China's Alibaba Group has started mixing social-networking functions into its leading e-commerce platforms, a move it hopes will convince users to spend more time and money on Alibaba Web sites.

The entertainment-based platform for Taobao in particular combines standard social-networking functions with original features that promote online purchases. It goes a step beyond efforts to mix e-commerce and social networking by Western companies like Amazon.com and Facebook, said Benjamin Joffe, CEO of digital strategy and research company +8* (Plus Eight Star).

E-commerce, already huge, is ascending rapidly in China. Online shopping transactions were worth 46.7 billion yuan (US$6.8 billion) in China in the first quarter, nearly twice as much as a year earlier, according to iResearch, a Chinese Internet consultancy.

Over three-quarters of that transaction value occurred among consumers on Taobao, according to the iResearch statistics.

Taobao's dominance gives its social-networking platform a sizable user base to draw on. All Taobao users can also access the platform, which has some user activity but that Taobao said it has not begun promoting yet. Taobao reported 120 million registered users at the end of the first quarter, more than one-third of China's total number of people online.