Social Media in China
Posted in Allgemein on May 19th, 2008
Genau eine Woche ist es jetzt her, dass ein gewaltiges Erdbeben weite Teile der chinesischen Provinz Sichuan verwüstet hat. Noch immer sind Rettungstrupps unterwegs, auch wenn die Aussichten, noch Überlebende unter den Trümmern zu finden, praktisch gleich Null sind. Die Gefahr von Überschwemmungen, von Seuchen, von Trinkwassermangel, auch von Nachbeben ist keineswegs gebannt. Und selbst […]
Posted in Allgemein on Apr 5th, 2008
It’s time to get Orchis Tower going again, after an involuntary break induced by an overflow of other, teaching-related work. Followed up on my China feeds today. Read and tried to digest a few hundred blog posts. Mostly about the Tibet crisis, mostly depressing, with a lot of noise. Some signal – like most entries […]
Posted in Allgemein on Mar 7th, 2008
“China’s New Intelligentsia”, this month’s Prospect title story by Mark Leonard, provides for some highly fascinating reading. Even though Leonard does not cash in its headline’s ambitious promise, he quite efficiently places the thought of some Chinese intellectuals into the context of The Middle Empire’s recent internal and external actions and development. In my eyes […]
Posted in Allgemein on Feb 25th, 2008
Saturday evening I’ve met Héng Gē (横戈), CEO and founder of Blogbus, the oldest independent blog service in China, in a small café opposite of the Shanghai Public Library. Heng Ge, whose regular name is Dòu Yì (窦毅), founded the service in late 2002. With more than 4 million accounts they are not the biggest, […]
Posted in Allgemein on Feb 21st, 2008
Through some winded path of reference I found a recent study comparing the online behaviour of Chinese and American youth. Henry Jenkins gives a useful summary of some its findings: Almost five times as many Chinese as American respondents said they have a parallel life online (61 percent vs. 13 percent). More than twice as […]
Posted in Allgemein on Feb 20th, 2008
As was to be expected, James Fallows’ article on China’s Internet control system, “The Connection Has Been Reset”, is an excellent one, well-informed and balanced. Funny enough, when I followed Fallows’ recommendation yesterday and downloaded the software for a “virtual private network” (VPN), I experienced exactly one of the measures described in his article. Sitting […]
Posted in Allgemein on Dec 26th, 2007
“You westerners take copyright issues far too serious. The web is not about intellectual property, it’s all about spreading ideas!” (A Chinese ideasmith, in conversation) (… and I couldn’t agree more!)
Posted in Allgemein on Dec 26th, 2007
On December 23 I was witness (always painfully conspicuous as a foreigner) to the year-end meeting of Sohu’s featured bloggers. All the big chinese portal providers also serve as blog hosters, some with millions of bloggers each. Most of the active bloggers in China have several blogs, hoping to be featured here and there by […]
Posted in Allgemein on Dec 26th, 2007
The Mindmeters website was founded in May 2003, originally as an online magazine providing space for contributions made to the Book Review supplement of the Economic Observer weekly (english). In Chinese the name of the website is 思维的乐趣, sī wéi de lè qù, The Delights of Thinking. The wonderful english title was coined by Qin […]
Posted in Allgemein on Nov 17th, 2007
Trying to come to grips with the all-important topic of Chinese portal brands and their strategies. I’m still crunching the available numbers and details, but here are some first observations: Reading the 3rd quarter financial reports of the big players, one thing that becomes obvious is the overwhelming importance of (meaning also: dependence upon) a […]