btrax blog

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

Twitter and Facebook both have global ambitions. And we know global means China on the horizon.

However, Chinese people already have a huge array of social media options – many of them developed by Chinese. These regional players have been quicker to capitalize on their deeper cultural knowledge, but their approach to growth might look very familiar.

The majority of the users are young, and almost 80% of them are referred by friends, classmates, or colleagues. On average, every user owns 2.78 accounts on social media sites, and most of the users use social media for entertainments, and 27.4% of users play mini games.

QQ alumni
The #1 social networking site in China. In terms of registered users, it has attracted the most users out of all social networking sites in China.
572.3 million total registered users

Facebook
The world’s most popular social networking site isn’t big in China. Although China’s government has blocked them without much explanation, dedicated mainland users still find ways to access it.

In contrast, Facebook is hugely popular in Taiwan (which also uses Mandarin) and is one of the fastest growing countries for Facebook with about 367,400 new registered users each week.
5 million Taiwanese users
56,480 Chinese users

Twitter
There are many clone sites of Twitter in China – partly helped along by the Chinese government’s enthusiastic blocking of Twitter.

TaoTao, which was launched by the same creators of QQ, is the biggest Twitter doppelganger with 51 million users. However, the terms of use limit what content can be put on the site.

Despite the challenges, Chinese users thirst for tweets from celebrities like Britney Spears, Shaquille O’Neal and Ashton Kutcher knows no limit and work-arounds proliferate.

Youku

There are 113 million unique users visiting video sharing sites every week in China. The market is definitely attractive for growing foreign social media sites, but most have failed due to the same challenges facing Facebook and Twitter – including video giant YouTube. Youku is the most popular video sharing site operated by Chinese in Chinaand and ranks among the top ten most trafficked site in China.
Estimated 6 million+

Bababian
Bababian is the Chinese clone of Flickr. One interesting difference is that it not only allows users to upload personal photos, but also images of tings to sell from Tao Bao, a popular eBay-like Chinese online shopping site. Combining these two powerful features has been a boon to Bababian and has attracted a substantial following across the social web.

With a constellation of online news, entertainment, gaming communities, Oak Pacific Interactive has become one of the largest and influential web firms in China And they are just warming up make another big move – this month they announced a new social networking site called Hi.mop.com.

Oak Pacific already runs two successful social networking sites, calledRenren (formerly Xiaonei.com) and Kaixin. In China, social networking sites seem to launch every week, but most of them have the exact same page layout and cookie-cutter functions – the volume of sites means even unique sites can have trouble making their voice heard in the crowd.

According to Oak Pacific, Renren was designed for people to build their social circle, while Kaixin.com is positioned as an online entertainment and gaming center. However, Oak Pacific has not clearly defined the positioning for Hi.mop.com.

Based on our observations, Hi.mop.com is simply a social networking extension of the original mop.com, which is their online news and forum site. In other words they may just be trying to maintain traffic by duct taping down visitors with social network offerings. However, Hi.mop.com’s main page is filled with online game ads and it seems unnecessary in the current market. Lacking a differentiation strategy it is likely their site brand will become diluted and drive away key champion users.

Making social networking simply an attraction, rather than the main focus, is increasingly a common gambit in China with few examples of innovation. The usual focus tends to be online gaming; even Renren has many online games on the site.

This is natural simply due to the economics of China – game are more profitable given the absence of an ingrained ad-driven business culture. The online gaming angle does have its risks – the Chinese government already has shut down games related to gangs on Oak Pacific’s primary sites.

How to position Hi.mop.com is critical for Oak Pacific, since it could easily cannibalize the gains made on their other properties. The key question is whether by duplicating Silicon Valley’s dotcom era mistake of figuring out the audience and monetization after building Oak Pacific will also face a rapid fall from its current heights.

集網路互動娛樂，網路新聞社區，和社交網路於一身的千橡互動公司已在中國佔有一席之地, 而如今又發表了新的社交網站－貓扑 Hi. 千橡旗下的社交網站已經有了人人網 (前校內網; 八月才正式改名) 和開心網, 而貓扑本來就是一個網上新聞社區和論壇空間, 所以新的貓扑 Hi將會把千橡的社交網站家族變的更有競爭力.

在中國, 層出不窮的社交網站都想在廣大的市場中佔有一席之地, 但是大部分基本頁面都雷同, 功能也都差不多, 其實並不容易分一杯羹.

根據千橡的說法, 人人網是定位於建立人與人之間的社交圈, 開心則市走網路娛樂平台路線, 但並沒有說明貓扑 Hi的定位. 就我觀察, 貓扑 Hi將可能會把貓扑的網路新聞社區延伸到有屬於自己的社交圈, 不過, 貓扑 Hi的主頁全是網路遊戲的廣告, 讓我替他們擔心貓扑 Hi的出現到底有沒有必要.

不 難發現的是, 中國的社交網站都並不是真正以建立社交圈為主要產品, 社交網路只是像一個吸引點, 最終的目的是網路遊戲. 連定位於網路社交圈的人人網都內建許多的遊戲, 因為網路遊戲的收益比廣告收益要多出許多. 但困難的是, 中國政府的強力干涉於某些最多人玩的遊戲只因為是有關於黑幫的題材.

正因如此, 貓扑 Hi的定位將會非常重要, 不然就會形成自己人打自己人的狀況. 當大家都在想千橡為甚麼要發表了新的社交網站的同時, 我想千橡也在想要如何打出一手好牌吧.

Chrome. 突破傳統的作業系統
幾天前Google 對外正式宣佈明年他們將會推出Google 的作業系統—Google Chrome OS, 也等於對外宣佈他們即將加入OS (作業系統的縮寫)的競爭市場. 暫且不輪Chrome OS的功能性如何, Google 已經震撼了整個科技界.

什麼是Google Chrome OS
Google在官方部落格上表示, Chrome OS 的特色是速度,簡單與安全為主旨. 整個OS是以開放原始碼的Linux為基礎, 而且以網路為中心, 將以往在電腦上執行的應用軟體透過網路來執行. Chrome OS主要是以長時間用網路的用戶為主要客群, 硬體方面, Google選擇從Netbook(小筆電)來出發. 再不久的將來, 以Netbook在中國的潛力和市場, Chrome OS可能會帶起另一個風潮.

Chrome OS對中國Netbook市場的影響
為甚麼Chrome OS的出現這麼震撼呢? 其中一個原因就是它是免費的. 在現今的經濟衰退期, 價格便宜的Netbook(一台平均US$439)已經在大陸持續成長, 而ˋ桌上型電腦和筆記電腦都負成長. 如今再加上免費的OS, Netbook的價格一定會更吸引民眾.

Google當然不會只把Chrome OS放在Netbook裡, 它的目標是進軍到所有個人電腦裡, 但是在行動上網已經非常普及和成熟之下, Google選擇以Netbook來開啟OS的市場, 其實是很聰明的. 尤其在中國和其他亞洲國家, 3G和3.5G的基礎都已經非常扎實, Google的加入更可以擴大Netbook的市場.

未來
雖然現在市場反應褒多於貶, 但是並不知道市場真正的接受度會是多少, 不過可以確定的是已經有很多的電腦和科技廠商, 包括: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Pacard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, 確定會跟Google 合作, 就讓我們拭目以待吧！

Photos by nDevilTV and Somewhat Frank

Chrome. A futuristic OS
A couple days ago, Google announced they will release their own operating system—Google Chrome OS, which means they are officially competing with Microsoft on every scale. No matter how useful or not Chrome OS turns out to be, Google has shaken the whole tech society.

What is Google Chrome OS
In Google’s official Blog, the key aspects are speed, simplicity, and security. It will be open-sourced and will be running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. The web is the platform, which means the browser is the UI, and you run everything through the browser. Chrome OS is designed for people who spend most of their time on the web, and in terms of hardware, Google chooses the netbook as a starting medium. Based on the potential market of netbooks, Chrome OS may be leading a new trend in the near future.

The influence of Chrome OS on Chinese netbook market
Why is this announcement so powerful? Because the OS is free. During this economic recession, the low-cost netbook (average price US$439) is growing constantly while desktop and laptop sales are dropping. Wow with the free OS, the price of a netbook will be even more attractive.

Google does not only focus on netbooks; its ultimate goal is to be on every PC, but since mobile internet is extremely popular and mature in China, starting with the netbook is a genius move. In many Asian countries and China, the foundation of 3G and 3.5G networks is solid, so Google can definitely expand the market of the netbook.

Future
Although the pros outweigh the cons right now on the market,  we don’t really know how well the market can accept this new product, but what I can assure you is there are many computer and technology companies who will partner with Google such as Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Pacard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Let’s wait and see!

Photos by nDevilTV and Somewhat Frank