btrax blog

MyTown takes social networking to whole new level – beating giants like Facebook to the punch through its addictive location-based gaming approach.

Much like Foursquare, which has recently emerged as a serious challenger to Yelp, interaction isn’t limited to only personal communication, but engaging the user by having them make their neigjhborhood and environment part of the experience.

It will give you a whole new experience on exploring your own city or others, because of its central gaming elements. The user (or player) can “purchase” real places near your location, such as a Starbucks., then collect rent from people who visit your places. The experience is like playing Restaurant City on Facebook, but in real life.

As similar social gaming platforms in Asia have experienced, MyTown has zoomed from a small startup founded in 2008 to a 800,000 users platform with 3.5 to 4 million check-ins per day. The brains behind MyTown is Booyah and CEO Keith Lee says that average users spend 50 minutes per day on MyTown.

Because of Foursquare, the gaming concept of check-ins has gained traction and is gradually becoming a must-have for social networking site. Even Yelp is getting into the action, rolling out a check-in function on its iPhone application. Facebook is also currently developing this function too.

One of the reasons Facebook has lagged is that gaming has not been a core part of its business plans, instead farming it out through APIs to secondary app developers. Yelp was also founded on very different community principles, rewarding an elite, serially posting set of super-users.

By comparison, MyTown was developed by a group of veteran game designers.

As smart phone ownership and usage continue to rocket upwards, Foursquare and MyTown will only grow, either eclipsing their competitors or more likely get acquired by their more heavily funded counterparts.

如果有人問你美國十大最受歡迎的網站，你大概可以很快的說出幾個耳熟能響的網站像是谷歌, 臉書, ebay, 和維基百科。

但是你可以說出中國十大最受歡迎的網站嗎？

我們所認為的網路其是是由幾個最常用的網站所架立起來的。但是, 這些網站可是因國而異。

隨著所有的企業持續尋找新的市場，尤其是在亞洲，想要成功的打進亞洲觀眾的市場，知道當地的網站趨勢變得最重要不過了。

接下來就利用Alexa的中國最多人流覽的網站排名來測試您的對中國的互聯網世界的知識與了解吧：

1. Baidu.com
百度就好比是中國的谷歌。這是最流行的搜索引擎，索引超過 7.4億的網頁，80萬張圖片和1000萬個多媒體文件。百度也是第一個中國公司在納斯達克上市的上市公司。

2. QQ.com
在中國沒人使用AIM或谷歌聊天。在中國，QQ主宰著即時信息平台，而其用戶為300多萬名。它包括了視頻，網上購物，搜索，遊戲和鈴聲下載。

3. Google China
儘管谷歌在中國落後於百度搜索，谷歌的中國引擎仍然有30％的搜索市場並吸引了3.380億互聯網用戶而站穩了中國網站的前三名。

4. Sina 新浪新闻中心
成立於 2001年，Sina.com是全球最大的中文娛樂門戶網站，擁有差不多100萬註冊用戶。用戶可以閱讀新聞，與其他人討論，和瀏覽照片。

5. Taobao
淘寶網是由阿里巴巴集團，擁有百分之78的中國國內網絡線上消費，它就像是中國的亞馬遜網站。以其超過170萬的註冊用戶，它已成為人們在中國主要的電子商務網站。

6. Google
Google 英文網也以卓越的網路流量而擠進了中國前十大網站。

7. 163.com 网易
163.com是一個快速發展的網絡門戶網站，現在每年已有180萬瀏覽人次。該網站主要專注於線上遊戲，而大多數的人都在玩線上遊戲當他們去163.com。

8. Sohu 搜狐
搜狐是另一個中國的搜索引擎。它提供最新的新聞，信息，娛樂和通信。它同時也吸引了2.5億名訪客去玩它的線上遊戲。

9. SOSO 搜搜
搜搜是QQ的姊妹公司 – 兩者都是網絡巨頭騰訊的旗下公司。它正在中國迅速的增長，並以分享照片，娛樂和音樂萊吸引廣大的用戶。

10. Youku 优酷
中國自主開發的YouTube已吸引了1.49億個用戶，而57萬名用戶來自於網吧。它的2009年年收入為人民幣2億。僅僅在2009年10月, 用戶總共花了2.29 億個小時在該網站上收看視頻。

照片取自於 Peter Fuchs

What’s Beyond Web 2.0?
It’s been a while since Sramana Mitra has defined “Web 3.0”. She predicted that the next generation of Web technology would aim to integrate a variable “Place” with Content, Commerce, Community, Context, Personalization, and Vertical Search. And the trends are increasingly bearing out that description.

Nowadays, for example, you search for a local (community) car dealer near you. You see the locations on maps, and you can drive there instantly. But if I were a customer, I would need more information.

Applying Social Media & Geo-Location Tools
For example, even after Toyota’s ecall news, suppose I am still interested in the gray color the Prius with a sun roof. I want to test drive it to make sure that the pedal problem is fixed.  I want the best deal. Which dealers have the exact car in stock? I don’t want to waste my time driving around to dealers on the map to find the answer to my question.

According to Sramana, the “place” variable is more than just location, but it shows where ‘things’ and ‘places’ are that you are searching for through GPS. Then people want to take actions. They want to visit the place and make a purchase or dine out after they search “Place”.

So people want to be sure that they do not waste time when they visit these places. They want to know inventories, available spots, menus, and other information when they search for their target places.

The Open Source Era
As these data became accessible by the general public,  it will get difficult  to draw a line between trade secret and public information. If a competitive company gets the data of your inventories and prices, it can take an advantage of them. They may offer a lower price of the same item or they may promote an item in different colors which you don’t have.

Suppose you want to protect your website code from viewers, then you need to hide the “View Source” option. If you want to disclose anything to a certain group of people, you could send out passwords and log-in names. But it prevents timely interaction and people may not want to go through the trouble of getting login information.

Open Information Speeds Up Innovation
It is said that Silicon Valley has a spirit of sharing information, reflected in its very high employee mobility rate. They also move within a small geographic area. And people talk! So it is realistically hard to keep trade secrets. Even Apple has been relatively unsuccessful in fully hiding its next major product release up to a year in advance.

In addition, it is said that Silicon Valley does not appreciate people suing former employees over trade secret violations.  So it seems that the Silicon Valley’s love for sharing information is likely to prevail, which in turn helps drive innovation at an ever faster speed.

Photos by xwelhamite and rnair

If someone asked you to name the top 10 websites in Amercia, most likely you could come up with a few or even most of them. Google.  Facebook. eBay. Wikipedia.

But could you name the top 10 in China?

What we think of the web is shaped largely by the few sites we use constantly. But those sites can differ widely country to country.

As businessness continue look for new markets, especially in Asia, knowing web landmarks becomes critical to succesfully navigating a foreign audience’s home landscape.

Towards that, Alexa’s ranking of the most trafficked sites in China is a good test of your knowledge of China’s Internet world:

1. Baidu.com
Baidu is the Google of China. It is the most popular search engine site, indexing over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. Baidu was also the first Chinese company listed on the NASDAQ-100.

2. QQ.COM
People in China do not use AIM or Google Chat. This is were juggernaut QQ comes in with its popular instant message platform serving over 300 million users. It includes videos,  online shopping, search, games, and ringtone downloads for users.

3. Google China
Although much is made of Google lagging behind Baidu in search, Google’s China engine still has 30% of the search market while hauling in enough traffic to make the top three among all website in China with 338 million internet users.

4. Sina (新浪新闻中心)
Founded in 2001, Sina.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal with almost 100 million registered users. Users can read news, discuss with others, and browse photos.

5. Taobao 淘宝网
Taobao was founded by Alibaba Group and is the Amazon of China with 78 percent of the Chinese domestic online consumer market for online shopping. With over 170 million registered users, it has become the primary e-commerce site for people in China.

6. Google
Google’s English site also performs very well in China with a healthy showing in traffic.

7. 163.com 网易
163.com is a rapidly growing web portal site with 1.8 million visitors annually. The site’s primary draw is online gaming, and majority of the visitors visit the site to play online games.

8. Sohu 搜狐
Sohu is another search engine that provides latest news and information, entertainment, and communications. It attracted 250 million visitors with its online gaming.

9. SOSO搜搜
SOSO is a sister company of QQ – both are owned by web business giant Tencent. It is rapidly growing more popular in China with users drawn in by photos, entertainment, and music.

10. Youku (优酷)
China’s homegrown YouTube 149 million unique visitors and 57 million visitors from internet café, translating into RMB 200 million of revenue in 2009. Visitors spent a total of 229 million hours on the site in October 2009 alone.

Photo by Peter Fuchs

Silicon Valley is the place where Netscape lost its war. The competition of browsers is fierce and harsh here. But without fear, a new browser has entered the market. It was born in Japan. It is named Lunascape. It is very Japanesque when you see the design templates of the background which you can choose from. They have samurai and kimono color backgrounds.

Lunascape opens multiple windows vertically

Lunascape is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. It has been downloaded over 15 million times and it’s available globally in 11 languages. The download is free and you can open three different web design engines in one page and they are Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (Firefox), and Webkit (Safari and Google Chrome). They say they are very fast with the triple engine and triple add-ons.

Professionally, I enjoy it when I have to test sites with different browsers. All I need to do is to open all three of them in one page and compare the layout. All three pages can be displayed vertically or horizontally in one page. It is pretty convenient.

The question is how much market share Lunascape can get in this competitive market. Internet Explorer is dominating because Microsoft bundled with computers. Since Mozilla has Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) and Mozilla Corporation (for profit organizations) to support Firefox, the non-profit gets donations which are used by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox gets money from Google by having its search engine on the browser, but besides that it is said that they get donations.  And the strength of Firefox is that it is an open source browser. Everyone tries to fix the problems andmake it better. Lunascape is not an open source browser yet.

Black pins of Firefox Photo by flod

Since Google came out with its own browser, I doubt how much longer it will stay generous to other browsers. The competition will be fierce. But all browsers have passionate fans to protect them. It seems that Lunascape survival depends upon how many passionate fans it can create.

隨著手機網路的技術日益成熟和普及,越來越多公司利用手機網路的方便性來開發它們新的產品，而社交網站就是一個最好的例子。最近最受矚目的莫過於Foursquare了。Foursquare是一個以所在地為基礎再加上整合了遊戲內容的社交網站。 當用戶到了一個地方就可以在手機上用Foursquare “報到” (check-in)以取得分數或徽章, 在同一個地方裡, “報到” 越多的人就可以變成 “市長” (Mayor), 而“市長” 有時還可以獲得特定的促銷。

雖然Foursquare還算是相當新的公司，但是在短短幾個月就吸引了40萬位瀏覽人數，而隨著Foursquare已經越來越受歡迎，最近更多人在談論的就是Foursquare 和Intel 的合作。在今年的消費者電子展(CES 2010)，Intel充分利用了Foursquare來吸引大眾的目光也更進一步達到了宣傳的效果。

隨著以所在地為基礎的社交網站越來越受到矚目, 以讓用戶分享自己去過的地方的經驗而出名的Yelp也加入了競爭的行列。 雖然還不知道最終誰可以在所在地為基礎的社交網站中領先群雄, 但毫無疑問的是, “報到” (check-in) 這個新的點子將會越來越常出現在我們日常生活中。

Photos by Byron Bay Food and Joshua Kaufman