About Yesky

Yesky

Yesky, published at yesky.com and known in Chinese as Tianji Net, is a Chinese information-technology news portal founded in 1997, historically based in Chongqing, and counted among China's earliest consumer-technology websites. It publishes computer, mobile-phone and digital-product news and reviews for a general readership. Its early history is closely bound up with ChinaByte: Yesky was a joint venture associated with Chinese PC Weekly and the International Data Group (IDG), and in April 2001 its internet business merged with ChinaByte, a joint venture of News Corporation and the People's Daily, to create what the partners set out to make the leading portal of IT content and services in the Chinese market. Within the merged operation, ChinaByte addressed advanced users while Yesky addressed the public — the ordinary computer buyer and technology enthusiast. That division of labour captures Yesky's identity throughout its history: it is the popular, consumer-facing side of Chinese IT publishing.

Origins in the 1990s

Yesky was founded in 1997 by Tianji Media. To place that date in context, China's internet at the end of 1997 was still very small: the China Internet Network Information Center's first statistical report recorded, as of 31 October 1997, more than 290,000 computers connected to the internet and about 620,000 internet users in the whole country. A consumer-technology website launched in that year was therefore writing for a tiny, pioneering audience of early adopters — the first Chinese households and businesses buying personal computers and going online. Yesky's base was Chongqing, in south-west China, rather than Beijing or Shanghai, which makes it a notable example of the first generation of Chinese web publishing outside the capital. Its operating company appears in News Corporation's own description of the later merged business as Chongqing Yesky Technology Co., Ltd., the company behind yesky.com. The portal grew up alongside the spread of the personal computer in China, and its subject matter — computers, and later mobile phones and digital products — tracked the devices its readers were buying.

Ownership: PC Weekly and IDG

Yesky's ownership linked it to two established names in technology publishing. People's Daily coverage of the 2001 merger described Yesky as a joint venture between Chinese PC Weekly and IDG, and described it at that time as the largest Chinese IT portal, providing IT information, comprehensive community services and value-added IT services. News Corporation's corporate listing for the merged ChinaByte business gives the same founding partners — Chinese PC Weekly and the International Data Group — for Yesky. That parentage mattered. A Chinese computer newspaper brought local editorial knowledge of the PC market and its readers; IDG, the international technology media group, brought the model of advertiser-funded technology publishing that it operated in many countries. Yesky was thus not a purely homegrown start-up but a joint venture built on an existing print title's audience, a pattern common in the first years of the Chinese internet, when print publishers were among the few organisations with technology content ready to put online.

The ChinaByte merger of 2001

On 17 April 2001, ChinaByte and Yesky announced the merger of their internet businesses. People's Daily reported that the merger was announced jointly by the chairmen of the two partners, that it had been carried out quickly after a decision taken several months earlier to establish a strategic alliance, and that its purpose was to create a leading portal of IT contents and services in the China market. The two sides were complementary. ChinaByte was a joint venture of News Corporation and the People's Daily; its predecessor organisation, PDN, had been established by News Corporation and People's Daily in 1995, making it one of the earliest foreign-invested internet ventures in China. News Corporation's description of the combined business states that PDN and Chongqing Yesky Technology decided to merge to form the number-one IT Chinese portal in April 2001, and that the merged company operated three websites: Chinabyte.com, focusing on advanced users; Yesky.com, focusing on public users; and Cseek, providing Chinese search engine services. The merged business stated its aim as targeting the rapid expansion of both the PC market and the internet sector in China, providing technology and information consulting services and support to China's rapidly expanding information-technology sector.

Two audiences: advanced and public users

The clearest statement of what Yesky is comes from that division of the merged business into audiences. ChinaByte, with its roots in a News Corporation–People's Daily venture founded in 1995 and its history of technology consulting, addressed advanced users — professionals who wanted depth. Yesky addressed public users — the general public buying and using technology. In practical terms, that meant Yesky's journalism was written for readers choosing a computer, following mobile-phone launches, or comparing digital products, rather than for the engineers and executives who formed ChinaByte's core audience. The portal's later self-description in Chinese IT-portal directories follows the same line: a consumer-technology site publishing computer, mobile and digital-product news and reviews. Understanding this positioning explains Yesky's tone and structure — product-centred, service-oriented and aimed at buyers — and why, in histories of Chinese IT media, it is grouped with the popular portals rather than with trade publications.

What Yesky publishes

Yesky's content covers the main consumer-technology categories of the Chinese market. It publishes news about computers — launches, pricing and industry developments affecting PC buyers — together with reviews that assess products for prospective purchasers. Mobile coverage follows handsets and the phone industry, which became steadily more central to Chinese consumer technology as phones replaced computers as the primary device for many users. Digital products more broadly — the cameras, audio equipment, wearables and other gadgets that filled out the consumer-electronics market — form the third strand named in descriptions of the site. Around the news and reviews, the portal's early descriptions also listed community services and value-added IT services among its offerings, reflecting the era in which portals combined publishing with forums and paid services rather than relying on display advertising alone. The common thread is usefulness to a buyer or enthusiast: Yesky exists to tell a general reader what has been launched, what it does and whether it is worth having.

Chongqing and the geography of early Chinese media

Yesky's Chongqing base is one of its distinguishing features. China's best-known early portals were concentrated in Beijing — close to Zhongguancun's technology trade and to the national media — with others in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. A leading IT portal operated by a company in Chongqing shows that the first wave of Chinese web publishing was wider than the capital. Chongqing Yesky Technology Co., Ltd. is the entity named in News Corporation's records as the operator merged into ChinaByte, and company histories of Yesky and Tianji Media place the portal historically in that city. The Chongqing connection also fitted the joint-venture structure: the Chinese partner, PC Weekly, was a Chongqing-based computer newspaper, so the website grew where its print parent was published. As the Chinese internet centralised commercially in later years, that regional origin remained part of Yesky's identity and of the historical record of how the country's technology media developed.

Yesky in the first portal generation

Yesky belongs to the generation of Chinese sites created before the search, social and mobile eras reorganised the internet. In 1997, when it was founded, China had only hundreds of thousands of internet users; ChinaByte's managers were already arguing in 2000 that Chinese internet companies would follow the model of combining with traditional media companies to gain content and distribution, and the Yesky–ChinaByte merger of 2001 was a direct application of that argument — two joint ventures, each pairing an international media group with a Chinese print institution, combining to build scale. People's Daily's description of Yesky at the time of the merger as the largest Chinese IT portal should be read as a contemporary claim made in the reporting of the deal, but it reflects the standing the site had achieved within four years of its founding. The three-site structure that followed — advanced users at ChinaByte, public users at Yesky, search at Cseek — was an early attempt to organise Chinese IT information by audience, before a single portal brand became the norm.

How readers use Yesky

For its readers, Yesky functions as a buying companion rather than a professional reference. A typical use begins with a product category — a new laptop, a phone launch, a digital camera — and proceeds through the portal's news and review coverage to a judgement about what to buy. Because the site was defined within its merged group as the public-facing title, its articles are aimed at readers who may be buying their first or second computer or phone, and explanations are pitched accordingly. The site's longevity as a recognised consumer-technology name in China rests on that habit of use, formed in the years when the personal computer first became a household purchase and a portal like Yesky was one of the few Chinese-language sources where its specifications, price and merits were discussed in one place. Its community and value-added services, listed in early descriptions of the business, extended that relationship beyond articles into ongoing contact with its readership.

Why Yesky matters

Yesky matters for three reasons that the historical record supports. First, its 1997 founding makes it one of China's earliest consumer-technology websites, created when the country had only about 620,000 internet users and run from Chongqing by Tianji Media. Second, its joint-venture structure — Chinese PC Weekly and IDG — and its 2001 merger with ChinaByte, the News Corporation and People's Daily venture, make it a documented example of how foreign media capital and Chinese print publishing combined in the first years of the commercial Chinese internet. Third, its explicit role in that merged business as the portal for public users, complementing ChinaByte's advanced audience, marks an early and clearly stated example of audience segmentation in Chinese IT media. Publishing computer, mobile and digital-product news and reviews at yesky.com, the portal stands as a surviving name from the period when China's technology press first moved online.