REKURSIVE BLOG

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