Category: China

China Tech Stories: Summary of Search Market in China

China Tech Stories: Summary of Search Market in China

Interesting report at China Tech Stories of tech.163.com’s report on the state of search in China. This graph shows — in green — Baidu’s current domination, but Google is coming on strong, contradicting the anecdotal trashing the company received at the hands of the Chinese users I spoke with last month in Beijing.

Google is even better when it comes to monetizing search. Maoxianjia’s analysis:

“First, Baidu has gained commanding lead in both usage and popularity reach. However, Baidu’s monetization on search is still very limited.

“Secondly, the data pretty much prove Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s remark that the China market is up for grabs. In such a short time, from Aug to Dec. 2005, Google has grabbed 14.4% of the market share in revenues in China which is quite remarkable.”

And in related China internet news, some squawking over the Chinese character domains — the censorship crowd is crying manipulation of traffic — me, it seems logical that you’d have domain names in the same character set as the users, no? Separate issue from who issues and controls the domains.

And finally, read somewhere yesterday that some pundit is predicting 60 million Chinese blogs within a year.

Micro Persuasion: Chinese Blogger Tops Technorati 100

Micro Persuasion: Chinese Blogger Tops Technorati 100

Well, I’ll be. A couple days ago I pick up on the meme that China bloggers are underrepresented if not completely uncounted in Technorati — making the syllogism that if I couldn’t get to Technorati inside of China then how could Technorati get to Chinese blogs.

Wrong. This is wild. Now comes the news that it ain’t Boing Boing on the top of the charts any longer, but now it is Xu Jing Lei. From the numbers quoted to me last week by Sina and Sohu — the blog counts in China are insanely off the charts. Here you go world, this is the face of the blogosphere and it ain’t the usual “A-List” cross linking to each other either:

 

Virtual China: Technorati’s Top 100: few Chinese blogs

Virtual China: Technorati’s Top 100: few Chinese blogs

Virtual China points out that few if any China blogs are in the Technorati Top 100. My comment is this: I, for one, could not access Technorati while in China. Therefore, if you can’t access it, how can Technorati rank a China hosted blog?

Chinese Site Design and Display Ad Models

Let’s begin this lesson by my pointing out the obvious, and that is I am pompously attempting to sweepingly discuss the design of websites written in a language I have no hope of ever learning how to read.

 

That said, I must also confess to have a grand total of ten days inside of China, time enough to see one major city, a village, some suburbs, the usual tourist spots, and the airport. Therefore, I have no sense of the rich cultural gestalt that drives Chinese design, assuming most of my Jungian design insights from the decor of bad American Chinese restaurants which serve food that is about as related to real Chinese food as a can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-O’s is to a good tagliatelle con ragu in a trattoria in Porto Ceresio.

When I was at IDG, one of the world’s few truly global online publishers, with master brands such as Computerworld, Infoworld, and PC World translated independently at the country level in dozens and dozens of languages, I arrived with the misbegotten notion that brand hygeine demanded a templated design across all sites. Then I met the folks from IDG China, who were delivering traffic numbers that essentially blew the original US brand sites out of the water, and who were following an ad model completely unlike the CPM, impression-based, lead generation dog fight we all have come to know and hate in the US and West.

In other words, the Chinese sites were kicking ass in terms of traffic and money and not spending a lot of time worrying about eye-tracking, heat maps, golden triangles, and audience development.

To the Western eye, they are an utter hash. What Steve Gillmor at ZDNET calls the “Las Vegas” approach to online publishing, where everything blinks, slides, pops-up, takes over, and otherwise — to plagarize from my own earlier post — induces epilepsy to someone enamored of the stripped down Web 2.0 design gestalt pioneered by Google and exemplified by Fiickr, del.icio.us (neither of which has much if any in the way of ads) and the user interface genius of the iPod (of which I saw none in ten days in Beijing).

There are some rules of thumb in U.S. online publishing models which say that two ad impressions per page is great, three is acceptable, four is pushing it, and five is insane. Some Chinese sites are throwing off ten to 14 impressions on their homepage. The skyscraper unit — the vertical “tower” that runs in the margins (and which I claim to have invented at Forbes.com in ’95 when I had the insight in the shower that the first thing to vanish during a scroll-down was the 468×68 horizontal banner pioneered by Hotwired) — on Chinese sites the things follow you down the page, skipping along, and, in some cases, there are units that float all over the page, impossible to kill or stop.

If you want to read a good explanation of the chaos, I suggest you check out Virtual China and it’s post on the aesthetics of abundance. They write:

Hans Juergen-Bucher (Media Studies, University of Trier) has a provocative 2004 paper titled Is There a Chinese Internet? which reports the results of user studies he conducted in Germany with Chinese Internet users. One of his most interesting points is about what he calls an “aesthetics of abundance” that shapes Chinese website design and interface.

In Chinese culture we can find two different kinds of aesthetical systems: the “aesthetics of abundance” and the “aesthetics of emptiness” (see Pohl 2004). Websites in China are usually designed along the principles of the “aesthetics of abundance” which refers to the Chinese popular culture and what can be seen in New Years pictures, calendars or paintings on dishes. The “aesthetics of emptiness” is part of the Chinese high culture and heavily influence by Zen and Chan Buddhism. The principles of this kind of aesthetics did not influence web design up to now in a significant way. The attractiveness of the “aesthetics of abundance” not only relies on its integration into popular culture but also on its symbolic meanings: strong and rich colour, density, and opulent presentation symbolize happiness and wealth.

I’ll add some links later. It’s past midnight in Durham and I need to be up in 6 hours.

Beijing Nightlife

Saturday night I received a full-on dosage of Beijing nightlife. I am a cautious drinker, as I have lost all capacity to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs in a colossal piss-up.  Scotch, the beloved “brown wine” is my preferred poison; martinis, Negronis, tequila, and Kamizazes are my downfall. I come from a long line of illustrious dipsomaniacs but haven’t been a big party animal for some years now.
The notion of getting hammered in a foreign city wasn’t too appealing in a security sort of sense (my idea of a great reality show would be to dump clueless Americans in the middle of Beijing at 1 am on a Saturday night with no money, and send them on a survival treasure hunt), but being a former bartender (Balboa Cafe, corner of Greenwich and Fillmore, San Francisco 1981-1982) I know how to comport myself in the presence of party people, and while I prefer to have a bar between them and me, I played the good sport geek in his Brooks Brother blazer, shirt, pants, and loafers and went partying with the Beijing Party People until o’dark thirty.

First it started with this man — Henry Lee — the “Steve Rubel” of Beijing, (of Studio 54 fame, but in Henry’s case, 88). Henry took me under his wing — literally — Tibetan prayer bead bedecked arm around me the entire evening, and introduced me to the mob at the Centro, an upscale Chuppie bar in the Kerry Center. One of these women is the granddaughter of someone really important, but I forget who. I would make a bad papparazzi, explaining to the editor: “I think one of these people is Brad Pitt. Will you buy my picture?”

Henry is very devout and wants to build schools in Tibet. He has owned or opened five bars across the city and is one of those rare people whom everyone seems to know and be happy to see at all times. He was one of the most favorite friends I made.
The Centro was a nice, genteel kickoff to the evening. Then we decided to lay down a food base to soak up the remainder of the evening by joining a bunch of rowdy English and Chinese film makers at a Sichuan restaurant for a 20-course feast of great food, which included the ubiquitous metal tub of “hot fish” which is spiced with Novocaine or something-caine (actually, a spice someone said was called Ma) that makes your lips numb, I guess to spare them the heat to come. I, of course, being Cary Grant, master of debonair and suave, the Anti-Post of table manners, nuked yet another shirt with a blob of red food launched by the chopsticks catapult and spent a major portion of the meal scrubbing myself with my napkin and soda water.
Tons of Tsingtaos — big ones, tallboys — were downed to quench the chilis, then out came the dreaded bái ji?, which smells like Brut or Old Spice and is served in little thimble glasses, and people started screaming the Mandarin equivalent of Bottoms Up at me. I expected a pistol to be served at any moment. Lonely Planet calls this stuff “liquid lobotomy” and I saw it advertised on the side of buses in big plastic jugs (to be fair it comes in far fancier decanters as well). In hindsight I should have tried cleaning my shirt with the stuff.

Then off we wobbled to Bar Street, or more properly Sanlitun, which was a city block lined with open doored techno-throbbing cafes filled with people half my age, some with laptops, none dancing (that happens in dance clubs, duh), all stylish and so-affected with ennui that I felt like taking a nap.

But in a few minutes I found myself in the back room of a back street bar owned by a nice Italian gentleman, and this time the drink was champagne, which I normally avoid like acetone in a closed closet. Four bottles and all around me are getting utterly hammered and belligerent and smoking six cigarettes at once and I am practicing all the classic bartender tricks of pretending to drink while not drinking (the secret is go to the bar, order a round of shooters for the mob, get a water shooter for one’s self, and make a big deal of it. Do that three times and everyone stops noticing that a designated driver is emerging from within their ranks.

And so it went from there. A total bar crawl out of the Lost Weekend. This was my favorite place. It changed colors and so did my stomach. I couldn’t watch it for long.

As my good friend Charlie Clapp has said, “Nothing important happens after midnight.” And indeed, nothing did. Were I but 25 years old and wearing my drinking pants as opposed to my teetotaller’s skirt, it could have been an epic evening for the ages.

I am grateful that karaoke was not involved as that is an activity I cannot abide (along with dancing). I tend to request inappropriate songs (I am Woman/Hear me Roar and Afternoon Delight) which I sing in a loud, Kermit-the-Frog voice to insure I won’t be asked to perform an encore.

Last post from within China

Happy May Day! I found a free wireless connection in the BGS lounge at Beijing airport and am replicating my Notes database before the 11-hour flight to San Francisco, then onto Phoenix, and eventually Raleigh for the last half of the week.

Relaxing Sunday writing reports, drafting the outline of the next book, and staying off line. Saturday was insane, running around Beijing with the director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring) and checking out the cheap DVD shops with him. Watched a fantastic film yesterday, Days of Living Wild, Wong Kar Wai’s 1991 masterpiece.

Saturday was a gorge fest of great food, very little sightseeing, an amazing massage that made me drool, then dinner with my sister’s inlaws, Huang Hua and He Liliang at their hutong. Great hospitality and a great story about Kissenger’s secret flight to Beijing in 1971 to arrange Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao. The sticking point was the language in the proclamation indicating whom invited who, the point being that Nixon invited himself.

Huang Hua was Mao’s translator to the West beginning in the late 1930s and served in the Chinese Foreign Service for years, in the capacity of the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations in the 1970s after spending the sixties in Africa as ambassador to Egypt, Ghana, and elsewhere. When someone tells stories of Edgar Snow (Red Star Over China), Nixon, Kissinger, negotiating the truce of the Korean War, an armchair historian like myself can’t help but be captivated. It was the perfect punctuation point to a productive and eye-opening week.

More blogs when I get stateside, or on the plane if I can’t sleep, which I should as it is now 11 pm on the east coast and I have to restart the jet lag resetting process.

Tons to digest and blog about. I wrote a four page report on the market and trends for my boss which I won’t share for obvious competitive reasons.
Heartening to see so many responses to my previous post. It means someone is reading.

I figured how to view blocked blogs in China

and I’m not telling. Let me just say RSS is a wonderful thing.

No posts for a few days. Checking out of my hotel and doing the tourist thing this weekend. Flying back to the States on Monday, then to Phoenix, then to RTP for three days, then finally back to Cotuit.

Boinging around Beijing

Jeez, what a day. I have completely collapsed in my hotel room north of city after an evil hour long cab ride from the Haidan District, the Silicon Alley of China, up here to Huilongguan, a sort of no-man’s land on the way up the Badaling Expressway towards the G-Wall of CN. Cabs are cheap — at least compared to their NYC counterparts — but they are just about as impossible to hail during rush hour on a Friday before a big holiday. The city was shitty with traffic when I walked out of my last appointment at Sina.com and flagging down a cab was an endless jaywalk, off-sidewalk, walking from corner to corner, dodging buses, bicycles, mopeds, more bicycles, bicycles ridden by the “surgeons” (the one’s with the gauze masks), bicycles that were loaded down like trucks, and insane cabs already filled with luckier people, while my buddy and guide, Liu Liu, told me: “Wait here.”

And then Liu Liu vanished into the seething masses with my hotel key and my only record of where I needed to be. The sun was setting. I was screwed if he didn’t come back.
Beijing is defined by its intersections. One can roll down the expressway, admire the view along the boulevards; but come to an intersection and everything changes into a rush for the lifeboats. They say the most dangerous occupation in Beijing is that of a traffic cop. These poor guys get run over on purpose, or beaten up for issuing tickets.
When your interpreter and guide tells you to Wait here you feel very, very alone. The Chinese writing looks like Klingon. The restaurants have big pictures of food never seen in nature (to be fair, when has anyone seen good pictures of food?). Street signs, even with Western writing, are unpronounceable. You look around, the tallest guy for miles, staring into the face of 20 million commuters headed your way and you think:

I want my mommy

Liu Liu returned. He is a senior at Beijing University studying finance. Tall, bespectacled; he isn’t into sports, loves movies (obscure Russian movies, which means he’ll get along great with my son), lives with his parents, is an only child, and wants to work in film. He likes gin and tonics, hanging with his buddies in the quiet cafes around Hohai, and the noisy rock and roll joints on Drum Street. He is immersed in World of Warcraft, lives on the Internet, reads lots of blogs, but doesn’t feel comfortable blogging himself yet.

Here were the learnings of the day in the order in which they were learned:

  • I am blessed with patient, nice colleagues in here in China. They are forthright, share what they know, don’t pull punches, and face completely different, and amazingly similar challenges that any online operation does anywhere.
  • Everyone has a humidifer that looks like a frog in their cubicle. Big plumes of fog over every desk. This place is dry. Like ten bottles of bottled water per day kind of dry. Chapstick is your friend.
  • Everyone is younger than me. China is young. You see a 40-something in the office and you notice.
  • James Ding at AsiaInfo is smart. He’s got a Long Tail Internet TV company — UITV.com — to do niche channel streams and PPV. I liken it to cycling.tv. His partner, Edward Tien, wired the country for broadband in the 90s and is the man behind China Netcom.

  • Old Beijing, the hutongs or traditional one-story neighborhoods and alleys north of the Forbidden City, is my favorite part of the city. Funky and lively.

  • When two opposing cars meet, the one with the white license plate and the man in the green Army uniform wins.
  • Not knowing how to speak Chinese makes me feel stupid. I have to speak slowly and clearly and not use idioms. I feel like a text-to-speech reading machine.
  • Blogs on WordPress.com are inaccessible from China and that pisses me off.
  • I discovered Rebecca McKinnon’s blog on China and think it is smart. She is at the Harvard Beekman Center.
  • I can tell a cab driver how to find my hotel in Outer Mongolia with sign language and extreme grimaces.
  • A noise like “Doo-way” means “OK.” Answering the phone with “Hway!” means “Hello” and thank you is “Shay-Shay.” I do not know the word for “no.”
  • Cashing a 100 RMB bill is like trying to break a $100 at a convenience store. And it’s worth like $12. If it has a hole — a pin hole — no one will take it.
  • It is fitting that there is a BMW and a Jaguar dealership in the lobby of the Sina.com building. Gauging from their IPO performance, this is sensible and a better idea than Starbucks.
  • Jeff Young at ZDnet needs to see China before slagging it.
  • There was something called the Sexy Weather, where the weather lady started at the north in Harbin wearing a fur coat, and stripped by the time she got to Hainan in the south.
  • Sexy girls are a big deal on Tom.com.
  • All traffic numbers here are staggering.
  • There is a cell phone called the “I Chocolate You”

  • I counted 36 construction cranes when I looked out a window this morning.

  • I want to come home. Work week is done. Some tourism this weekend. Big old jet airliner on Monday to S.F., then Phoenix, then RTP, then home on Friday night — one week to go.

Fred Flintstone Eats Out In Beijing


IMG_0387

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

I like the presentation on this dish. Basically spare ribs with the spare ribs included to remind you what you’re eating. Which is actually very useful as I had to turn to my colleague Fei Hongxing every other spin of the lazy-susan to ask him what was coming around the bend.

Spent the day learning about the China mobile phone market. 80 vendors duking it out for one billion potential customers, a third of whom have already signed up and plunked down some serious disposable income to get connected.

It’s a GSM world over here, but it’s moving to a China specific 3G standard called TS-SCDMA by 2008, with the push starting next year to get the Tier One cities signed on by the Summer Olympics in ’08. The market is young, professional, and concerned either with price or fashion. I went to a trendy nightclub earlier in the week and people were wearing their phones around their necks on leashes like ID badges. Phones are jewelry and will be the way the Chinese get online and stay online, since Internet penetration is only around 8 percent. When 3G hits I think that trend will intensify as broadband content starts streaming to the devices.

Before dinner I visited a Chinese version of Best Buy which was total electronics heaven. Bazillions of phones, PDAs, phones, USB memory sticks.

Then off to dinner. Chinese hospitality is humbling. Very gracious hosts and many toasts made for a late evening and tired blogging. More to come when there is time to process it all.