Sina Blog’s Little Assassin in Feeds

Chanced upon Sina’s smart “assassin” embedded in the feeds. Take a look at a normal blog post (above) first.

Atom OR RSS feeds are not popular in China; not at all though blog platforms like Sina Blog does provide RSS feeds (you can get it from firefox address bar for example) though it’s not obvious on the interface. Social networking sites like RenRen offers blog like function which also allows users to import blog posts by providing blog URL into its platform.

Sina inserts one line of texts with link to a special landing page promoting Sina Blog service:

blog RSS Feed Item

I asked friends previously when I was importing self-hosted wordpress blog and no one actually realize I have a self-hosted blog, not to mention which platform I was using. The above imported blog post is in my current renren account and it’s a pretty good tactic from Sina to promote its blog service and win more users.

However, from usability perspective, it could confuse normal users and some may think blog author inserted it. On the other hand, Sina seems not ready to monetize the feeds yet.

China Internet Statistics 2009 Summary

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 news
    • search engines.
  • Top 3 fast growing online applications
    • Online payment
    • Travel booking
    • Online stock trading
  • Male Internet users v.s. Female: 54.2% v.s. 45.8%
  • 10% of China internet users don’t have income; 30.3% have a monthly income of over 2000 yuan.
  • An average, an China internet user spends 18.7 hours per week online.
  • Total search engine users: 280 million, up 38.6% from previous year
  • Total bloggers: 221 million
  • Social networking sites users: 176 million
  • Online shopping users: 108 million, up 45.9%

How Chinese bloggers make their fortune online

chinese-blogger

As many consumers from all parts of the world, Chinese consumers turn to blogs and forums for product reviews before they buy.

Reviews from popular bloggers or active members of a forum often matter a lot in consumers’ decision making; however, many consumers are not aware their favorite bloggers could be as well a stranger to the product or service herself.

A 27 year old girl Xu Shan (alias) quit her job about a year ago turning into a full-time blogger and making around 5000 yuan per month.

XUSHAN used to work for AUPRES (a cosmetic brand) and  is very familiar with cosmetic products. She shared tips and insights on different cosmetic products. As the quality of her blog posts is generally high, her blog gradually became popular. She quit her job and became a full-time blogger last May.

According to Xu Shan, it’s not easy to get a “customer” to pay for blog posts. The total page views have to be at least one million. Her blog has accumulated over 1.5 million page views at the end of last Oct when she received her first payment – 200 yuan for a post about 800 characters.

Now Xu Shan charge on average 500 yuan (US$73) for one blog post. She shared that the key to success in blogging is to write high quality post to gain popularity.

She also shared that she did NOT try the product before she blogged about it. The post was written according to the resources that companies provide her.

Xu Shan is not worried about the product quality at all though she admit that many bloggers just publish the product review without ever trying them. She only writes for well-known brands and the chance of readers having a problem with the product will be very low.

Sometimes Chinese bloggers share negative review about a product as well when paid by its competitors.

Most Chinese blogs are judged by the total page views, the number of visitors, and comments. Sometimes Alexa ranking, Google PageRank, and back links are counted as well. Normally it costs about 200 yuan per post and well known bloggers ask for thousands; sometimes over 10,000 yuan per post.

China’s Anti-Blogging Strategy: Tell the Truth, and Fast

via New America Media,

Xinhua published an article titled “Ten Suggestions for Local Governments on How to Respond to Internet Opinion.” In a commanding tone, the article argued that local governments should release information early, “reporting facts fast, reporting causes with caution.” Crisis management is actually “crisis communication management,” it asserted. It cites that the “open government information regulations” require “being open as the principle, not being open as an exception.”