The development and integration stage

2009

After the "hibernation", the year of 2009 brought the spring to the Internet industry. In this year, Tencent overtook eBay and Yahoo! to become the second biggest Internet company in terms of market value, next only to Google and Amazon. Chinese Internet companies' global influence started to grow. By the end of 2009, China had boasted 384 million netizens, and the number is continuing to grow.

In 2009, the concept of Web 2.0 gradually faded out as SNS websites emerged one after another. With the rise of SNS websites, "vegetable stealing" made an unprecedented Internet sensation and "Your mom is calling you home for dinner" became a symbol of the ending. It also triggered a nationwide entertainment-for-all campaign. Suddenly, people of all ages were "stealing vegetables" online, and "杯具" (tragedy), "草泥马" (the F-word), "围脖" (Weibo), and "不要迷恋哥" (Do not have a crush on me) became popular on the Internet, and the whole Internet industry displayed a strong momentum for growth.

As the whole country went crazy about cyber entertainment, the lawsuit field by "kaixin001.com" against "kaixin.com", which belonged to the China InterActive Corp" added to the drama. The two websites shared the same name "kaixin", provided the same vegetable-stealing and parking games and had even nearly identical domain names. Would the lawsuit put the heating SNS competition in order or throw cold water on SNS participants?

Of course, SNS websites were not the only thing that grew in the "springtime". Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase Inc., declared that he was planning to raise pigs. The move was enough to expand the imagination of venture capital and break the established mindset of the industry and existing industrial boundaries. But pig raising was not the most important. What's more important was that NetEase acquired the dealership of the World of Warcraft (WoW), which belonged to The9 Limited, which caught the eyes of five million WoW players. In addition, Shanda acquired Hurray!, and then Shanda Games was listed and bought www.ku6.com, a video website. It seemed that the year of 2009 was not a peaceful year for online games. New rules were rolled out for virtual currency used in online games. The online game industry concerned the personal interests of a massive number of players, so the government would never take a laissez-faire attitude towards it as towards SNS websites.

In 2009, the Chinese Internet industry embarked on the right track and the government started to step into Internet regulation. The campaign to eliminate pornography and illegal publications throughout the year helped create a healthy, orderly cultural environment. Measures to purify social morals were taken in good order, porn information and pirated products on the Internet were decreasing, and cyber infringements were cracked down upon. Several related documents were released, including the Notice on Default Installation of Green Filter Software for Internet Surfing on Computers, the Notice on Strengthening and Improving Content Review of Cyber Music, the Stipulation on Job Responsibilities, Internal Organs and Staffing, and the Law of the People's Republic of China on Tort Liability. All these efforts have cleared obstacles and consolidated the foundation for the future development of the Internet industry.

Of course, online public opinion was a force that should not be underestimated in 2009. A series of corruption acts such as "hide-and-seek game" (a young man was claimed to die in a hide-and-seek with inmates in the detention center), Deng Yujiao (a female hotel staff who stabbed two town government officials out of self-defense at work, causing one death), "Luxury Cigarettes" (a director of district housing management department in Nanjing was found smoking luxury cigarettes and wearing luxury watches after photos of him in a meeting were uploaded to the Internet), and "Entrapment" were exposed on the Internet and attracted extensive attention. The Internet made it easy for people to express their opinions online and thus enabled public opinion to play the role of watchdog. Meanwhile, communication modes of "points-to-one-point" and "points-to-points" were taking shape.