Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) chairman and CEO Robin Li led keynote speeches at the Piper Jaffray & ChinaVenture Investment Conference on Tuesday. Starting off with a few statistics to show stable ARPU growth rates, Li changed into discussion of the company's latest products: telephone-based voice search and instant messenger service.

Baidu's decision to develop voice search in a time when most companies are struggling to get online is a little more than baffling. Li mentioned in his speech that there are over one billion telephone users in China, but he failed to produce statistics on how many people are willing to pay RMB1 per minute for voice search. Speaking of a company strategy that quickly became the theme of his speech, Li said voice search would help Baidu "build a community", whatever that means.

When it came to the company's IM product, Baidu Hi, Li did a better job of introducing the company's thought process. He said, "Baidu Post Bar is like a filter, when users get familiar with each other on Post Bar they turn to products like MSN and QQ for further communication." Given that situation, it seems Hi could meet real demand, but there's just one little problem with the product: its name. Chinese users have grown accustomed to saying things like "MSN me" or "Q me", but "Hi me"? At best, the request sounds like a proper name, at worst an indecent proposal.

In his speech, new-product-heavy Li didn't say much about Baidu's consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce business. The service is scheduled for a mid-year launch at the earliest. Aside from these three treats, Li said Baidu is not developing any other new verticals or products this year, but is keeping an eye on mobile phone applications.

In 2008, China is in for heavy voice search and IM campaigning. But how these products, along with Baidu's other services, will be integrated into a real "community" platform remains unclear.