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Fri
20
Aug
2010
25% discount for Search Engine Strategies Conference Hong Kong
Search Engine Strategies (SES) is the leading global conference & expo series that educates delegates on search engine marketing (SEM), including optimization (SEO) and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices.
The event is now coming to Asia for the first time with its inaugural conference in Hong Kong on September 13th & 14th. Please click here for more details: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/hongkong/. George from Web2Asia will be speaking in the China track on Understanding How Consumers in China Access the Internet.
We can pass on this code for a 25% discount to our Web2Asia network: SESSI16. Registration link: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/hongkong/registration-details.html.
See you there!
Tue
03
Aug
2010
New report: China's Top 10 Social Games and the Top Social Networks
Our portfolio company BloggerInsight has just released a new report titled: "China's Top 10 Social Games and the Top Social Networks." It is packed with must-read info for
developers, publishers, and investors.
You can find a free preview here: http://www.chinasocialgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Preview.pdf
For our Web2Asia readers we can offer an exclusive, limited-time offer to buy the report at a promotional price of $690 USD. The standard price is $990 USD. Purchase link: http://www.chinasocialgames.com/?page_id=487
REPORT CONTENTS (123 pages total):
1) Profiles of Top 10 Social Games
2) Analysis of Top Social Networks
3) Advertising on SNS (for both games and brands)
4) Interviews with Industry Insiders (both developers and publishers)
5) Statistics, Pricing Sheets, and Directories of Developers and Publishers
This extensive report analyzes the exploding social gaming market in China and describes how game companies can compete to succeed.
Tue
20
Jul
2010
Asiajin Shanghai Meetup July 24th
Our friends from the Japanese tech blog Asiajin will hold their first meetup in Shanghai this Saturday, July 24th to bridge the startup communities of China and Japan. Location will be the fancy Sunstyle showroom at Red Town.
Two industry experts from Japan will talk about the Japanese startup industry and their own startup experience, followed by Q&A and networking session. Please register under the eventbrite link given below - seats are limited!
- Date: 2010 July 24th (Saturday)
- Time: 15:00-18:00
- Language: English
- Venue: Sunstyle Showroom. 570 Huaihai Xi Lu. 淮海西路570号
- Map: http://www.sunstyle.cn/images/shanghai_map.jpg
- Registration: http://asiajinmeetupshanghai.eventbrite.com/
Speakers:
- Shunichi Arai: Situation and recent trends of web startups in Japan. Arai is a co-founder of Mogura Inc, a small startup which is providing business contact management system. He is also a co-founder of Asiajin.com, Japan’s leading English media which provides news from Japanese IT and Web industries. He will talk about the latest situation and trends of Japanese web industry.
- Shinsuke Tabata: Tabata is a co-founder of Nulab Inc. Their new software called ‘Cacoo‘ is a realtime collaborative web-based drawing tool. Cacoo is already featured in many media such as TechCrunch, Mashable and The New York Times. He will talk about his own experience on starting up in Japan.
Thu
13
May
2010
Geeks on a Plane Asia 2
There is another Geeks on a Plane Asia tour with Dave McClure upcoming shortly! Kick-off will be in Shanghai on May 23rd and the tour will then continue through Beijing & Seoul ending in
Singapore on June 2nd. You can find the basic overview here http://geeksonaplane.com/, details will be added shortly. The tour will incl. visits to the re:think event series in Shanghai, CHINICT conference in Beijing, Global Mobile Internet
Conference in Beijing, Startup pitches in Korea and the echelon21 conference in Singapore. In between there will be Startup2Startup dinners hosted by Dave.
For Shanghai we will post the agenda for May 24th re:think events shortly (sneak peak here http://shanghai.rethink.cc/). In the meantime I would like to invite you to check out http://shanghai.rethink.cc/2010/05/ignite-shanghai-is-may-24th-submit-a-talk/ and submit an idea for a talk! Ignite consists of short, 5-minute talks. We’d
love all sorts of topics–anything that would appear to tech geeks or to the ReThink Shanghai audience.
See you there!
Wed
21
Apr
2010
Upcoming May 27th & 28th: CHINICT - Chinas largest tech conference
During the upcoming Geeks on a Plane Asia Tour 2 we will also attend the CHINICT conference in Beijing. CHINICT is the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship. It takes place in Beijing on May 27th & 28th 2010 – for the 6th consecutive time. Get your tickets here.
Mon
18
Jan
2010
Chinese Internet users hit 384 Million in 2009
According to the China Internet Network Information Center China's population of Internet users reached 384 million at the end of 2009. The report can be downloaded here (Chinese only).
In 2009, the number of Chinese netizens grew by 86 million (28.9% yoy) . In total 29% of China's 1.3 billion population are now online. Access through mobile phones has risen by 120 million to in total 233 million, which represents approx. 61% of all Internet users. The most popular destinations online are still music sites (83,5%), news portals (80,1%) and search engines (73,3%). Business applications are however on the rise. The report also estimates the Chinese eCommerce market to have reached a value of 250 billion RMB.
Mon
18
Jan
2010
Chinese eCommerce Platform Taobao Launches App Store
Taobao, the largest online shopping destination in China, has today announced the launch of the Taobao App Store and will invest RMB10 million (US$1.46 million) to foster promising independent software developers via the Taobao Open Platform (TOP) fund every year. The move comes less than 6 months after eBay opened up its market place for third-party applications last August.
The Taobao App Store (http://app.taobao.com) will offer solutions created by independent developers through TOP for Taobao merchants and consumers including tools for sellers and buyers; extensions for Taobao community sites; tools for product recommendation; and mobile phone applications.
The TOP fund established in October 2009 is jointly financed by Taobao, Alibaba Group and outside investors. As of December 2009, more than 25,000 independent software developers have registered on TOP and more than 4,000 applications have been created using the application programming interface (API) provided on TOP.
This article was cross-posted at http://thenextweb.com/asia/2010/01/15/chinese-ecommerce-platform-taobao-launches-app-store/
Wed
13
Jan
2010
Google likely to retreat from China (update)
Please note: the original commentary was moved to the personal blog of the author here.
Google posted an article on its offical blog today stating that it will no longer censor its Chinese language search results even if this means that the company will "have to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China." The company lists recent hacker attacks from China in order to monitor China based activists as a reason.
This move doesnt come entirely surprising to us, after all we've heard from sources very close to Google's China operations and also after the resignation of Google China's former president Kai-Fu Lee in September last year. The company has been constantly losing market share against its rival Baidu in the last few months and is currently left with a small part (below 30%) of the Chinese search market. The way however Google (US HQ) arguments and prepares its exit of the Chinese search market is very surprising.
Mon
11
Jan
2010
ChinaMode Awards: Vote for your favorite Chinese Internet companies!
Similar to the The People's Voice Award (as part of the The Webby Award) China now has his own award honoring excellence on the Internet: The ChinaMode Awards. Initiated by Gang Lu and the OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup and supported by the 14 most influential Chinese tech bloggers, including: Appin, Williamlong, Web20share, Kenengba, Jandan, MobiNode, Webleon, Showeb20, Vista2.o, Yunkeji, Riku, Herock, China Web2.0 Review and MobiNode.TV the award aims to determine Chinas most important Internet companies in 8 categories such as most talked about website, best user experience & product design, most promising start-up, etc.
Starting today, you can now vote for your favorites in the Chinese internet space here: http://chinamode.org/ (Chinese only). The winners will be announced on January 25th 2010.
Wed
02
Dec
2009
PayPal China Developer Conferences: BJ Dec 14, SH Dec 15
This November PayPal opened its software platform to outside developers in a move designed to unleash a flood of creative uses for the online financial transaction service. With the new open software, called Paypal X (great domain btw: www.x.com), users won't have to type their username and password into a separate PayPal Web site in order to complete a payment. Instead, people will be able to sign into PayPal and make purchases, such as for example virtual goods, right inside a gaming application.
Mon
30
Nov
2009
Check out the TWIA Podcast for a weekly digest of Asian tech news
Earlier this month our East Asian friends @cerventus, @mikefoong, @bleongcw and @johnlim started a weekly podcast at http://thisweekinasia.net. You should check it out to keep track of the hottest news dominating the web and tech landscape in Asia! Follow them on Twitter @thisweekinasia or on their Facebook Page at This Week in Asia.
The same folks, together with the extended Open Web Asia Workgroup, will by the way also organize the Open Web Asia SEA conference next February 3rd & 4th in Kuala Lumpur. More details on the conference and how to get involved as a speaker, sponsor or attendee here.
Mon
30
Nov
2009
Barcamp Shanghai this Saturday, Dec 5th @ Xindanwei
After a first Barcamp during the Geeks on a Plane tour in June this year, the Shanghai startup community is organizing a second event this Saturday, December 5th.
BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. All presentations are scheduled starting the morning on the day of the event. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall for whatever technology related topic you want to talk about!
Location:
新单位|Xindanwei Co-Working Space
Address: 4C, Building 4, "IIInShanghai Hub", No.727 Dingxi Road (near Niuqiao Road), Changning District, Shanghai 地址:中国上海市长宁区定西路727号映巷创意工场4号楼4楼C座(靠近延安西路) Tel: +86 13916925435
Click here for more infos & to pre-register. See you there!
Wed
25
Nov
2009
Breaking: Chinese entertainment company Shanda acquires local Youtube clone Ku6.com
Sina broke the news today that - according to an unnamed insider - Chinese entertainment company Shanda (NasdaqGS: SNDA) has just completed the acquisition of local Youtube clone Ku6. Ku6 is generally regarded as number 3 after Tudou and Youku among the Chinese video hosting companies. The price was not disclosed, according to the article.
If this is true, it would be fantastic news for the Chinese Internet market. Very little M&A activity has happened here in the past and its rather practice to conquer & destroy than partner & buy among local Web 2.0 companies. Even though experts claim Shanda has not done the best job in handling its other recent acquisitions such as digital entertainment company Hurray and online publishing platform QiDian, a purchase of Ku6 will give a great boost to its competitors Tudou and Youku, who both have been rumored to be preparing an IPO for 2010.
We just recently published an interview with Ku6's founder and CEO Kevin Li here. The former Senior VP at Sohu had founded Ku6 only 3 years ago with investments from DFJ, DP Capital as well as Chinese search engine giant Baidu.
Thu
12
Nov
2009
Latest statistics on online SNS usage in China
The Chinese Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) yesterday released its latest report (Chinese only) covering the usage of online social networks in the Middle Kingdom. Before highlighting some of the key findings its important to keep in mind several points:
- The survey was conducted in July 2009 via telephone and does not recognize recent developments such as e.g. the block of Facebook in China (in the introduction for example, the report talks about Facebook launching a Chinese version and how this stresses the importance of Chinese users to them ..)
- The results are based on a sample of 3007 completed telephone interviews, covering seven provinces in China as well as a mix of tier 1, 2 and 3 cities.
So for the moment please find below just a 1:1 translation of the report highlights without further comments. Here we go:
Demographics and most popular SNSs:
- By the end of 2009, China will reach 124 million users of online social networks.
- The vast majority of users has accounts on multiple networks – on average 2.78.
Wed
04
Nov
2009
Interview Series: Kevin Li from Ku6
Here we go with another China interview from our Geeks on a Plane Tour participants Adrian Bye. Adrian runs MeetInnovators, which features interviews with founders and CEOs of web-based companies.
The full transcript and mp3 files of this interview can be downloaded on Adrians CEO interview ressource http://www.MeetInnovators.com here.
Personal Info
Hobbies and Interests: Travel, Books and Ping Pong Tennis.
Favourite Books: Books by Lu You and Confucius.
Favourite Entrepreneurs: Jack Welch, Robin Li from Baidu, Charles Zhang from Sohu.
Personal blog: http://user.qzone.qq.com/622005602?ptlang=2052
Company website: http://www.ku6.com
Mon
26
Oct
2009
Chinese game developers invading Japanese social networks
Asiajin has an interesting post on Chinese game developers infiltrating Japan's largest online social network Mixi. And yes: its farm games :-)
Mixi's no 1 ranked app currently is Sunshine Farm by Chinese developer Rekoo. The game reached two million users in less than two months since its launch. On no 3 is already the next China-developed game Everyone’s Farm with 500,000 users by Yicha.
Fri
23
Oct
2009
Interview Series: Nick Yang from KongZhong Corporation
After our Geeks on a Plane Tour, one of the participants Adrian Bye was so thrilled that he decided to stay in China for another 2 weeks to do some 1:1 interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs. Adrian runs MeetInnovators, where he publishes interviews with founders and CEOs of web-based companies. Today's interview is with serial entrepreneur Nick Yang. The full transcript and mp3 files of this interview can be downloaded on Adrians CEO interview ressource http://www.MeetInnovators.com here.
Personal Info
Thu
22
Oct
2009
Lunch 2.0 Shanghai - Oct 23 @ ChinaNet Cloud
Oh no … we’ve been lazy announcing our Shanghai Lunch 2.0’s here recently since it all runs through our Facebook Group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13224258265. Anyways, here is this weeks event:
October Lunch 2.0 is on Friday!
For the month of October’s Lunch2.0 we’ll be going over to the China Net Cloud offices near Xujiahui. This month’s theme is Expo 2010. Is your company doing anything Expo related? What project/business ideas are out there to tap into Expo potential? Does the Expo even mean anything, particularly for tech businesses in Shanghai?
Lunch will be provided courtesy of China Net Cloud — A big thank you to them!
Please RSVP through the Facebook group or by email to Toffler@redte.ch so we can accurately budget for food.
Date: Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Time: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: X2 Space 1-601
Street: 1238 Xietu Lu 上海市斜土路1238号1-601室
City/Town: Shanghai, 200032 China
Subway: Line NO 4 to Damuqiao Road. Exit #4. 5 min walk.
Map: http://ditu.google.cn/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E5%BE%90%E6%B1%87%E5%8C%BA%E6%96%9C%E5%9C%9F%E8%B7%AF1224%E5%8F%B7&ie=UTF8&ll=31.198413,121.465187&spn=0.006433,0.013443&z=17
If you get lost or need help with directions, please call Junjng at 13918056958.
午餐会2.0将于10月23日周五举行!
本次午餐会主题是“世博会2010”。我们会讨论世博会对上海公司的商机.
午餐由云络提供 — 感谢云络团队!
如有兴趣,请提前通过Facebook 或者发送邮件 (Toffler@RedTe.ch) 回复我们,以便我们准备分量合适的午餐。
日期: 2009年10月23日,周五
时间: 12:00 - 14:00
地址: 上海市斜土路1238号1-601室
地图:
http://ditu.google.cn/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E5%BE%90%E6%B1%87%E5%8C%BA%E6%96%9C%E5%9C%9F%E8%B7%AF1224%E5%8F%B7&ie=UTF8&ll=31.198413,121.465187&spn=0.006433,0.013443&z=17
如果你不幸迷路,请联系云络的Junjing: 13918056958
See you there!
Thu
15
Oct
2009
Exclusive: Clarification from the Ministry of Culture on Chinese online game investments
Tuo Zuhai, deputy-director of the Culture Market Department of MOC during GDC China
We have just received several documents relating to last weeks announcements from the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) “prohibiting foreign investment in domestic
online gaming operations through joint ventures, wholly owned enterprises and cooperatives.”
We had reported earlier this week about the contradicting statements from the
Ministry of Culture and the GAPP, as well as the underlying reasons for this continuing power struggle between the two institutions.
The first document is a transcription of the speech from Mr. Tuo Zuhai, deputy director of MOC’s Department of Cultural Market, that he gave during GDC China this week.
He started by saying “General Administration of Press and Publication must stop the surly interference in domestic online game enterprises. It is MOC’s duty to ensure the long-term development of
China’s culture industry, especially the game industry.” He went on by clarifying the roles of the three involved government bodies Ministry of Culture, State General Administration for Radio,
Film and Television, and General Administration of Press and Publication, referring to it as the “Three-Determination” Regulation.
Mr. Tuo made clear that “(the) Ministry of Culture is further stressed to be the competent authority in charge of the administration of online games” and continued by referring to the recent GAPP
announcements saying “recently General Administration of Press and Publication issued another notice and this will surely accelerate the full control by MOC. This is an major and important issue
of right and wrong, and is a matter of principle, as mentioned the day before yesterday by the officials of the Office of Central Institutional Organization Commission. We will never compromise
on such a matter of principle.”
The second document we received is a translation of an older notification from the Ministry of Culture from September this year, just before GAPP issued its counter announcement. The document
clarifies once again that it is the administration body for the operation of online games in China. The document also refers to the delays in re-launching World of Warcraft in China, after
Blizzard had decided to discontinue working with The9 as their exclusive operator and awarded the contract to its competitor NetEase. NetEase had launched World of Warcraft on September 19, after
it had received approval from the MOC already in July but without the approval from the GAPP.
You can find both documents as downloads below.
Tue
13
Oct
2009
China bans foreign investment in online games: O RLY?
Apparently good news for people that love bad news: just in time for "GDC China" which is taking place in Shanghai these days (not to be confused with "China GDC" ...), the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) issued several notes, which were instantly picked up by Western media, reinforcing once again its announcement from earlier this year that "foreign businesses were banned from investment in China's online game operations through setting up wholly owned enterprises, joint ventures and cooperatives."
However, as Inside Social Games quotes a Beijing investor correctly: This is a) not a new policy and b) "total BS".
Its just another display of power in the ongoing fight between the Chinese Ministry of Culture (MOC) who is backing up Think Services "GDC China" event and GAPP which supports the rivaling China GDC event from Howell Expo (Think Services former 2007 JV partner).
All of the large Chinese game companies (see our post of the most valuable internet companies in China here) are listed on international stock exchanges and/or invested by foreign VC, so are all of the currently most promising rising stars.










