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A fascinating story on Sohu.com, one of the big three web portals targeting the Chinese market..according to the story, today, Sohu stands as one of the world’s most remarkable Internet rebound stories. In this year’s second quarter, net income totaled $7.53 million as revenue more than tripled from a year earlier to $19.3 million; the company’s stock price has risen more than 1,300% since August 2002.
How did it do it? By harnessing SMS. “Sohu’s strategy was simple: It moved much of its content, such as dating services and chat rooms, from the Internet to the SMS platform for mobile phones. That provided a basic but essential benefit to Sohu and other Chinese Web portals making the same move — allowing them to bill users for content by adding charges to their mobile-phone bills. Suddenly, the content that they had been giving away free on their Web sites could fetch a modest sum on mobile phones.”
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