Chinese portal ChinaByte, a joint venture between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and People’s Daily Newspaper, will replace CommTouch’s e-mail service with the portal services of Hong Kong startup Outblaze.
The two parties Friday revealed their partnership just over a week after Outblaze signed a joint venture agreement with Hong Kong publicly listed China Rich Holdings Ltd. which injected US$4.5 million into the startup.
“With the assistance of ChinaByte, Outblaze is increasing its
stature as an effective provider for Internet services and technology,” commented Yat Siu, CTO and vice president of Outblaze.
“The
decision of a world-class Web site such as ChinaByte to switch to an
Outblaze product is another confirmation of our technology’s superior
quality,” added Siu.
Siu indicated to internetnews.com that the deal with ChinaByte gives Outblaze great credibility because Chinabyte previously used CommTouch’s Web-based free e-mail system.
Santa Clara-based CommTouch is a leading provider of branded e-mail services and claims to have six million individual subscribers through its 70,000 partner Web sites.
Outblaze will also provide ChinaByte with personal/group calendar and mailing list services.
The Hong Kong company will not charge an up front fee to ChinaByte for these services but the two partners will share advertising revenue accumulated on each “Powered by Outblaze” service.
“This partnership between
ChinaByte and Outblaze offers both sides excellent opportunities,” said Alex Wong, general manager of ChinaByte.”Outblaze is definitely the best choice for our web site: not only can they meet our needs, but their multi-lingual services cover all forms of Chinese as well as English.”
“We considered several solutions to improve our portal services, and were
planning on using different packages for different applications and
services,” commented Richard Montoya, assistant general manager of ChinaByte.
“Outblaze’s one-stop solution enabled us to sign up for multiple
services very easily, allowed us to plan a unified registration process, and
did not add to our development time,” said Montoya.
Since its launch in December 1998, Outblaze claims to have signed up over 1,500 partners from around the world and supports over 800,000 user-members.
