Witkey: the Online Bazaar for Wisdom
The witkeys bid for the value of wisdom.
Trend Description:
Witkey is the buzzword of e-commerce in China. It was defined as a new business model that allows people to make money with their wisdom, knowledge, skills and experience via the internet. In another word, the witkey is an online platform where people sell and buy innovative ideas to solve their problems. According to a survey conducted by iResearch, more than 10% of Chinese internet users logged on at least two witkey websites in June 2007. The top two witkey sites are Zhubajie.com and TaskCn.com.
Cases:
Witkey:
Witkey.com was founded by Liu Feng, who coined the word “witkey” in 2005 when he was an MAB student in China Academy of Sciences. It offers three ways of doing business on witkey website - a witmap, the digital map integrating people according to their location, professional skills, contact information, witkey space and other personal data,a board for bid and a showcase for innovative designs and ideas. According to Liu, the witmap will put a new face on search engines as real people will be the searching entries. The board for bid is a good place to get solutions and do marketing as well. It also opens up an opportunity for people geographically constraind to contribute their knacks and skills to those in need, which diversifies choices.
Taozhi：
“Taozhi (meaning to pan out the wisdom)” got its name from the inspiration of “Taobao (to pan out the treasures)”, China’s Ebay and the most successful C2C platform. Taozhi has one big difference with Taobao - it only deals with goods untouchable, such as a nice name for a newborn baby or a logo design for a new brand . Other than that, the two websites share a lot of similarities, for instance, they have similar interface; they both set aside a third party to manage the deals on the websites and rate the credit of buyers and sellers. The introduction of C2C mode is an innovation to witkey itself.
TaskCn:
TaskCn is on the top of the witkey site list in the survey conducted by iResearch in the summer of 2007. By January 31, 2008, it has 1,697,833 registered users. The total bid on it is 1,908,499 yuan and 1,635,393 yuan has been reimbursed to winners of the bids.
Trend Impact:
The witkeys have a huge market in China. The Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co. estimated there was 9 million witkey users by the end of 2007 in China alone. On a survey in December 2006 by iResearch, only 47% internet users showed interest in witkeys; while in July 2007, a similar survey indicates 81% of the interviewees would like to try their luck there. As the quanlity of ideas is the single most decisive factor for successful bids, witkeys casts a worldwide net for human resources, among who freelancers and college students will benefit most.
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