REKURSIVE BLOG

CSDN is back online after 10 days

After 10 days, CSDN is finally back online. The official explanation they offered for the outage:

A newly registered user had posted on his/her blog many links to download Olympics-related videos from P2P sites - because we did not remove this forbidden content quickly enough, CSDN was inadvertently shut down for 10 days. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused. In order for us to provide you the best possible service, please do not post pirated Olympic content here in the future.

Wow one errant blogger can shut down such a high-profile site (FWIW CSDN has an Alexa traffic rank of 768).. go figure.

Lesson: the Chinese government has firm control over the Internet in China, be prepared to face the consequences if you do not understand the current national conditions and play by the current rules and regulations. Rules and regulations can be quite fluid in China; the present Olympics-related general paranoia and lockdown is just one example of the fast changing environment in this country. Also, human cen sors are almost definitely required for any user-generated content website in China.

CSDN a major Chinese Community website for Software Developers has been shut down during the Olympics period

CSDN (China Software Developer Network, www.csdn.net) is an important and popular community website in China for software developers / Techies / IT enthusiasts. It hosts many active IT forums, blogs, knowledge base articles, IT news and an IT job hunting service.

However the website has been inaccessible for the past few days. The website’s operators have yet to issue an official announcement explaining the outage – very strange for such a major and well known website. Reports in the Chinese Internet indicate that CSDN has been shut down by the government because it illegally hosted some Beijing Olympics videos and CSDN might possibly come back online only around the end of September, after the Olympics.

This case is illustrative of the tight control the government has over the Internet in China. Beijing has been very aggressive with enforcing Oympics trademarks in the past few months and probably also became very sensitive to unauthorized Olympics videos after a Korean TV station leaked a video online of a Olympics Opening Ceremony rehearsal.

This isn’t the first time the government has shut down a website – some months ago the Chinese video sharing site 56.com was shut down for a few weeks, probably because they needed to make changes to obtain the official “online video license” from the government. Many online forums are shut down during important Chinese government events, e.g. during every Com munist Party Congress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSDN

Highest paid blogger in Sina.com earns about 40,000 yuan/month

It is becoming more and more feasible for people in China to make a living by blogging. Sina.com, one of China’s biggest portals, hosts blogs for many users. About 4000 users are currently enrolled in Sina.com’s revenue sharing plan, which commenced in November 2007.

While the majority of them only earn about 400-500 yuan/month, there are also bloggers earning thousands of yuan per month. This is not bad considering that the current average pay for office/white-collar workers in China’s biggest cities is about 4000 yuan/month. The highest paid blogger earns about 40000 yuan/month (about 5800 US dollars/month, assuming 1 USD = 6.82 RMB)

The most successful blogs so far are those written by celebrities, or blogs about stock market investing.

Source (Chinese)

City-wide wireless Internet (WiFi) access in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities

China is planning to enable city-wide wireless Internet access in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Qingdao, Yangzhou and Shenzhen.

Beijing
Wireless Internet access is already available for free within Beijing’s city center (Beijing WiCity English homepage) during the Olympics. By the end of 2009, wireless Internet will be available for all areas within the 5th ring road. By the end of 2010, the wireless Internet service will be available within the entire Beijing municipality.

Although the wireless Internet service in Beijing is initially free during the Olympics, usage fees are planned after the Olympics: 0.12 yuan/minute, 20 yuan/day, 60 yuan/week or 80 yuan/month. In comparison, currently GPRS access costs 660 yuan for 6 months and CDMA access costs 620 yuan for 7 months.

Shanghai

Wireless Internet access is already available in downtown Shanghai. The entire city will have coverage before the 2010 World Expo.

Guangzhou

Guangzhou is planning to enable city-wide wireless Internet access in 3 phases, all to be completed in time for the 2010 Asian Games.

Specific implementation timelines have not yet been announced in the other cities. However in general, wireless Internet access in China’s major cities is expected to grow rapidly over the next 2 years, i.e. there will presumably be broad coverage in all major Chinese cities by the end of 2010.

Source:
http://it.people.com.cn/GB/1068/42899/7626258.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/citylife/2008-06/11/content_6752831.htm
http://english.nanjing.gov.cn/today/njnew/polity/200805/t20080520_239022.htm

Baidu Jingjia: Baidu’s equivalent of Google AdWords

Jing Jia is Baidu’s advertising product – their homepage is http://jingjia.baidu.com/ (warning: in Chinese; there’s currently no English translation). Like Google Adwords, Jingjia lets advertisers bid on keywords and uses the Pay-Per-Click model: advertisers only pay when users click on their ads in search results. Jingjia also lets advertisers define targeted geographic areas and daily spending limits.

However one big difference between Baidu Jingjia and Google AdWords is the presentation of ads in search results: Baidu Jingjia mixes ads into organic search results, rendering ads in the same font, colors and appearance as organic search results. The only way to tell if a search result is organic or paid is by looking at the hyperlink URLs - paid results undergo a Baidu redirect, probably to track click throughs. Most Baidu search users will not notice the difference between organic and paid search results. Contrast that with Google, which prominently highlights ads (with a red background) and mark them clearly with the label “Sponsored Links”.

Baidu also has another advertising product called Huo Bao Di Dai, which roughly translates to “Hot-Zone”. These are ads that appear on the right side of the search results page. Unlike Jingjia, Hot-Zone does not follow a Pay-Per-Click model. Advertisers pay Baidu a fixed fee to display ads for a fixed period of time – this is regardless of the number of actual click throughs or actual ad impressions.

Here’s a screenshot that compares Google Ads and Baidu Ads side by side in search results:

A popular online music website in China: 1ting.com

I had mentioned in an earlier blog post that listening to music online is a very popular activity for Chinese Internet users. 1ting.com is one such online music website that Chinese users love. In general I’m quite impressed by 1ting.com’s functionality and ease of use. A search box at the top of the homepage lets users search for music by name, album title, singer or lyrics. A tabbed navigation bar exposes most of the website’s functionality:

• Music (the homepage). Sub-tabs allow users to select different categories of music: Hong Kong and Taiwan Male Singers, Hong Kong and Taiwan Female Singers, Hong Kong and Taiwan Groups, Mainland Male Singers, Mainland Female Singers, Mainland Groups, Popular Western Music, Japanese, Korean, MTVs, Movie soundtracks, Korean Drama soundtracks and Other.
• Top Music Charts. Sub-tabs allow users to select different categories of music (same as above)
• Spaces. A social/user-oriented section where users can share favorite music, albums, singers with other registered users.
• Original Creations. A section where registered users can upload and share recordings of their own singing.
• Dance Music. A section dedicated to dance music.
• Pictures. Contains many pictures of pretty Asian pop music stars.
• Gossip. The latest gossip/news about Asian pop music stars.
• Radio. 1ting.com’s own online radio station.

The website appears to have a very extensive, up to date, well-organized and complete database of music. It’s super easy to find music using their search box, or to just browse around for all kinds of music – there are all sorts of categories and sub-categories on the website (i.e. music organized by genre, singer, album, etc). A little “mobile phone” icon next to the most popular songs lets users send the song to their mobile phones for a small fee.

Best of all, you can listen to any complete song or even whole albums for free online. No downloads are required as the website uses Windows Media Player. The audio stream appears to be CD-quality. Try for yourself – click here to listen to Tupac’s “Greatest Hits” album. Or what about some Craig David? : )

I haven’t researched their revenue model, however it’s apparent that they are at least earning some revenue from ads on their website and fees for sending songs to mobile phones.

Promoting your WordPress blog using social media sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

Do you feel like you are posting great things on your blog – but very few people are aware of the wonderful content and you would like to rapidly expand your readership/audience? Then perhaps you should consider leveraging social media sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Sphinn, etc.

In theory these social media sites allow anyone to post interesting articles/websites which users then vote on. The articles with the most votes are posted prominently on these social media site’s homepages, which can potentially expose your blog to thousands of new visitors.

In practice however, getting votes on these social media sites is a deep science and art – writing great content is a necessary but hardly sufficient first step to getting many votes. In general these social media sites reward their most active users. For example in Digg, it’s recommended that you first befriend other users by digging their submissions, so that they will reciprocate and also digg your submissions. The most successful users also make a great number of submissions to drive the small percentage of submissions that get voted to the top.

If you decide to try promoting your blog using social media, make it easy for your readers to vote for your post by adding voting buttons to your blog:

• Instructions for adding a Digg voting button to your site
• Instructions for adding a Reddit voting button to your site
• Instructions for adding a StumbleUpon voting button to your site
• Instructions for adding a Del.icio.us voting button to your site
• Instructions for adding a Sphinn voting button to your site

There are many articles on the Internet that propose strategies for getting votes on these social media sites.

Beijing online merchants are required to have business licenses?

Apparently, starting from August 1st online merchants in Beijing are required to have business licenses to continue selling on the Internet. It will be interesting to see how this plays out because there has been a lot of debate and resistance to this new requirement – according to this news article as of July 31st not a single online merchant has applied for the required license. Online commerce websites such as TaoBao also have not added any new verification features to ensure that merchants have the requisite business license.

88% of the respondents to an informal online survey on Sina.com do not support this new business license requirement. 86% of the respondents think that this new requirement will have a negative impact on the growth of online commerce in China.

According to the Zhongguancun Department of Commercial Affairs, to apply for the license, online merchants will need to present their property ownership certificate (?), personal identification card and temporary residence registration.

We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks/months:

• Will this new requirement be postponed or cancelled due to strong opposition from Chinese Internet users and websites? Beijing is supposed to be a testing ground before a nationwide rollout of this new requirement.
• Will the government will enforce this new requirement (which will conveniently also make it easier for them to collect taxes on online transactions), to the detriment of China’s fledging online marketplace? A lot of small/casual sellers may be driven away due to the hassles involved in getting and maintaining a license.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/wdxg08/index.shtml
http://business.sohu.com/20080801/n258521239.shtml
http://news.ctocio.com.cn/72/8240072.shtml

WordPress search engine optimization: H1, Title tags, Permalink/URL structure

WordPress is a good blog publishing system. However due to the complexity and fast-paced evolution of the Internet there are actually a lot of tweaks and customizations that need to be done to maximize the power, reach and effectiveness your WordPress blog:

The theme’s index.php: Are the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags used effectively?
index.php defines the appearance of your blog’s home page. Google and other search engines give more weight to words in the TITLE tag and H1/H2/H(n) tags. The H1 tag should probably be used for the title of the blog – this can be the same or different from what you use in the TITLE tag. H2 tags should be used for the titles of your posts. Not all WordPress themes use the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags as described here.

The theme’s single.php: Are the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags used effectively?
single.php defines the appearance of each single post’s page. This is where some themes screw up by using a TITLE string like “[Blog Title] >> Blog Archive >> [Post Title]”, and using the H1 tag on the blog’s title instead of the post’s title. For maximum SEO effect, the TITLE string should just be the post’s title. The H1 tag should only be used once on the page, for the post’s title string. The blog’s title should just be wrapped in ordinary SPAN, P or DIV tags – not in a H1 tag.

Use a search engine and user friendly Permalink/URL structure
The default Permalink setting (e.g. http://host.com/blog/?p=123) is not search engine friendly (search engines like/highlight keywords in URLs) or user friendly. Go to the Settings/Options => Permalinks page in the WordPress dashboard and define a custom Permalink structure that includes your post’s title, for example:
/%post_id%/%postname%/

Stay tuned - in a later post, I will discuss other WordPress optimizations/tweaks like caching and robots.txt …

China’s Internet users - demographics and statistics

The rapid expansion of China’s domestic market is very attractive to foreign companies and investors – however, when entering the China market (in any field) your enthusiasm must be tempered with a good understanding of the risks and the very different nature of doing business in China. The demographics of Chinese consumers are also very unique. For example did you know that:

• 50.4 million people in China access the Internet using their mobile phones. They represent 24 percent (around one quarter) of all Internet users in China. The largest proportion of them are in Guangdong province – 14.5 million mobile phone Internet users.
• Half of the Internet users (just over 100 million people) in China are aged <= 24 years old. 68 percent of the Internet users in China are aged <= 30 years old.
• Only 36 percent of Internet users have attained tertiary/university education.
• Students form the largest segment of Internet users: 28.8 percent
• 74 percent of all Internet users earn <= 2000 RMB per month (that’s about 293 US dollars per month, assuming 1 USD = 6.82 RMB). 86 percent of all Internet users earn <= 3000 RMB per month.
• 33.9 percent of Internet users go online at Internet cafes.
• The most popular Internet applications are (starting from most popular): online music, instant messaging, online video, news, search engines, gaming and email.

I got these statistics from a survey the China Internet Network Information Center released this year. Their website is a great resource - they also have many other different kinds of statistics and information about the state of the Chinese Internet.