Baike.com

"Hudong" redirects here. For the Chinese town, see Hudong, Lufeng, Guangdong.
Not to be confused with Baidu Baike.

Douyin Baike
抖音百科
Type of site
Social network with wiki-based encyclopedia, chat forums, and bulletin boards
Available inChinese
HeadquartersBeijing
OwnerByteDance
Created byPan Haidong (CEO)
URLbaike.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional (required to edit pages)
Launched19 June 2005 (2005-06-19)
Current statusPerpetual work-in-progress

Douyin Baike (Chinese: 抖音百科; pinyin: dǒu yīn bǎi kē), formerly known as Hudong Baike (Chinese: 互动百科, also sometimes spelled Hoodong and also known as Baike.com), is a for-profit social network and Chinese encyclopedia owned by ByteDance. It is one of the two largest wikis in China, along with its more prominent rival Baidu Baike.

Features

Baike.com is a wiki and lets its users edit and contribute material. Frequent users may accumulate credits redeemable for gifts.[1] It has also included features of social networking sites, including chat forums and fan groups.[2][3] Baike.com is a for-profit business partially supported by advertising and paid support services.[2]

History

Baike.com was founded in 2005 by CEO Pan Haidong,[4] who had moved back to China after earning a PhD in systems engineering from Boston University in 2002.[1]

Baike.com, a 2007 RedHerring 100 Asia company, developed its own wiki software platform, called HDWiki, as a rival to MediaWiki. The system has some social networking-like interactive features, such as user profile, friends and groups. The first version was released in November 2006 and by November 2007 version 3 with added functions, features, and more stability was released.[5]

The HDWiki software is free for non-commercial use, has been downloaded 200,000 times and currently supports over 1,000 other web sites in China (as of December 2007), consisting mostly of tech researchers, software groups, government, universities, and high school students.

In 2011, it was announced that Draper Fisher Jurvetson had invested $15 million in Baike.com.[1]

In 2010, Pan Haidong made a post to Weibo entitled "Three Questions to [Baidu CEO] Robin Li", questioning the high search ranking that Baidu (the dominant search engine in China) gave to its own services, including Baidu Baike over those of rival companies. Baidu sued Pan in response, with Baidu eventually winning the resulting court case, with the court ordering Pan to pay 120,000 yuan to Baidu.[6] On 22 February 2011, Baike.com submitted a complaint to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce asking for a review of the behavior of Baidu, accusing it of being monopolistic.[7]

In December 2012, the company changed its English name from Hudong to Baike.com.[8]

Baike.com struggled to compete with Baidu Baike as well as Sogou Baike (another Chinese wiki encyclopedia) because it lacked search engine integration, resulting in it falling behind in users and content creation. Baike.com began offering small payments to college students to write entries. As the Chinese internet became more dependent on walled garden app ecosystems throughout the 2010s, Baike.com declined further.[9]

In 2017, the company became the subject of major controversy as a result of a investigation on the China Central Television (CCTV, a Chinese government-run broadcaster) consumer rights programme "The 3.15 Show", which found that the encyclopedia had a "pay for creation" system that allowed users who paid a fee to create articles with effectively no oversight, including one advertisement-like article on an unregulated supplement which claimed to cure cancer.[10] This exposé severely damaged the credibility of Hudong Baike, causing its profits to plummet.[9]

In 2019, the company was acquired by ByteDance.[11] The encyclopedia was subsequently renamed several times, being renamed to Douyin Baike in 2024.[12][13] By the time of its acquisition by ByteDance, Baike.com was far less popular than Baidu Baike,[9] having only around 7% of Baidu Baike's daily viewership (8.6 million vs 130 million daily views).[14] In 2025, Douyin Baike was found guilty in a Beijing court of illegally copying 600,000 entries from Baidu Baike, creating fabricated user data to make it seem that this action had been done by ordinary users, and was ordered to pay 8 million yuan (the equivalent of around $1 million USD) in damages.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Why Draper Funded China's Wikipedia". Forbes. 23 August 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Information game changer", Chinadaily.com, 2011-02-24, webpage: CD6 (Archive) .
  3. ^ Fletcher, Owen (22 May 2009). "'Chinese Wikipedia' Offers Social Networking Too". PC World. Archived from the original on 26 May 2009. Retrieved 23 May 2009.
  4. ^ "Hoodong: Homegrown Wiki". BV Capital Blog. BV Capital. 27 November 2007. Archived from the original on 30 November 2007. Retrieved 31 January 2009.
  5. ^ "Red Herring 100 Asia, 2007". Archived from the original on 7 January 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2009.
  6. ^ "卖给头条的互动百科也曾是百度的死对头 | 界面 · 财经号" [Hudong Baike, which was sold to Toutiao, was once Baidu's arch-enemy]. Jiemian News. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 3 February 2025.
  7. ^ Yang, Yang (杨阳 Yáng Yáng). Translated by Guo Wei. "China's "Wikipedia" Submits Complaint about Baidu." () Economic Observer. 4 March 2011. Issue 508, Corporation, Page 28. Retrieved on 26 October 2012. Original article: "百度：我是大哥 我不叫度娘." 25 February 2011.
  8. ^ "互动百科宣布启用新域名及新版LOGO" (in Chinese). DoNews. 5 December 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
  9. ^ a b c "卖给头条的互动百科也曾是百度的死对头 | 界面 · 财经号" [Hudong Baike, which was sold to Toutiao, was once a fierce rival of Baidu.]. Jiemian News. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2025.
  10. ^ Lai, Catherine (17 March 2017). "China's 'biggest online encyclopedia' apologises for selling fake entries on its open platform". Hong Kong Free Press.
  11. ^ Wan, Shaw (9 September 2019). "Acquisition of Baike.com Puts ByteDance on par With Rival Baidu". Pandaily. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
  12. ^ "头条百科测试版上线 启用域名baike.com" [The beta version of Toutiao Encyclopedia has been launched and is now using the domain baike.com.]. Phoenix Television (in Chinese). Retrieved 28 November 2025.
  13. ^ "品牌升级通知：识典百科正式升级为抖音百科" [Brand Upgrade Notice: Shidian Encyclopedia has officially been upgraded to Douyin Encyclopedia.]. Baike.com.
  14. ^ Xu, Tony (20 August 2019). "Bytedance takes on Baidu with investment in Wikipedia-like Hudong Baike · TechNode". TechNode. Retrieved 28 November 2025.
  15. ^ "抖音百科抓取百度百科60万词条被起诉，法院判赔800万元" [Douyin (TikTok) was sued for scraping 600,000 entries from Baidu Baike (Baidu Encyclopedia), and the court ordered it to pay 8 million yuan in damages.]. Yangcheng Evening News. 23 May 2025. Retrieved 28 November 2025.

Further reading

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