Baidu ends microblogging service in China

Beijing, Aug 10: Baidu, the largest search engine in China, has announced the plan to stop its Twitter-like social service Baidu Shuoba, or Baidu Talk.

Baidu, which controls the search engine market in China with more than 80 percent market share, announced that it will suspend the Baidu Talk service by the end of Aug 2011. Though Baidu declined to give specific reasons for the site's closing, the company said that Baidu Talk helped them to gather more valuable experience in developing its social networking services strategy.

"Due to adjustments in the company"s operations, starting today Shuoba is accepting no new user posts, and on August 22 the entire Shuoba service will be suspended," Baidu said in a statement.

Baidu said that this micro-blogging service will be incorporated with other Baidu products. Also, the company urged users to try two of the site"s other products: message board Baidu Tieba and user-generated question and answer service Baidu Zhidao.

Baidu Talk was launched in Sep 2010 and grabbed more than 1 million registered users. But, it failed to attract more users as two other companies, namely Tencent and Weibo, were offering similar service long time back in China.

Finally, Baidu, which thrashed global search giant Google in China, was forced to close its micro-blogging service in the country where Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus have all been blocked by Communist government.

OneIndia News