Podcasters Pushing The Limits In China

NPR’s All things considered , has a very interesting piece on Podcasting in China.

Like everything else Internet-related in China, podcasts are exploding in popularity. From film parodies to pornography, audio and video downloads are pushing the boundaries of the law and decency.

There is any interview with Irishman Ken Carroll started podcasting Chinese lessons just over five months ago. His learn-with-Ken podcasts now attract more than 10,000 visitors a day, making it China’s No. 3 most popular podcast show. Quite amazing.

Another interesting story is about the video spoof of an epic film by Chinese director Chen Kaige. His movie, The Promise had a cast of thousands and cost $40 million to make. It took one 32-year-old sound engineer just four days to turn the film into a laughing stock. He re-edited the movie into a 20-minute parody, titled The Bloody Case of the Steamed Bun.

Hu Ge, the spoof creator, said he never intended it to become an Internet phenomenon. The film “was very bad, so I thought it would be fun to parody it. When I finished my video, I gave it to friends. They passed it around and eventually it ended up on the Internet.”

A copyright violation or true media democracy ? What ever you say, it sure demonstrates the power of user generated (or should I rather call it “user edited content” ?) content and the power of word of mouth. Now no movie director is safe anymore, if people don’t like your movie, they’ll just make their own version or it., and who know perhaps even a better one..

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Related posts: China Internet & Techology Key Take Aways, Michael Arrington With The Maxthon U3 Key!, China: Strength in Advertising Suggests A Stable Year Ahead, Ice Age 2 Viral Campaign, Why I Love Podcasts, The Future of Film-making?, The Art of Creating A Community, Me in New Media Age, Maxthon Users Put Yourself On The Map, Call For Action! Create Your Own Maxthon Video!, Today I Become the Offical Anyfilms Blogger For Samsung Mobile, Nice old Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu Video, TooDou – Video & Podcast Sharing From China, Douban – A Chinese Book, Music and Movie Recommendation Thing, How To Fold A T-Shirt, Celebrating One Year As A Blogger, Cartoons, Dane’s & Word of Mouth

China Internet & Techology Key Take Aways

Piper Jaffray held their third Annual China Internet & Technology Conference in Beijing last week. From the discussions & presentations held at the conference, the following key take aways emerged:

1. The economy is less of a risk, compared with last year
2. Leaders are emerging within the sector
3. Companies are more realistic about market opportunity and margin leverage
4. Regulation is helping moderate growth rate, preventing potential bubbles
5. New areas are emerging in blogs, social networking, etc.
6. Adoption of advertising and online medium by small businesses is increasing
7. Local companies enjoy home-grown advantage

Focus Media and Ctrip are emerging as leaders, Baidu and TOM Group as well. Baidu is dominating search and Google will have a difficult and uphill struggle in challenging Baidus domination. Online advertising is expecting to grow 35-40% during 2006 (an amazing oppertunity here). What I find particulariy interesting is the new areas that are emerging in blogs and social networking. According to Piper Jaffray, blogging is the big new trend catching on very rapidly. They also believe that it will continue to grow, and the existing players such as Bokee, Blog CN, Sina and surprise: MSN Spaces are likely to be market leaders. Other rapidly growing companies are: online match making, phone agencies and travel search engines.

Against this background I must say that Maxthon is very well positioned in China, we are already driving a huge percentage of Baidu’s search traffic, we are the second biggest browser in China and our user growth in China (as well as outside of) are just exploading.

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TooDou – Video & Podcast Sharing From China

TooDou – Video & Podcast Sharing From China



 
TooDou is a cool & intersting Video and Podcasting sharing thing from China. Looks very promising. Like I previously mentioned – watch out for China. A lot of good stuff is cooking there..

Related posts: Douban – A Chinese Book, Music and Movie Recommendation Thing

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Douban – A Chinese Book, Music and Movie Recommendation Thing

Douban in Chinese


Douban is a Chinese book, music and movie recommendation community. It was born in fall of 2004 by Bo Yang, a bilingual book worm, partly out of frustration that he could not find anyone in Beijing to talk about his new English books with. It was decided that a pilot version should be made in Chinese. Douban.com (alpha of course) went live on March 6, 2005, from a $800 home-made server hosted in the cheapest datacenter in Shanghai – quite amazing.
 
By December douban.com has attracted over sixty thousands registrations from Chinese speakers all over the world, over a million collections and ratings, and over 13,000 full-length reviews. The almost identical English version, douban.net, went on public testing on December 6, 2005. Douban also has a blog.
 

 

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Celebrating One Year As A Blogger

I have now passed my first year as a blogger and it has been an amazing year. This blog was born out of many requests that I got from working with various media agencies and start-ups on questions like: do you have any research on viral marketing? do you know of any company providing …? what media strategy do you suggest that we use on…? have your heard of..? We are looking to hire a talented person that..? What do you think of this business plan? Can you help us find investment for this new start-up? and many more. Instead of emailing ideas etc whenever it came up, I thought I just start a blog to share some of my experiences and know-how with my circle of contacts. However, I never dreamt of that it would turn into a business..

Here are some of the major take aways from my first year as a blogger.

  1. Build a fantastic business network & made new friends
  2. Helped companies in generating new business
  3. Launched Samsung MobilesAnyfilms.Netblog campaign through my cooperation with Hyper Happen.
  4. Helped some talented people getting new jobs
  5. Adviced media agencies on blog strategies, viral marketing and what makes people tick’
  6. Connected people
  7. Inspired others to blog too
  8. Launched my company Mash Up Media – (MUM)
  9. Connected start-ups with Venture Capitalists & vice versa
  10. Made some money too

To sum up: I have learned a lot, got in touch with so many new and interesting people, helped other people with promoting their businesses and skills. If there is one thing I can say is that blogging is good for you and your business whatever you might be doing, just remember the famous line “Anything that you say, can and will be used against you…” so think twice before you post. BTW, stay tuned later over the next couple of days for a new blogging announcement.

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World Economic Forum China Business Summit

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We where invited to the World Economic Forum China Business Summit Dinner in Beijing. Guess what? According to the badge I come from People’s Republic of China.

Arrived in Shanghai – Stay Tuned

Shanghai Hotel View

Just arrived in Shanghai (by nigth view). I am here to present at the Red Herring Asia 100 for Maxthon (we used won the award). It’s going to be pretty exciting with a lot of meetings with top Chinse Internet companies and venture capitalists. Stay tuned for more.

15% of Baidu Searches From Maxthon

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Agaist the recent Baidu IPO I just thought it would be worthwhile to know that Maxthon is responsible for 15% of all Baidu’s search traffic….and we are growing fast, very fast…

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