Archives - Business
08/10/2005
A Reuters article about Bokee.com and China’s blogging market went online this morning, Many thanks to Sophie Taylor, Reporter from Reuters and the author of this article.
Bokee, which was set up in 2002, claims the biggest share of China’s blogging market with about 2 million registered users, and said it is adding 6,000-10,000 daily.
Since blogging services are usually free, companies make most of their revenue from advertising.
Bokee’s Wen said he might begin to charge for blogging services at the end of this year, but still saw most of the company’s revenue coming from advertising and wireless charges.
Bokee’s site carries ads from the likes of Dell, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, although the firm declined to say how much revenue it generates.
I’ve exchanged some emails with Sophie in the last two weeks. She had done a phone interview with me and Fang. Since Bokee had some mis-leading report before due to the bad news translation, we are carefully dealing with the numbers and figures this time, especially the funding amount, IPO plans and amount other issues.
Tags: blogging, bokee, china
209 Comments
06/ 1/2005
The story has been widely reported by Chinese media, which makes huge reaction over China’s internet and blogosphere.
A Dell account manager named “Chris” sent an email to a customer saying that sales of IBM machines are “directly supporting/funding the Chinese government.” The picture below are the original Email send by DELL’s salesman:
“DELL - an unacceptable Corporation in China” A special report to this incident on BlogChina (in Chinese)
BingFeng’s blog have more details regarding to this incident.
No doubt, the nationalists in China will call for a boycott of DELL products in the coming next. The Email not only damaged DELL’s corporate image in China but also destoried their customer relatioships. Not even to say that will cost their millions of dollars marketing budget to rebuild their branding, Companies make such a mistake are awful!
Tags: china, dell
193 Comments
From a recent interview, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the enterprise innovation strategy inside Google.
“We prefer them to run rampant,” said Schmidt. “The most clever ideas don’t come from the leaders, but rather from the leaders listening and encouraging and kind of creating a discussion,” he said. “Wander around … and try to find the new ideas.”
Google encourages its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time on “something of the engineer’s own choosing,” with the idea that focusing resources on activities that are not directly related to the company’s core business will ultimately lead to new discoveries
The open source community has been particularly adept at attracting some of the “best and brightest of new talent,” in part because it is an international phenomenon, Schmidt said. “I know this is a shock, but not all the best programmers are sitting here in California,” he said.
Tags: business, google, innovation
2312 Comments
05/13/2005
Kantianxia.com, China’s first web-based RSS news aggregator and RSS consulting company had relaunched their service.
Kantianxia first launched their service on last April, which provided a web-based RSS news aggregator and RSS news reader software in Chinese language. It had been ordered to shut down by Chinese officials on this February. The company, urPOS Technology didn’t declare the shut down related to official’s censorship but it was widely believed that the closure is due to some sensitive content had been aggregated in their service.
The new presence of Kantianxia.com was impressive, They are not only had better design of the outcome, but also enriched their service functionalities such as RSS search-engine, RSS knowledge-base and RSS feeds index. They have three kind of RSS products: a RSS reader software, a Outlook edition of RSS reader and a web-based RSS aggregator. I’ve been noticed that kantianxia had officially partnered with popular RSS aggregation company NewsGator, and the Outlook edition of RSS reader and online RSS reader service are developed based on Newsgator’s product.
Good luck Kantianxia.
Tags: blogging, china, rss
93 Comments
05/12/2005
Recently, I had seen a lot of buzz around that Google plans a China operation in Shanghai, one of my blogger friend Topku (currently working at Baidu.com) had post a picture of Google’s office building on his blog couple weeks ago, Some sources point out that Google hired Victor Koo, the former COO of Sohu.com, to lead the company’s Mainland operations. Updates: rumor was declared by Google.
Yesterday, Retuer’s story confirmed that Google won a operation license in China. which will allows the web services leader to step further into China’s market. Google didn’t disclose the company’s hiring of Victor Koo, but some media sources says Mr. Koo was taking a vacation in South Africa and will back to Shanghai soon to take his new role.
Baidu, Google’s largest competitor in China which also planning a IPO to Nasdaq, didn’t make any direct response to Google’s new move. Baidu’s PR policy highly restricted their employees to contact outside media, so no one really get to know their marketing reaction after Google’s setp in.
Google currently has two job vacancies posted under the China section of its Web site, including a marketing communications manager and a marketing director. (It seems that Google take away of those hiring information today).
More curious of Google’s China operation is that how they will deal with Censorship in China to avoid evil.
Read more:
Retuer: Google steps up fight for the China market
Interfax: Approval of Google’s plans to expand Mainland China operations
2878 Comments
04/27/2005
Mariana sent me a email about a Job Opening from Livedoor Inc. They are looking for a Marketing Assistant who would be able to read and write simplified Chinese and speak Mandarin. Details are below, if you are interested in this job and love beaches and waves, please contact Mariana ASAP.
Company: Livedoor Inc.
Job Title: Entry-Level Marketing Assistant
Location: Miami, Florida
Livedoor, Inc. is a leading online media company, as well as an Internet solutions provider to both business and consumers. The Company provides services through eight major business lines including Network & Solutions Services, Software Distribution, Internet Media, Data Services, e-Commerce Solutions, Internet Services Provider and Business Consulting.
Our company is seeking an entry-level Marketing Assistant. Position will report directly to the National VP of Marketing. The ideal candidate must be able to handle multiple projects, excellent sense of prioritizing and problem solving. Read and write in simplified Chinese and speak Mandarin is a must. Ability to travel to Asia is required.
Responsibilities: general computer help and support to the Marketing Team. Assist in development and implementation of marketing and advertising campaigns; maintaining promotional materials inventory; planning meetings and trade shows; maintaining databases.
We are looking for natural leaders, able to motivate and enhance our marketing team. This will require an energetic, results-oriented and positive individual that believes in the true concept of bringing success to the workplace.
Visit us at http://www.livedoorinc.com
To apply, please forward cover letter and resume to Human Resources at [hr (at) livedoorinc.com]
Tags: business, job, marketing, pr
29 Comments
04/26/2005
Google was testing new RSS Adsense in Longhornblogs., the feed works fine in both RSS reader and Blogline’s services. I was wondering that How Bloglines’s RSS advertising business to compete with Adsense? Even if they didn’t launch it yet.
With site-targeted advertising, advertisers set a maximum CPM bid - that is, the price they are willing to pay for every thousand impressions - and pay on a per-impression basis. This means that, unlike pay-per-click ads, you’ll earn revenue each time a CPM ad is displayed on your site. For every eligible impression, both pay-per-impression ads and pay-per-click ads compete in the same auction. Our technology will automatically display the highest performing ads on your pages.
Because of these new features available for advertisers, the number of image ads in the Google advertising network will grow. To take advantage of these ads, and the increased earnings potential that they offer, we encourage you to review your image ads preference in your AdSense Account Settings page.
You can also choose your image ads preference on a format-by-format basis when generating your ad code. For publishers who want to fully leverage image ads, we now provide an image ads only selection.
[Via chris Pirillo]
142 Comments
04/23/2005
From Tony Perkins’ hardcopy report AlwaysOn, the blogazine of innovation, in which he discusses Bill Gates comments on blogging during a private dinner at Gates home on Lake Washington.
“Blogging makes it very easy to communicate. It gets away from drawbacks of email and the drawbacks of a website. Eventually, most businesses will use blogs to communicate with customers, suppliers and employees, because it’s two-way and more satisfying.”
And Tony add
“Gates knows that the referral power of the blogosphere is also exploding and marketing and PR executives must embrace this reality or risk losing control of their messages.”
Via Red Couch
584 Comments
04/22/2005
David Jackson, the former Morgan Stanley telecommunications analyst also is my favorite Blogger who was running China stock Blog. He had a post about the latest interview of BlogChina.com's Founder Mr. Fang XinDong with Pacific Epoch. He gave out the summary from the interview transcriptions. So, as I'm working with Fang and BlogChina in Product and Business development right now, I'd like to add some comments from my own.
Mr. Fang was a passionate person and had some optimistic perspectives on the future of BlogChina. But as David point out that the lack of a clear revenue generating model was the most consideration of to be a sustainable business for BlogChina. Actually it is also the major task for the Team to work out a the health business model after raising the funding. I would like to give out some of my personal perspectives, hope it would help people know more about BlogChina.
First, I want to point out that currently BlogChina's revenue generated from advertising and research consulting covered "big" part of company's routine expense. Hopefully the cash flow will become positive at the end of this year. Now, the company have almost 160 employees with 5 divisions. The series A funding from Softbank was certainly becomes to our operating capital for the business expending. The company's structure was reformed by new management team and secure the money from investor will be put on the right place, make surewon't expend too crazy. The former VP of Legend Capital Tan Yongquan recently joined BlogChina as a new COO. I can say that Mr. Tan was a outstanding man with motivation and good communication skills.
Since BlogChina acquired Blogdriver.com (the previous startup) earlier this year, the combination of two services had over 1 mln register users/Bloggers, over 70% of total are active user (three updates per month will be count as active user). Blogdriver.com will be remained as independent blog services provider. we differentiated the two services to target different user activities and communities.
Blogdriver.com will be develped as a blog hosting service provider, the service used by avid bloggers who want a more flexible and powerful tools. And BlogChina's blog service which we called "Boke Community" will combine with communities components to let individuals to interact with friends, alumni, families and communities. In short, Blogdriver's service for avid bloggers, professionals and "Boke Community" for community and younger users.
As you see that BlogChina's front page is a media portal with high frequently updates. BlogChina.com was widely known as the influential Technology media portal in China. Over 10,000 industry insiders, experts and columnists regularly contribute to BlogChina.com, provide the valuable and profound industrial perspective, breaking news coverage, feature articles, and special reports covering technology, culture, society, economy. The open-source media model was founded by Mr. Fang and his colleagues who had strong background in IT media industry at earlier stage. The portal was attracting a lot of corporation and IT company's advertisements.
Next, we are going to build up a ranking system inside the service. User's content may have chance to show up on the front page if they agree to join the affiliate program. Through the ranking system, the service will evaluate the content base on our algorithm (traffic, comments, trackback and more) and if the post get enough points, the editor will send the title of content to the portal under appropriate category. Also, we are developing a tool which offerring auto-clustering functionality to automatic the process.
Certainly, BlogChina won't become to a web portal compete with other big Chinese portal site such as Sina, Sohu, Netesae. The strategy was clear that BlogChina going to be a professional blog services company and will be an industry leader in terms of service. Let's say in short, We are not a portal, media or technology company, we are a personalize services company. The coming trend of web 2.0 comes from the needs of personalized web, and the major goal of BlogChina is to provide various of niche services to our user such as RSS reader, Social Bookmarking, PodCasting and more, improve user's online interaction, communication and experiences. The social networking will be our necessary components, but without the content, the social network still lacks on relativity. The combination of Social network and Blogging lead the Road to Personal Portal.
Back to the business model, there are lots of market spaces for us to explore for a sustainable business model. We will explore in different approaches to get our goal. In advertising, BlogChina will use various methods to make advertisements target more specific audience. the company already cooperated with Narrowad.com to have the contextual advertisements, and we are going to experiment RSS advertising and tagvertising in the future. In services side, we will provide value added services and applications for bloggers, improve our user experience and service reliability, build up the trustful relationship with our user and makes them comfortable, implement Word of month strategy to strive for user's loyalty, and will differentiate our services and functionality for certain paid services to user.
Tags: blogchina, blogging, business
1968 Comments
04/21/2005
CNET Networks has bought out the assets of PCHome in cooperation with Chinese subsidiaries and affiliates. The price? $11 million in cash payments, with $5 million due at closing and the remaining $6 million due in Q4 of 2005.
Under the terms of the agreement, the founders of PCHome will retain a 10 percent minority interest. CNET Networks does not expect the PCHome transaction to materially impact financials in 2005.
In related moves last year, CNET Networks acquired ZOL and Fengniao, two leading personal technology Web sites based in Beijing.
Via PaidContent.org
Interesting, I was thinking that why CNET choose to buy PCHome but not PConline?
114 Comments
02/ 1/2005
According to FT New, China's biggest search engine company Baidu plans $200M IPO.
Baidu.com, China's largest web search engine, is preparing a New York listing that could raise more than $200m and test the appetite of international investors for Chinese internet stocks. The company, in which Google holds a stake, is backed by US venture capitalists and is believed to have appointed Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs to manage the initial public offering. It is likely to take place on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.
Good news for some of my friends who are working at Baidu, Hopefully the lock-up period won't take that long.
742 Comments
01/12/2005
Wired has a good piece talk about apple’s recent lawsuite against Think Secret. Worth to read. I had learned couple things from it.
The Story: Last week, Apple filed suit against Think Secret for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets following a report about a $500 monitor-less iMac and new iWork software, a productivity suite to rival Microsoft’s Office. Marketing Experts says Apple’s lawsuit against Think Secret? is a strategic but risky move designed to focus press attention on this week’s Macworld.
Lawsuit is a Strategy: Apple’s lawsuit to Think secret more likely a marketing strategy. the purpose of this lawsuite is about generating more publicity. the story gets into border media and people got know this story as a news, inculde the sercets already leak out that apple’s $500 mac computer. It’s a lot of free advertising from the press that was telling the whole country of apple’s new product. This “rumor marketing” works.
The strategy was risky: It antagonize apple’s greatest fans about suing omeone who is devoted to apple’s products. and also gives some unclear information to fans who are still promoting apple’s products. So this kind of stratege may use once but will risk the relationship with loyalists in the future.
Rumor Strategy: This kind of strategy had been long used by politican to manipulate the press. Wipperfurth (principal of Plan B) said “Rumors are often started by the companies themselves. For consumers, Word Of Mouth is the most credible source of information, and the buzz marketing is becoming more and more important to marketers; Indeed, rumors and buzz about companies and products are fast morphing into full-fledged folklore. Folklore is a more profound and enduring version of word-of-mouth. Folklore is how consumers communicate with each other in modern consumer culture. A brand like Apple is driven by a tribe of consumers. The Mac is a tribe, and the tribe communicates with each other through this modern version of folklore—rumors, anecdotes and ritual product usage."
Guy Kawasaki and Buzz Marketing: Apple has long benefited from customer evangelism to bolster its marketing efforts. In the late ‘90s, buzz marketing was made official: Chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki marshaled a formidable cadre of amateur Macevangelists to fight the stream of bad press about Apple, and organized amateur salespeople to sell neglected Macs at big box computer stores.
124 Comments
06/ 3/2004
I caught a news from CNet.com said Firendster hired a new CEO, the new CEO Scott Sassa, who has been president of NBC Entertainment for the last three years. The previous CEO Jonathan Abrams remain company chairman position.
Since more and more social netwoking sites had released, Frienster's competitors were getting more stronger than before. inculde google's orkut.com, lycos, even Microsoft's Wallop, although they are focusing on different fields, the concept are the same, the goal is the same too: let more internet users join their Social networking service. No doubt, these SNS service are too much for me, maintain one social networking service is ok, but when I recived 20 invitation emails a day from different services, it drives me crazy to deal with. Also, keepping update my profile in different service is hard because of there no standards, each service has their own focus and functions, to update in various versions of my profile is annoying.
More service, more chioce. but eventually, just few of them would survive after the phnomenon.
901 Comments
04/15/2004
China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 9.7 per cent in the first quarter, exceeding consensus estimates and raising further doubts over the effectiveness of Beijing's effort to cool the economy.via FT
Compare with last year GDP average 9.1% increase, the market was blooming really fast indeed. In the same day in South China, the 95th Guangzhou Commodity Fair opens, over 27,500 exhibition stands this year. More and more multinationals are getting involved in China’s market. Although the economy grew, job market is not optimism for students. Probably 50% of Graduates may not get a job in this year. I’m not a analyst, I don’t know why the economy grew fast but the demand is still weak.
586 Comments
04/10/2004
From CNet
In its last two fiscal years, the Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker has exceeded the 14 percent yearly revenue growth it needs to reach that goal, Dell said at the company's annual analyst meeting in Austin. Thus, the company expects to exceed $60 billion relatively quickly.
I am not a Dell fan, and I'm not interested inDell's computer either. Dell's cheap Desktops and ugly design laptops are flooding all around me. Most of my friends are using Dell-made PCs. everybody envied to own a Apple computer, but all of them give in that unbelievable high price. That's why Dell reach their goal incrediblefast.
9 Comments
02/12/2004
Astounded the financial world that Comcast Corp the cable television giant now faces a daunting task in selling the blockbuster combination and announced a 487 billion deal to bid for Walt Disney Co. This unsolicited bid makes Disney extreamly on edge.
Just couple days ago I heard Pixar Animation Studios ends its Disney deal in 2005, Pixar produced a lot of incredible, well know animation movies for Disney in the past few years, Toy Story, Finding Nimo, Monster Inc etc.
No wonder, that's a big shock for Disney lost a such creativity producer. But now they have to be faced with a more tougher situation. Business competition are always astounding us no matter how big company it is. Market are making changes everyday. Netscreen, a security technology company which I recommanded to my manager to use their product at PN. right now are been buying by another Network giant company Juniper Network corp.This is Market economy.
Releated Reading:
Investors Frown on Comcast Bid for Disney - AlwaysOn
Hunting Disney - Economist.com
Chinese Version - WSJ
Comcast offers $66 billion for Disney - CNET
Updatae:Disney rejects offer from Comcast Corp - MSNBC
118 Comments
02/ 6/2004
Online advertising and mobile-phone messaging (SMS) give Sohu.com Inc big increased profit in last year. Also its first full-year profit in 2003. Via AlwaysON
Sohu said Tuesday it earned $26.4 million, or 66 cents a share, for the full year under U.S. accounting rules compared with a loss of $1 million, or 3 cents a share, in 2002.
Alike Sohu, other two Chinese internet protals Sina.com, Netease.com also got a big step in profit, they both had a huge revenues in 2003. Netease CEO DingLei almost be the richest man in China since their shares 50 times increased in NASDAQ stock market.
Although those three big protals went to profit and expended their business in other fields like online game, wireless access via mobile phones, but they were losting their reputation gradually. Sexual pic, message and nasty stories all over the site. I think one site attracted visitor not only service but also culture and information quality.
1864 Comments
12/30/2003
I saw this old news on Guardian Onlineblog
"On the day of the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' 1903 flight, a small craft called SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic flight is now possible by a small company working without government help. It also represents an important milestone in Scaled Composites' ambition to win the X-prize, to be awarded to the first non-governmental body to launch a manned spacecraft into space," reports Dr David Whitehouse of BBC News.
Paul Allen announce this supersonice flight for small business in
Scaled.com, The X-prize is $10m for the first privately funded, non-governmental body that can launch a three-person spacecraft into space twice in two weeks.
9 Comments
10/ 9/2003
In business view and concern, how to design a website base on valued web standards. from adaptivepath.com
also a three-stage rollover all with CSS from SimpleBits
4 Comments
08/26/2003
From Koogle
在美国一个农村，住着一个老头，他有三个儿子。大儿子、二儿子都在城里工作，小儿子和他在一起，父子相依为命。
突然有一天，一个人找到老头，对他说：“尊敬的老人家，我想把你的小儿子带到城里去作？”
老头气愤地说：“不行，绝对不行，你滚出去吧！”这个人说：“如果我在城里给你的儿子找个对象，可以吗？” 老头摇摇头：“不行，快滚出去吧！”
这个人又说：“如果我给你儿子找的对象，也就是你未来的儿媳妇是洛克菲勒的女儿呢？” 老头想了又想，终于让儿子当上洛克菲勒的女婿这件事打动了。
过了几天，这个人找到了美国首富石油大王洛克菲勒，对他说：“尊敬的洛克菲勒先生，我想给你的女儿找个对象？”洛克菲勒说：“快滚出去吧！” 这个人又说：“如果我给你女儿找的对象，也就是你未来的女婿是世界银行的副总裁，可以吗？”洛克菲勒还是同意了。
又过了几天，这个人找到了世界银行总裁，对他说：“尊敬的总裁先生，你应该马上任命一个副总裁！” 总裁先生头说：“不可能，这里这么多副总裁，我为什么还要任命一个副总裁呢，而且必须马上？”这个人说：“如果你任命的这个副总裁是洛克菲勒的女婿，可以吗？”总裁先生当然同意了。
这虽然是一个小故事，但却是当代企业家配置资源的一种典型方式！
0 Comments