Mary Meeker of the prominent VC Firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfied Byers released her annual Internet Trends slide deck at the D11 Conference on May 29th. Meeker’s report highlighted a number of compelling trends, including the astounding growth of Android and iOS mobile market share (now a combined 88% globally from 5% in 2005), mobile traffic [...]
The Staggering Rate of Smartphone Adoption
In a LinkedIn post from November of 2012, former Director of Google China and head of Beijing-based venture firm Innnovation Works Kai Fu Lee predicted that the installed base of smartphones in China would double to 500 million by the end of 2013 (note that Mobithinking [...]
CEO of Beijing-based game developer CMUNE Ludovic Bodin recently spoke at the China Game Developer’s Conference on what he views as the rise of a combination of hardcore social and mobile gaming. CMUNE’s most prominent title is the 3D First Person Shooter (FPS) called Uberstrike, which was ranked the #1 browser-based FPS game worldwide with [...]
Journalist Adam Century recently wrote about Weixin in the venerable pages of The New York Times. It’s high time for WeChat to start getting international attention.
The story, Chinese Messaging App Gains Ground Elsewhere, is a sharp overview of the WeChat phenomenon.
As I exited the Taipei City Hall metro station, two beautiful Taiwanese girls in short shorts and skimpy tank tops approached me. The ice-cold shower of reality hit me two seconds later when I found that they were trying to sell me something. D’oh.
But my interest was rekindled when I discovered that something is WeChat (or 微信 in Chinese), the mobile chat app that we at TechRice have predicted as the China tech story of 2012.
Now the story has moved beyond China.
Sina and China Merchant’s Bank will launch a social credit card for Weibo DaRen users at the end of August. Sina is in non-stop experimentation mode as it tries to monetize Weibo. Here’s the scoop.
What does a long-deceased eunuch have in common with Chinese tech giants, Baidu and Tencent? It’s not an online music platform or a market capitalization north of US $40 billion (approaching $70 billion in Tencent’s case). Nor is it being a eunuch. Zheng He’s famed Ming-sponsored sea expeditions of the early 1400s represented a powerful China at the center of global trade and influence. Leading fleets of unprecedented size, Zheng He’s seven voyages graced the shores of modern-day Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and India, as well as the Horn of Africa, and extended the emperor’s sphere of influence.
While Baidu and Tencent may not be in shipbuilding (almost surprising given their polymathic aspirations), domestic success has left them with the funds to spread to new lands and markets.
It’s no shocker that Zuckerberg’s mischief has ‘inspired’ a flock of Chinese copycats. Over the past couple of months, two Chinese college students from different schools have each cited Mr Zuckerberg, hacked their school’s database, and built their own Facemash.
In dorm rooms across the country, China’s next generation of white, gray, and black hat hackers are hacking away. Make sure you look good in your school pics.
Worldwide, Old Media faces two crises:
#1 Death by demographics: how you young punks are a huge pain-in-the-ass for Old Media.
#2 The new business of New Media: how New Media is drawing and quartering Old Media to sell it piece-by-piece at a lower price
And in China, Old Media faces one additional crisis:
#3 Crisis of Credibility: how New Media has exposed the propaganda side of Old Media
Social media has gone far beyond entertainment. Businesses are now looking into how they can use these channels in their recruitment strategy.
Hiring the right employees is imperative for any company, but Chinese companies also face some unique challenges. China is caught in a double bind of worker shortages for high skill labor and unemployment. Targeting and recruiting the country’s fickle talent pool has become extremely competitive for recruiters and HR-professionals. How are companies using China’s unique social media environment to tackle this problem?
