Qihoo 360 rolls out group buying portal

Global Times, February 25, 2011

Qihoo 360, a leading Chinese network security solution provider, launched its group buying portal by integrating services from more than 200 group buying sites and forming a new cooperation model in the group buying industry.

"Qihoo 360 selected more than 200 partners out of over 2,600 sites and now presents their services on the integrated address tuan.360.cn, which covers more than 130 cities in China," Ai Yongchun, a PR official from Qihoo 360, told the Global Times Thursday. Major domestic group buying sites are all on the portal, including lashou.com, meituan.com and manzuo.com.

As one of the leading network security solution providers in China, Qihoo 360 can bring potential customers to its partners through the cooperation. And it can also make online group buying a better experience by shielding unqualified group buying sites from the portal, allowing users to share buying feedbacks and avoid frauds, using its security solutions to make transactions safe and others.

Users can register at the portal and purchase items from different service providers with the same ID. The user base is shared among both Qihoo and all the partners.

Ai said this kind of cooperation model benefits all and will help to build a sound environment in the group buying industry. And this is just the first step of Qihoo 360's plan of an "open" strategy in 2011. It will apply the cooperation model to more areas including web page games and software management.