Radiohead is now the latest in a growing (if slowly) trend of Western celebs opening Sina weibo accounts to reach out to their Chinese followers. Last Friday, the English mega-stars made their inaugural "tweet", which was a rather lifeless "testing the weibo." Either they didn't expect the resulting response, or they simply didn't care to draft an initial message with any feeling to the Chinese weibo universe. That intial post has, in four days, been forwarded almost 11,000 times and received 4,100 comments, and they have received over 60,000 followers. more ›

This neat little infographic from Endelman Digital maps out the social media habits of internet users all across Asia. The data used comes from PC-based internet users only, leaving out the very substantial chunk of Asians staring at the internet through their phone or at an internet cafe. But anyway, it's pretty to look at, and gives a nice clear peak at user habits, as well as Facebook's slow and steady world domination. (Penn Olson points out that Facebook actually does surpass Wretch in Taiwan, with 58% online penetration.) more ›

In light of the rumors raging over a Facebook China partnership with Baidu, we decided to check in on the recent China numbers from SocialBakers (a site that monitors Facebook users by country.) Back in February, we saw users more than double following Mark Zuckerberg's visit in December. This month, the numbers are way, way down. Not a gradual drop off, mind you. On April 5, about 40% of Chinese Facebookers disappeared. more ›

Wow. All that speculation, the flirtation, the obsession, but we never thought it would actually happen. Could it be true? According to Sohu and others, yes it could, and probably is. Following all the rumors and Mark Zuckerberg's recent trip to China, Facebook has now reportedly signed a deal with Baidu. more ›

Just in time for Mark Zuckerberg's rumored China visit (he and his gf travel 2gthr every Dec!!1 ZOMG! lol so romantic) Tech Rice brings us a look at just how Facebook might fare against the local competitors IF (and it's a big if) the market were free from intervention and there was no censorship or invasive meddling among the internetz by the government. Still, they make some interesting points worth noting, considering most have approached Facebook's China rumblings with reactions mostly fluctuating between dismissal or disbelief. Boiled down, here's what Tech Rice has to say: more ›

In October last year we reported that Oak Pacific (the owners of Xiaonei.com), in a bid to capture more Chinese online social networkers, registered the domain name kaixin.com to compete with kaixin001.com, the fastest growing social network in China for young white collar Chinese wasting time at work. TechWeb.com.cn reported today (h/t @ganglu) that kaixin001 finally got around to suing Oak Pacific and the case has been accepted by the courts for using the 开心网 (kai xin wang) name. Looks like not-so-happy times may be ahead for Oak Pacific. more ›

In the not-quite-so-distant future in a universe not so far away, a war has begun. Well actually, it's not surprising that in a country renowned for reverse engineering and manufacturing knock-off handbags that a war has begun for the hearts and clicks of netizens throughout China. more ›

• Last week Baidu announced after two years of searching the appointment of Li Yinan as the new Chief Technology Officer for China's leading search engine. Just when everything began to fall into place and we were getting ready for a season Googlesque innovation, rumours began to fly that William I. Chang, Baidu's Chief Scientific Officer was planning to resign because he didn't like his new job scope. Not sure though how much of a rumour it is when they have already named his successor.
• To make CEO Robin Li's life even more stressful, Baidu's next big push will be into the e-commerce arena with the launch of youa.com may be thwarted by Alibaba Group's announcement that it will invest another RMB5 billion into its own online Taobao.com to strengthen its 57% market share. Of course Alibaba claims that this had nothing to do with fending off Baidu and we of course believe them.
• In its own corporate reshuffle, Alibaba has for the first time in its five year history appointed a COO. Zhang Yong, former CFO was promoted to fill the void left by Huang Ruo, the former VP and B2C business director who resigned at the end of September.

Adding to the list of Chinese social networking service providers like Xiaonei and Tencent, kaixin001.com (开心网) has confirmed to have secured USD4-5million in venture capital today from Northern Light Venture Capital headed by Feng Deng, one of the top 10 Chinese venture capitalists in 2007. Launched in April this year, the SNS that is still a private beta already boasts over 20 million active users. Rick Martin (@pandapassport) reports on CNET that the Chinese Facebook clone includes features such as a photo uploading, blogging & micro-blogging platform, music sharing and 1GB online storage space.