Economy

Everyone has been talking about how economy these days. I read something in one of the forums the other day. It pretty much pointed out the whole Chinese economic model was really messed up. Well, the stock was already down a lot. RMB appreciating, new labor law, squeezed out pretty much all the profits of small companies. according to some stats 30% of the SME on the coast have already closed.

That was before Wall Street crumbles. Now with america going into recession, maybe, import of Chinese goods will sharply decrease, which was how Chinese were making money before. companies are stopping manufactures. a lot of them, factory closing, layoffs. I doubt China has been full impacted by this downturn. wait until Q1, Q2 next year. What is going to happen?? no one know, but lets pray.

So how is digital market will be affected?? first clients have less budget, so media and agencies are going to suffer. But there will still be more people going online in China. so the online population will still increase. More mature netizens will seek for different things online, communities will still be hot. But there wont be any money... internet startups are gonna go through something really hard, especially the ones dont have a clear profit models like SNS and Videos. Their little ad revenue will be cut first by agencies & client. the web 2.0 bubble will fully burst. bad times for new media.

On the upside, marketers will probably pay more attention to the effect of the ads since now the budget is limited. better technology on performance marketing will probably be encouraged and paid attention to. maybe it is a time for Chinese digital market to cool down and really focus on building something nicely instead of blindly expand. Companies focuses on technology will eventually prevail.

When chaos spread, heros arise...

The Future of Sina

Recognized as the most influential internet media in China, Sina has its magic wands. Its news channel, what it was famous for, offers reportedly the best editoral content online. Sports, dominating Chinese sports online media consumption with more than 50% of sports fans read sports news on sina. blog, the new channel quickly attracted some of the most influential bloggers in China, then raised to be top 3 traffic drivers. finance, reading, and woman channels also rank the top in their categories.

Sina is consistent the #1 choice of Chinese advertisers, especially for the high end industry like automobile and real estate. "CEOs read sina." has been the image that people say when they talk about sina. I also heard from quite a few people that sina has one of the best conversion rate among portals with any kind of campaign.

ummm... yum... with internet media changing rapidly, QQ and baidu surpassed sina's #1 traffic ranking in the past a couple of years. other portals are chasing behind it. So, what is the future for sina?

Sina is almost like yahoo, other than expanding to every single new thing there is, it couldn't do much. Sina does feel fatigue sometimes with these kind of endless expansion while competing with the leader of the category, giving up their iAsk search and striking a deal with google was a perfect example. UC instant messenger was also a complete failure.

Sina seems like not really favor acquisitions, other than some SP aquisitions, it failed to acquired some of the best vertical sites (arguably). However, itself was involved in quite a few rumors of being acquired, Google, Focus Media, Yahoo, including a hostel takeover attempt by SANDA, a freaking game company. Come on... ...

I spoke at one of sina's conferences for advertisers. Just out of curiousity i looked through their channels. I have to say, it is a bit messy. dead links, duplicated sections, outdated stuff are everywhere. yuck...

With nowhere else to expand to other than China, unlike Yahoo, Sina will have to think about something else other than catching the wave of internet booming in China. With the 40% year by year growth of Chinese internet users, Sina will stand on the top for another 5 years probably. but What is going to happen beyond that?

Make some bold moves, at least...

The Future of Social Network

an analyst from some investment bank asked me during a consulting session, "what is the future of social network?"

"will there be an organic business model?? "

That is a good question...

that is a question for myspace, facebook, bebo, and gazillion of other Social networks.

is it really showing a KFC ad right next to your profile because your are african american and call it demographic targeting??

certainly not...

adidas Olympics

http://2008.adidas.com

My New Year Thoughts on Online Video

Follow my last thought on video, which is the cynical one as always. I thought about how video can turn out. I'm gonna check back in 3 years and see if i am right about this.

- Content is still the king. platform, yes, but in the end it is called platform, like you have a theater where people come to watch movies or shows or your brother trying to hurt himself by riding the bicyle backwards. eitherway, ur show gotta be good. But amatuers are just not. even reality tv shows are professionally editted. so all video sites gotta create their own content. professional content that is good enough for people to come and watch.

- Interactive, so what is the difference between online video and tv?? it better not be the same because i will never get a 42 inch screen latop. so interactivity or something, something creative, gotta come into the place to virtually separate online video and tv. i dont what it is. It will be fun and cool and magical.

- Live, what? how about viewing stuff in my control? i am gonna say no. you can watch different videos, but it will never beat live experience. why? because time only goes by once. creating live video programs put people together at the same time and do cool stuff together. just like u can buy cds but it will never be like concert experience.

- Business model, okay, serve ads. thats cool. but it doesnt generate enough money. so put ads on live programs, u get much high exposure at timely basis. better. but is interenet so limited within advertising? no there gotta be some more, internet is not only a medium but also a channel that can be used in a lot of business sense. For example i saw this company has video site where products in the site are being sold on the side of the program. nice video + ecommerce. fantastic.

The Future of Video Sharing

Someone asked me what is the future of video sharing.

I mean what exactly is the business model here. is it really gonna be sharing some wacky video some 16 years old made on his handy cam and preroll an pepsi ad?

i doubt it.

Who's going to pay for the advertising technology made in China?

so who is going to pay for the advertising technology made in China? that is my question after attending a couple of product meetings. It is common when people laugh at how shitty chinese technology company is. But if you think carefully, you might realize no matter how fancy it is, no one is willing to pay for it. No wonder there is not a single company that is solely standing with online advertising technology.

Not advertisers, they got money, but technology's too much trouble. they only want a 1 stop shopping center where everything they need is offered, packed and put into their trunk. All they need to do is give away the check. they are like fat men watching ESPN in rocking chairs, so far agencies are feeding them nice beer and fried chicken, the chair is rocking, they are happy.

Not agencies, they are too busy feeding fat men beer and fried chicken. With poorly trained & understaffed service teams, They really dont have time for another guy coming in tell them something no one understands. Plus, fat men is fine with beer and chicken in China, agency dont need to do that.

Not publishers, they don't wanna spend that kinda money. We are in China, so naturally dont expect much. All those expensive technology softwares really cut down their profits. Labor is cheap, your management system probably cost more than hiring 10 college grads to do it. Of course they might not be as good, but close enough in Chinese standards.

Not VCs, they know what makes money, what not. Chinese tech guys might be cheap, but there is nobody that's capable of leading a development team in China and compete with sophisticated western technology companies. On top of that, communication difficulties kill, not enough english speakers, "DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHATS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH"

Not the governement, IT is new and lucritive, there are already a lot of capitals in it. Why do i need to do that while billions of farmers need food, millions miles of road need to be built, weapon need to be made etc etc

So who is going to pay for Chinese online advertising technology??