CHINICT is the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship. It takes place in Beijing on May 26th & 27th 2011 – for the 7th consecutive time. China is becoming bigger than Silicon Valley, both as a hotbed for innovations of global impact & as a magnet for entrepreneurs from all over the world. CHINICT, will once more showcase this silent yet on-going revolution.

This years speakers & attendees include among others:

• A Mason, Founder & CEO GROUPON
• Tim Draper, Co-founder, DFJ
• C Binghao, CEO, KAIXIN001
• Vincent Tao, CEO, PPLIVE
• Nick Yang, Founder & CEO, WUKONG
• G Zhongwen, Vice Mayor, BEIJING
• Kaifu Lee, CEO, INNOVATION WORKS
• Hongyi Zhou, Founder & CEO, 360.CN
• and many more, check out the complete list here: http://www.chinict.org/about/whos-coming/

CHINICT has been sold out - early on - for the past 5 years. Therefore, if you have decided to join this year, we recommend you do not postpone your ticket purchase - as there is a imit of on-site attendees to 700 people. Click here to reserve your ticket.

Alibaba Group, Chinas leading e-commerce company today announced, it is planning to build a network of warehouses across China and hopes to mobilize other partners to join in this effort to create an integrated logistics platform that will help elevate the quality of service to Chinese consumers and allow merchants to meet rapidly growing domestic consumption needs. Over the medium term, Alibaba Group and its financing partners will commit between RMB20 billion and RMB30 billion (US$3.01 billion to US$4.52 billion), and Alibaba Group hopes to spark a total investment of more than RMB100 billion (US$15.05 billion1) in logistics development in China by others partners in the e-commerce eco-system.
 
"It’s clear that logistics is a crucial link in the e-commerce eco-system and in order for Chinese entrepreneurs to reach their future growth goals, this sector needs to develop rapidly in China. It’s also clear that everyone involved in this sector needs to work together to accomplish this," said Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of Alibaba today. "Hopefully within 10 years’ time, anyone placing an order online from anywhere in China will receive their goods within eight hours, allowing for the virtual urbanization of every village across China. In order to achieve this, we will need to establish a modern, 21st century logistics network."

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.

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.

Welcome back after the Chinese October Holidays! Here is our next China Tech CEO interview from our Geeks on a Plane participant Adrian Bye. Adrian runs MeetInnovators, where he publishes 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.

Heres another China Tech CEO interview from our Geeks on a Plane participant Adrian Bye. Adrian is from MeetInnovators, where he publishes 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.

Last weekend Web2Asia's George Godula had the the opportunity to attend Alibaba Group’s 10 year anniversary celebration, dubbed the “Alifest”.

Alibaba is best known for its international B2B e-commerce and sourcing market place Alibaba.com, but also operates Taobao – the “eBay of China” and largest C2C Internet retail web site, Alimama – an online advertising exchange and affiliate network – as well as Alipay, China’s most popular third-party online payment system modelled after Paypal but offering additional features such as escrow services.

During the Geeks on a Plane tour, one of the participants Adrian Bye ran a series of interviews with China CEOs. Adrian runs MeetInnovators, where he frequently publishes his interviews with the absolute best minds and most influential founders and CEOs on the Internet. Here is a re-post of Adrians interview with Tudou co-founder and Spil Games Asia CEO Marc van der Chijs. The full transcript and mp3 files can be downloaded on Adrians CEO interview ressource http://www.MeetInnovators.com.

In response to Serkan Toto's Post on Japan's most valuable Internet Companies, we compiled a list with the Top 30 Internet & Telecommunication Companies on the Chinese market.

They are ranked according to their market capitalization, whenever possible we link to the English Version of their homepage. Note: Market Cap is based on the stock prices of the 18th of August 2009, for their current value click on the Stock Exchange Link.

While currently most companies are listed either in the US (NASDAQ and NYSE) or on the Hong Kong Stock Market (SEHK), it will be interesting to see if the Chinese Mainland stock market (SSE) can attract more investment in the future.

Oak Pacific Interactive Chairmain Joe Chen announced this week to change the name of popular Chinese social networking website Xiaonei.com to Renren.com.

Xiaonei.com's literal meaning ('inside school') highlights the fact that it was originally designed as a platform for graduates to keep in touch. However this also proved to be a barrier for extending its user base beyond students. Ren Ren Wang now seeks to attract a wider audience by literally meaning 'everybody's web'.

We have always wanted to use this pic

The last part of our feature on leading Western Web Services and their Asian equivalents (some call them clones or copies ..) is about the largest Internet Market in the world: China. This post is in response to the overview started by Serkan Toto of Asiajin on Japanese equivalents and the follow-up by Channy Yun on Koreacrunch. Here is the response from Taiwan. 

Part 2 of our series on leading Western Web Services and their Asian counterparts is about one of the most wired countries in the world: South Korea. Please visit Koreacrunch to see the original post done by Channy Yun, who again had posted his overview in response to Serkan Totos post on Japanese equivalents of Western Web sites.

Our friend Serkan Toto over at Asiajin just updated his list of Japanese equivalents to Western Web 2.0 services. See his overview below - we will also post the Korean & Chinese response to it shortly.

Danwei has a very good summary post on the current situation of microblogging in China here. Fanfou (饭否), Digu (嘀咕), Zuosa (做啥) and Jiwai (叽歪) are all down it seems. Only Tencent's Taotao (滔滔) has not been affected for the moment. Danwei points out that its user base is younger and has a different profile than the other micro bloggin platforms. Additionally it does also not allow for search.

We did a quick round of calls with the founders and CEO's of some of the blocked services. The majority was optimistic to be back online soon again, although none of them was able to officially comment on the situation.

Shanghai-based language learning social network, italki, has accounced the first　business member of its Language Marketplace: English training company, Eleutian　Technology. The service offers one‐on‐one internet tutoring with US‐certified school　teachers and Eleutian's SpeakENG product, which incorporates Pearson's (PSO) English Language　Learning and Instruction System^TM to italki's members.

Prospective students can visit www.italki.com and register for an eight‐minute trial lesson with one of　Eleutian's American teachers via video‐conference. The product is called Eleutian SpeakENG^TM, and　students can subscribe to an integrated package of online multimedia English courses and videoconference　tutoring. SpeakENG also offers real‐time assessment to measure progress and to track a　student's needs.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has just published their mid-year statistical survey report on the Internet Development in China:

• The Number of Chinese Netizens increased by over 40 Mil during the first half of 2009, representing a 13.4% growth rate compared to 2008. By June 30 2009 the total number of Chinese Internet Users has reached 338 Million, which represents a penetration rate of 25.5%

• 320 Mil (or 94.3%) of all online users have broadband access

• 155 Mil (or 45.9% of all netizens) use their mobile devices to go online. In the first half of 2009 this number increased by 37 Mil. 28% of these Mobile Internet Users are considering to use 3G in the second half of 2009.

• The number of Rural Netizens surpasses 95 Mil, accounting for 42.7% of the total online population, 15% growth alone during the past half year

• Although security software is installed on 82.4% of all devices, security still remains a huge problem with 195 Mil Chinese experiencing Viruses/Trojans and another 110 Million becoming the victim of Account/Password Fraud

The block of foreign Web 2.0 services in China continues: Around 5pm local time today FriendFeed got stuck in the wires of the Great Chinese Firewall and is no longer accessible.

Other companions in misfortune currently non grata in the Middle Kingdom: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogger.com, blogs hosted on Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Tumblr, Xanga. Whos next?

Vincent Tao CEO PPLive

Tee second interview by our China guest Adrian Bye from MeetInnovators.com is with Vincent Tao who is CEO of PPLive, a p2p TV service - basically the Chinese version of Joost, except that it works! It has 120M installs, with 30M active users every month. The full transcript and mp3 files of the interview can be downloaded on the exclusive CEO interview online ressource MeetInnovators.com.

MeetInnovators, a platform for interviews with the absolute best minds and most influential founders and CEOs on the Internet, is run by our Geeks on a Plane participant Adrian Bye.

Dianping CEO Tao Zhang

We are happy to feature a series of interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs in the next few weeks by our Geeks on a Plane participant Adrian Bye. Adrian runs MeetInnovators, where he publishes his interviews with the absolute best minds and most influential founders and CEOs on the Internet. 

Our first interview is with Tao Zhang who is the CEO of Dianping.com — basically the Chinese version of Yelp (that started 2 years before Yelp did!). The full transcript and mp3 files can be downloaded on Adrians CEO interview ressource http://www.MeetInnovators.com.

Today was the second Shanghai Facebook Developer Garage. Congratulations to organizer David Li for a full house at M1NT club and the following great speakers:

• Wei Zhu, Platform Engineer, Facebook Platform
• Are Mack Growen, Director, Playfish China, Design of Social Game
• Ellison Gao, CEO, Five Minutes, Development of Facebook Application
• Zhang Lijun, Openapilabs Use fbopen for SNS extension
• Wang Lin, Platform Architect, Taobao, Shop on Facebook, open platform mashup
• Loc Le, Director of Technology and Vivid Savitri, Creative Director, Trigger
  Theatrical Games on Web, Social Media and iPhone Platform
• Jerry Jin, Director, Tsong, Web3D and FB Apps
• David Li, CTO, Citymoments, Facebook Connect and local business

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued new guidelines on internet security that come into effect on the 1st of June 2009. It has been decided that public network security issues will be handled by the China National Computer Network Emergency Response Team (CNCERT).

All companies & organizations have to report security problems according to a 4-level emergency plan. Apart from describing the problem, the report has to include a proposal on how to solve it so the CNCERT can act accordingly.

For the full announcement, please refer to IT168.com (Chinese only)

Toocle, a global B2B marketplace that connects buyers and sellers, released their own Chinese business SNS at sns.toocle.com. After one year of development, Toocle hopes to offer its members a platform to exchange information and develop business relationships and friendships.

Still in its initial stage, the SNS has attracted tens of thousand of companies already but is currently far from being profitable. According to Toocle's President Sun Deliang this isn't a problem as their business circle toocle.com remains their core business.

For more information please refer to the article on Sohu (Chinese only)

Organized by Web2Asia, The Founders Fund and Dave McClure are inviting international investors and tech entrepreneurs on a 10 day orientation tour of Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai's Internet, Mobile & Gaming sector. The tour will take place from June 8th to 16th 2009.

Please click here for details on the itinerary and how you can get involved: www.geeksonaplane.com.

Objectives:

• Gain insight into tech & innovation trends coming out of East Asia.
• Meet the startup & tech community in Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.
• Understand the current investment climate in each respective city.
• Participate in a pro-entrepreneur and pro-investment initiative during a tough global economy.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture just issued a new regulation on the import of online games. Key points worth noting are:

• Companies that want to import online games to China have to apply for a license from the Ministry of Culture
• Preliminary testing (e.g. Beta Versions) is limited to 20.000 active users
• Without appropriate license, imposing user fees, engaging users in business cooperations or posting advertisement is illegal
• In case of a significant change in the nature of existing business, a new license is required

For more information visit http://tech.163.com/09/0427/18/57U5O32D000915BF.html (Chinese only)

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) just released its Q1 Report on the Telecommunication Industry:

• China's total telephone subscribers exceed 1 billion.
• Mobile phone users reached 670 million, which is nearly double the fixed telephone subscribers.
• Alone in March, the net increase of mobile phone users nationwide was 10,551,000 - a new monthly record.
  
• Q1 2009 telecommunication industry turnover: RMB 587 billion (US$ 86 Billion), + 10,8%.
  
• Q1 2009 mobile & data communication revenues grew by 10,4% & 7,7% respectively.
  

More in Chinese here: http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2009-04-24/13453035964.shtml

The Chinese eBook portal du8.com, together with the industry observer CBBR have just released the 2008 China eBook Market Development Report. Here are some of the results:

• Total sales income from eBooks in 2008: RMB 226 Million (US$ 33 Million), 33% increase compared to 2007
• Total number of Chinese eBook readers in 2008: 79 Million, 34% increase compared to 2007
• Mobile application for eBooks increased by 366% in 2008

A current problem faced by eBook providers is the lack of an industry-wide standard. The goal proposed by the report is to develop and promote China's own UOML standard and integrate it with the international OASIS Standard developed by Semi.

Original article by China News (Chinese only)

Back in 2008 Baidu launched its online gaming platform wanba.baidu.com. Now, the Chinese search engine giant has announced a strategic partnership with online gaming company Kylin for their long anticipated MMORPG 'Genghis Khan'.

Beijing based Kylin started development in 2007 and has so far spent RMB 100 Million (US$ 14,7 Million) in producing the game. The company hopes to benefit from Baidu's large user base and their strong media presence. Baidu on the other hand expects to win a substantial share of the online gaming market. So far, the game is still in beta and reached a maximum of 15,000 concurrent users. It is expected to launch on April 29th 2009.

See original article by IT168 here http://d1.it168.com/show/16192.html (Chinese only)

Robin Lee, CEO of leading Chinese search engine Baidu, is currently attending the Boao Forum for Asia. He there announced that his company is planning to heavily expand its international business, hoping to generate 70% of its revenues from foreign markets by 2025 at the latest. Key markets will be the US and Japan, said Lee.

The Boao Forum is an annual conference for Asia's most influential leaders in government, business & academia.

The9, a Shanghai-based online game operator, is about to lose its exclusive license to operate and distribute World of Warcraft (WoW). This was indicated by a internal memo to employees by The9's President Xiaowei Chen, reports newsportal Sina. WoW, which soon became mainland China's largest online game after its launch in June 2005, will in the future be managed by Chinese portal and gaming company NetEase.

The announcement led to an immediate 25% drop of The9's share price on NASDAQ. WoW contributed 94% of The9's Q4 2008 revenues. At the same time NetEase is reported to having spent around RMB 200 Million (US$ 30 Million) for WoW infrastructure already.

The9's WoW license will expire on the 8th of June. For more information and Mr. Chen's full announcement, refer to http://news.cnblogs.com/n/46010/ (Chinese only)

Netease reported today that China's popular SNS Kaixin001.com hopes to receive 20 Million US$ in additional funding from its second round of investment. Apart from initial investor Northern Light Venture Capital, rumor has it that Shanghai-based Qiming Ventures will join in for this round. This news is quite startling as local media expected Beijing-based Ceyuan Ventures to close the deal. Netease reports Qiming's Managing Director's reaction on the matter to be: 'No Comment'.

Link to original article on Netease (Chinese only): http://tech.163.com/09/0414/07/56RIOS8H000915BF.html

We are very happy to announce the 5th edition of the CHINICT conference and Web2Asia's role as marketing partner to help promote this first class event again this year. During the high tech week in Beijing, under the patronage of the Beijing Municipality, CHINICT - the largest networking, communication and brand-positioning event in China for the world fastest-growing & leading IT corporations – will take place again in Beijing on May 21st & 22nd 2009.

Attendees get a unique outlook at the:

• Hottest investment opportunities
• Most cutting-edge technologies & disruptive models
• New market trends.

Registrations for Web2Asia readers can be done directly at http://www.amiando.com/CHINICT.html.

Google yesterday launched a new online music service in China at http://music.google.cn. The service is free for users from Mainland China but is currently not accessible from any other country.

Users can search, download or stream free licensed music and choose from a pool of over 1.1 million songs. The main revenue model is based on banner advertising and expected to grow to a business with 100 million yuan ($14.6 million) in annual revenue within the next few years. Among the 140 label partners are also the big 4 major labels - Warner Music Group, Universal Music, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment. Songs are distributed through Googles chinese partner Top100.cn and revenues will be shared with the labels at approx. 50:50. Additionally the downloads are tagged with a digital watermark that will allow the labels track how often and which of their songs are downloaded.

With this latest move in the fight over search engine dominance in China, Google directly attacks the leading search engine Baidu, which has a dominant share of search revenue in China mainly due to its mp3 search which often links to unauthorized downloads.

We have put together a short presentation below to walk you through Google Chinas new mp3 service in detail:

Daily Economic News today revealed that the Chinese video hosting service Pomoho silently relocated its HQ from Beijing to Hangzhou. There the company apparently will receive around 6 Million RMB (900.000 US$) in funding through a newly set up "Government Venture Capital Fund" from the Hangzhou city government. Additionally, Pomoho is expecting to raise another 10 to 20 Million US$ in foreign investments, mainly from their previous investor, an undisclosed Singaporean Venture Capital Company.

According to the report this new venture round will mostly be used to further develop and implement Pomoho's ‘Triple Video’ Strategy to attract new viewers. Besides focusing on the existing Web Platform, the company plans to contract more private TV channels and adapt their services for the upcoming 3G standard.

For additional information you can find the original report by IT168.com here http://d1.it168.com/show/14204.html (Chinese only)

Web2Asia's customer & partner Jimdo today announced an exclusive agreement with KDDI Web Communications, a subsidiary of Japan's 2nd largest telecommunication corporation KDDI.

The German startup and the Japanese industry leader launched the Japanese Jimdo version, www.jp.jimdo.com, in a joint press conference at the German Embassy in Tokyo.  KDDI Web Communications will also offer Jimdo's website creator for business clients on its hosting platform www.cpi.ad.jp.

Tencent, who among other services operates QQ, the most popular instant messenger in China, or Qzone China's (or maybe even the world's) largest SNS, yesterday accounced that it will soon open up for third-party applications (original Chinese news report by Sohu here). This announcement came after several other Chinese Internet companies recently opened their respective platforms. Tencents CEO Pony Ma stressed two points for applications to be allowed: innovative products and high security standards.

According to China Press and Publication Association, China’s online gaming industry is continuing to grow rapidly. The industry had combined revenues of 18.38 Billion RMB (2.63 Billion US$) - a 76.6% year on year increase compared to 2007. China is currently exporting its online games to more than 40 countries, with the US being the biggest market. Annual sales revenue in foreign markets amounted to 70 Million US$ and are expected to exceed 100 Million US$ in 2009.

Tencent Holdings Limited a leading provider of Internet and mobile & telecommunications value-added services in China who is best known for their instant messanger product QQ, today announced the unaudited consolidated results for the fourth quarter of 2008 and audited consolidated results for the year ended December 31, 2008.

Here is an overview of the most striking results:

• Total revenues were RMB7,154.5 million (USD 1,046.8 million), an YoY increase of 87.2%
• Revenues from Internet value-added services (IVAS) were RMB4,915.0 million (USD 719.1 million), an increase of 95.5% YoY
• Revenues from Mobile & telecommunications value-added services (MVAS) were RMB1,399.0 million (USD 204.7 million), an increase of 73.2% YoY
• Revenues from Online advertising were RMB 826.0 million (USD120.9 million), an increase of 67.5% YoY
• Gross profit was RMB4,984.1 million (USD 729.2 million), an increase of 84.4% YoY.

Key platform statistics for Q4 2008:

• Total registered Instant Messaging (“IM”) user accounts increased to 891.9 million, representing a 4.2% growth QoQ
• Active IM user accounts increased 6.1% QoQ to 376.6 million
• Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded 49.7 million, a growth of 9.7% QoQ
• Peak simultaneous online user accounts of QQ Game portal (for mini casual games only) was 4.7 million, representing a 6.2% growth QoQ
• IVAS paying subscriptions were 31.4 million, an increase of 3.6% QoQ
• MVAS paying subscriptions were 14.7 million, a decrease of 0.7% QoQ

The news site Sohu reported in an article last week (http://it.sohu.com/20090312/n262760344.shtml Chinese only) that Chinese eCommerce market leader Taobao was to introduce its own social network. According to a PR spokesperson the SNS will be named 淘江湖 ("Tao Jiang Hu") and will mostly be formed by combining several of Taobaos already existing sites and services. However additionally the news report said that this new SNS may add several "shopping related games" through an API open to third party developers. The slogan of the SNS is reported to be "淘，我喜欢。淘，共闯江湖" which roughly translate into "Search what I like and explore/play in a game world together".

The concept of combining eCommerce with social networking or gaming is not new to Asia. The Japanese video hosting site Nico Nico Douga for example allows its users to post purchaseable items related to the respective video. You can find an overview of Nico's eCommerce functions here in a post by our Open Web Asia friends over at Asiajin.

Our friend Adam Schokora (@ajschokora) pointed out a funny picture of an offline ad published on Douban for the Chinese search engine Baidu's eCommerce platform Youa.com.

The writing translates to "Want to be rich? Go build nice roads first! Want to go shopping? Go to Baidu Youa.com first!".

With its recently launched consumer-to-consumer e-commerce platform Youa (Pinyin for "Got it") Baidu is looking to attack the leading Chinese ecommerce store Taobao.

Since last night YouTube has apparently been blocked (once again) in China. Some internet users from different parts of the country however reported that they have had access to the site temporarily and its not entirely clear if it’s just some technical glitch or if the Great Chinese Firewall indeed is in action again. Youtube had previously been not accessible in China from time to time during the last view years, however since around the time of the Olympics last year had been stable and continuously available.

We'll keep our eyes peeled on this issue, and will update you in case of any occurring changes.

Our friend Chang Kim recently pointed out an interesting article by the Economist regarding the international expansion plans of the Korean search giant Naver. According to the report the company plans to launch several more culturally specific search engines, such as “Naver California”, “Naver Korean-American” or “Naver Chinese-American”.

Read the full post from Chang on his blog Web 2.0 Asia here and the original Economist interview with Navers CEO Mr. Chae here.

Lunch 2.0 Shanghai is back after the Chinese New Year break. This month’s lunch will be hosted by Diangping. We’ll feature brief talks from three CEOs from the “local web” — services that let you get more out of the places you are:

- Zhang Tao (张涛dianping.com)
- David Feng (冯琰, beijingology.com)
- Wang Jianshuo (王建硕, baixing.com)

Lunch will be provided courtesy of Dianping - thanks again very much to Tao for offering this.

Date: Friday, February 27, 2009
Time: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: 大众点评（Dianping.com）

BTW: This is our Shanghai Lunch 2.0 Facebookgroup - join us to stay up to date on future events http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13224258265. And here is the announcement on Lunch 2.0: http://www.lunch20.com/2009/02/26/lunch-20-shanghai-feb-27/

Last week JLMPacificEpoch announced that Taobao, the C2C divison of China’s business-to-business platform Alibaba, exceeded RMB 300 million (USD 44 million) in average daily holiday sales.

Chongqing Morning Post reported that between Jan 10 and Jan 30 (including the one-week Chinese New Year holiday) the daily transaction volume peaked at RMB 460 million. In the past year Taobao generated a turnover of RMB 99.96 billion.

http://www.jlmpacificepoch.com/newsstories?id=P140276

In a recent article TechCrunch reported that MySpace will close its satellite office in Korea by the end of the month. The Korean portal’s operation will be continued by the staff of the other Asian offices. The layoff will affect less than 10 persons the company said. Although MySpace didn’t comment on user statistics in Korea, without much doubt the company’s growth expectations haven’t been met.

The major hurdle to succeed in the Korean market consists of the local social network pioneer Cyworld, which was already established 1999. According to recent reports 9 out of 10 Koreans in their twenties are using Cyworld! Needless to say, that for this reason and the distinctive features of the Korean market, MySpace always was struggling to gain ground there.

On January 13 China's largest C2C platform Taobao announced, that it has more than doubled its transaction volume in 2008 and reached $14.62bn (RMB 99.96bn), up 131 percent YOY from $6.33bn in 2007.

Lu Weixing, spokesman for Taobao, told Interfax China that the company predicted its transaction volume would continue to see year-on-year growth of over 100 percent for 2009. Moreover, he believes that the economic downturn will drive more people to shop online as more and more people are looking for cheap online offerings. Lu also stated that Taobao began turning a profit in September 2008.

We recently featured a series on China's e-business on our blog. If you are interested in the story of Taobao and general statistics on the Internet in China we recommend the following 3 blog posts to you:

1. China: Web use accelerates, e-business still lagging
2. China: Who's dominating China's e-business
3. Lessons learned: The roadmap into Chinese e-commerce for Western companies

We are happy to announce the official launch of our portfolio company BloggerInsight (http://www.bloggerinsight.com). BloggerInsight uses an online expert panel of bloggers to crowdsource market intelligence.

Companies can easily create market research or product development questions and BloggerInsight will assign them to specialized bloggers who will give qualitative or quantitative feedback through the platform. For bloggers this unique concept helps them in a new way to earn money based on their expertise in a certain topic.

Please find below the official press release as download as well as a short article on the launch at the Chinese Blogger Conference here. Additionally theres a review from the Next Web Blog here.

by CNReviews

After successfully retrieving Shel Israels passport and changing his flight schedule, he, David Feng and Elliott Ng had already flown into Guangzhou last night to meet with Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica. The rest of the China 2.0 Blogger Tour followed this morning together with Markus Fuhrmann from Web2Asia to attend the yearly Chinese Blogger Conference. Follow the tweets at #cnbloggercon and see first pictures from Elliott Ngs photo stream here.

Started the day with the founder of Shanghai-based Qiming Ventures, Gary Rieschel. He gave us a very interesting overview of the early stage VC market in China over breakfast at the Park Hotel. Gary has over 25 years of operating and investing experience in the information technology and cleantech industries. Prior to Qiming, Gary was the founder or lead investor in several leading venture capital firms in the U.S. and China including SAIF Partners (China), and Ignition Partners (U.S.). Gary was also the founder of SOFTBANK Venture Capital/Mobius Venture Capital in the U.S. (1996), a firm with over $2 billion USD under management.

Our third day in Beijing started with the highlight of the tour for many so far: an exclusive breakfast meeting with Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the VP of Google China.

A big thank you goes to our sponsors: the General Manager of the Marriott Beijing City Wall who provided fantastic food and a perfect location. It was also great to meet up with Adam Schokora from our lead sponsor Edelman Digital, who flew in all the way from Shanghai to join us for the session and the subsequent visit to the Forbidden City.

We were able to live stream the entire session and you can find the recordings on our Web2Asia channel below or at: http://www.kyte.tv/ch/172789-web2asia.

by CNReviews

We started our second day in Beijing with a visit to the JUCCCE cleantech conference. Although we just attended the morning sessions (it was a smoggy morning btw) it was enough to understand the tremendous challenges The Middle Kingdom is facing in sustainable energy development.

The Chinabusiness Network, CNReviews & Web2Asia yesterday kicked off the China 2.0 Blogger Tour with first pre-sessions in Beijing and Shanghai. Official start of the tour will be tomorrow Monday Nov 10 in Beijing. For details check www.china20.asia and follow us on hash tag #china20.

Yesterday afternoon we had a great session at the Web2Asia office with Robert Scoble & Rocky Barbanica from FastCompanyTV meeting local Shanghai entrepreneurs & investors. Check out Robert Scobles Kyte recordings here, a blog post about his learnings here, some pics from Christine here and our Web2Asia Flickr set here. Additionally Danwei made a video interview with Robert Scoble on his China experience here.

We are excited to announce that the Editor of TechCrunch UK Mike Butcher will be joining us on the China 2.0 Blogger tour to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou from Nov 10-16.

After months of planning and working behind the scenes, we'd like to announce the Inaugural China 2.0 Tech Tour taking place in November.

The China Business Network, Web2Asia and CNReviews.com have partnered to organize the first ever international blogger/tech influencer tour of China's tech sector taking place November 10-17. The lead sponsor is Edelman Digital China.

2008 China Internet Conference will be held from September 23rd to September 25th in Nanjing. This is the annual conference organized by Internet Society of China, a legal organization, authorized. The Theme of this year is "Convergence: Driving Development, Integration: Optimizing Value". This conference stands for the most updated trends of Chinese Internet market. For more details of previous conferences, please visit www.internetdigital.org.

Since 2001, China Internet Conference has generated extensive attention around the Asia Area. It has been highly regarded by the whole Internet industry around the world. Many American internet giants involved in this conference to extend brand awareness around China and detect their opportunities of doing business in China. International companies from European countries (UK, Netherlands, German etc.), Middle Asia, Japan and Korea worked together with domestic companies to discover opportunities and threats in China. Famous media networks will live and nearly 10,000 participants will attend the conference. 2008 China Internet Conference" in the size and level will be greater than with previous upgrade and expansion.

Introduction about the International Internet Summit

The International Internet Summit is the Chinese Internet Conference (CIC)'s main conference. Besides the scale, the specification, it is as important as the opening ceremony of CIC. This forum will be with the cooperation of Japan Broadband Association, Internet Professional Association Hong Kong, China, Taipei Hsien Computer Organization, China and other world famous organizations. The summit will be a stage for the Internet Companies and Organizations in the world to communicate and cooperating fully. The latest technology and innovation will be introduced by the speakers from American and European Internet or IT companies. The local characteristic of development and variation in China will be discussed between the Chinese Internet Companies and the Companies abroad. George Godula, Founder & Managing Director of Web2Asia will be present as a speaker at the International Internet Summit on 23 September 2008. The summit will also be a connection which creates more opportunities and cooperation among the world internet associations and organizations.

The "Online Travel Report 2007" of Baidu Data Research Center - Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine - which is based on data collected from browser cookies in Q4 2007 indicates that Ctrip is dominating the online travel market with a 51.65 percent market share. Elong (Expedia's exclusive affiliate in Asia) and Mangocity (owned by China Travel Online) lag far behind with a 12.48 and 11.10 percent market share.

Next Lunch 2.0 Shanghai will be on Friday August 29th at the office of Symbio Group (http://www.symbio-group.com/). Thanks a lot to Vincent for providing the space.

Topic is “Stock options for Chinese employees” and we will have Garret Wiley from Red 5 Studios (http://www.red5studios.com) as a speaker.

Lunch will be provided courtesy of Symbio Group - thanks again very much to Vincent for offering this.

The address is:
Tomson Commercial Building
Suite 303
710 Dong Fang Rd.
Pudong
(Right next to the Century Avenue stop on #2 line, exit 1)

浦东新区东方路710号汤臣金融大厦303室
(近二号线世纪大道地铁站,一号出口）

Please RSVP through our Facebook event page at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=25620637658

Join our Shanghai Group at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13224258265

See you there!

The Open Web Asia Working Group (http://www.openweb.asia), of which Web2Asia is a member, today announced the first pan-Asia web technology event bringing together executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from throughout Asia.

The Open Web Asia '08 conference (http://www.openwebasia.com)  will be held on October 14 2008 at the Sheraton Grande Walkerhill in Seoul, Korea in association with the 9th World Knowledge Forum (http://www.wkforum.org)

Open Web Asia '08 marks the birth of new conference that will be the first truly pan-Asian web technology event. Top technology executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists from throughout Asia will gather for this premier event to be hosted in Seoul, Korea in its inaugural year.

The event is organized by the Open Web Asia Workgroup and other prominent entrepreneurs, thinkers, and bloggers within the Asian web industry. It was spurred by a desire to create a high quality, informative and practical technology conference focused on the Asian internet industry which to date has been lacking.

Open Web Asia will be held in association with the World Knowledge Forum (WKF). The WKF has established itself as one of the most prestigious conferences in Asia with speakers and attendees such as Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Jack Welch, Alan Greenspan, Michael Dell, and Paul Wolfowitz.

The theme of the 2008 conference is 'the Social Web'. Social has been a game changing development of the internet industry and the social web is an area where Asia has its own strength and vibrancy. Asian countries have a distinct internet cultures and market players, so informative and educational crosscountry comparisons can be made.

The one day conference will be divided into four sessions focusing on the following key areas: Insights and Best Practices, Innovations in Asia; Collaboration - An Introduction to Asia's Social Web; and East meets West - The challenges of internationalization to and from Asia. The topics were to chosen to create a forum for education, debate and information sharing.

Confirmed speakers include some of the most experienced and knowledgeable people from the Asian internet industry and a selection of business leaders and thinkers from outside the region such as:

• Kevin Dai (CEO, Comsenz, China)
• Arthur Chang (VP Global Sales, Alibaba, China)
• Yongseok Jang (VP, Ebay Asia, Korea)
• Yozo Kaneko (COO, NGI Group, Japan)
• Jimmy Kim (Nexon, Korea)
• Loic Le Meur (CEO, Seesmic, USA)
• Ram Lee (Head of Communities, Naver, Korea)
• Kent Lindström (Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Friendster, USA)
• Shusaku Maruko (GM, Felica, Japan)
• Jean K. Min (Director International, OhMyNews, Korea)
• Akio Tanaka (Partner, Infinity Ventures, Japan)
• Bill Wang (VP, Perfect World, China)
• Andreas Weigend (Consultant; Former Chief Scientist of Amazon, USA)
• Kim James Woo (CEO, Yahoo Korea)
• Kwan Yoon (Partner, Bluerun Ventures, USA)

This premier conference will offer web professionals from inside Asia and those from outside with an eye on the Asian web market and opportunity to learn, network and create business connections that will benefit both the regional and global internet industry.

For more information and registration please visit http://www.openwebasia.com.

A limited number of sponsorship packages are available. For details, please contact sponsor@openwebasia.com.

At the end of March 2008 it was reported that the Chinese online education website for pregnant and nursing mothers Yaolan.com received USD 17.1m in Series D funding.

Yaolan Ltd. was founded by Matthew J. Estes, President & CEO of BabyCare Ltd. (www.baoying.com). BabyCare is a leading provider of nutritional supplements for expectant mothers and infants in China.

Community portals for mothers are already very popular in the US. Web2Asia met Gao Xiang, CEO of Yaolan New Media Ltd. (www.yaolan.com) and got to know a little more about the plans of Yaolan.com and the trend of mommy community websites in China.

Please give us a short intro on Yaolan New Media.

Yaolan New Media Ltd. operates the dominant Chinese language online parenting web portal, community, and education platform www.yaolan.com. Founded in 1999, the company has built the most highly recognized and trusted online parenting brand by offering quality information and education services to pregnant women and parents of 0-6 year-old in China. Currently we have around 1.55 million registered members. Yaolan attracts 190,000 unique visitors daily that account for 1.2 million daily page views.

We have recently learned of a tool for Chinese learning English: Jukuu.com. It has a Google like interface where you can type in a few words of Chinese or English and find sentences that contain those words. In addition, each sentence is paired with its corresponding translation. This can be particularly useful for learning a language, since you can see how idiomatic language is translated.

ZHANG Yue, founder of Jukuu.com, told us more about the sentence search engine, his new company Cikuu and his future plans.

In 2006 you founded Cikuu. Can you tell us a little more about yourself and this company?
After graduating from Northeastern University as a master in Computer Science in 2000, I worked for Microsoft Research Asia as an assistant researcher, focusing on Chinese language processing. In 2005, I joined Qihoo as the department manager of the Natural Language Group. In 2006, I started Cikuu Corp. with some partners. Cikuu provides search and retrieval solutions for companies. Our team is composed of people formerly working at Microsoft, Baidu, Sina, ZhongSou, Qihoo and some other famous internet companies. So far, Cikuu's customers include Beijing Mobile, CSDN Group, Southern Media Group and etc.

Carsten, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us what you are doing in China?

I'm a researcher in technology-supported learning (e-learning) and I'm interested in exploiting today's incredible advances in technology in order to create useful and usable applications for learners. This includes Web 2.0 technology, the next generation of the Web called the Semantic Web, and Artificial Intelligence techniques in general. Before I came to Shanghai, I was a researcher in the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH), one of the world largest and most renowned AI research centers. My work as a researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University focuses on supporting adult learners who have only limited time at disposal. I'm also a consultant for Totuba, an innovative start-up that develops a range of tools that support research and active learning. Although my works involves cutting edge research results, I'm not so much interested in ivory-tower research. Both my work at SJTU and Totuba aims at creating practical tools which make learning easier right now.

What is your China story? Why did you choose to work and research in China and not in your home country Germany? Is the environment here more beneficial and supportive?

My China story started in 2005, when I served as the German co-organizer of a joint exchange program between German & Chinese universities. On my first visit to Shanghai, I was immediately fascinated by the vibrant life in the city, the willingness to take changes and to grasp opportunities. Quite a difference to Germany. In 2007, me and my wife moved to Shanghai, she as a teacher at the distant university of SJTU, and I as a researcher at the SJTU e-learning lab. The Chinese education system faces intriguing challenges: huge amounts of users, the transition from the traditional teaching practices to more innovative ones, etc. This is an excellent opportunity for applied research. The close cooperation between research and teaching practice creates test-beds which cannot be found in Germany. Here, it is not a problem to test research results with hundreds of learners.

According to your experience in China, what is the main difference between Chinese users and European ones? How does European e-learning differ from Chinese e-learning? Are there major differences in the design of the platform and the user interface?

The main difference I experience every day is the low initiative of students to do things on their own. Hierarchies are still dominant, unless the teacher tells them, few students will try things on their own incentive. But that is of course an interesting challenge: how to teach students to become self-guided, independent learners - skills they will need in their daily lives. Another main difference is of course the numbers of learners. Distant classes with 400 students are frequent, with students being at quite different levels. A teacher will not be able to address all students' problems individually. But usage of AI techniques can be used for personalization of learning materials, which relieves the teacher of quite some burden. Finally, the wide-spread usage of mobile Internet allows innovative research on mobile learning, in a much more realistic way than possible in Europe, where mobile applications are still hampered by prohibitive costs.

You are collaborating with the team of TOTUBA, a startup in the field of e-learning and knowledge management - how do you assess the Chinese market and the potential for e-learning?

In China, education is traditionally seen as a prerequisite for success, and thus, the market opportunities are huge. Currently, the Chinese educational system is in the transition form the traditional knowledge transfer model, where information is passed from teacher to students, to constructivist models that emphasize the active participation and knowledge construction by students. This type of learning requires new tools and of those will be developed by Totuba. What we see today, the so-called Web.2.0, is still in its infancy. My work at Totuba consists of exploring how to exploit the full potential of the Web and to make it useful and helpful to anyone who is learning, not just an information technology elite. Such tools will have a significant potential, as exemplified by another Shanghainese company, Praxis Language and its highly successful learning environments for language learning (e.g., ChinesePod).

Carsten Ullrich online:

Homepage

Professional Blog

Private Blog

Twitter

World renowned consumer brand NIVEA is working on launching a new product in the Chinese market and teamed up with Letstry.com.cn - China's unique consumer platform for direct brand experiences. Letstry is an online platform that enables Chinese consumers to test free samples of Western brand products. Brands need interaction with consumers to build strong relationships and that's exactly what Letstry's online community marketing concept is about.

As already exclusively revealed by Venturebeat last week, Web2Asia, its parent company MH | direkt and amiando, a leading platform provider for online event management, have today officially announced a distribution partnership for the East Asian market. In June 2007, amiando launched the first European online tool for a secure, uncomplicated and individual do-it-yourself ticket shop. After gradually expanding to other European countries, amiando currently offers it’s platform in German, English, French and Spanish.

The East Asian region, particularly China, has shown impressive growth potential for foreign interactive media companies. In the first quarter of 2008 China had reached an online population of 230 million – more than any other country in the world – and continues to grow at an astonishing rate of 53.3% yearly.

Not only is China's online industry experiencing tremendous growth, also the exhibition and event industry is developing rapidly with a 20% growth rate per annum. The number of trade show visitors and exhibiting enterprises ranks second in the world and with around 4,000 exhibitions in 2007, China is number one in Asia. The upcoming Olympic Games 2008 and the Expo 2010 in Shanghai are expected to create additional growth momentum. Regarding non-business related events, the disposable income of the Chinese population is continuing to rise significantly and people are increasingly spending money on leisure and entertainment activities like sports and cultural events, concerts and festivals. Besides the well known traditional festivals such as Chinese New Year, people equally enjoy celebrating foreign festivals such as western-style wedding events, Halloween parties and December 31st New Year celebrations.

„We have a strong international focus and are happy to work together with a strong partner to further adapt our product to local needs.“ says Markus Eichinger, director of international expansion at amiando AG. In cooperation with Web2Asia and MH | direkt amiando’s system has already proved to be particularly suitable for events in Asia, such as seminars by the FORUM Institute, Germanys largest business conference and seminar specialist, or the CHINICT conference held in Beijing this spring.

Previous major international events that have trusted amiando’s technology include the leweb3 conference, Lift!, DLD and the Crunchies awards.

The OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup launched its website this week at www.openweb.asia. It was initiated by English language Chinese tech blogger Gang Lu at www.mobinode.com. The Workgroup is a network of premium blogs focused on the Asian Web industry. These sites build efficient channels between the Asian web and the global industry, and also enhance the inter-communication of local Internet markets.

At the same time OpenWeb.Asia announced plans for an international tech conference. Called OpenWeb Asia 08, the conference will be the first and largets of its kind in Asia. It is being put together by an organization committee including industry insiders from China, Hong Kong, Korea, the US and Japan:

• Andrew Shuttleworth (IT Entrepreneur, Japan)
  
• Angus Lau (852 Signal, Hong Kong)
• Arai Shunichi (Asiajin, Japan)
• Benjamin Joffe (Plus8Star, China)
• Bernard Moon (Silicon Moon, US)
• Chang Kim (Web 2.0 Asia, Korea)
• Gang Lu (Mobinode, China)
• Georg Godula (Web2Asia, China)
• Howie Chang (The Digital Movement, Singapore)
• John S. Kim (Paprika Lab, Korea)
• Tangos Chan (China Web 2.0 Review, China)

More details on location, date & program will be announced soon.

Last month the Chinese government unveiled plans to restructure the national telecommunication industry to create more competition and to stop monopolization trends in the market. The plan urges the country's six telecom providers to combine into three groups.

On June 2nd China Unicom and China Netcom pressed ahead announcing a multi-billion dollar merger, marking the first move after the government called for action. China's No. 2. mobile phone operator China Unicom plans to acquire fixed-line provider China Netcom in a share swap. The merged group will have a market value of US$63.28bn. Separately, China Unicom will sell off its CDMA mobile network to China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line operator, for US$15.86bn.

China's online populations reached an amazing 230 million at the end of the 1st quarter of 2008. Moreover, China now has more Internet users than any other country in the world! This vast user base facilitates the e-commerce boom in China.

Last year 55 million of Chinese Internet users purchased goods online for 5.36 billion Euros (B2C and C2C transaction volume excluding travel related transactions). That's a jump of 13 million online shoppers and 2.53 billion Euros spent online in comparison to 2006. But that's just the beginning - for the year 2011 an online shopping transaction volume of 36 billion Euros is forecasted!

We've talked with Alexandre Misseri, a French Internet entrepreneur living in Shanghai, who has launched 88BRANDS.com - China's first online club of private sales. 88BRANDS.com celebrated its first anniversary this June 1st with a revamped homepage designed to enhance user experience. Alex provided us some insight in this skyrocketing market and shared his hands-on experience of launching an e-commerce start up in China with us!

Social Networking Service Facebook has announced the launch of a Japanese language version of its website and services. At a news conference on May 19th, Founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed hope that more Japanese people will utilize the site, which he said is highly safe, to share information with friends.

Facebook again turned to its users and asked them to translate its site into Japanese. About 1,400 users contributed and more than 30,000 translations have been submitted. Already the German and Spanish language sites have been translated with the support of its users.

So far, Facebook has not been highly popular among Japanese Internet users. The unavailability of a Japanese language version has constituted a major barrier. Zuckerberg is confident that Facebook will draw in Japanese users because its offerings are different from its rivals. One such difference is that Facebook users provide their real names, which has made the site more trusted.

At 2.28 p.m. local Beijing time - the moment the devastating earthquake occurred on May 12 - millions of people in China and overseas observed three minutes of silence. Across the country, sirens, cars, trains and ship horns wailed in grief as the people fell silent. More than 32,000 people have been confirmed dead and the estimated death toll could top 50,000.

National flags fly at half mast, public entertainments is cancelled and the Olympic torch relay is suspended during the three-day mourning period.

The Chinese Government has ordered all entertainment centric web sites and even television programming to shut down completely for the next three days. Only TV stations broadcasting the official CCTV earthquake programming will remain on air.

China Daily reported yesterday "... all public amusements will be suspended for three days from Monday as China begins an official mourning period ... the State Council, the Cabinet ordered a nationwide display of respect for the dead ..."

Gaming portals like game.com.cn, xiaoyouxi.com and Shanda Online have already completely shut down. Other websites like the major portals Sina, Sohu & 163 and the video sharing sites Tudou & Youku have limited their offerings to news content. Furthermore, all major websites in China have adapted a black and white layout, as the screenshots provided below show.

Last Friday leading news portal Sina unexpectetly launched an English version of its website. This major news was followed by another announcement reporting the launch of a special English coverage on Sichuan earthquake on its WAP site two days later. The special report offers round-the-clock coverage on the quake relief efforts and current situations in Sichuan and other quake-affected areas.

The English special report on Sina WAP will work together with the Internet-based Sina English to provide Sina's worldwide user base (230 million registered users) with the latest and fullest coverage of Sichuan earthquake. According to sources with Sina, Sina WAP will use the experience they gain in this special English reporting to launch a large-scale English coverage on the coming Olympic games in August.

A devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit China's Sichuan province this Monday at around 2:30 p.m. local time, killing ten thousands of people in Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Chongqing, and Yunnan. As we post the death toll numbers are still rising. Please refer to http://shanghaiist.com/tags/earthquake2008 for continuous updates.

The epicenter was about 100 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, a city of 3.75 million, and struck the area in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. The quake was so powerful it even left buildings in Beijing and Shanghai swaying for several minutes and some office buildings were even evacuated.

Musicshake, the first online User Generated Music application, today announced it has released a new version of the application and added new options for sharing and rating songs. Now Musicshakers can send an original tune link via email, embed it in a blog, or export it to Facebook profile with a player widget. The site also features new Shake charts highlighting the 'Top 50' songs and 'Best of the Best' based on community votes and expert reviews.

Musicshake makes it easy for anyone to compose original songs for ringtones, videos, web sites and more. Users can then create a global community around User Generated Music. The application requires no prior musical training or knowledge. Users simply choose a genre and combine instruments from a database of 400,000 modules created by professional musicians, and Musicshake does the rest.

See Musicshake in action here:

Shanghai based language-learning social network italki.com just released its
new feature, italki Knowledge, which aims to become the largest source of free, user-generated language-learning textbooks.

Italki Knowledge allows users to create and collaboratively edit web pages using text, video, sound, and pictures - media that traditional textbooks can't offer. Students can find language materials on topics such as grammar, pronunciation, slang, culture and more.

"Italki Knowledge is an application of the idea of collaborative wikis," says CEO Yongyue Jiang. "What makes italki Knowledge unique is that it will be supported by an editing community of over 200,000 language learners speaking more than 90 languages." According to Jiang, the community will ensure that the content on italki will be up-to-date and will improve over time.

Web2Asia's client Jimdo is about to release a totally new blogging tool. Starting now, Jimdo is launching the beta phase, which allows participating users to test the new functions and take and exclusive glimpse at the new tool before it is made available to all Jimdo members.

Jimdo's new blog tool enables users to simply and speedily write their own blog. What is so special about Jimdo's blog feature is that bloggers can be in charge of their own design as all elements used on Jimdo web pages can be integrated - whether it's text, photos, videos or widgets...

Web2Asia, its parent company MH | direkt and Narragansett Technologies have today announced a partnership agreement for the distribution of the professional email marketing solution SpinnakerPro and the online survey tool SensorPro in East Asia.

The East Asian region, particularly China, has shown impressive growth potential for digital marketing. By the first quarter of 2008, 230m Internet users were identified in the Middle Kingdom - more than in any other country of the world. Even though the overall share of online media from most advertisers is still reported to be only 3-4%, current studies predict fast growth in the online ad market of over 50%. Mostly driven by Olympic-related spend, the total online spend in China, including email, is estimated to reach EUR 928m in 2008.

Together with our parent company MH | direkt, an international direct marketing group with headquarters in Austria, we have been appointed marketing partner in Europe for the upcoming CHINICT conference in Beijing/China.

The CHINICT conference takes place for the 3rd consecutive time in Beijing, P.R. China, on May 22nd & 23rd 2008. This event is the largest gathering around the most innovative and fastest-growing IT rising stars in Asia and comparable to DEMO in the U.S.: participants are some of the most famous international and Chinese IT companies, VC investors, representatives of the world's most prestigious stock exchanges as well as "Rising Stars". Rising Stars are emerging companies on the Internet & Mobile sky, which have the opportunity to present themselves to selected participants in an exclusive environment.

Founded in 2003 by Eyal Gever, Gizmoz offers consumers a new generation of character-based visual expression for use across their digital lives. The Gizmoz service makes it easy and fun to create, customize, animate and share lifelike, 3D talking characters that enable individuals to put a unique face and voice to their digital communications.

Gizmoz characters can be fashioned either as a self-portrait starting from a single 2D profile photo, or created using images from the Gizmoz library, all in just a matter of minutes. The result is a customized digital character that can be used to deliver personalized, lip-synched messages in video clips and other forms of original content.

In May 2007 Gizmoz has raised USD 6.3 million in Series A led by Benchmark Capital with Columbia Capital. The company has raised another USD 6.5 million in Series B financing from a round led by DoCoMo Capital, a subsidiary of the largest mobile phone operator in Japan, in March 2008.

Founder & CEO Eyal Gever was running Zapa Digital Arts before founding Gizmoz. Zapa developed visual communication solutions consisting of complementary authoring environments and servers based on proprietary Java and 3D technologies. Founded in 1993, Zapa has emerged as an industry leader in its efforts to fuse art and technology to produce unique, innovative, visual communications solutions for the rapidly developing Internet marketplace.

Web2Asia is supporting the jointly organized Open Source & Drupal Camp taking place in Shanghai on May 17 and 18. We are happy to contribute to the community and invite all interested readers, friends and partners to attend and participate in this unique UNconference event to make it a big success.

Here we go with another one of our interviews with foreign entrepreneurs developing online based products in China. This time we spoke with Frank Quosdorf, Chairman and co-founder of Totuba, a global education marketplace and community.

1. Hi Frank, could you briefly introduce yourself and your company?
I am German, born in Saxony, married, with one child. For more than five years, my wife and I have been living in various countries working with multi-cultural teams. Totuba is an education company targeting major education stakeholders: learners, teachers, education service providers, related bodies, experts, and innovators. Our business is a global education marketplace and community, incorporating useful tools that make knowledge activities easier for people, provide a hub for affiliate connections, foster education innovation, and provide inputs to increased education program quality. Totuba is headquartered in Shanghai, China with a multicultural mix of employees and partners.

2. What is your China story? What brought you here?
Totuba was founded by Suren Gunatillake (Chief Executive Officer), Managing Director of Shangcorp, a project management company in Shanghai and me. In 2002 and 2003, I was implementing a large-scale e-Commerce platform for Bertelsmann in New York. Having Chinese colleagues and friends there, I got interested in both Chinese culture and business opportunities in China. In 2004, together with my wife, I relocated from Berlin to Shanghai to actively take part in China's development. Suren arrived in Shanghai in 2003, sponsored by an Australian entrepreneurial fellowship. He established an IT consulting company in Shanghai, moving Shangcorp from IT services toward media consulting and production, serving multi-nationals as well as SMEs. As Shanghai is becoming a global hub for media and education as well as a cosmopolitan city offering similar lifestyles to New York, Sydney or Berlin, we both are fully committed to China as a business hub, and to Shanghai as our place of choice to live.

3. Now speaking of Totuba - are you planning to develop this product for the Chinese market only or do you more or less just want to benefit from the local cost structure to keep the development costs reasonable?
Totuba is all about connecting education stakeholders on a global scale. Certainly there will be localized versions of Totuba, but we consider ourselves a Global Knowledge Market. Totuba is currently running a production facility in Shanghai, but this is less about saving costs than having very creative and highly committed staff that can implement our business ideas in extremely short time. It is also about being headquartered in one of the fastest and most exciting business environments in the world.

4. What experiences can you share with us and our readers concerning the differences in the e-learning behaviour of Chinese and European users? What is unique about the Chinese user?
There are many e-Learning initiatives and projects in Europe, and the European commission (Directorate-General for Education and Culture) is doing a great job unifying the many different European education systems. This political struggle, however, sometimes prevents European schools from really being innovative across borders. The Chinese government is attracting education experts from all over the world, making Shanghai a great place for education innovation. Since Chinese are, other than most Europeans, very open to changes and adaptation, their learners have been using latest technologies in e-Learning and distance learning very successfully, and for quite some time. One of Totuba's corporate goals is to help bridge the gap between Chinese and European educators and learners by connecting them through our global education network.

Web2Asia and its parent company MH | direkt is co-organizing the Shanghai IT Day 2008 and is teaming up with avenit Software AG to deliver an interactive presentation on "Successful E-Commerce in China". The event will not only offer presentations, but also exciting live shows and workshops giving the attendants the opportunity to participate in a more interactive manner.

Web2Asia will attend the Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, which happens April 22-25, 2008 at Moscone West.

Web 2.0 Expo is a conference and tradeshow for the rapidly growing ranks of designers and developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, and business strategists who are embracing the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies. Web 2.0 Expo features the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies providing attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.

Chinese Internet experienced an interesting phenomenon today when users started adding (L) China to their MSN Messenger name. Apparently millions of Chinese Netizens used this symbol to express support for their country and their love for the Olympic Games in the light of recent events surrounding the Olympic Torch run. The trend gained additional momentum when MSN China officially supported it by suggesting it to their users with an special "how to" instruction page. Here is the official Link. According to MSN by 3pm today already 2.3 Mio users had added the (L) icon.

Web 2.0 has brought a lot of different personalities forward. What do they think of the current trends, technologies and potential for their ventures in East-Asia? Web2Asia lets you discover their point of view through interviews with some of today's most interesting internet entrepreneurs active in the Middle Kingdom, the Land of the Rising Sun and the Land of the Morning Calm. This time we spoke with Jun Lin, Founder & CEO of sayjoy.com, an online video editing site. Jun Lin started to develop the website last year when he realized that there was no simple and efficient tool to easily create short videos from photos.

1. Hey, could you please introduce yourself and your project www.sayjoy.com?
My name is Jun Lin and I graduated from university in 1994 and since then have worked in the IT, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and telecommunications industry. I also gained experience in the field of technology, market research and marketing. In 2006 I founded my first internet project, which is sayjoy.com.

Sayjoy.com is an online video editing site. Its main function is to compile photos, videos and music into a narrative with personal video sets. Videos are created as a WMV file, which also can be downloaded and saved. You can play them on your PC, but also using a DVD player. The video files can also be converted to 3GP and MPEG4 files which are suitable for handheld devices like mobiles and PSPs. The service can be used without having to install any software on your PC and the handling is very simple.

2. When was sayjoy.com launched? How does the site differ from services like jumpcut.com? What are the tailored features that fit the tastes and interests of Chinese users?
Since the second half of 2006 our R&D Team has worked on the website, but the idea to establish this website was already born at the beginning of 2005. The idea was triggered by my own personal needs. I became a father in 2005 and was delighted and excited and took many pictures of my daughter. But I experienced that the majority of the existing client software available for editing pictures had some deficiencies. Most software is designed for professionals and very complicated to use. Furthermore, the installation requires several hundred megabytes of hard drive capacity and the installation itself is often very cumbersome. Based on that experience, I wanted to develop an online service providing video editing software to avoid the aforementioned problems. In June 2006 I met Xiao-Jun Hu, a teacher at Zhejiang University. After a technical analysis of the project we agreed that this service could be realized and we started developing sayjoy.com.

After a period of six months we came up with the first beta version for on-line testing in March 2007, providing the core functions for video editing. At the same time we also discovered jumpcut.com on the web, which provided the same basic functions as sayjoy.com. After the online-testing we closed the site and did a large revision and upgrading. We not only modified the service, but also upgraded to the latest flash technology (AS3 version).

The revision and upgrading of the site was done taking into account the actual needs of the users in China and also the current situation of China's internet: 1) the demand for online editing of digital videos (DV) is not very strong in China; users are more interested in online-editing of photos at the moment; 2) China's internet is too slow and does not support services like online-editing of DV; 3) as the flash AS2 version has some inherent technical problems (memory consumption, CPU occupation, etc.) we have restricted the number of functions to provide a smooth service.

The upgrade of the website also included a new feature - Cool Head Zone at http://kutou.sayjoy.com. The user uploads a photo and our website generates a small video clip, which is essentially a moving avatar with facial expressions. When we added this feature we considered entering the mobile phone application market, but for various reasons no operator was willing to cooperate. Now, we are considering implanting advertising into the application and we continue to seek suitable partners.

City!N is a China-based social networking site that aims to be not just another Facebook copy, but an intelligent SNS. Simon Chan, co-founder & CEO of City!N shared some information about his latest project with us. According to Simon, ISNS (intelligent SNS) will be the future of the web!

1. There is already a large amount of local and international SNS in China. What does City!N include and offer that other SNS don't?
I don't see any high quality (or ''up to standard'') SNS in China so far. People are too busy with the financial game and they tend to forget about the importance of real user experiences. But I see that some competitors are catching up, especially the VC market which is a bit quiet now. But I don't think City!N is the same as any SNS existing at the moment. We are the next big change for SNS.

2. So what exactly are those innovative features that fit the tastes and interest of your target, Asian young adults?
The magic behind City!N is an AI learning engine, which, besides connecting you to your real friends, can also study your behavior and make appropriate recommendations to you to enrich your social life. Asian young adults love to reach out and meet new friends and they also like to "show off" their tastes.

3. Can you tell us a little more about the technology being used to match people?
Our matching technology can be divided into two levels. The simple level is that "if you like A, you should also like B, because most users who like A also like B". The advanced level, which we still haven't released, is to match the users' tastes. "User A's taste is similar to User B's. So as User A likes apples, User B should also like apples". This technology is the future of recommendation and matching in the way that traditional contextual matching isn't anymore.

4. City!N was officially launched on March 13 in China. How is the site perceived by the users, how many members do you already have?

Up to now we have only around 4,000 users. I know that this number is very small in the market, but please remember that it's a closed network and we are still in the invitation-only mode. Number of members is not our primary concern at this stage. We focus on the quality of the social network inside.

YouTube, the world's largest Internet site for sharing video clips and other user created content (UCC), is aiming to expand its market share in non-English speaking countries by further adapting the already existing local YouTube versions. A Korean version with localized features has been up since January 23rd this year.

Our friends at Jimdo today annouced a major release with great social features for their free website creator. You now can:

• add other Jimdo-users as friends.
• send messages to your Jimdo-friends.
• keep your visitors and friends up-to-date via the newsfeed.

Check out the video below, download the official press release or even better: try it yourself and find your friends on Jimdo!

X | Media | Lab and Web2Asia are happy to announce the "Wealth of Animation" event at Suzhou Industrial Park from May 8th to 10th, 2008.

X|Media|Lab Suzhou will bring together a stellar range of animation experts from all over the world. International participants include:

• Raman Hui - Director of Shrek 3
• Michael Johnson - Motion Picture Lead, Pixar Studios
• Duncan Brinsmead - Chief Research Scientist, Autodesk (Maya Software)
• Suresh Seetharaman - Founder and President, Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation
• Sue Erokan - Supervisor, Character Animation, Dreamworks
• Dan Scott - Head of Global Production, Nokia Games
• Masakazu Kubo - Executive Producer, Pokemon Film and TV Series (Tokyo)
• Dennis Conner - Head of Global Outsourcing Strategy, ILM, Lucas Arts (Los Angeles)
• Heather Kenyon - formerly Director of Development, Original Animation at Cartoon Network
• Dale Herigstad - 5-time Emmy Award Winner, Schematic (LA)
• Nickson Fong - Founder, Egg Story (Singapore)
• Paul Steed - Founder, Exigent Studios (Los Angeles)
• Madhavan - Founder, Crest Animation (India)
• Michael Stevens - Board Member, Park Road Post (Wellington)
• Tatiana Kober - Founder, Bejuba Studios (LA and Toronto)
• Anand Gurnani - Founder, Animation 'Xpress (India)
• Tim Brook Hunt - Head of Children’s TV, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Sydney)
• Alan Lindsay - CEO, Vue DC Group (Perth)

China participants include a ‘who’s who’ of the China animation industry including: the Dean of Animation, Beijing Film Academy; President, Great Dreams Cartoon Group; Executive Deputy Secretary General of China Animation Association, and Head of Digital Media Technologies, Beijing Institute of Technology; Executive Vice President of China Animation Association; Deputy Director of Digital Animation Creation R&D Centre, China Art Academy; Secretary General of Mobile Animation Industry Association; CEO of China Animation Association; Managing Partner of China Renaissance; the Vice President of ID Tech Ventures; and many others.

More details on this event at http://www.xmedialab.com/xml_suzhou.html (English) or here http://www.xmedialab.com.cn (Chinese).

Web2Asia's got a packed schedule ahead for April. We will start off with the Re:publica 08 in Berlin on April 2nd, followed by The Next Web 08 conference in Amsterdam a day later, then the Future of Web Design in London on the 17th and the I-Techpartner meeting in Stockholm on the 28th. For Asia the WWW2008 in Beijing is on our agenda.

Let us know if you want to meet up with us on any of these events!

Musicshake, Inc. is the world's first on-line user generated music (UGM) creation solution that provides music composing solutions aimed at the general public (a.k.a. music dummies) without previous musical knowledge or expertise. The Korea-based online music creation service recently expanded to the US.

Michael of Web2Asia recently had a chat with Kihong Bae, General Manager of MusicShake in the US.

1. Could you please briefly introduce yourself and your company?
I am a Korean native, but I grew up in Spain. I have studied and worked in Korea and the United States, travelling back and forth. Prior to working as Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft Korea I was working for several companies in the IT industry. Currently I am heading up the US operations of MusicShake. The US office is manly in charge of the marketing, but the goal at the end of the day is to move the HQ from Korea to the US. Right now we are try to keep the company very lean.

I have always been interested in fusion technology and media entertainment – exactly what MusicShake is combining. MusicShake is a software that allows the general public, we call them music dummies, to create their own music in a very easy and intuitive way that no other software achieves. We provide a variety of music modules, you just need to drag 'n drop to create different patterns. Currently we have about 400,000 different modules online, so just imagine the combination of possible songs. We cover all the instruments out there and even provide vocals. All modules are currently created by in-house and part-time outsourced musicians in Korea, where we have a pool of 30 people. But we are recruiting musicians in the US right now as well. One side of music is pretty international and there is no need to translate, music is music. But at the same time there is a cultural aspect – what is popular in Korea does not necessarily have what it takes to be popular in the US. Therefore the localization of the music modules, especially the lyrics, is important.

2. How do you assess the market for user generated content websites? Is there still potential for more to come?
In my personal opinion the answer would be yes, but is going to take different forms. User Generated Content is not a new concept. There have been bulletin boards and so on before; there was just no platform to enable stuff on the web. Users have always wanted to participate more; they want more levels of e-democracy. YouTube kind of set off the whole user generated content revolution. The next step is user generated fusions, combining technologies that are out there that allows users to do a lot of things. To sum up, it is a basic instinct of human beings to do something, to participate, to show off, to share – user generated content websites just provide the platform that allows you to express yourself.

3. In the past we have seen many globally dominating websites failing to establish themselves successfully in the Korean market. According to you, what are the reasons for the weak performance of so many international players in Korea?
One, maybe obvious reason, is that a lot of the global companies in the past thought that whatever works in one market can be translated into other markets – especially internet technologies. But whatever you do must be customized to the local demographics. A perfect example is the story of Wal-Mart in Korea, which was a total failure. They failed to realize the specific demographics of the Korean consumers. Koreans do not buy in large junks, they like to go to the market every day and wouldn't buy food for the whole week. Wal-Mart did not realize this before entering the market. It's the same thing for YouTube and Google. They failed to understand the key characteristics of Korean consumers. What is the purpose? Why do Koreans watch videos on websites? Koreans prefer high quality videos because the internet infrastructure is very well developed and allows fast data transfer, but YouTube's videos are very low in quality. In general, there are different dynamics in the US and Korea. Koreans are a very unique type of people. They are very trend driven, if there is something popular they want it the next day. Also the culture adds to their patriotism. Koreans tend to be more loyal than other customers, if they stick to one thing it is really hard to make them switch to other stuff.

4. What tips and tricks can you share with foreign Interactive Media companies that are planning on entering the Korean market?
My main advice would be to study the market in detail – not just reading books, but being out there, physically out there, watching how Korean consumers react to whatever product you have, to identify the key differences in consumer behavior. I suggest working with local partners, to take baby steps instead of launching a product in a big way. First test the market and then do the next thing instead of spending tons of money on doing research and then coming out with a big big launch. Initially go with a local entity that understands the market, there are ways to separate when the company is big. You need to be there, watch people, get real feedback from the market and not from analysts or academics.

5. You recently expanded to the US – how did you prepare yourself so that you won't experience the same difficulties as many US sites did when entering the Korean market?
I think music that Asians like is not so different from what people like in other markets, therefore it was not so difficult to approach the US market. The management team have a very international mindset. The mindset of a CEO and the managing team is really important when going into a different market, you have to be willing to change the ways of doing business, and you must be very flexible and willing to learn. We talked to as many people in the IT and digital music industry as we could and teamed up with potential advisors, people who have experience in the digital entertainment industry and know-how of how business is done in Asia and the US. It was important to receive feedback and taking it back to the headquarters and then executing the strategy in the US. I think many Asian companies that have been successful in Korea or other parts cannot do business in the US – they think whatever is successful at home will be a success abroad as well. It's about the mindset; it's the rigidity that brings everything down. You need an advisory board that helps you out. It's about having the right team who knows about doing business in the US and has at the same time experience in Asia. The core team of MusicShake is made up by a couple of people from Korea and Korean Americans.

6. The US version of MusicShake appears in a different design than the Korean one. Why do you think the Korean design would not work in the US market? Furthermore, does only the design differ or did you localize the site by adding new features?
A couple of points are done differently. Korea has a huge broad band penetration rate. Therefore the Korean version of MusicShake features a lot of flash and active-x based stuff that you can bring up in a matter of seconds. The internet connections in the US wouldn't allow that and we therefore took out many flash based elements. In addition, Americans do not like active-x stuff that pops up, so we got rid of that as well. Whatever they need to get done, they want to have it done as simply as possible. A feature that is more or less only available in the US is the possibility to share and embed songs. Those features are also available in Korea, but the whole concept of sharing is a larger one in the USA. Koreans prefer to come to the website and listen to songs that other users have made. US users prefer to come to the website and make the music themselves. Then of course we made some localization things. Language for example, the English is not perfect yet. We are still in the process of washing out all the Konglish (Korean English).

7. How did you enter the US market? Did you go for it yourself or did you team up with a local partner to explore the market?
We are a 100% independent subsidiary owned by the Korean company. Korea is still the HQ, but as I have said, at the end of the day the goal is to have the HQ in the US. The US is a bigger market and that's the reason why we want to have the HQ in the US. It is easier to hire good people from the US when you are a totally American company. It's easier to attract talent and easier to attract US venture capital. Right now we are in talks with VCs, but I cannot really tell when the next round will be.

8. What experiences can you share with us and our readers concerning the differences in Korean internet user behavior and U.S. American users?
Americans are more do it yourself oriented, more brave, more aggressive, they like to try things out. In Korea the IT infrastructure is much better; the streaming is very fast and in good quality. That might be a reason why they are a little more passive and watch many videos online, but that's only my point of view. In Korea users are also used to advertisements and active-x bases stuff.

Zopa (www.zopa.com) is a marketplace for Social Lending. People lend and borrow money with each other, sidestepping the banks. Recently Zopa Japan was formed and will shortly launch with a localized version of its services.

Web2Asia had the opportunity to ask Giles Andrews five questions about their international expansion plans.

1. Dear Giles, could you briefly introduce yourself and your company?

My name is Giles Andrews, I am CFO, co-founder and UK MD of Zopa, the world’s first online lending and borrowing marketplace. We launched in the UK in March 2005 and now have operations that have launched in Italy and the US and plans to launch in Japan.

2. Why did you opt for Japan after tapping Italy and the US and not for other European markets?

We have experienced tremendous interest in our concept of social P2P lending since we launched our operations and have been approached by people from all over the world that wanted to collaborate with us. After assessing a proposal from Japan we found this market very attractive and believe that Japan is a particularly interesting opportunity for Zopa as the concept of collaboration and working together is deep-seated in the Japanese culture. However, we are still looking at other European markets as well and hope, optimistically speaking, to enter another three markets in 2008.

3. What are the major issues you had to address entering the Japanese market and to what extent does the Japanese concept and website differ from the other ones?

The operations in Japan will draw from Zopa's experience across the globe and introduce a social lending platform that is tailored for the Japanese culture and regulatory environment. The regulatory environment is different in every country, requiring changes to each proposition. Consumer attitudes and culture are also different. The changes for Japan are still a work in progress, but will reflect local culture, consumer attitudes and regulation. The design and layout of the website itself won't be changed as it proofed to be well accepted.

4. Zopa Italy operates under a license obtained from Zopa UK, and in the United States Zopa teamed up with six credit unions. How did you enter the Japanese market?

Zopa Japan is majority owned by Zopa, with the management - Chairman Takashi Yoneda and Managing Director Tatsuya Kuboi - also being shareholders. Concerning the mode of entry, as you can see in the case of Italy, we are pretty flexible and assess every market and proposal on an individual base. Of course we would opt for majority stakes in countries we think have great potential. Joint Ventures are very common and well accepted in Japan as people are, as I have mentioned before, used to collaborate and work together.

5. Which other markets do you plan to enter in the near future? How do you assess the Chinese market and its potential?

We are looking at European markets and also markets in Asia. China is obviously interesting on account of its scale, but there are question marks around its credit infrastructure and credit data availability – we will watch the performance and development of P2P lenders in China like PPDai or Qifang with great interest.

About Giles Andrews

Giles Andrews spent 10 years in the motor industry, co-founding Godfrey Davis Motor Group. He then set up his own consultancy practice where clients included Tesco and Tesco Personal Finance.

According to the World Tourism Organization, China is projected to have 100 million native travellers by 2020, making it the number one supplier of outbound tourists. Already, 40.95 million Chinese are leaving their country each year to explore foreign holiday destinations. Regarding the domestic tourism market, the China National Tourism Administration has even more superlatives to offer: In 2007 an astounding 1.610 billion Chinese traveled to visit either family, or famous sites in the Middle Kingdom.

Serial entrepreneur John Ho estimates that around 80% of all Chinese outbound tourists, and a rapidly increasing number of domestic travellers, will carry a digital camera with them on their trips. At the same time he believes  these travellers will want to share the pictures taken along their journeys with friends and families online in order to partake in China’s progress to tourism super power.

Johns latest project www.wherefun.com - a geotagging enabled photo trip community - aims to provide exactly this service. You set your camera's clock to the time on an external GPS tracker and it matches up the timestamps on the photos (EXIF data) to its log of the exact location and time of where your pictures were taken. After your trip you first upload the data from the tracker followed by your pictures. Wherefun will then combine both sets of information and visualize your trip based on Google maps. 

Several international startups such as http://www.everytrail.com/, http://www.wayfaring.com/, http://www.flagr.com/ or Google owned Panoramio have similar functionalities in place. Also photo-sharing giants Flickr (Places) or Picasa have recently added geotagged photo compatibility to their systems. Wherefun, however is the first and currently only site available in Chinese (as well as English).

Concerning hardware, numerous external GPS tracking devices are currently already on the market as well as increasingly more mobile phones with cameras adding GPS support. Digital cameras with built in GPS support today are still at an early stage but are expected to explode in numbers in 2009. Until then John is planning to offer Wherefun’s own GPS hardware trackers at a price lower that RMB 350 (approx. EUR 30) that run on conventional batteries.

With many Chinese increasingly recording their travels on Wherefun, this could help build valuable geobase information on Chinese travel behaviour e.g. for outbound tour operators and travel agencies.

We are excited to take part in two events in Brussels this March - the Benelux Venture Forum on March 3rd as well as the Plugg conference on March 4th. Looking forward to seeing you there!

1. Hi Michael, could you give us a short introduction about yourself and your company?

My name is Michael Sheetal and I started UltraSuperNew Inc. with my business partner, Marc Wesseling, in January 2007. We both come from advertising backgrounds, Marc more on the sales side, and I have more experience on the technical side and running production teams in web, mobile, animation and video/tv.

UltraSuperNew Inc. is an interactive creative agency specialising in using the power of consumer generated media, social networks, and guerrilla advertising. We have high level creative and technical skills in house to service our clients in building and/or integrating social media into their brand and also to help them establish an identity in the new media landscape.

2. Now what is your Tokyo story? Why this country? And why this city?

I moved to Tokyo in 2002 after working on some TV commercials for Japan from Australia and being fascinated by Japanese culture and technology for some time. I initially worked for a music television show based in Tokyo, then moved on to advertising where I helped build an interactive division for a mid-sized agency here before finally establishing UltraSuperNew Inc.

Tokyo is one of the most exciting cities for technology in the world. It offers a unique market and vibrant advertising culture where the infrastructure is already in place with the high bandwidth data services to both homes and to mobile phones to make amazing content and unique projects.

3. What experiences can you share with us and our readers concerning the differences in Japanese internet user behaviour and European or U.S. American users?

One of the first lessons I learned working in the Japanese market was that the Japanese audience sees things in a very different way to the western world. The attitude to advertising is much less sceptical towards advertising than the western world but trust is much more important for being able to interact with people.

It is very important to have strong local ties. An important part of doing business in Japan is the customer and vendor relationships. Without strong relationships it is very hard to get things done. That is something that just comes with time and something 6 years in the market already has put me in a good position for.

4. What other tips and tricks can you share with foreign Interactive Media companies that are planning on entering the Japanese market?

Don't underestimate the difference between the Japanese market and the rest of the world. Don't forget mobile, Japan is one of the most advanced mobile markets in the world (along with Korea) and with flat-rate data plans, people are not afraid to download movies, games, music and other content in high volume.

Welcome back everyone after the Chinese New Year break. We have some very thought-provoking interviews/scene reports from Korea and Japan coming up next week. In the meantime we would like to thank everyone for the interest shown in our recent post on the meaning of numbers in China. This week we wanted to give you some additional insights on language and word-plays in China. Enjoy…

Net lingo, Internet slang or Leet has been popular among techies and geeks from the early days of the Web onwards and is today widely used by all kinds of netcitizens on message boards, in chat rooms and instant messengers or for SMS communication. Nevertheless, commonly used English or e.g. German short hand, abbreviations and word-plays can be very tricky to interpret, if not completely unreadable for those unfamiliar with them. If you combine this kind of slang with Chinese – a language that theoretically uses 47,000 different characters (full literacy for day to day usage requires at least knowledge of between 3,000 to 4,000 characters), each with a different meaning but sometimes identical pronunciation – and add the Chinese obsession with numbers then things are taken to a new level of complexity and fun. No wonder it is commonly referred to as "huo xing wen" or Mars language. Judge for yourself with some examples below:

• 555 - pronounced “wuwuwu” is used to represent the sound of sobbing and sadness :°-(
• 3Q – “san q”, thank you
• (pp)mm - “meimei”, for a young (and pretty) girl
• ssgg – “shuai shuai ge ge", for a handsome boy (literally “handsome older brother”) or
• dd – “didi”, for young boys (“younger brother”), careful when putting a “small” in front as in “xiao didi” …
• ddd – “duiduidui”, “rightrightright” to indicate agreement
• 88 – “byebye”. Not advisably to be used in German chat rooms unless deliberately intended …
• 520 -  “wo ai ni”, “I love you”
• 530/360 – “wu xiang ni”/”xiang nian ni” for “I miss you”
• 775885 – transliteration for “qing qing wo bao bao wo” meaning "kiss me, hug me”. Be warned, however, that using this one on ppmm’s or ssgg’s could result you being told to 748 “qu si ba” as in "go to hell” since it might really 7456 that person as in “qi si wo le" for “this really annoys me" …

Welcome to our new category “Market Focus China”. Throughout the next few months we will cover many different topics surrounding the Chinese Internet World – for both newbies and veterans alike. Our first post will give you some fun facts on the symbolism of numbers but also practical hints for Internet ventures in China.

Numbers and numerology have always played a pivotal role in Chinese belief systems. These beliefs were as much spiritual as practical and are still evident in modern day life. If you’ve been to China before and wondered why many apartment and office blocks don’t have a 4th floor (or a 14th or 24th for that matter) the answer lies in the connotations the spoken word holds (see below)  And you could never accuse the Chinese of being selective in their superstitious beliefs: the number 13 is shunned almost as much as in the supposedly ‘rational’ Western world. You may also like to consider the following (entirely true) nuggets of information:

• The Summer Olympics in Beijing will officially start at 8pm on 8/8/2008 (and no, this isn’t a coincidence)
• A regional Chinese airline reportedly paid about EUR 224,000 to use 8888-8888 for its telephone number
• The car licence plate ‘AC6688’ recently sold for a whopping EUR 7,500

A brief explanation of the reasoning behind so-called ‘lucky’ (e.g. 6, 8, 9) and ‘cursed’ numbers (4, 13, 14, etc.) may help to make things clearer. With Chinese word-sounds usually having multiple meanings,  it’s little wonder the spoken form of every number could easily be understood as something else – the following, in fact:

• 0 – sounds like ‘you’
• 1 – sounds like ‘want’ or ‘will
• 2 – sounds like ‘love’
• 4 – sounds like ‘death’
• 5 – sounds like ‘I’ or ‘none’
• 6 – sounds like ‘smoothly’
• 7 – sounds like ‘family’, ‘wife’ or ‘together’
• 8 – sounds like ‘prosperity’ (or ‘get rich’)
• 9 – sounds like ‘a long time’ (or ‘forever’)
• 14 - sounds like ‘going to die’ - the evilest of all numbers

Now what does that mean for the Web world you might wonder. Well, Internet entrepreneurs have not been slow to recognise the dual meaning of many numbers, taking advantage of the most auspicious numerical formations in their domain names:

• www.51.com - spoken as wo yao - which means ‘I want’ (China’s biggest social networking site)
• www.ku6.com – ku le – ‘cool/happy’ (video sharing portal)
• www.6.cn – le – ‘happy’ (video sharing portal)
• www.56.com - wo le – ‘I happy’ (video community)
• www.9158.com - jiu yue wo ba – ‘date me’ (dating site)
• www.1ting.com - yao ting – ‘I want to listen’ (music portal)
• www.5460.net- wo si nian ni/wo xiang nian ni  - I miss you (classmates portal)
• www.52pk.net- wo ai pk – ‘I love PK’ (gaming portal)
• www.766.com- qi le le – ‘let's be happy together - let's play together’  (gaming portal)
• www.67.com – le qu –‘ amazement’, ‘go to play’ (entertainment portal)
• www.17k.com - yao qu kan- ‘going to look at it’ (books and magazine reviews)
• www.che168.com- yao liu ba – car on the road to prosperity (car community)
• www.126.com - yao er liu – ‘let you be happy’, ‘want you to be happy’ (email provider)
• www.wo99.com - wo jiujiu – ‘mine forever’ (music portal)
  

and to round off our list (and avoiding only 14 entries):

• www.163.com - not a wordplay in this case but one of the fist modem dial in numbers from China Telecom back in the days. Now taken as the domain name of NetEase, one of China's leading Internet and online game services providers.

In February Web2Asia will be over in good old Europe attending the Lift08 in Geneva as well as the Barcamp Mitteldeutschland in Jena. Check out more dates to get to know us in person here.

A big Xie Xie to the good people at Jimdo who helped us put our site together. Special thanks go to Janina for the excellent logo creation & web design.