Danwei is pointing out that we have had a record month of Jewish-Chinese coverage in the western media. Since I am slowly but surely immersing more and more into China, and as an observant Jew, I find Chinese-Jewish relations very faschinating.

Here is a great video from the Sexy Beijing, about the opening of the first Mikveh in Beijing in modern times. And by the way, good news for all China visiting Jews! There is finally a kosher restaurant in Beijing !

Kaiser reports that the "Chinese Joost" UUSee, just received $23.5 in VC funding from DFJ’s Growth Fund, Highland Capital Partners and Steamboat Ventures. P2P is really flourishing in China with such players as Google invested Xunlei – a Maxthon partner, PPLive and PPStream. I agree with Kaiser’s prediction that it is only a matter of 3G time until we will see mobile P2P services popping up all over China

Update: Talking about the future of video & P2P, there is an interersting article on Technology Review by Hui Zhang called "Peering into Video’s Future".

Technorati Tags: China, Joost, Maxthon, p2p, PPLive, PPStream, UUSee, VC, Venture Capital, Xunlei

After a very good board meeting with Maxthon, I paid a visit to HiPiHi - Chinas answer to Second Life. This came about after I had written a short post on them earlier and got an invitation to swing by their office. Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy) and Xinhua Liu (early investor in HipiHi & Technology Director at Burson-Marsteller).. also joined me.

Armed with camcorders, cameras and curious minds, we invaded HiPiHi physically and virtually. I must say that I was really impressed. I always felt like Second Life was too geeky and to inaccessible, and therefore had only signed in a couple of times and flied around out of boredom.

Not so at HiPiHi. They have been smart enough to realize that most of us deadly are not geeks and need a more user-friendly user-interface to motivate us enough to play around in this virtual world. Although they are just in private alpha, they have come along way with a team of just 60. The user is offered a bunch of pre-fabricated avatars, buildings, hills, rocks, objects and event water to furnish their own worlds. Should they feel for it later, the user can always customize or create any object from scratch as they see fit.

It is clear that HiPiHi has given much thought into making the virtual world more user-friendly. HiPiHi’s CEO Hui Xu (beside me on the picture above) explained to us that the service will be launched in four stages based on traditional Chinese creational mythology (read Kaisers summary for an expansion on this).

Revenues will come from virtual property sales and advertising. And I can definitely see how advertisers will love this. Especially since HiPiHi is targeting the young and cool rather than a bunch of geeks in pajamas or "social media stars".



I shot a couple of short clips of a walk-through in HipiHi-land with a simple digital camera. Comments are both in Chinese & English. More clips here.

I have a very good feeling about HiPiHi and am waiting eagerly for the public launch.

(Image above: Sunset in HiPiHi-land).

I’m off to China on Sunday for the Fourth Annual Piper Jaffray China Growth Conference, March 6-8 in Beijng. I will be a panelist on "Emerging Internet Companies" talking about Maxthon. Piper Jaffray is known for organizing top events (invitation only) and judging from past events – this one looks very promising indeed with a great line up.

It will be a great opportunity for networking and potential Maxthon deals. Top executives from Chinas major Internet , Wireless, Game and Technology companies will be there. I am in particular interested in the Chinese focus group conversation, since I many times wonder what makes Chinese Internet users tick‘.

Following the conference I am meeting with Maxthon Fan & supporter No 1: Kaiser Kuo, rockstar & Group Director at Ogilvy Interactive in China, followed by a Maxthon boardmeeting. It will be great to meet Bill Tai (CRV), David Zhang, Yuzhu (WI Harper), Jeff and Carol (Maxthon) again – just hope it will not be as cold as the last time..

If you want to meet up in Beijing please let me know, schedule is quite tight – but long is the night..;)

Who knows, maybe I even will have time to shoot some cool Beijing street scenes?

Technorati Tags: Beijing, China, Maxthon, Ogilvy

What does navigation-based blogging, Secondlife-like gaming and mobile phones in common? Well, this is the platform run by Japan based mobile marketing firm Naviblog now looking to enter the Chinese mobile space.

China Business Cast has an interesting interview with Naviblog CEO Mandali Khalesi on saying that mobile marketing will drive the adoption of the mobile Web in China.

Piper Jaffray just published a fat report called "The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium". Here are some of its key findings:

• We expect global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011, representing a 21% CAGR (2006-2011).

• The User Revolution. The advertising world is going through a revolution, one that we call the "User Revolution" as it is happening primarily with the consumers, who are taking control of content consumption and branding. We believe this trend will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption and marketing medium.

• "Communitainment." The Internet has increasingly become a principal medium for community, communication, and entertainment–three areas that have collided together and are impacting each other’s growth–generating a new type of activity that we call communitainment.

• The Internet Is Mainstream. The Internet has become a mainstream media outlet that now rivals traditional media for reach and advertising dollars.

• Media Fragmentation. The proliferation of online and offline media outlets has resulted in shrinking television audiences and an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

• The Golden Search. We believe search continues to gain ground, driven by the rise of search as the New Portal, the increasing use of search in branding campaigns, and the local search opportunity.

• We believe Google’s wide variety of non-search-related products creates a virtuous cycle of brand affinity that drives incremental search volume.

• Video Ads Could Drive The Next Wave. We believe Internet video ads could become a game changer for large brand advertisers, who are used to the 15- or 30-second TV commercial

• Internet Usage Patterns Are Changing. Portals maintain the highest reach, but the fastest growing category of destinations is communitainment sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

• Ad networks are experiencing increased demand due to increasing Internet fragmentation, desire for more targeted inventory, increasing usage of networks for branding, and increased site visibility.

• Agencies are rapidly evolving into more sophisticated, technology-savvy entities that combine best of breed offerings.

• Companies to watch: Google (and YouTube), Yahoo!, Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Microsoft, InterActive, Facebook, Craigslist, Brightcove, Yelp, SINA Corp., Baidu, aQuantive, ValueClick, 24/7 Media, Netflix, Wikipedia, MobiTV, Digg, and Hakia to be the most important players to watch.

Like my good friend Kaiser Kuo, Group Director for Digital Strategy, for Ogilvy China, mentions in this new (and great) blog " Ich bin ein Beijinger" : none of this should come as a surprise, but the report is full of eye-opening finding regarding the decline of TV viewing, changing viewing and decline of broadcast TV ad as percentage of total ad spend.

Kaiser who has a unique insight to China (and was very much responsible for Maxthon getting discovered and funded..) is confident that advertisers will flock to video ads and all the opportunities that are opening up for digital media advertising in China .However, he wonders how ready people really are for pre-roll commercials stuffed in to things they want to watch.

I tend to agree with Kaiser, although there is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers, the Internet savvy users might very well prefer to block ads if possible. This is something we have learned at Maxthon and seems to be especially true for Chinese Internet users. Al the sophisticated ad-blockers and filters that come pre-installed in Maxthon has definitely been one of the key driving factors for Maxthon success in China.

Anyway, next week I am flying down to Beijing again to talk on Piper Jaffrays Annual China Growth Conference on behalf of Maxthon. I will then have a chance not only to meet up with Safa and rest of the Piper Jaffray gang, but also to meet with Kaiser again and plot how we can deliver some interesting advertising opportunities together in China.

Thanks to Mark Pols for sending me this fat report!

Bonus: Video Interview with Kaiser I made just before he left the Red Herring.

This is quite amusing. It seems that the interview I gave to ReadWriteWeb a few days ago have stirred up quite some emotions. Believe it or not, Linux Journal calls Maxthon The Real Firefox-Killer...

For the real challenger comes not from Microsoft directly; instead, it’s from  a new browser that uses IE’s rendering engine,  Trident, but which is produced completely independently of the company. This means  that it can offer all the "benefits" of 100% compatibility with what is still  the dominant Internet browser, together with a host of real improvements -  some of which go beyond even Firefox.        This new competitor is called  Maxthon..

BTW, read the comments – quite interesting..

Maxthon for Linux anybody?

Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Linux, IE7, Browsers, Linux Journal, Firefox, Technology

Today I had the pleasure to have lunch with Tangos (aka Chen Huan), the editor of the Chinese “Techcrunch” (but without the commercial tags) China Web 2.0 Review in Beijing. Chen is a product manager at the Chinese Web 2.0 search engine/portal Qihoo (that just raised $25M from US investors) at day and blogger by night. I have been following the development of his blog ever since it’s inception and it has become an important source of information for me on what is cooking on the Chinese Web scene.

Except that it is always nice to meet up with a fellow blogger it was great to hear Tangos view on what’s hot and what’s not on the Chinese Web scene. When I asked Tangos what if there was anything new he found particularity interesting right now, the answer was no. In fact, although Web2.0 companies are mushrooming all over in China, it seems that there is nothing really new happening this year as opposed to last year. That very much seems to echo the sentiments back in the Valley and outside China at large.

When I asked him what he personally found most exciting, he mentioned Douban – the book, music, movie, travel and blog review site.

I know I have mentioned it several times before but I can warmly recommend China Web2.0 Review.

I had a couple of very good days in Beijing with the Maxthon team, some partner meetings and night out. Hong Kong will be my next destination where I will hook up with some entreprenuers and an active Maxthon plug-in developer hope to be able to Vlog that time permitting.

Abover is a picture of two happy WI Harper fellows from our evening out. Yuzhu Xiong , VP and Ping, Analyst.

Piper Jaffray summed up China’s 2005 Mobile Market Share, revealing these takeaways:

• SMS still remains a major revenue contributor
• KongZhong, Hurray! and Tom Online dominate WAP and are best positioned for the transition to 3G
• KongZhong and Tom Online are the most diversified players

Subscribe to Safa’s excellent China reports here & here.