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

In the afternoon we had David Feng as a second China 2.0 Tour participant on stage to speak about international Chinese.

David Feng is the President of the Beijing Macintosh Union and the Beijing Macintosh User Group, Publisher of techblog86, a tech, mobile and enterprise blog, and the founder of Beijingology, a blog and a wiki about the city of Beijing. He is also the author of The Beijingologist blog on City Weekend, a co-blogger at CNReviews, the tech editor at Shanghaiist, a columnist at Macsimum News and a regular guest on Radio Beijing (AM 774).

You can also review his speech in the afternoon session below.

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.

by CNReviews

Among todays presenters was also Lucas Englehardt, CEO & Co-Founder of Web2Asias portfolio company BloggerInsight. CNReviews titled him now famous thanks to media coverage by two A-list Taiwan bloggers @thecarol and @kenworker. See the post at http://cnreviews.com/cnbloggercon/blog-monetization_20081115.html.

BloggerInsight conducts online focus groups with expert Chinese bloggers to provide clients the necessary information to make smart decisions. The network of bloggers spans a variety of industries and has been hand picked to represent some of the top, independent thinkers in their respective fields. BloggerInsight gives bloggers a new method for monetizing their knowledge while providing clients a cost effective way to get tailored, independent advice.

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 next destination was just accross the Suzhou river at the office of Spil Group Asia. CEO Marc van der Chijs, who is also the co-founder of video hosting site Tudou, talked to us about his personal career as a serial entrepreneur & business angel in China as well as the success of Spil's online casual games.

After the session Marc led us to the nearby Tudou office, which is also located on Suzhou Creek in an old converted warehouse.

At the Tudou office we were honoured to combine our monthly grass root event for the Shanghai startup scene - the Shanghai Lunch 2.0 - with the China 2.0 Tour. Who would have thought that we would ever have international tech blogs & writers such as Shel Israel, Techcrunch, Mashable, The Next Web Blog, CNET Asia & many more covering us live :-)

Tudou is one of the two leading Chinese video hosting sites and their CEO & co-founder Gary Wang, who had just returned from the USA, gave us an introduction presentation on their latest innovations such as the recently launched HD channel Heidou.

We would like to thank Tudou and especially Anita Huang very much for providing the space and catering with yummy startup food!

Unfortunately our wifi card had an error and we were not able to stream & record the session on video (the irony ..) but you can review some previous video footage on Tudou below.

After Garys talk Web2Asia gave a short overview of Western Internet companies in China (incl. a quiz with the China 2.0 Tour participants) and why all of the big international players have so far failed to compete with their local counterparts. We also gave a sneak peak at the GoingEast.Asia survey results which will be published soon and will give valuable insights on the obstacles & success factors of companies expanding from and to East Asia.

The Web2Asia introduction was followed by 5min pitch presentations of local startups:

• Askform - survey widget (see a previous post from Adam Schokora on survey applications here)
• WoWuWu - online pet community (had to cancle last minute)
• Club Fish - educational MMOPRG
  
• Qifang - P2P student loan lending platform

Highlight of the day for our China 2.0 Tour participants was without doubts the graffiti session in Tudous warehouse basement. Find some great pics by CNReviews below and reviews from Shel, Marc and Ryan (private post & for CNET).

Whilst the rest of the China 2.0 Tour headed to the last meeting of the day at the Italki office, Shel Israel (who had finally gotten his passport back), Elliott Ng and David Feng had to say 再见(Zai Jian/Good-Bye) to Shanghai and catch their flight to Guangzhou.

At Italki we got an introduction to their online language learning platform as well as an additional presentation from Italki co-founder Kevin Chen on his latest project - the family memorial website www.famento.com. Last but not least Mark Inkster from China Cascade Interactive, Inc. joined us to talk about "Chinas Tripadvisor" www.yiqilai.com.cn. All presentations can be reviewed below on our kyte.tv channel:

by CNReviews

Our mood lightened up quickly under the cristal blue sky (!) of Shanghai and with exceptionally sunny & warm weather.

After finally being able to check in the Shanghai China 2.0 bus drove us out to Pudong for a lunch meeting with Andy Yao, VP of chinese online social network 51.com.

You can review the entire session below and find a post from Ernst-Jan Pfauth here.

by CNReviews

Our next tour stop was the Dianping office (which is in the same building as our office). Dianping is Chinas leading dining recommendation website. In some ways it is similar to US-based Yelp but with an extra offline notch to it. Check out Eric Eldons post on Venturebeat from earlier this year here.

Dianpings founder Zhang Tao gave an energetic presentation with great insights into the spirit of returnee Chinese entrepreneurs. The meeting was streamed live and can be reviewed below.

by CNReviews

The tour participants only got a few hours of rest before we walked from the Park Hotel through the crowded Nanjing Dong Lu to an exclusive VIP dinner sponsored by Alibaba at the South Beauty Shanghai restaurant close to People's Square.

We would like to thank John Spelich, VP International Corporate Affairs, Joe C. Tsai, CFO of Alibaba Group and Christina Splinder, Director, International Corporate Communications very much for sponsoring this event and giving our tour participants first hand information on the chinese & international eCommerce market.

Additionally to the China 2.0 Tour local bloggers, entrepreneurs and analyists such as Ryan from CNET Asia, Gang Lu, Adam Schokora from our lead sponsor Edelman Digital, or Kenneth from Shanghaiist joined us. As a special guest we also had the honour of welcoming German business angel Lukasz Gadowski to our dinner, who happened to be in town.

Enough to call it a day? Not for the China 2.0 crew! Up next was the Shanghai China 2.0 Cocktail reception at the M1NT club. The event had a great turn out and we were happy to welcome the who-is-who of Shanghai's Internet scene at this exclusive pre-opening event.

We were amazed to see may of the China 2.0 folks partying on at local bars & clubs until late. What a day!

Theres also are great review of the first Shanghai day to be found here from CNET Asia's Ryan McLaughlin.

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.

Our last company visit of the day was ChinaCache - the leading Content Distribution Network (CDN) provider in China.

Simply put, the company helps its customers to better deliver their online content to its users in different geographical locations and within the networks of the many Internet Service Providers in China. This is to guarantee to high performance, security and scalability.

Customers include large domestic & international players such as Sina, Netease, eBay, MSN, Amazon, Myspace China and many more.

After ChinaCache we headed back to the Marriott Hotel to soon catch our overnight train to Shanghai. But thats another story ...

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.

by CNReviews

In the afternoon we had invited local bloggers, entrepreneurs & investors to a round table in Beijings Sanlitun area (just accross the recently opened Apple store). The discussion was followed by a second session with Jake Hsu from Symbio Group to talk about offshore development in China as well as the chinese Internet market in general. Find their review here.

Check out all sessions below on kyte.tv video and find an additional post from the perspective of China 2.0 Tour participant Ernst-Jan Pfauth here.

The afternoon sessions were followed by the Symbio China 2.0 Cocktail reception at the Blue Frog Sanlitun with the usual suspects of the Beijing tech scene plus many new faces.

The night ended with Kaiser Kuo, William Bao Bean, Web2Asia's George Godula and finest Scotch Whisky.

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.

by CNReviews

At the same time in Beijing Shel Israel was on guided tour through Beijing & to the Great Wall with Eliott Ng & David Feng from CNReviews plus a bunch of local tech guys.

Check out Shels first blogpost out of China here and pics from Elliott 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.

Mike Butcher has written for UK national newspapers including the The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and magazines including The New Statesman. For the last seven years he has been a consumer technology columnist for The Irish Times in Dublin. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and The Industry Standard Europe and he has launched or relanched several media web sites. In 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 Mike was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry the UK by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. He has appea(red) on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, commenting on technology and new media. In August 2008 TechCrunch UK was named the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. His personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters here.

The China 2.0 Blogger tour will lead prominent international bloggers through Chinas Internet tech scene from Nov 10 to Nov 16. It is organized by The China Business Network,  Web2Asia and CNReviews, with Edelman Digital China being the lead sponsor. For details please visit www.china20.asia.

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