FRANKLY, I DON’T KNOW what to make out of the Tibetan protests. I’ve not spent significant time researching on the issues involved. However, from what I know and remember of Chinese history, I feel quite strongly that Chris Nebe (as a foreigner with insider knowledge and experience of China) is speaking the truth about Tibet in the video here:
Nebe’s post in YouTube:
The West is trying to demonize China. Why? To ensure an upper-handed position economically, politically, and socially.
Too many harbor strong opinions about Tibet, yet know nothing more than the few slogans offered by the mass-media outlets.
The media screams:
“They killed innocent monks!” – but those “innocent” monks and other young hooligans killed innocent Chinese before a single shot was fired on them.
“The Chinese are oppressive” – do you consider freeing over 95% of Tibetans from slavery, building a state of the art infrastructure, and a new economy oppressive?
“The Chinese suppress Tibetan Buddhism” – then why have the Chinese spent a fortune restoring ancient monasteries and places of religious significance?
China doesn’t SPIN NEWS like we do. Their silence is too often mistaken as admission of guilt. Don’t be another uninformed drone. Do everyone a favor and learn truths before forming opinions.
Here’s to Peace & Harmony! The 2008 Beijing Olympics deserve support!
]]>By the way, the interface of the YouKu.com site looks very like YouTube.com! In the spirit of Web 2.0 and open-source, let’s hope YouTube (or rather Google) would let things be.
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RECENTLY, CHINESE BLOGGER KESO published an interesting series of articles discussing Baidu.com (百度) and four of its competitors: Google China, Sina, Tencent QQ, & Alibaba. This has made me very curious: What’s so great about Baidu?
According to a New York Times report in September 2006 (quoting Bloomberg stats), Baidu is the leading Chinese language site, with a market share of around 57 percent for search engines and around 50 percent for advertising revenue. Google, the closest second, only has around 33 percent market share for search engines and 16 percent for advertising revenue. Baidu is reportedly very strong in Chinese MP3 music content and the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China.
Going by Alexa’s Traffic Rankings, Baidu is within the Top 10 worldwide and Number 1 in China. The other top 9 sites in China are (details extracted and summarized from Wikipedia):
- Tencent QQ 腾讯网: The most popular free instant messaging software in Asia, and the world’s third most popular IM service. Over 160 million QQ users in China alone. Offers many subfeatures including games, pets, ringtone downloads, etc.
- Sina.com.cn 新浪新闻中心: The largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, with over 30 channels covering various aspects, including news, sports, technology, finance, advertising, entertainment, fashion, travel and more.
- Sohu.com 搜狐: Offers advertising, a search engine, and other services.
- NetEase 163.com 网易新闻: Search engine technology and massively multiplayer online gaming.
- Taobao.com 淘宝网: A consumer-to-consumer trade site for Chinese customers. The main competitor to eBay in China for online auctions. Currently captures over 65% of the e-auction market. Part of the Alibaba 阿里巴巴 e-commerce conglomerate.
- Yahoo! China 雅虎中国: News, information, email, and a search engine
- Google China 谷歌中国: Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages.
- TOM Online: A mobile Internet company, offering a variety of online and mobile services, including wireless internet and online advertising.
- Microsoft Network (MSN): Dialup access and content provider.
WITH THIS BACKGROUND INFO, plus more details from Google Finance (added via links on the company names after this point), Keso’s articles on Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) now make much more sense:
In Baidu & Google China 《谷歌篇》, Keso considers Google China as Baidu’s strongest competitor. Both have very similar business models. Their main source of income is advertisements. However, Google is restrained by its headquarters while Baidu is constrained by the sentiments of its stock investors. In addition [taken from "Baidu & Alibaba"], Google, with its ever-expanding portfolio of productivity tools (such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Analytics, Webmaster Central, Apps for Your Domain), has been positioning itself as an economical search engine. Baidu, with its strong entertainment orientation, risk lowering its brand image, might raise costs for its advertisers and thereby lowering its value as a commercial “spine”.
In Baidu & Sina 《新浪篇》, Keso explains that Sina, with its recent launch of a music library, looks ready to compete with Baidu in the MP3 Search market. Sina, however, has quite fragile media relations. The whole situation is also likely to change with Baidu’s newly acquired news publisher license.
In Baidu & Tencent QQ 《腾讯篇》, Keso explains that Baidu and QQ (Tencent Holding) are very likely to top the charts if there’s ever a popularity contest among Internet youths in China. Interestingly, the nett value of QQ is larger than Baidu by 1.8 times. Baidu, with its huge in successes MP3 Search and Baidu Post Bar, has been expanding aggressively into social networking — moving closer and closer to QQ’s business model. The two companies look set to have a battle soon.
In Baidu & Alibaba 《阿里巴巴篇》, Keso explains that Alibaba, with its strong B2B business model, basically links suppliers to buyers. Thus it was originally not a competitor of Baidu. However, in August 2005, Alibaba acquired Yahoo! China. And once its estimated value of over 4 billions USD (超过40亿美元) was announced around the same period, people started comparing Alibaba with Baidu. In addition, more and more people are using search engines to find business partners. With increasing breadth and depth of search engine applications, the entire Internet has now been transformed into a gigantic trading platform!
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At first impressions, besides the minimalist search (搜藏) interface, Baidu seems to offer many services similar to those offered in Google: e.g. news (新闻), images (图片), maps (地图), video (视频), Blogger-equivalent (空间), BlogSearch (博客搜索) and toolbar (超级搜霸). However, one key difference seems to be in the extent of integration. Unlike Google, the many services in Baidu feel like subfeatures of ONE service and not many separate services. I only need to log in once.
What do you think? Have you used Baidu and Google? Which do you prefer, and why?
See also discussion on the Asia Social Media 2.0 Forum.
]]>In China, Ya.IYee came up with a list of “Top 40 Chinese blogs” based on stats given by RSS reader Zhuaxia抓虾 (apparently most popular in mainland China right now, with around 30% or 60,000+ users).
In Malaysia (thanks, LiewCF), Gaman compiled a list of “50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia” based solely on Technorati rankings while Blog Webmaster Malaysia Alang created a list of “Strongest blogs in Malaysia” based on Page Strength, a combination of different factors, including Google PageRank, Technorati, Alexa, etc.
In the Philippines, a few dozen companies pooled resources to sponsor and to present “The 2007 Philippine Blog Awards” in 12 categories recently (end march) — based on the evaluation of 14 judges. I couldn’t help but wonder though: Who in turn has/have evaluated the competence and objectivity of these 14 judges?
Which evaluation criterion (or ranking) is most reliable (or not reliable) to you? Why or why not?
Afternote 14-04-2007: LiewCF.com, listed on Technorati’s Top 10 for Malaysia, is not among “the strongest of strongest blogs.” Somehow, Page Strength shows no result for his Alexa Rank and listing in DMOZ.
Afternote 13-04-2007: JUST FOUND this very interesting set of PinoyBlogosphere (”Pinoy” is equivalent to “Filipino”, I presume) sites:
- PinoyBlogosphere.Net allows you to submit a blog entry that will be reviewed by all readers and will be promoted (based on popularity) to the main page.
- PinoyBlogosphere.Org is a forum about pinoy blogging by pinoy bloggers for pinoy bloggers.
- PBS Ranking – ranks registered pinoy blogs according to average page views per week. Blog readers are also able to rate and give reviews on their favorite pinoy blogs.
- PBS Pinoy Videos is a collection of various pinoy videos uploaded by none other than by fellow pinoys.
- LiNK eXchange – using both manual and auto-links. Just enter Name/BlogTitle and URL or send requests via email.
By the way, in Malaysia, there are also several similar networks:
- Malaysia Bloggers Forum — a forum hosted by LiewCF, giving blog help and resources
- Digg Clone in Malaysia — all about Malaysian local content. Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community.
Also by the way, in Singapore, for those who might not know this, there are:
- Tomorrow.sg — Articles are submitted by the community and approved by a panel of editors.
- Ping.sg — All bloggers who ping this site have their posts displayed automatically for public reading.
Related Info:
- Asia Social Media Directory: China, Malaysia and Philippines pages
- FriedBeef’s Tech: How do you measure blog influence?