Ninetowns (NINE) has launched tootoo.com, its new business-to-business vertical search platform.

Ninetowns' Chief Executive Officer Shuang Wang said, "The launch of tootoo.com represents another significant milestone in Ninetowns' new B2B strategy. The foundation of tootoo.com is a combination of Ninetowns' industry-leading B2G services, our vertical search engine, and our recent partnership with ThomasNet. Tootoo.com will provide users with a simple yet sophisticated way to access and utilize information on international trade with China."

Tootoo.com will be the cornerstone of Ninetowns' new B2B strategy of providing vertical search and trade services. The company says tootoo.com is built upon Ninetowns' market intelligence in business-to-government trade processing and its experience in evaluating supplier capabilities for companies ranging from small businesses to large multinational corporations. By leveraging this foundation with the recent acquisition of Ample Spring and strategic partnership with ThomasNet, tootoo.com is positioned to become a leading-edge B2B search and service provider.

The tootoo.com platform features a new B2B-focused search portal that enables business users to input search terms and provides them with quick, effective and relevant B2B search results. These results will include product information, manufacturing specifications, technical articles, trade intelligence, company backgrounds, recent news, and more. In order to maximize the value for business users, tootoo.com has been engineered to optimize the relevancy of search results using two key methods.

In addition to the core search services, tootoo.com will also offer value-added services such as MeiMaoTong, which is a customized catalog solution provided through Ninetowns' recent strategic partnership with ThomasNet. The catalog solution not only provides more professional and in-depth content, especially in the areas of product specifications and supplier capabilities, but also displays this content in a manner consistent with each different industry and profession.

In delivering B2B search and other value-added services, tootoo.com plans to generate a majority of its revenue through providing customers with targeted advertising and marketing solutions, enabling them to reach relevant business users.