UCWeb started in 2004 in Beijing as a mobile browser built to address what Yu calls the “4 restrictions (screen size, bandwidth, input method, and battery) and 3 mores (more OSs, devices, and networks)” of mobile Internet. To solve these problems, it pioneered the use of client-server mixed architecture in mobile browsers, the technology now used to turbocharge Amazon Silk and many other browsers. Today, it’s China’s leading mobile browser with 56% market share according to StatCounter.

Overall, the firm claims 200 million total monthly active users, 100 million smartphone users, and 50 million Android users. That’s 70% of Android users in China.

Emerging Markets First

This year, UCWeb is making a big push in emerging markets, especially in Southeast Asia. It has over 20% market share in India and over 10% in five other markets. Its first overseas office is in India and it aims to overtake Opera as the #1 browser there by the end of the year.

It’s easier for Chinese companies to understand conditions in developing markets, says Yu. Many users are first-time smartphone owners and browse via limited mobile data networks.

Developed Markets Next

Emerging markets are UCWeb’s first focus, but the US and Europe are next. It’ll open an office in the US later this year.

Developed markets are usually more difficult for Chinese firms to crack: UCWeb previously tried in Japan and Korea without much success. But it’s by no means impossible: Dolphin Browser, another Chinese company, has strong momentum in the US and other developed markets.

UCWeb has developed a number of new features designed for these markets, including an RSS reader. At the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, UCWeb announced a partnership with EverNote to develop a browser plugin for the note-taking service.

Yu believes feature localization is key to any market. In China, for example, UCWeb features a “night mode” so that students in a dormitory can browse in a dark room without disrupting others–or being discovered by the authorities.

Distribution Channels

To get its browser in the hands of users, UCWeb relies 70% upon user downloads and the rest come from handset pre-installs and other partnerships. UCWeb has a strong relationship with many of the Chinese OEMs who are selling affordable handsets in emerging markets.

Since starting internationalization in 2009, UCWeb currently has a total of 40 million international users, but has plans for many more. Within 5 years, Mr. Yu hopes to reach one billion monthly active users.

UCWeb, China’s leading mobile browser, speeds into emerging markets is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

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?

I’d like to share a few observations from my work at MXMM, an advertising agency that has integrated social media into the recruitment strategy for a majority of its clients. We recently conducted a survey on employer branding and recruitment on Chinese social networks, as shown in the infographic below.

Our research shows that 51% of the survey participants have been using SNS for employer branding and recruitment purposes. A large majority of them have already had successful hires. The most used channels by HR-professionals are currently Renren and Sina Weibo as they seem to have the most interesting user demographics.

In the West, this space is dominated by LinkedIn, but China does not yet have a widely-used business social network. Nor is there a Chinese equivalent to BranchOut, the Facebook-based app that recently nabbed $25 million in funding for social recruitment. Social networks are a promising recruitment channel but the tools available in China today are still in their infancy.

In the survey, half of respondents felt that social networks will be the most important channels for their future employer branding and recruitment. Companies like Deloitte, Nike and Federal Mogul are pioneering social recruitment by setting up career pages on Sina Weibo.

 Weibo career pages of Deloitte, Nike and Federal Mogul 

Job boards and corporate career sites will remain important recruitment channels, but they are very different from social media. Where career sites and job boards are mainly broadcast channels for vacancies and corporate identity, social media is a different kind of engagement. It can be a more tailored way of communicating that gives candidates the opportunity to have a more personal employer brand experience.

Finally, recruiting via employee referral programs is widely perceived as one of the most efficient ways to recruit. Social networks could become an excellent way to target candidates among an existing employee’s peer group.

About the author

Jidi Guo started her career at employer branding and recruitment advertising agency MXMM in Shanghai after graduating with a Master’s in New Media at the University of Amsterdam. “The China Social Network Employer Branding and Recruitment Survey” is one of her current ongoing projects. Email jidi.guo at mxmm.cn

About the study

To stay updated on the latest in Social Recruitment, MXMM is conducting an on-going research study that looks into the broad (social) media landscape in China. Every year, MXMM will be publishing a report on the use and perception on (social) media according to HR-professionals in China. Keep an eye on www.socialrecruitmentchina.com and follow us on Weibo (SocialRecruitmentChina) or Twitter (SRChina) for more information on upcoming studies in 2012.

Recruiting via China’s Social Networks [Infographic] is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

How Idiots Track Success is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

Instead, version 4.0 of the Weixin mobile app is vintage Tencent. The new release adds a host of new SNS features, many of which copy from Path, Instagram, and Google Circles, and still others that are unique. It’s a prime example of the homegrown combination of copying, remixing, and innovation that Tencent executes to perfection.

Moreover, with the release of version 4.0, Weixin (微信) has an official English name: WeChat. Tencent has its sights on the global market: in addition to English and Chinese, the app is now available in Arabic, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Portuguese.

Weixin is already TechRice’s prediction for product of the year 2012, and this release only strengthens its claim.

Pony and WeChat

Pony Ma is a rare breed of internet CEO in China. Like Mark Zuckerberg, he started as a programmer, and later became a product guy. Inside Tencent he is worshiped by his employees as the “Super Product Manager”.

Pony Ma demands that things get done and rewards employees when that happens. WeChat’s team each received a Macbook Air for the Chinese New Year.

At 4:11 a.m 29th March, Pony Ma posted to his Tencent Weibo announcing that WeChat had just reached 100 million registered user. Just 4 months ago Tecent claimed 50 million registered and 25 million active. After starting with a team of 10 developers, the team now has over one hundred members.

Pony is investing heavily into mobile social networking and WeChat might be his biggest bet of all. The goal is to create a whole new lifestyle for the white-collars in China, a demographic that previously eluded Tencent and its QQ empire.

WeChat 4.0′s New Features

1). Timeline Photo Album

WeChat’s new photo sharing is designed in the same timeline style as Path, but with a simple blue interface design. Users can share photos with comments, i.e. what they were doing and with who.

Since 3.0, Weixin has included a set of special effects for photo editing: think of it as Instagram in Facebook Messenger.

One of the best features is that WeChat’s top-notch compression minimizes the volume of data consumed via this rich multimedia messaging.

2). Circles

Next up, WeChat takes a page out of Google Plus by offering new friends ‘circles’. Contents can be locked as ‘private’ so that they are only accessible to users in the private circle. After starting from one-on-one messaging, Tencent is now experimenting with building out a social network.

Also new is the name card feature: users have a personal card that they can exchange just as they might a business card.

None of these are original ideas on their own, but Tencent is integrating them in a way and at a scale never tried before. By comparison, Facebook is far more conservative with its mobile app: features are an extension of the website, rather than truly new experiences and functionality.

3). WeChat Open API

This is perhaps the most impressive of all new features in 4.0: third-party apps can now access WeChat’s API to share contents from their Apps to the messenger. For example, if I were to find a piece of sharp news in Google Reader, I may soon be able to share it to friends on WeChat.

One new cooperation is with Tencent’s own QQMusic. Users can easily stream songs via that service from within the app’s timeline.

4). Message Forwarding

Received a funny photo that you would like to share with other friends? Just forward it. In WeChat, you can now forward all content to other contacts.

5). Location Sharing

This is a long-overdue feature that I think WeChat really should have included in earlier versions. A few friends of mine beg to differ though: it can lead to rather delicate location-tracking situations for those in a relationship!

6). Favorite Contacts

Wanting to access that special person instantly? Fave her! Or him. WeChat now allows you to keep a collection of starred contacts who’re special to you, so you can find them easily among the hundreds of others.

7). Group Messaging

Finally, this is a feature that in my personal opinion makes WeChat a truly killer app. In China, people love SMS’ing, and now they are hooked in sending messages via WeChat. Goup chat will extend that even further!

Back in September of last year, I saw WeChat as a revolutionary mobile messaging app because it didn’t solely clone, it polished and perfected what it cloned. User experience is everything for the developer team at WeChat, and as a user I love it.

At TechRice we see WeChat as a potential game-changer in how Chinese users communicate with each other via mobile devices. On the one side, more and more users are using smartphones, and on the other side WeChat’s team worked hard on offering a complete cross platform App that now even include Windows Phones (Windows just entered the Chinese market this month, officially).

Our prediction is that WeChat will be China’s Internet product of the year in 2012, perhaps even greater than Weibo was in 2011.With 100 million registered users, torrid growth, a host of terrific new features, it’s looking like WeChat will hit the mark.

Get WeChat here.

Weixin 4.0 is Vintage Tencent and the Most Important Chinese Internet Product Since Weibo is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo Enterprise 2.0 changes that. One week ago, I was granted a test account of the product, and two days ago I also received information about a “Sina Weibo Ad Package” from contacts at several Chinese ad agencies. This is clearly Sina Weibo’s most robust and realistic attempt to monetize so far.

Weibo’s Spotty Track Record in Monetization

Since launch in 2009, Sina Weibo has attempted to monetize both its commercial and ordinary users. But none of its attempts to-date have had major impact.

Before reviewing Sina’s monetization options, let’s review the latest user stats [Source: Sina]. Note that Sina Weibo has a large audience, but its not mass market in the same way as QQ, Baidu, or Taobao.

1. 300 million registered users
2. 27 million daily active users
3. 1.5 hours spent on Weibo per user (average per day)
4. 100 million new posts per day
5. 30 million video views per day

1). Social Gaming

In 2011, Sina ventured into the social gaming field, previously the stronghold of Kaixin001, a social network founded by its former CTO. Kaixin001 recently accepted a strategic investment from Sina’s top competitor, Tencent.

Sina’s early venture into social gaming started with the Sina Weibo game center launched on July 20, 2011. It promotes in-game-purchases via Sina’s virtual currency, Weibi. But 9 months after launch, the activity on Sina Weibo’s game center is far lower than its key competitors. Can it pay for the entire Sina Weibo platform? I guess not.

2). Mini-campaign sites

In social advertising, mini-campaign sites are big money. Brand clients will pay extra for their “very own” fancy flash banner on the site or a few extra functions. Sina’s early approach was to  create pages that acted as online communities for users with shared interests to get together.

Some of the examples are a dedicated page for the NBA and Love Lady. In spite of Jeremy Lin’s hotness, these Sina Weibo Pages never became a big hit.

3). Value-added services

IVAS (Internet Value Added Services) account for about 90% of Tencent’s revenues, while advertising is the remainder. Perhaps Sina was trying to borrow a page from Tencent’s book when it introduced Sina Weibo Code, whereby users could pay for a lucky numerical ID. Whatever the rationale, it is not a popular service.

Relative successes

But not all failed. Although it hasn’t sold much, two products have given businesses a bigger role on Weibo:

1). E-commerce

Sina first launched its Weibo Enterprise Edition in cooperation with e-commerce giant 360Buy.com. Large traffic has translated into considerable income source for 360Buy, and many more e-commerce sites have since adopted Sina Weibo.

2). Enterprise Weibo 1.0 for Brands

The enterprise edition of Sina Weibo is designed specifically for brands. Extra functionality includes customizable widgets and basic data analysis tools for brands.

This is still completely free and has attracted most brands with the foresight and good sense to engage their consumers in social media. I suspect that it won’t remain 100% free for much longer.

2012 will be a decisive year for Sina Weibo: Can it meet the demands of its ad clients and maintain its high engagement? Or will it fall short of media and investor expectations?

Ads in Enterprise 2.0

[Note: the data that follows comes from Sina Weibo Enterprise 2.0 and Sina’s business development presentation for ad clients.]

Enterprise 2.0 is divided into two main sections: the Ad System and the Data Center.

1). Ad System

Sina has revamped its display ads to support a self-serve advertising platform. I’ve translated Sina’s pricing:

Self-serve display ads are experimenting with new forms of engagement. For instance, an ad can allow users to sign-up with their Weibo account to test drive a new car.  These ads come in three types, according to Sina’s BD presentation:

1. 3 types of display options: navigation bar; banner and “image within image”
2. 4 types of interactive options: social interactive; embedded video; information research (redirect, fill in required information and proceed); and category directory
3. 10-ad theme packs

2). Data Center

How will brands monitor performance? So far, Sina Weibo has allowed third-party consulting firms to provide services that guide and help brands to understand Sina Weibo’s markting value.

With the launch of Enterprise 2.0, Sina Weibo is largely taking that into its own hands. Below is an infographic based on sample data from a test account Sina Weibo provided me with: 

This data provides a strong overview of how a brand is performing. It will be challenging for third-party service providers to compete.

On top of this, Sina Weibo is currently developing a paid version of this data service. According to a recent conversation with a VP of Sina Weibo, social media monitoring and Word of Mouth tracking will likely be part of a package to come later this year.

Sina Weibo Limits Third-Party API Access

Enterprise pushes out many third-parties that offer Weibo consulting. Weibo’s commercial API has become less and less accessible over time. In Q3 2011, Sina Weibo ceased granting new commercial API accounts to third-party firms, effectively reasserting that territory for itself. A VP at Sina Weibo told me that new approval guidelines are currently being drafted that will reassess existing third party commercial API partners. Those guidelines will have stricter controls and possibly require profit-sharing between third-parties and Sina Weibo.

Personally, I believe such a move could hamper the social ecosystem in China. It will severely limit the innovation that could come out of a more open environment and change China’s social media industry for the better.

Conclusion

All in all, Enterprise 2.0 is the best Chinese social media advertising tool for brands yet. That should help Sina Weibo become the most profitable social media platform in China.

Update: Sina Weibo VP Xu Jingyang, in charge of commercial solutions and Enterprise 2.0, has resigned. Xu was reportedly the casualty of one of the many insider political fights between divisions at Sina. Xu is rumored to join Baidu.

With Enterprise 2.0, Sina Weibo Looks to Cash in on Social Ads is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

Disclosure: I am writing this review at the request of a friend from Sina, though I will uphold my independence here. My opinion obviously does not represent that of Sina Corporation. 

The Flipboard Clone

The predecessor of Sina View was Sina’s mobile news application that was and still is available on most mainstream mobile OSs. Many Chinese iPad users are using Flipboard clones like Zaker and QQ Reader, as the original Flipboard was blocked for a period of time here.

Sina View, presumably as a revamp of Sina News mobile, was launched earlier this year for iPad only. It has the same Flipboard style of animated page flipping and is fully integrated with Sina Weibo, allowing users not only to organize RSS contents but also follow people from Weibo. This is a waste of functionality in my opinion since we are already “following” people in Weibo and repeating the same action while receiving the exact same feeds is well… a waste.

There is an irony here: last year Flipboard entered the Chinese market through a “close” cooperation with Sina and Weibo. If you search in the China Apple App Store, it will automatically transfer you to the Flipboard China edition with full Sina Weibo integration. But what happens when your partner launches the exact same app?

It bears similarities to Tencent’s crafty hedging against Groupon China, when it “partnered” on that service and all the while operated its own group-buying service and invested in others.

How secure is your China strategy?

Sina View Browser Version

Anyway, let’s move on. I was asked by a friend at Sina to review the browser version of Sina View. It essentially has the same functionality but with a different visual design.

Somehow they chose not to leverage HTML5 and create a visually impressive product with full animations and interactivity like Tencent did for its WebQQ. That’s a shame, considering most of Sina View’s existing users own an iPad and could easily access an HTML5 version.

Upon my first log-in, I was prompted to pick my channels then directed to the home page which by design resembled Sina’s video service Kandian (I hadn’t previously used their iPad App–I’m personally still on Google Reader, call me stone-aged). The page displays in a 3-column format with a news feed in the middle, and channels I follow on the right.

Of course I can follow other users here and also see the channels they are following, although I don’t find those to be very attractive features. Every time I comment or retweet posts it’s just the same as in Sina Weibo itself.

Sina is exploring different means to engage their users, attempting to squeeze more stickiness out of its social platforms. Sina View and Kandian are in fact under the corporate structure of Sina Weibo, which may not be the best fit: imagine if Twitter also had a small Youtube and Flipboard department.

[Coming soon] I’m invited to beta test Sina Weibo’s latest commercial product, Enterprise Weibo’s Data Services for Ad clients. I’ll write a review for that, so stay tuned. The investment world is holding its breath waiting to see how Sina will profit from its social platform. 

Introducing Sina View, the Social Magazine [Review] is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

Reflecting the name of the article, Sullivan relies on Twitter and [Sina] Weibo to draw his conclusions.   However, while Weibo is arguably the microblog, even Tencent Weibo’s lowest estimated user numbers make it worthy of greater attention. Only mentioning Tencent and others in passing to describe the fractured world of Chinese microblogging results in an incomplete picture, and leaving out non-microblogging channels is irresponsible when attempting to go deeper than most coverage in Western media. The reality is that it’s a story of numerous social media channels in China. Trends exist (and change), but forums, social networking sites (SNSes), and weibos all play a role in China. In fact, TechRice owes its very existence to the diversity of digital technology in China, so it’s only fair to question Sullivan’s limitation of the article’s focus.

Jumping into the substance, Sullivan takes some liberties in describing use of Twitter in China as an explicitly ‘political’ act without evidence as well as with his explanation on the difficulty of accessing Twitter within Chinese borders. Contrary to the article, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are not the only way to access Twitter, even though they are the most common. In addition to proxies, our fellow Asian tech blog Penn Olson recently pointed at a much easier method at circumventing censorship by directing browsers to an alternate server to gain access. This isn’t meant to imply that Chinese censors aren’t problematic, because they are. However, Twitter is not comparable to underground churches, which do exist in China.

Sullivan also alternately portrays digital China as a robust atmosphere where criticism of government performance and policy is common on one hand, and on the other as the symbol of censorship better known in Western media. I have seen the hypocrisy and know Chinese diplomats with Twitter accounts, but an accurate picture needs point out inconsistencies and explore them, which would be a more revealing profile of the government and how censorship operates. The problem of consistency comes up again when he describes typical Chinese netizens as “young, predominantly male” as well as “politically opinionated, critical of the state and supportive of democratic norms” and later uses similar language when referring to motivations of the Chinese Twitter community as “frequently political, critical of the state and pro-democracy” and “disproportionately” male and young . Making a clear distinction between the groups is essential for the premise of the article, that the there are two different worlds. This isn’t to suggest that Sullivan should change the facts to fit the case, but not only do his descriptions clash, they cast doubt on the CCP’s censorship, which has been widely covered, including within his article. In analyzing the world of the Chinese activist and the roles of Twitter and Weibo, an approach is needed that draws on the empirical evidence from case studies rather than relying too often on the opinions of others and allowing generalizations that contradict each other.

To be sure, Twitter is substantially different than any of the Chinese social media channels. Despite the announcement that Twitter will field government requests to censor material (which was subsequently lauded by the Chinese government), the policy will be implemented through what Twitter has explained to be a transparent process and will not take the form of removing content. Instead, Twitter stated, it will only delete content entirely based on a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request that has little to do with the movements that occurred across the Middle East last year. Moreover, most governments with users on Twitter would find themselves in the midst of a public relations nightmare if they pursued censorship for all but the most extreme circumstances. There were proposals from the British government following the 2011 England riots, but a later study concluded that censoring Twitter wouldn’t have prevented the public disorder.

Positively, Sullivan did point to evidence of censorship that demonstrated the differences between operating within Twitter and Weibo, including the prominent case of A* W*iwei. Examples such as this, along with lists of censored words that have frequently turned up and even A* W*iwei’s brief appearance on Weibo last week, are what paint a picture for what activists experience. However, when following this approach, it’s equally important to include mundane cases. There has been significant press covering extreme examples of crackdowns, but not as much information available on what the censors approve. Although I wouldn’t want to overlook the instances and consequences of censorship, websites like Chinasmack.com and Chinahush.com provide limited translated access into what Chinese netizens see, giving a more accurate understanding to non-Chinese speakers of where the accepted boundaries lie.

The system itself also needs a deeper explanation that explores the politics behind the CCP’s policy. Sullivan failed to fully put it into context and didn’t touch on the offline issues that drive much of the activism. For as much as is made of what’s happening online, the ultimate goal is to have an impact offline on a wide range of issues that matter to the people.

In short, Sullivan argues that even as Twitter allows for some level of organization among activists, it is essentially isolated and thus a non-force. On the other hand, he concludes that Weibo has become an influential tool for Chinese netizens, despite its self-censorship. Ultimately, Sullivan’s attempt to correct misconceptions Western media has about Twitter’s influence on activism around the world has caused him to marginalize Twitter while crowning Weibo and ignoring other Chinese social media channels.

Though an interesting conclusion that Chinese Twitter users are secluded in their own world of like-minded activists, cut off from the rest of China, their presence need not be limited to the Twitterverse. The modus operandi of activism is based on enacting change through adapting. They have multiple accounts, on Twitter and Weibo. They use code words. And finally, word-of-mouth continues to have powerful meaning, so the dialogue that happens on Twitter does sneak through cracks in the Great Firewall. That’s what allowed A* W*iwei to have more than 10k followers within a few hours on Weibo, and that’s what will continue to happen until the Great Firewall becomes a wonder of the ancient digital world rather than a functional entity continuing to ‘protect’ China.

Editor’s note: a few terms were slightly masked (***) in order to avoid GFW issues, if possible.

Review: A Tale of Two Microblogs in China is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

China is becoming a new frontier of social media, with more and more advertising spending on the digital brand promotions. Within this yet to be fully explored marketing field one particular area is however much more matured than the rest, it’s Search Engine Optimization. It is the fundamental base channel of getting your information out into the digital space. This coming April 16-18th in SES Shanghai is coming back for another tour with an impressive host of industry experts to share with you the latest trends, best practices and case studies of how your information can be optimized through search engine.

When we talk of search engine Google as the distinct market leader simply cannot be ignored. From Google attending as a keynote speaker Avinash Kaushik will be speaking about Why We Should Optimize in the Digital Age. Also among speakers are Mark Vozzo of SalesForce, Chris Maier of Milward Brown etc.

TechRice will be present at the event as a media partner; we will update with you our interesting findings and interviews with the speakers.

Also for TechRice readers registering as a participant SES’s organizers is granting you a special discount, click here to register.

We look forward seeing at SES Shanghai 2012.

SES Shanghai 16-18th April, Let’s Talk Social Media and Search Engine Optimization is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

Think of the favorite storybook from your childhood, and add touch. The premise is simple: you’re the master of a tiny island (actually, the back of a big yellow whale) that’s home to an adorable piglet. It’s like a kid’s version of the popular iPhone game, Pocket God.

Your nominal goal is to fulfill piglet’s wishes, although that’s really just a guide to discovering the charming surprises of the little island. Gameplay is open-ended, and opening one door often unlocks several others: One door Roll the snow to make a snowball. Combine snowballs to make a snowman. Dress your snowman.

Nearly every element on the island is touchable, swipeable, pinchable, rollable, or blowable. If you get stuck trying to achieve a goal, piglet has a mailbox with hints to guide you on your way: [blow on the ice so that it hardens and piglet can ice skate].

Whale Island in Winter is the second title by the Chinese developer, Pama Kids. I sat down with the founder, Yifei Xu, to discuss the pedagogical philosophy of the game. After graduating with a bachelor’s in biomechanics engineering, Yifei got his master’s in a subject he truly loves, psychology. After previous roles in user experience at InnovationWorks and Dianxin, he decided it was time to pursue his own vision.

Yifei says childhood for many Chinese is often sheltered and stressful–it’s like they’re on their own little island. But instead of making it a first-person hero story, Yifei wanted to make children realize someone else’s dreams. The first such character is piglet, but there may be more to come in the future.

Winter Island in Winter was also one of a handful of apps to demo Adobe’s GPU accelerator technology at GDC last week, which supports thousands of active elements on the screen at one time. It’s a visual feast of animation.

It was just released today and is available in the iTunes store for $5.99. I recommend you check it out, and not just for the kids.

Whale Island in Winter Will Delight More Than Just the Kids is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo

The Singularity University’s China Competition asks one question for Chinese thinkers: “What new product or service can you create, through leveraging technology, that could improve the lives of 10 million Chinese citizens within 5 years?”

This challenge is open to academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, and anyone else in China who is ready to transform their innovative ideas into reality.

The prize is a a scholarship of $25,000 to attend the 2012 Graduate Studies Program (GSP12) at Singularity University in the Silicon Valley, California. From the site: “This 10-week interdisciplinary program brings together entrepreneurial leaders and top graduate and postgraduate students from around the globe to explore solutions aimed at solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”

The scholarship is in partnership with Bailie Gifford investment managers and was brought to our attention by Web2Asia.

Think Big: Win $25,000 to Study at Singularity University is a post from: TechRice Follow TechRice on Facebook, Twitter, or Sina Weibo