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!

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. 

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.

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!

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!