Yahoo and Chinese Yahoo

Sex is definitely the universal theme for Chinese websites, from the major portals to small sites. It is very interesting to compare a US portal with a Chinese portal site to see the difference on this topic. It happens Yahoo is a good example for this since Yahoo has a Chinese Yahoo (Yahoo China) and it is comparable to other major Chinese portals, such as Sina.com.
There is no sex on the front page of Yahoo at all. You basically don’t see any ads or words related to …

Baidu.com:
Baidu (百度) is the Chinese Google. It dominates Chinese language search with about an 80% market share and is one of the biggest sites worldwide. As a local Chinese site it censors it’s search results. Like Google, Baidu offers a number of services apart from search, including Maps, documents, MP3 search, Baidu Space (a social network with over 100 million users) Baidu Encyclopedia, (China’s largest encyclopedia by users) and is launching a new video site called QiYi.com in March.
QQ.com
QQ is a portal that runs a number of services, most notably …

Chinese online travel website company eLong Inc. reported its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2009.
Total revenues at eLong.com for the fourth quarter increased 18% year-on-year to CNY106.9 million and net revenues increased 18% year-on-year to CNY100.9 million. Operating income in the fourth quarter was CNY2.4 million compared to operating loss of CNY10.3 million in the prior year period. Net income in the fourth quarter was CNY1.0 million compared to net loss of CNY8.2 million in the prior year period.
Total revenues in 2009 …

The state-owned newspaper The Global Times has run a particularly open article about the extensive controls on the internet within China and their effect on users and Internet companies. If you’re pressed for time to read the whole thing, DigiCha posts some choice quotes.

Douban, a Chinese social networking service website, received $10 million in venture capital from its second round of fundraising on January 25, after raising $2 million in 2006. Photo: CFP
He couldn’t take it anymore.
When Hong Kong writer and poet Liao Weitang found his online photo album had …

China’s Internet has seen rapid progress in both technology and expansion of users since it officially gained connection to the international network 16 years ago. Following are the key facts about China’s Internet development:
In April 1994, China achieved its full-functional connection to the Internet by opening a 64 kbps international dedicated line to the Internet, and was then officially recognized as a country with full functional Internet accessibility.
In May of the same year, China’s first web server and the first set of web pages were launched by a research institute under Chinese …

The online video business in China is seeing explosive growth, as Chinese consumers learn how to capture and watch video and as Chinese advertisers seek to boost their branding. Several several emerging Chinese companies are scrambling to exploit it — so far, few U.S. companies are there.
Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine company, said today it has raised $50 million from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners to pump into Baidu’s new online video unit. The unit, a separate corporate entity called Qiyi, is licensing premium video content and running ads …

China says at minimum 70 million people will visit the Shanghai World Expo this year; local government authorities are dangling whopping numbers like 100 million.
That’s an average of more than 380,400 people descending on the site on each of the expo’s 184 days, starting May 1. Around 20 million tickets have been sold, organizers say, and to underscore their confidence in demand they are sticking to plans for gradually increasing the cost of daily admission, now “benchmarked” at 160 yuan, or $23.50.
The government even suggests some visitors might prefer to …

In case you’ve missed it, China’s irrepressible shanzhai enthusiasts have been at it again, using imitation to pay tribute to Google.
Since Google’s Jan. 12 announcement that it might withdraw from the Chinese market, two knockoff Web sites have appeared in China bearing an intentionally uncanny resemblance to Google sites.
Goojje.com, a spoof of Google’s Chinese site, was reportedly founded by a female college student in Guangdong and put together by a group of about 20 people around the country, according to Chinese media. Its Chinese name (谷姐, whose Mandarin …

Despite controls, Web plays key role in connecting, organizing Chinese citizens
The Internet plays an increasingly vital role as a forum of public opinion in China as other forms of media remain under tight Communist Party control, though government restrictions on the Web will likely intensify, experts said at a recent INTERNET IN CHINA SYMPOSIUM held in Tokyo.
The recent threat by the U.S. search engine giant Google to pull out of the world’s most populous market over alleged cyber attacks and censorship has once again highlighted China’s policy of controlling content …

When Google threatened to quit China, most of the focus was on human rights and the country’s extensive system of internet censorship, the Great Firewall. China rebuffed such criticism. Countries that censor political speech on the internet are quick to point out that western nations also have laws governing content online, some of it political.Germany bans neo-Nazi symbols on German internet sites. The state of South Australia recently attempted to ban anonymous political speech online in the lead-up to elections. China said it was its sovereign right to set limits on internet activities. …

China’s online tourism market is booming as an increasingly wealthy middle class travels for pleasure and the use of credit cards and the Internet soars, analysts say.
As millions of people pack their bags for Lunar New Year holidays, the busiest travel period of the year, many will have booked their trips home online, according to Chinese Internet research and consulting firm iResearch.
Revenue from online flight, hotel and package tour bookings will hit 4.75 billion yuan (695.8 million US dollars) in 2010, up 27 percent from last year, iResearch says, with …

www.chinatraveltrends.com, COTRI and Dragon Trail are inviting all visitors
to the ITB in Berlin to a China Outbound Tourism workshop during the ITB 2010 – March 11th at 4.30pm to 5.45pm in Hall 7.1.
As part of the ITB Convention Destination day the China Outbound Tourism Marketing Forum @
ITB Berlin 2010 will look at “Social Media Tourism Marketing – The Example of China”.
The Chinese Outbound market is one of the few source markets which continued to grow even during the global economic crisis. Social Media are increasingly important especially for the younger, …

China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google.
Bloomberg – A message of support for Google left outside the company’s Beijing office on Jan. 14.
In 1661, Adam Schall, a Jesuit missionary from Germany and astronomer at the Chinese imperial court, fell victim to jealous mandarins, and was sentenced to death for teaching false astronomy and a superstitious faith. He was only just saved from being strangled, when a sudden thunderstorm convinced …

I read a fantastic article last week on the Advertising Age website entitled, “The Internet Does Not Rise Above Nations and Cultures.” The article (please see below), by @wolfgroupasia of the Silicon Hutong blog, takes a closer look at why foreign Internet companies in China fail. Wolf writes that through observing past examples (such as: eBay, Yahoo! & Google) we are able to see some common threads of why foreign Internet companies fail in China. Rather than attribute failure to external factors such as government interference and unfair competitive practices, …

In the last quarter of 2009, a number of significant public speeches were made about Internet of Things in China. It started on August 7, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a speech in the city of Wuxi calling for the rapid development of Internet of Things technologies. It included this equation: Internet + Internet of Things = Wisdom of the Earth. Wen Jiabo followed up with a speech on November 3 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in which he encouraged breakthroughs in key technologies …

China added 86 million users in 2009 to reach a total of 384 million Internet users by December 30, up 28.9% from late 2008, according to a report released January 15 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). China added 120 million mobile Internet users in the year to reach a total of 233 million, representing 60.8% of all Internet users, CNNIC said.

Domestic broadband users reached 346 million by the end of 2009, 76 million more than that of 2008. Rural Internet users accounted for 28.7% of the users, …

Local Market Knowledge Helped Baidu, but So Did Piracy, Nationalism and Marketing
HONG KONG (AdAge.com) — Google’s decision to pull out of China unless the authorities will allow uncensored search results — an unlikely outcome — probably does stem from moral outrage over the government’s heavy-handed tactics.
But it could be a face-saving way to exit a market where Google has made surprisingly little progress. Most research companies agree Google controls at most one-quarter of China’s search market. That’s hard to swallow, given Google’s dominant position in the U.S. and many other …

“We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil.”
– Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the company’s decision to offer a censored version of its search services in China, Jan. 30, 2006
Before reflecting on the latest news, also take some time to watch Kaifu Lee’s presentation on Youtube about Google’s approach to Google, and the Internet landscape in China – to Carnegie Mellon students in Feb 2008. (Kaifu Lee resigned as CEO of Google China in late 2009)
Evidently Google is taking its informal “don’t …

In a research that explores the motivations of Chinese netizens categorised under seven digital tribes, GroupM revealed online entertainment such as video and gaming is preferred over traditional media like TV and cinema.
While most research on web behaviour in China are examined by city tiers, GroupM has segmented its web users into seven different digital tribes.
The study, using focus groups and interviews, was conducted across nine different markets in China from tier-one to tier-three cities about their attitudes to online gaming, entertainment, social networking services, blogging and online shopping.
The seven …

Observations Suggest Brands That Court Younger Customers Digitally Might Come Out Ahead
New department stores like Lane Crawford in Beijing have increased the number of luxury brands available to potential buyers in Beijing
While many luxury brands are counting on ostensibly luxury- and brand-mad Chinese consumers to bring in steady profits for the foreseeable future, industry insiders — or research groups — with feet on the ground know that Chinese consumers are far from a uniform group. As luxury expert Patricia Pao, of the Pao Principle in New York, recently wrote, contrary …