The Weibo accounts hosted by Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent will require real name and ID number registration from all users by March 16th, with unregistered users to be denied posting and forwarding capabilities. The announcement was made at the Beijing Weibo Development Management Regulations Seminar held today in Beijing. more ›

Tencent, the Chinese Internet giant that is known for its instant messaging software QQ, has apologised for describing Apple's new CEO Tim Cook as a "sufferer of homosexuality" ("同性恋患者") in a recent article on its content portal. more ›

Groupon's China site Gaopeng.com went live today, officially registering emails with plans to start advertising group-buy deals in early March. The site is headquartered in Beijing and will initially offer deals in Shanghai and Beijing, with plans to expand soon. After their Super Bowl commercial gaffe and an anti-Groupon alliance among Chinese competitors, we'll be watching carefully to see what comes of the new Tencent-partnered endeavor. more ›

Tencent aired this commercial during the CCTV Gala last week, the most expensive air time on Chinese television. It resonated with the thousands of Chinese working and studying abroad, and probably with anybody else who's ever felt that thousands of miles can sometimes bring you closer to the ones you love. more ›

In a startling case from earlier this week, it seems that courts in Zhejiang Province have ruled that Tencent, the makers of the super popular QQ chat program, is 10% responsible for a student who killed himself. "Fan" responded to a "suicide invitation" by "Zhang" on QQ, and the two agreed to meet up and commit suicide. Only Fan died, when Zhang gave up because of the "unbearable pain." 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 ›

Yesterday morning, Changchun (长春) became a sensitive word on QQ. The best thing about it: Not only is 长春 a city - making it "The first Chinese city to ever become a sensitive word in China" - it's also the name of the current CPC Propaganda Chief. more ›

• Meet this 6-year-old, who has 15 fingers and 16 toes, enough to outnumber the current world record of 25. He lives in Harbin. [People's Daily]
• The Rio Tinto trial for Stern Hu and three other Rio Tinto employees has ended, though a verdict on the charges of accepting bribes and stealing commercial secrets won't be announced for a while yet. [New York Times]
• So yeah, Google wasn't able to make it in China. But will any of these touted Chinese internet giants - Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba - really be able to make it out? [New York Times]

If you follow us on our twitter, you've probably noticed that, every now and then, we'll ask you to chat with us on the new QQ International. What's QQ? It's the chat platform that's taken China by storm - basically any local with an internet has a QQ ID. QQI is the International English version of the platform, which now gives you a window into the China chatting world (download it here). And we're on it. If you want to join our group, talk to some of our writers and generally shoot the breeze about China and everything else with other Shanghaiist readers, here's our QQ ID: 35321512. more ›

On-line dating is already one of the most successful business ventures to spring out of dot com mania, but it looks like one Shanghai based company is going to take the dating service idea one step further. more ›

Most social networks and web businesses generate their revenues from online advertising - but it looks like some do it much better than others. more ›

• Arrests made over audio porn [Shanghai Daily] "City police approved the arrest of a Shanghai native surnamed Gong, 30, the general manager of ilisten.cn, for allegedly making a profit by spreading pornography. Other suspects in custody include two of Gong's employees - a local in charge of the company's technical department, and an Anhui Province native who worked in the department. A 23-year-old Shandong Province woman surnamed Ma was caught in Beijing. She was allegedly hired to record some of the audio books, police said."
• The world’s most lucrative social network? China’s Tencent beats $1 billion revenue mark [VentureBeat] "A billion dollars in revenue in a single year? Not even MySpace, currently the most profitable social network outside China, has managed to accomplish that. But publicly traded Tencent, a leading Chinese web portal, instant message client, social network, game developer and more has done it, and largely through the use of virtual goods and other 'Internet valued-added services,' like avatars, dating services, online memberships, music and community sites."
• Dissident warns Taiwan on China [Taipei Times] Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰), a Chinese democracy activist living in exile in Australia, yesterday warned Taiwanese to beware of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “two-faced” approach to diplomacy. Yuan made the remarks at a press conference in Taipei after 15 Chinese academics were blocked from leaving the country to take part in a conference on the development of liberalism in China, despite calls for more cross-strait cultural and intellectual exchange by the Chinese leadership.

QQ, China's wildly popular instant messaging service with over 690 million registered users, 360 million monthly active users and 130 million daily users, is now available in English, under the new portal IMQQ.com. As far as we understand, QQ has had an English version of QQ since 2005 but those earlier versions met with little success. With the launch of its new English portal, is Tencent Inc (the company behind QQ) finally setting its sights on the world? Well don't start scoffing at the idea because Tencent did make its millions way before MSN figured out how to monetise its Messenger service. Anyhow, for those of you that are interested, start downloading the QQ2009 Beta for Windows and the Mac version 1.0 beta to begin chatting with your Chinese friends. more ›

Hot on the heels of the Asus eeePC and the meteoric rise of the netbook, Tencent has leaked that it is planning to launch a "lightweight, long-life notebook computer" next year. JLM Pacific Epoch says that it will be themed on the instant messaging tool. Our guess is that it will just be another ultra-light netbook with a penguin sticker on it. more ›