Floating around on the Chinese interwebs right now is the very creative Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens 2009. It is an apt description of our mood right now following the mysterious disappearance of all Google apps in China [h/t Rick Martin, @mranti @fumi]
Chinese microblogging site Fanfou (饭否) is now temporarily unavailable for "server maintenance" and according to a note posted on its website (see screenshot), will be back up by the morning of June 6. From now till then is four days, so this sounds like some pretty massive "server maintenance" going on, but make of it what you will. Meanwhile, it's business as usual at other Chinese Twitter clones Digu, Zuosa, Komoo and Taotao.
Most social networks and web businesses generate their revenues from online advertising - but it looks like some do it much better than others.
A few thoughts to begin your week with. [h/t to Shanghai Eye]
Rebecca MacKinnon, formerly CNN's Beijing bureau chief and now Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, writes an open letter to President Barack Obama in the Huffington Post, In Talking to China, Remember its People. She encourages the president to adopt a more nuanced view of the Chinese citizenry:
The point is that while these people are not citizens of a democracy, they are by no means an undifferentiated mass of brainwashed drones. Despite often crude censorship of the Internet and state-run media, despite manipulation, intimidation of dissidents and political astro-turfing of the blogosphere by paid commentators, there is no unity of thought in China today. Civic minded citizens manage to hold wide-ranging debates on the Chinese Internet, in living rooms, dormitories, office break rooms, and classrooms about many public issues. Reading the Chinese blogs I've found all kinds of views about you and your new administration. Many are inspired by your personal story and the idea of truly equal opportunity that you represent. Others hope that you will be more forthright and principled on human rights issues than the Bush administration was. Others are very concerned that you will be protectionist in order to help the American people in the short run, and that this will hurt the Chinese people economically. Others lament cynically that no matter what happens, the rich and powerful in both countries will be the relationship's main beneficiaries.She also recommends that the president harness the power of the Internet to engage the Chinese public:
Just as you have used new technology to engage with the American electorate, your China policy can be greatly strengthened if you conduct a real conversation with the Chinese people. Listen as much as you talk; provide a much-needed platform for open discussion. The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests - from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law -- shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back. Sure there will be censorship problems on the Chinese side, but if enough Chinese find the conversation important and relevant to their lives, the censors ultimately won't be able to stop it. Nor should they want to if they're wise - because the resulting conversation would help both governments build a more stable and rational relationship that would truly benefit the people of both countries.
The local government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province has just passed what looks like a wide-reaching law making it illegal for people to publish someone else's 'private information' on the Internet. Offenders can be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for half a year! The news comes one month after a district housing bureau chief in Nanjing was dismissed after netizens posted photos of him wearing a RMB100,000 watch and smoking a RMB150 a pack cigarettes. The pictures spread like wildfire on the web because those items were seen to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's modest wages.
Of the 22.6% of the country that now has access to the Internet, 162 million blog, while 234 million log on to read up on the news.
As we've mentioned earlier, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center this week published a list of web pages considered "vulgar and unhealthy". Google and Baidu, among others, were warned to clean out the unwanted material... or face the music. Baidu has already issued a very contrite-sounding apology. Meanwhile, high-ranking officials have demanded the resignation of three editors at news.163.com we hear. At Kuaiche, one of the web portals criticized, we could see clear results today. The first screenshot shows what the page's photo section looked like yesterday, the picture below is the same section today. We feel less vulgar already.
UPDATE 2: Adult entertainment studio Harmony Films wants to offer 'Kappa Girl' a real job
Tudou cofounder and mastermind behind the Chinese online game site game.com.cn (we wonder how much he paid for that domain name!) Marc van der Chijs seems to think so:
This week we were analyzing the traffic figures on our Chinese online game sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com, when we noted a strange effect. During weekdays there was hardly any growth on our portals, but on weekends the growth was similar to what we were used to. We looked a bit deeper into this and may have found a reason for this: staff in companies play less online games during working hours (normally we see a spike in traffic around 11:30 AM and from 4 PM onwards).Continue reading "Is the global financial crisis making people work harder in the office?"
... and before you start scoffing, it's all from a very reliable and authoritative source of course — no, it's not AC Nielsen and neither is it Taylor Nelson Sofres — it's a doctoral student from Shanghai University by the name of Ni Lin. Never heard of her? Well neither have we, but if the Shanghai Daily starts quoting her as proof of its popularity among expats in this town, then she must be something right?
In the latest Google Zeitgeist rankings which aggregates billions of search queries and ranks top search queries around the world, Edison Chen and Sarah Palin took top honours in China and the world respectively. The Beijing 2008 Olympics would have been the fastest rising search term hands down but was edged out by Edison Chen in the China category, and Sarah Palin in the Global category.
CCTV breaks the news that Chinese search engine Baidu has been accepting money from illegal medical companies for paid search results. While paid search results have been criticised for undermining the integrity of the search experience, they continue to account for 80% of the company's revenue. In the melamine scandal, Baidu was said to have accepted payment in exchange for censoring news that were not favourable to the dairy companies.
Today is the second and final day of the Shanghai leg of the inaugural China 2.0 Tour organised by our good friends from the China Business Network, Web2Asia and CNReviews. The week-long tour aims to give participants an overview of what's happening in the Chinese internet landscape and to provide opportunities for face-to-face interaction and networking. The list of China 2.0 participants coming in from overseas reads like a who's who of the internet sector, and we're talking about people like Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Robert Scoble (Fast Company), Shel Israel (author of Naked Conversations) and Ernst-Jan Pfauth (The Next Web). Shanghaiist had the opportunity to meet some of these amazing guys last night at a dinner sponsored by Alibaba, and our night ended with a big party at the new M1NT Club. (Pity the party ended a bit too early but that didn't stop us from getting ourselves shit-faced.)
Chinese hackers have "penetrated the White House computer network on multiple occasions, and obtained e-mails between government officials", said a senior US official to the Financial Times:
On each occasion, the cyber attackers accessed the White House computer system for brief periods, allowing them enough time to steal information before US computer experts patched the system.Continue reading "US says attacks on White House, Obama and McCain networks came from China"
For all of you outside of China right now who have no idea what the internet is like over here and are curious enough to meet the Net Nanny face to face, here comes the ultimate Firefox extension for you, the China Channel Firefox Add-on. Here's the description of the add-on:
Experience the censored Chinese internet at home!Continue reading "Download the ultimate Great Firewall Firefox extension"
After two long years, the void left by the departure of Jerry Liu has been filled by telecommunications technologist Li Yinan. Li was the former Chief Technology Scientist at Huawei Technologies and oversaw the development of 3G mobile chipsets.
The video of this young Korean gamer who launches into a 5 and a half minute long diatribe against Chinese gamers and their supposed lack of game knowledge and gaming ethics has riled thousands of Chinese netizens, and apparently a few of their Korean counterparts are not amused either. Read translations of comments from Chinese and Korean gamers here.
The New York Times reports that a Canadian human-rights activist cum researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has discovered that instant messaging (IM) conversations over the Tom-Skype network were being blocked, tracked and recorded on a cluster of eight computers located in China.
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.
Valleywag points us to an interesting article in the Financial Times which highlights five markets in which Google plays second fiddle to local rivals — Russia, the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea and, you guessed it, China.
And you thought they'd never get to it! Ctrip.com is now looking a lot more like a dot.com because you can now finally pay for that ticket you booked online via Paypal and with your foreign credit card. As far as we can remember, the last time we tried to book a ticket with our foreign credit card, their customer service staff directed us to fax in an authorisation letter to allow them to charge our card, and since the last time we even touched a fax machine was like ten years ago, we gave up and decided to call another travel agent. ChinaTechNews.com reports that having built in payment options for non-Chinese, Ctrip is now going to work on brandbuilding among foreigners. We'll try buying our next ticket online with Ctrip and tell you how it goes.
Andrew Lih reports on some websites newly accessible in Mainland China leading up to the Olympics. They include: BBC Chinese, Wikipedia Chinese, Radio Free Asia and Apple Daily HK newspaper. Lih is quick to point out that "there are plenty of sites still blocked in China, including Tor Project, Amnesty International, Wikia, The Pirate Bay, AboutUs.org, and LiveJournal." Lih's bet on when unblocked sites will be reblocked? "8 hours and 8 minutes after the Olympic closing ceremony." In other web censorship news, the press commission head of the International Olympic Committee said he smells a conspiracy regarding the controversy surrounding inaccessible sites in Olympic media center: "I have to accept that I appear to be the fall guy and may be the fall guy." Are you a disgruntled Olympic reporter? Try this.
In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for "TechCrunch" and said: "And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our 'About' section." Why it is none other than Shanghai's biggest R.E.M. fan, Sam Flemming, head honcho of Internet Word of Mouth research and consulting firm CIC. So, that answers the "who" portion of this question ... but what about the "why"? The only thing we can think of: Cuil rightfully finds Sam a more attractive alternative to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
Well, you might want to check out these Chinese website search plugins for your browser. Some work for IE7, too. [Source]
Modern Internet connectivity meets old-school snail mail charm in Shanghai resident Paulo Magalhães’s popular website Postcrossing.com, which allows users to send and receive postcards from friendly strangers all around the globe. Founded in July 2005, the site grew wildly popular as fans passed the news by word-of-mouth and now boasts 50,000 users in 182 countries. On the occasion of its third anniversary, Shanghaiist caught up with the Portuguese innovator just as Postcrossing hit its biggest milestone to date — one million postcards exchanged!
Interview: Grace Before Meals post-rocking Shanghai
Around Shanghai: No more airplane temperature checks, but we're getting a Wall St. Bull and Linkin Park!
Week Around the Ists
Fatal bus crash on Shanghai's Yangpu bridge
Xinjiang riot leaves 3 dead, over 20 injured
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