Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced plans to invest CNY300 million in the newly merged Yahoo (YAHOO) Koubei Company in 2009 to develop the lifestyle services business of the company.

A representative from Alibaba told local media that Yahoo Koubei's development strategy is to further focus on the e-commerce areas of lifestyle services to provide Chinese consumers with a platform with the lifestyle service market as its core and Yahoo's social networking site website Yahoo Relations as its support.

In the future, Yahoo Koubei will be mainly engaged in lifestyle services and will play down Yahoo's former businesses like news and search services. This is the key focus of the company which was set during the merger of Yahoo and Koubei.com.

The representative adds that there will be personal adjustments in the company. Although it is unclear whether the company will cut staff or not, some employees, who originally worked in Beijing, will be transferred to Hangzhou, and some worked in Hangzhou will be working in Beijing in the future.

Shen Jianming, vice president for Alibaba Group and vice president for Yahoo China, just resigned her positions and officially departed from Alibaba Group. Shen says she left Alibaba Group for personal reasons. She says her departure is partly because Yahoo China shifted its focus to Koubei.com after it acquired the website and she was asked to work in Hangzhou to manage Koubei.com. However, she does not want to leave her family in Beijing, so she put forward her resignation a month ago.