According to foreign media reports, the U.S. market research company Nielsen released a report released on Friday said the past year, the use of social media in the Asia Pacific region is experiencing an unprecedented growth, the region has become the most important trends of the network 1. According to Nielsen’s survey found that 7 of Internet brand globally, there are three big brands is social media, it was Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. The survey also shows that all Internet users around the world, nearly three-quarters (about 74%) of Internet …

The report found that one in every four social media users in what they call ‘initiators’ — influential usrs that regularly start conversation, create content and publish their views online and are the fertile starting point for new ideas, services and products.
A further 29 per cent of Chinese social media users are ‘commenters’ who react and comment on other people’s views. They are also the ‘accelerators’ of new ideas.

The largest group, comprising 45 per cent of social media users, are ‘gawkers’ who quietly …

This past month has been an interesting one in the cat-and-mouse game between Chinese Internet censorship and its non-conformists. Microblogs in the People’s Republic had begun to feel the weight of a heavier government crackdown, following the publication of a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) claiming social networking websites are used as tools of “political subversion”. The Internet Blue Paper, published by CASS in early July, claimed microblogging and social networking platforms, such as Facebook, helped spur on the ethnic …

Microblogs on radar of official scrutiny
The genie is out of the bottle and he’s not going back. I refer, of course, to microblogging and what appears to be a change in tack on the part of the authorities toward social networking.
Microblogs on radar of official scrutiny
When the plug was pulled on Twitter a year ago a number of domestic versions rolled out and quickly became a hit among the masses, encouraged by celebrities like Jolin Tsai, who can twitter on all day about her crystal nails and attract hundreds of …

From CIC, we can track the buying process Chinese netizens progress through before the buying decision is made.

Tracking the decision process for purchasing a netbook, we can see how the initial inquiry arises, and how a Brand is selected from the buzz. Netizens value collective opinion first, and then look to popular advocates second to confirm their decisions. Afterwards, netizens refer back online for maintenace and upkeep of their new purchase.
The relationship between products and the web is quite clear, while TV, newspaper and magazines may create awareness for Brands, its the web that creates …

Sina Weibo and other domestic microblogging services are more than a match for the United States company, Lin Shujuan reports
Huang Jianxiang, 42, was once China’s best-known sports commentators.
He came to international attention during a World Cup commentary on June 26, 2006. Five months after his passionate outburst against Australia, while describing the final goal of the match between Australia and Italy, he resigned from China Central Television. Many thought that was the end of his career as a soccer commentator.
But Huang is back in business, commenting on each team and …

Agreement with China a Great Opportunity for Canada’s Tourism Industry

Ottawa, June 24, 2010 – With today’s official signing of the Approved Destination Status agreement with China, Canada’s tourism industry is now presented with an excellent opportunity for growth.

“This is a great day for tourism in Canada, and a great day for travelers from China,” said David Goldstein, President and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC). “This agreement will create a greater openness between our countries, allowing Chinese visitors greater access to all of Canada’s iconic attractions …

From Synovate China Media Atlas; measurement of China’s top media channels.

Clear preference for digital via internet and mobile. TV continues to hold on, but expect this to decrease as future generations split their time across engaging digital medium vs. passive TV entertainment.
From Synovate China Media Atlas; measurement of China’s top portal popularity by city tiers.

Tier1 and Tier3 cities lead the pack in internet usage across China’s major portals.
From Synovate China Media Atlas; how different income levels interact online.

Higher income level netizens lead interaction across China’s web. This is quite interesting; as targeting the more intelligent, …

The drive to express online is a central motivation for the Chinese. Due to China’s strong censorship and control of traditional media, the internet becomes a major destination to receive balanced views, see how others think and react to events, and share and express one’s individuality.

The above stats from BCG show how social China’s web really is; with major emphasis on self-expression, sharing knowledge and feelings; China’s web is a very personal space that allow otherwise economically and politically restricted Chinese a sense of freedom. This gives the market a unique …

China Tuesday published a white paper on its internet policy, stressing its commitment to freedom of speech on the internet.
The white paper, released by the State Council Information Office, introduced facts of the development and use of the internet in China.
Coming three months after the very public dispute with Google, which resulted in the shutdown of Google’s China-based portal, the paper offers a revealing look back on Chinese Internet history as well as where the country stands today.
Not surprisingly, China still supports the so-called “Great Firewall” approach to controlling and censoring …

June 4th 2010 marked the 21st anniversary of the massacre of 3000 students and protesters carried out by the Chinese government at Tiananmen Square. Discussion of the bloody incident is strictly prohibited on mainland China and the ban extends to the internet.
But China on Friday blocked Web service Foursquare, which lets users alert friends to where they are through their cell phones. The reason was not known, but many users had been “checking in” from Tiananmen Square to mark the anniversary of a bloody 1989 government crackdown on student-led pro-democracy …

With Twitter and Facebook blocked in China, Ctrip, the Shanghai-based online travel agency, is ramping up its social-media efforts as it targets inbound travelers from places like the U.S., the U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong.
The dominant OTA in China, Ctrip will soon launch its first blog, to be called Ctripper, says Coley Dale, Ctrip’s business development manager for its English-language website.
The blog launch in a couple of weeks will roughly coincide with a new company slogan, “Your China Your Way.”
“China can be a lot of different things to a lot of people,” Dale …

You just can’t stop the word from spreading in China — as McDonald’s recently discovered. In March, the American fast food chain invited people who had discount coupons on chicken wings from any restaurant in China — including rivals like KFC — to use them to buy McSpicy Wings at a discount. Building on the buzz, McDonald’s promised that if one million people in China were to pledge their love online for McSpicy Wings, it would hand out free chicken wings for seven days at seven restaurants. In just four …

As social networking sites (SNS) increasingly gain popularity in China, more and more companies are eying these sites as an effective way of winning the hearts of young social network users.
Advertisements based on interactive activities among social network users, in particular, have become the darling of some companies.
On renren.com, one of the largest social networking sites in China, more than 100 online activities have been held since last September. They range from product sample …

Facebook is a non-entity in China, but the country is chock full of social networking fans who belong to four different social sites.
The actual Facebook.com is blocked by government censors (Chinese sites all obediently and quickly remove “objectionable” content). No single social network will conquer the China market in the immediate future, least of all a foreign one.
Instead, there is fierce competition between the top four:

RenRen (formerly Xiaonei) copied the Facebook model: it started with students and has since opened to all.
Kaixin001 attracted white-collar office …

Will China’s Web, like its larger economy, comfortably combine extraordinary growth with government repression?
On March 23, the day after Google pulled its search operations out of mainland China, a woman who uses the online pseudonym Xiaomi arose in her Shanghai apartment and sat down in her bedroom office for another day of outwitting Internet censorship. She leads a confederation of volunteer translators around the world who turn out Mandarin versions of Western journalism and scholarly works that are banned on China’s Internet–and that wouldn’t be available in Mandarin in any …

If you are doing social media marketing in China, you may want to make sure that Chinese users share content on your Chinese website on various social media websites in China.
Is there a similar site widget as “AddThis” or “ShareThis” for social bookmarking and social sharing?
This widget  has exactly the same name “AddThis” on org.cn. AddThis.org.cn provides social bookmarking and social sharing website widget for publishers as well as browser plugins for Internet users (under development).

As shown above, the social bookmarking and sharing widget allows visitors to …

The Spanish social media travel portal Minube has entered the China marketplace with the launch of its Chinese website Minube.cn.
According to reports in foreign media, this is the first step for the company to expand in the Asian market, and it will be followed by the launch of a Japanese website and the establishment of an office in Guangzhou. Minube was first launched in 2007 and now has Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French versions. Minube claims over one million monthly visits in Spain and around 1.6 million visits globally.
Raul …

One of the hottest conversations online in China right now is about the so-called ‘water army’, a term referring to people employed to post comments on online forums and social networking groups that benefit commercial clients. Postings by the ‘water army’ may be negative or positive (more on this below), but whatever the case they are lies and the practice is leading to declining trust in social media sources.
The situation has got so bad that according to a special report on CCTV (aired on …

Facebook Inc. is considering plans to enter the Internet market in China before the end of this year, according to a report on a Shanghai news site.
Sina.com cites local media reports about Facebook’s plans, but gave no other details.
Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said the Palo Alto social media king is “interested in China, just as we are many other countries, and while we are studying and learning about them all, we have no specific plans for China at this time.”
If Facebook does attempt to …