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Written on 21st January 2009
4 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I traveled through China with Mike Butcher, Shel Israel, Christine Lu, Scoble, the guys from Web2Asia, and some other rather inspiring folks last November, we were all impressed by the massive user-base from the country’s largest services.
China 2.0 Blogger Tour
One of them is QQ, China’s largest IM service. Web2Asia’s CEO Georg Godula showed us that QQ has 341.900.000 active users. Yeah! We’re serious here! Almost 342 million active users (also because users have multiple online identities and thus multiple accounts)!
Kenneth Tan, the man behind Gays.com (watch my co-editors Boris and Patrick’s take on this SNS) and editor of the blog Shanghaiist just mailed me to tell this IM giant is about ready to cross China’s borders. They’ve launched some English versions earlier, but this time it’s for real.
The new portal IMQQ.com will allow you to chat with your Chinese friends. Download the QQ2009 Beta for Windows or the Mac version 1.0 beta and start messaging, uhm, instantly.
Written on 20th November 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The problem with crowd sourcing is the overabundance of opinions, suggestions and remarks you’ll get from the community. How to sort these out? And how can you decide which ones can be taken seriously? A possible solution for this selection problem is to add an expert layer.
BloggerInsight has done just so. The service connects Chinese expert bloggers with high tech companies which want to enter the Chinese market. According do BloggerInsight, there’s little reliable market research and that which does exist is expensive and generic. By asking bloggers for their opinion, companies might get better information on how to enter the tough market.
BloggerInsight CEO Lucas Englehardt wants to redefine market intelligence. In the press release he says, “By connecting clients and expert bloggers, BloggerInsight hopes to fundamentally alter the economics of information and lower the barriers to success.”
Then he adds a rather interesting point: “In doing so, BloggerInsight hopes to reward new media for its independent voice”. Of course BloggerInsight just wants to make money, but a new way of monetizing blogging can be an interesting side effect. Most bloggers are experts on their field of interest and their opinion is worth a lot of money.
Bloggers roundtable during China2.0
In the US and Europe, many bloggers act like consultants in their free time – or the other way around. In the hard Chinese market though, an intermediary like BloggerInsight might be necessary. Only if it was just for breaking the language barrier.
BloggerInsight is the portfolio company of Web2Asia, one of the three parties which organized the China 2.0 tour I participated in last week. Read an interesting interview I had with co-founder Markus Fuhrmann here.
Written on 19th October 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When George Godula from Web2Asia (story here) invited me on a trip to China with bloggers like Robert Scoble, Sam Lawrence, and Shel Israel a few weeks ago, you can imagine I didn’t hesitate for one second. Who doesn’t want to gain a deeper understanding of China 2.0? Spil Games is sponsoring my trip, for which I’d very much like to thank Marc van der Chijs and his team!
But you know what? Mashable and VisualCV might sponsor your trip! None of the full time Mashable bloggers was able to join the China 2.0 trip, so they partnered up with VisualCV.com. Tamar Weinberg writes:
We’re going to send one of our dedicated readers to take the trip. The winner gets their airfare paid for, can post about the trip in their blog (if you have one), post on the official China 2.0 blog and may even get to report back to the Mashable community throughout the week-long trip to China.
The trip is led by The China Business Network and co-organized by Web2Asia and CNReviews, the inaugural China 2.0 Tour is sponsored by Edelman Digital China. The tour leaders are taking an interdisciplinary approach by looking at social media, clean technology, gaming, wireless, and other areas where trends in China will affect markets around the world.
I’ve written quite a bit about China, especially their online video market – which looks like one big soap opera to me. Thus I can’t wait to actually visit the offices of the companies that are building the structures for world’s largest Internet market. And thanks to Mashable and VisualVC, YOU might be able to join me. Check out the Mashable post here.
Update: These bloggers will join the tour as well!
David Feng, @davidfeng, TechBlog86.com
Elliott Ng, @elliottng, CNReviews.com
Sheila Scarborough, @SheilaS, FamilyTravelogue.com
Written on 5th June 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you have visited a tech conference lately, chances are high you’re familiar with the tickets from Amiando. This German service – based in Munich – helps event organizers to sell tickets online and is quite popular. Le Web 3 has used their services, as well as DLD, The Crunchies, LIFT08, and next08. Take their solid business model – ask a few percent commission (between 2.5 and 5) – in account, and you’re probably not surprised to hear Amiando is quite a successful start-up. Today, they’ll announce their first round of financing – reports VentureBeat.
Wellington Partners and Adinvest both have invested in Amiando, which is heading for an Asian adventure. After offering Spanish support in March and French in September, the German ticket-selling wonderboys now have a partnership with Web2Asia, a company that helps Western tech start-ups to grow in the mysterious markets of East Asia. With an increasing amount of Chinese events, this market has a lot of potential for Amiando.
Web2Asia co-founder Markus Fuhrmann told me that the sooner a company heads to China, the higher the chances for success: ““A lot of the successes are from companies who came to China very early in their product life cycle, giving them time to adjust before Chinese competition could copy their business model, or create a more culturally matched version.” Well, I’d put my money in Amiando, as they’re only six sixteen months old.
Update: A PR representative from Amiando has just told me that their Asian ambitions are limited to the distribution partnership with Web2Asia. They’re still focusing on the European market.
Written on 25th March 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
During one of the lunches at the LIFT conference in Geneva I met Markus Fuhrmann. He’s the co-founder of Web2Asia. A European service with headquarters in Shanghai that specializes in supporting western Internet companies and Mobile content developers to get a company or service going in China, Japan and Korea. Needless to say, there’s a lot of potential in these rapidly developing markets. Some of their clients are Jimdo (Germany), Xendex (Austria) and Vanilla Live Games. I kept in touch with Markus, and the business he runs turns out to be really fascinating. So I decided to ask him some questions about this hard to comprehend Asian markets.
Markus has a entrepreneurial history in games. His story in China began with an IMBA semester at Tongji University in Shanghai. “In the beginning I both loved and hated it in China, because I started my stay with one week in a Chinese hospital with pneumonia. After recovering and getting used to the cultural and environmental differences, I started to enjoy the dynamics and sheer endless opportunities available here.” He consulted several companies on how to launch in China. When he met his partner George Godula they connected immediately and it made perfect sense for them to team up.
How to bring a product from Europe or the US to Asia
So, when I want to enter the Asian market, what should I take in account? “The East Asian characters. This is a smaller problem for completely web based services but can amount to a lot of work if you have to change your client or back end infrastructure because you forgot to use Unicode and double byte support in the first place. In terms of function and usability there are a lot of things to watch out for, especially in Japan and Korea with the example of mobile phone support, which is crucial.”
“The second important part is the content side. Here you have to take care that the content fits the Asian culture, especially in terms of symbols and language. Another sensible topic is working specifically to local legislation requirements and restrictions on certain content.” I assume Markus is referring to dealing with censorship in China. Which probably brings some conscience issues.
The last part is less complicated and controversial, namely the feasibility of the underlying business model. Markus: “It’s already quite hard to earn money through advertising in Europe and the US, but it is even more difficult to earn money through this model in East Asia. The positive examples have been able to transfer a model of premium memberships, customizable content – micro payments – and value added services.”
Facebook doomed to die
These three different parts seem to create some obstacles for all the global players, since they failed to gain a foothold in East Asia. “One of the most famous examples that didn’t work out in China has been Ebay China, the local competitor Taobao realized that Chinese users prefer much more to buy products instantly than to wait for an auction to end. Same thing with Google; in Korea the company only has approximately 6% of the market share. As for other western hypes, they have yet to make it to East Asia, which are not good signs either. For example, jokes are already going around in China calling Facebook, “fei si bu ke” (非死不可) a transliteration which means ‘doomed to die’.” (more…)
asia, china, china20, Gays.com, instant messaging, mike butcher, qq, Shel Israel, Tencent QQ, web2asia
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