Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (or
Shanda), a Chinese interactive entertainment company has launched a new subsidiary,
Shanda Literature Limited.
The new company will be dedicated specifically
to publishing original, reader-generated works according to the company
website, ?From magic fantasy, swordsmen, military, history to contemporary
stories.? This list would seem to
suggest that the project?s focus extends beyond the publication of fiction to
that of the humanities and social sciences.
Shanda Literature operates three distinct
networks. Qidian.com, purchased by
Shanda in 2004, currently serves an audience of over 20 million users which
allegedly generate a traffic rate of 220 million page views per day. Hongxiu.com, which Shanda acquired in March
2008, is a smaller platform with approximately 1.8 million users and focuses on
?pure literature?, i.e. fiction. Finally,
Jjwxc.com is geared specifically towards female users and claims 700,000
registered accounts. Jjwxc.com was
acquired by Shanda in August 2007.
Xiaoqiang Hou, CEO of Shanda Literature, voices
his ambition, expressing the hope that, "Shanda Literature will bring
together the most talented writers in Chinese online literature.?
Comment by Chen Tianqiao, chairman and CEO of
Shanda adds another dimension to this picture.
He says, "Shanda Literature plays an important role in the
development of all of Shanda's business units as Shanda will be able to
leverage Shanda Literature's user-generated literary works and story lines to
develop additional online games for Shanda Games".
It would thus appear that although Shanda
Literature purports to serve a wide variety of writing genres, its helmsmen?s
minds are at least partly focused on harnessing users? creativity to promote
and develop branded content connected with Shanda?s range of web-based social
games, which includes classic board-style games alongside popular MMORPGs? such
as The Legend of Mir II or Dungeons & Dragons Online.