Alibaba Requires Staff to Use Laiwang Mobile IM

China Business News, 10/22/13

Staff at Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group have confirmed that company employees are being required to use Alibaba's mobile instant messaging SNS app Laiwang. Employees who do not have 100 non-Alibaba employee friends on Laiwang will not be eligible to receive their annual bonuses. Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, recently published a notice on an internal Alibaba message board emphasizing the importance of Laiwang to the company, even stating that the company would not consider listing before its wireless business is fully developed.

According to Alibaba insiders, CEO Jonathan Lu met with company management on October 18 to emphasize Alibaba's strategic focus on mobile development. In addition to Laiwang, the company will also focus its resources on the mobile version of its C2C & B2C e-commerce site Taobao, Alibaba's Aliyun OS, and a soon-to-be-released O2O product.

Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "Alibaba Launches Laiwang Mobile IM Promotion" MD 9/23/13 issue and "Alibaba Encourages Staff Promotion of Mobile IM with Cash" MD 8/20/13 issue.

Keywords: Jack Ma Jonathan Lu wireless mobile IM Alibaba Group Laiwang

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