移動信息大戰升溫，阿里巴巴領投美國Tango
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????Tango是一款信息和視頻移動信息應用，這家公司已新募集了驚人的2.80億美元新風險投資。阿里巴巴（Alibaba Group）牽頭投入2.15億美元，獲得了少數股份作為回報。剩余的那部分由Tango現有投資者投入，這些投資者先前已投入了8,000萬美元。 ????據熟悉情況的一位消息人士稱，這筆交易對Tango的估值超過10億美元。這家公司自己并未討論估值問題，只是表示，這筆交易實際上并沒有受到Facebook收購WhatsApp交易的影響。 ????“那件事發生的時候，我們差不多都已經談好了，”Tango聯合創始人兼CTO埃里克?賽頓說?！拔艺J為，基本上，從對于這一領域獲得關注的程度和每個人所看到驚人價值來看，收購WhatsApp的那筆交易讓每個人感覺都很好?！弊畛醯拈T戶網站一代敗給了搜索引擎，但移動應用這一代并不是搜索引擎，甚至也不是應用程序商店。它涉及的是移動信息傳輸應用，人們每天要查看40次。這給我們創造了一個機會，讓我們可以帶領人們獲得其他的體驗?！?/p> ????賽頓認為，正是這些其他體驗幫助Tango與像WhatsApp等公司區別開來，因為WhatApp依然幾乎完全把重點放在了信息傳輸上。舉例來說，Tango用戶可以與其他人分享音樂，一起打游戲。這一點可能變得越來越重要，因為世界各地越來越多的用戶可以獲得無止境的數據流量。 ????“舉例來說，眼下在美國，消費者的確沒有感受到每一條文字信息背后的價格，”賽頓解釋說?！耙虼耍峁┙o消費者的實際上是將與運營商服務垂直的服務?！?/p> ????預計這些籌資的大部分將用于招聘，其中包括為其北京辦公室招募員工——這也幫助解釋了阿里巴巴為什么會參與進來。阿里巴巴美國投資業務董事長蔡瑟加入了Tango董事會，這也是這筆交易的一部分內容。賽頓表示，阿里巴巴特別吸引他的原因是，阿里巴巴作為一家私有企業如今已經發展到了這么大的規模，而且公司創始人們至今仍然具有很大影響。還值得關注的是，阿里巴巴正準備在今年晚些時候上市，但賽頓不愿探討自己公司的IPO前景。 ????除了這項融資聲明外，Tango表示，他的公司最近已經擁有超過2億“成員”，其中包括7,000萬每月活躍用戶?？梢宰鳛閰⒄盏氖牵琖hatsApp發布報告稱擁有4.50億活躍用戶，而中國的微信【為騰訊（Tencent）所有】擁有 3.55億活躍用戶（注：各公司對“活躍”的定義并不一致）。（財富中文網） ????譯者：老榆木 ???? |
????Tango, an app for text and video mobile messaging, has raised a whopping $280 million in new venture capital funding. Alibaba Group led the round with a $215 million commitment, in exchange for a minority stake. The remainder was filled out by existing Tango investors, who previously had disbursed $80 million. ????A source familiar with the situation says that the deal values Tango in excess of $1 billion. The company itself is not discussing valuation, except to say that it was not really affected by the Facebook-WhatsApp deal. ????"We were pretty much all done when that happened," explains Tango co-founder and CTO Eric Setton. "I think, in general, that the WhatsApp deal made everyone feel pretty good, in terms of the amount of attention on the space and the remarkable valuations everyone is seeing. The original Web generation was won over by search, but the mobile generation isn't about search or even the app store. It's about mobile messaging, where they're checking 40 times per day, and that gives us the opportunity to bring them into other experiences." ????It's those other experiences that Setton believes helps set Tango apart from a company like WhatsApp, which has remained almost exclusively focused on messaging. For example, Tango users can share music or play games against one another. This could become increasingly important as more and more mobile users around the world get unlimited data plans. ????"In the U.S. right now, for example, consumers don't really feel the price per text message," Setton explains. "So it's really about giving them something orthogonal to what they get from the carriers." ????Expect much of the funding to go toward hiring, including for its office in Beijing -- thus helping to explain the involvement of Alibaba. Michael Zeisser, Alibaba's chairman of U.S. investments, has joined the Tango board of directors as part of the deal. Setton says that he was particularly attracted to Alibaba because it has grown so large as a privately-held enterprise in which its founders still have a large impact. It's probably also worth noting that Alibaba is preparing to go public later this year, although Setton didn't want to talk about IPO prospects for his own company. ????In addition to the funding announcement, Tango says that it recently passed the 200 million "member" mark, which includes 70 million active monthly users. For context, WhatsApp reports 450 million active users, while China's WeChat (owned by Tencent) reports 355 million active users (note: definitions of "active" may vary from company to company). |
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