You are here: Home

Tencent Launched English Portal imqq.com for Expats

by Rocky Fu on February 6, 2010

in News

Tencent launched English version instant messenger some time ago and it has recently launched an English portal for expat netizens – imqq.com.

Unlike its Chinese portal qq.com, imqq.com currently seems to focus on local content. Right now, it has included Shanghai and Beijing.It also promotes its English version instant messenger – QQ International (in English, French, and Japanese) which includes a light Mac version as well.

The content covers local events, listings, group, and video.

Bookmark and Share

{ 1 comment }

Baidu Map Integrates Real Time Search

by Rocky Fu on January 28, 2010

in Search Marketing

Click on the image above for Complete Screenshot with Annotations

Baidu Map has launched a very interesting section to show real time search results on the map.

Called “Post Bar Map”, it’s hosted on say.map.baidu.com, latest posts from i Post Bar (Baidu’s twitter like product) related to the search keyword will keep popping up on different locations of the map (user locations).

Bookmark and Share

{ 1 comment }

I’ve been testing a few social media monitoring software for Chinese market (mainland China) lately and found very few good ones. Let me share some tips on sourcing social media monitoring software or online applications for mainland Chinese market.

Language capabilities. If an application does a good job of monitoring online conversations on English keywords, it’s not hard to add in support of double byte characters like Chinese characters. But, it’s important the tool can tell the difference between traditional Chinese (official language in Taiwan, Hong Kong) and simplified Chinese (used by mainland Chinese).

If your English brand name (or your competitors) is very well known in China such as BMW and LV, you do want to monitor English brand keywords as well while no content from English content are returned at the same time.

BBS online forums.
I came across a tool this morning that did a good job of monitoring online content according to the specified keyword; however, no forum results are included at all. Social networking sites and microblogging sites are popular; no doubt. But, online BBS forums are still the place where most online conversations take place.

Do a search in Google and Baidu and identify some popular forums where your brand is mentioned. See whether they are included in the returned results from the social monitoring tool.

Filtering function. Whether you like it or not, people in China copy articles from other sources including the top portal sites. You can expect news content appearing across news sites, blogs, and forums. If the social media monitoring tool can filter out news content from blogs and online forums, it will definitely be very helpful.

Advanced aggregation and summary feature. If a piece of news gets published across different sites, and many people leave comments on these sites, you want to have aggregated comments in one place instead of having to click into each matched item and view the comments separately.

Last tip: ask yourself what actionable results the social media monitoring tool can generate for your China marketing / PR team.

Bookmark and Share

{ 1 comment }

China Internet Statistics 2009 Summary

January 20, 2010

The following statistics are based on data released by CNNIC for 2009.

China Internet users: 384 million, with a penetration rate of 28.9%
Broadband Internet users: 346 million
China mobile internet users: 233 million (60.8% of total internet users)
Internet users in rural areas: 106.81 million
Registered domain names: 16.82 million (80% are .cn domains)
Top 3 Internet applications

online music
online [...]

Read the full article →

Baidu to Launch AdWords Editor like PPC Editor Next Tuesday

January 19, 2010

Baidu is going to launch its paid search desktop editor on Jan 26, 2010. Its official name for the editor is “Baidu Promote Assistant“.
The Baidu PPC Editor looks a lot like the Google AdWords Editor including the following features:

Multiple accounts management
Quick navigations with filter and advanced search abilities
Mass create, edit, and copy keywords and ad [...]

Read the full article →

Baidu Added Two More Links on Homepage

January 19, 2010

Yesterday evening, Baidu homepage was found updated with two more links.
The new homepage has two links added, one link to “baidu map” above the search box and one link to “baidu baike (wikipedia)” below the search box:
Are more links coming to the homepage? What if Google does pull out of China?

var addthis_pub = ‘rockyfp’;
var addthis_language [...]

Read the full article →

Taobao Expands into Offline Retail Business

January 18, 2010

Last week, Taobao announced its entry into the off-line business, authorizing supermarkets, chain stores, and school shops to become Taobao’s official shopping service stores.
The first line of 150 off-line authorized stores opened on January 16, 2010. Taobao plans to open over 30,000 authorized Taobao stores.
It is reported that Hangzhou Taobao off-line stores are co-operated by [...]

Read the full article →

China Online Display Advertising Reached 18 Billion in 2009

January 15, 2010

According to the latest CR-Nielsen report, China online display advertising market reached 18 billion yuan in 2009, up 36.9% from 2008.
The top 5 online display advertising industries

automobiles: 16.1%
fashion: 14.8%
entertainment: 10.6%
computer and electronic products: 10.3%
FMCG: 8.4%.

Top 5 Online Display Advertisers
Top 5 Advertisers with the highest online advertising spend:

Jiayuan.com (online dating): 520 million yuan
VANCL (online apparel): 510 [...]

Read the full article →

Taobao Launched Electronics Mall

January 13, 2010

Taobao just launched Taobao Electronics Mall, a B2C platform for 13 categories of electronic products:

Mobile phone
mp3 player / mp4 player / ipod / digital recroder
Laptop
Computer and accessories / imaging products
Electronics accessories
Office equipment
Memory card / storage devices
Personal care / health / massage equipment
audio-visual appliances
kitchen appliances
household electronics
video games / accessories
Digital camera / digital recorder /

So far, over [...]

Read the full article →

Google.cn Has Already Stopped Censoring Search Results

January 13, 2010

Google this morning issued a statement regarding a “big decision” about Google China operation,
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within [...]

Read the full article →