October 17, 2014
Yesterday at Wandoujia (豌豆夹; known internationally as Snap Pea) HQ, located in Beijing's Zhongguancun Dongsheng Science and Technology Park, the mobile content search engine innovator held a press conference marking the one year anniversary of its Video Search tool. CEO and founder Wang Junyu, co-founder Liu Yaping, and search technology lead Li Dahai, presented on Wandoujia's recent innovations as well as related developments in the search engine industry.
A brief history of developments and accomplishments was presented by Mr. Liu:
September 2013, Wandoujia officially release their Video Search function, allowing users to open Wandoujia video search results in other applications for playback.
January 2014, Wandoujia introduce their Mobile Content Search Strategy: Wandoujia version 4.0 expands video, e-book, wallpaper and other categories' contents.
March 2014, Wandoujia publicly release the only fully comprehensive, mobile-exclusive content search function. With this, even if a website doesn't run a mobile version of its application, developers can still access their app using Wandoujia.
July 2014, Wandoujia brings Maoyan (“Cat's Eye”), the movie ticket search-and-purchase app, into its ecology. This enables users to jump directly from Wandoujia into Maoyan's seat-selection and ticketing operations—helping users extend their access to online content and further broadening Wandoujia's functionality.
Bringing us up to the present, Mr. Liu talked about a Wandoujia innovation currently on trial with Wandoujia users: integrated travel/tourism search results. In a live demonstration, by searching the term 'Japan,' Wandoujia yielded a wealth of travel-related content, from tickets for the Bullet Train to Japanese food, sights and activities, to Japanese apps, games, films and TV shows. With a grin, Mr. Liu said the goal was to create a one-stop stop travel/tourist content experience and broaden Wandoujia's applicability and competitiveness among rival search engines.
Mr. Liu and Mr. Li then shared the mic to situate Wandoujia in the current landscape of the search engine industry. They noted Google's December 2013 release of App Indexing, which allows users to jump to content with an Open In App button. Lesser known search engine Quixey was also cited: its release of App URL in August 2013, enables jumping directly from the content page of another application into that application. They also noted that in March of 2013, Chinese Internet giant Baidu released its Search Applications function. With Search Applications, users can search Baidu from any mobile phone browser and connect to several of Baidu's native apps such as Baidu Maps and iQIYI.
In 2013, Wandoujia was worth about 1.2 billion US, and last February it received $120 million USD in funding headed by Softbank. Although Wandoujia is only fully operable on Andriod, Li Dahai explained during Q&A that Wandoujia engages the Chinese iOS user base with video and other content linking. As Chinese Android users of Google Play hovered around 6% last year(1), Wandoujia is well-placed in the domestic market to lead mobile content searching—not to mention its arsenal of unique innovations. Based on the comparisons it provided at the conference, it seems that Wandoujia is keeping up with if not staying ahead of the curve.
(1)