MCLC: YY is coming

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: YY is coming
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Source: Wired (11/21/12):
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/11/yy-facebook-china/

Facebook Is All Smiles in China Now, But YY Is Coming
BY RYAN TATE

Facebook is officially banned in China, which gives local social network
YY.com ­ with 400 million users and counting ­ a big leg up. The playing
field is more even on the U.S. stock exchange Nasdaq, where Facebook and
YY will begin competing for investors any day now.After filing to go
public earlier this month, YY could IPO as soon as this week, seeking
around $90 milion at a fully diluted market value of around $664 million.

That¹s small fry compared to Facebook, which is worth tens of billions of
dollars. But it¹s part of a broader impressive showing for Chinese
internet firms. Search engine Baidu trades at a market cap of around $33
billion on NASDAQ, where YY is planning to list. Hong Kong-based portal
Tencent is valued at $62 billion.

And YY CEO David Li has been talking up the company¹s growth potential,
bragging 
<http://blogs.voanews.com/digital-frontiers/2012/11/20/chinese-social-netwo
rk-yy-reaches-400-million-users/> about the company¹s utility in
teleconferencing, popularity among online gamers, and reportedly brisk
business selling access to online music performances. ³We¹re very strong
on interest-based groups, whether it¹s music, farming, education or
medicine,² Li recently told Forbes Asia
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/06/20/social-with-a-twist-chin
as-yy-com-mixes-real-time-voice-and-video-with-virtual-goods/>.

YY is also a leader in the ³sticky² activity of group voice chat. The
company says the typical user of its ³YY Client² chat system spent 52
hours on the system in September, roughly nine times as much the typical
<http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/time-spent-on-facebook-mobile/> American
Facebook user spent on Facebook. YY claims 84 percent share of ³real-time
online group voice communications²

YY investors include the Asian arm of Steamboat Ventures, a venture
capital affiliate of the Walt Disney Company. IPO underwriters include
Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Deutsche Bank. In other words, thanks in part to
state controls back home, YY is now able to roll with some the most
red-blooded capitalists the free market has to offer.