rather use its own resources.
That means increased financial efforts from the business perspective through what the organization calls as “e-commerce media ecosystem.” Beyond than three-bundled buzzwords joined together to form a phrase, CEO of the Hangzhou-based organization, Daniel Zhang, claimed the case that media represents a possibly profitable channel for online trading facilities, and those of the organization while also helping media organization earn money.
Besides the publication, Alibaba also invested in ‘Weibo’ (a microblogging website) and is passing through the completion phase of a $3.5 billion takeover of video website ‘Youku Tudou’ to enhance its media profile.
Apart from dropping its paywall, the mobile apps of SCMP is also revamped with deep-linking, personalization, search and other features, since the organization states it is now “a mobile first company” with mobile representing most of its business.
Many doubted the intentions of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos when took over the American publication, Washington Post, but the newspaper seems to be allowed to keep working under own rule. Alibaba can be compared to Amazon in a number of ways, and people can just wait to find out if it can act with patience with its sparkly newly acquired media asset.
SCMP reported that since last night, a reader could read it free of charge and download the new app for Windows, Android and iPhone for easy and speedy reach to the latest news.
Chairman of Alibaba, Jack Ma said, “[With the paywall taken down today] our focus now should not be on finding the right media business model.” The dropping of Paywall differs from the international trend of publications charging readers for articles they read on websites, but Jack is taking a lesson from his Taobao experience. He expressed confidence that with the help of a change-embracing and open-minded approach, the publication would turn itself into a profitable publication and find out its own business model.
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