From Hong Kong-based blogger Thomas Crampton: The Chinese link? The Fail Whale was drawn by Chinese graphic designer Lu Yiying, who sold it on iStockPhoto for US$10, according to Jay Oatway of the Hong Kong-based Charged magazine. Thanks to Twitter’s perpetual failures, Lu’s Fail Whale now features on t-shirts and coffee mugs while other artists create kinetic Fail Whale sculptures. The Sydney-based Lu Yiying fanned the flames of fandom with a girlfriend (and the official......

Since Monday, we've been having problems accessing Facebook here and thought we were the only ones having that problem. Tuesday, we began to hear from friends of ours all around China complaining of the same problem, on the Shanghaiist Contribute page and among the China Twitterati. And then this piece by the WSJ's China Journal appeared, devoting five full paragraphs to Facebook's mysterious outtage. God forbid the day when we have to turn on our......

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is......

Chinese video-sharing site Youku.com has raised another US$25 million in funding while our favourite airline ticketing company Qunar.com has received US$10 million in a fresh round of funding.Chinese social networking service Xiaonei.com has followed in the footsteps of Facebook and opened up its services to non-college students. The only thing standing in its way, we think, is its name as Xiaonei ("校内") literally means "at school“.Google has launched an SMS search function that now makes......

Yes, that was our reaction when we saw these pictures, but sorry to disappoint all you Facebook whores (that includes ourselves!) out there, the image on the right is just a Facebook clone, Xiaonei.com (校内网). It looks like the portal was started around 2005 (less than two years after Facebook was born), and since then, it has grown exponentially to cover around 2,000 university campuses in Greater China. They have just recently started to......

So both Myspace and Friendster have their own China versions. Now Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy Digital China Watch points us to a report on China Business News (第一财经日报) which cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper also claims that "Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site......

We had a good laugh when we saw this "patriotic" banner by Chinese blogger Xiucai ("秀才") which reads: "Joyfully welcome the 17th Party Congress, building a harmonious society together. Xiucai is a good comrade. This site has temporarily shut down comments and forum features." [h/t to Rebecca Mackinnon] The truth is, as the 17th Party Congress looms closer, Chinese bloggers have been having anything but a party. MacKinnon also points us to an excellent post......

How to write a China article "If you can’t find a taxi driver whose political views match those of your readers, then just make one up. Call him Mr. Wang, inform your public that he only earns a hundred dollars a month, and they’ll believe any old crap you write." When Jerry Yang Talks China, Run for the Doors "Focus instead on the fact that every time Jay Yang has taken charge of Yahoo!'s......

Large hydropower project in Chonqing to start production in October Started in 2005, the new project is slated for completion in 2009 and will account for for approximately 30% of Chongqing's total installed capacity. Shanghai Subway Line 1 experiences problem causing up to half hour delays This happened on the 19th, around 12pm. The train stopped in the middle of the tunnel, and then began to slowly move again, only to stop and start......

Say wha? Yea 麦斯贝 (mai si bei), somewhat better known as MySpace, is launching its Chinese site in two days, or so say the good people at Sohu IT. The wildly successful social networking site is supposed to have had a complete local makeover, but if “麦斯贝” is any indication of that effort, we aren’t going in with high expectations. Other than a vague phonetic resemblance to "MySpace", the Chinese name carries no meaning of......

Our friends at Virtual China have brought us news of this interesting site, Tagren.cn, a new breed of Chinese social networking website where people tag (characterize) themselves in hopes of finding like minded people. Tags for this contributor? “Shanghaiist”, “Boonna” and “Kristie Lu Stout fan” are just a few tags that come to mind. The site hasn’t been around for long -- all of 13 people from Shanghai, well 14 now. BTW, if Tagren looks......