The vast majority of websites–and there are more than 230 million of them–are rarely if ever visited. This sobering (if unsurprising) fact is something we are mindful of as we unveil Alizila, a corporate news website for the Alibaba Group. We say sobering, because Alizila debuts at time when there is no shortage of company websites, blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. Most are destined to become the I.T. equivalents of space junk, discarded and forgotten clumps of digital deitritus uselessly orbiting the vast reaches of the Internet.
The trick, then, is to avoid getting lost in cyberspace. We launch today with high hopes that, if you are interested in e-commerce, Alizila will be informative, relevant and worth regular reading. Our proposition to you is a little unusual. Although we are owned and operated by Alibaba Group, our small staff of journalists will not busy themselves with marketing theatrics of the type found on most company websites. Our job is to cover Alibaba Group and the e-commerce industry like any newspaper beat reporter would, preferably with insight, clarity and even skepticism. Yes, some Alizila features, videos and commentary (including this blog) will present a corporate point of view. But our main goal is to commit fact-based journalism–to inform, not to sell. Think of Alizila as an experiment in corporate transparency. We ask you to hold us to this promise of independent coverage.
Of course, any reporter who has ever covered the local school board knows that stories are only as compelling as their subject matter. Fortunately Alibaba Group is a major e-commerce player, owner of some inherently interesting and influential websites and Internet services that reach more than 250 million registered users around the world. There’s Alibaba.com, which connects millions of manufacturers with wholesalers and retailers worldwide and whose shares are publicly traded in Hong Kong. There’s Taobao.com, China’s largest B2C website, which is revolutionizing Chinese e-tailing and surpasses Amazon.com in online sales volumes. And there’s Alipay, a China-based online payment platform that is underpinning the growth of e-commerce in this region through a trustworthy, escrow-based e-payment system.
These are companies worth reading about, not least because Alibaba Group’s top executives, including founder Jack Ma, who’s a bonafide business celebrity in China, believe that e-commerce will profoundly alter the international business landscape in the years to come. The Internet has the power to nurture small businesses, generate jobs, improve productivity, boost economic growth and even protect the environment by reducing waste. Alibaba Group companies are being positioned to help drive these changes by providing innovative platforms and solutions for increasingly frictionless e-commerce. If you are an Alibaba Group customer, an entrepreneur, a business or technology journalist, investment analyst or are otherwise interested in developments at Alibaba Group, we invite you to watch this space as the future unfolds.
