The Yahoo Space (i.yahoo.com.cn and club.yahoo.com.cn) service includes blogging, photo gallery, online networking and other interactive functions for users, Yahoo China said.

Industry sources had told Reuters that Yahoo China planned to launch a blogging service, and a Yahoo China spokesman confirmed its plan in the statement.

“Search is a tool for the user to get the information he wants, but it is not the final destination,” Zeng Ming, Yahoo China’s new president, said in the statement.

“Yahoo’s next step will be to allow users to share their hobbies with each other so that they can expand their knowledge.”

Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce firm, has been reorganizing Yahoo China since it took over the company in 2005. Yahoo Inc. of the United States bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba for $1 billion as part of that deal.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. runs the popular online MSN service, while News Corp. is preparing to launch a networking Web site venture in China industry sources have said.

“This shows the invigoration of Yahoo China. We haven’t heard anything innovative from them in the last two years, since they were so focused on internal issues,” said Florian Pihs, assistant vice president at research firm Analysys International.

The launch of blogging and networking services will help boost Yahoo China’s competitive advantage and sharpen its focus on online community services as a core strategy, Zeng said.

“Online community services will encourage current users to bring in new users … This will help accelerate Yahoo China’s growth,” said Zeng.

Zeng told his staff in an internal email seen by Reuters last month that Yahoo China would focus on its online community this year in cooperation with Alibaba, which provides an online trading platform.

Yahoo Space had over 1.3 million users, with over half of Internet users in China under 25 years of age and strongly attracted to online networking and communication services, Yahoo China said.

Microsoft has said its chat service MSN Messenger has over 20 million users in China, the world’s second-largest Web market with around 137 million users.

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