GUANGZHOU, China, Feb. 25, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- YY Inc. (Nasdaq:YY) ("YY" or the "Company"), a revolutionary rich communication social platform, today announced it has launched the Company's newly-branded 100 Education dedicated education platform.
YY's 100 Education platform will initially offer a variety of exam preparation classes and programs to aspiring students through its portal, www.100.com. These programs will include TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (International English Language Testing System) preparation courses, which will be offered on the YY platform free of charge to its users. In addition, YY will open an online enrollment channel, providing simplified access for its millions of users to participate in the courses.
Mr. David Xueling Li, Chief Executive Officer of YY, stated, "We're very excited to accelerate our education endeavors with the debut of our 100 Education branded education platform. Leveraging our powerful audio and video communication technologies with massive real-time hosting capabilities, we will provide comprehensive teaching tools that enable students to receive customized, real-time tutoring in highly interactive settings anytime and anywhere. Offering free TOFEL and IELTS courses, which are immensely popular in China, through our education platform will help significantly diversify and expand our user base. By bringing Chinese students a truly unique and interactive learning experience that is not possible in traditional offline education services, we believe our cost-effective online education programs have the potential to transform traditional means of learning. By offering such popular subjects that are increasing necessary in a competitive overseas higher education and job market, we believe that 100 Education will help us to further expand our user-reach and enhance the user experience on our increasingly diversified platform."
In conjunction with today's announcement, YY has established a stand-alone education department which consolidates its existing education services and resources onto the 100 Education platform. For the fourth quarter of 2013, there were more than 30,000 online education institutes and teachers providing lectures and online tutoring on YY's platform. The number of paying users in December 2013 increased by 340%, from the comparative period in 2012.
About YY Inc.
YY Inc. ("YY" or the "Company") is a revolutionary rich communication social platform that engages users in real-time online group activities through voice, text and video. Launched in July 2008, YY Client, the Company's core product, empowers users to create and organize groups of varying sizes to discover and participate in a wide range of online activities, including online games, karaoke, music concerts, education, live shows and conference calls.
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