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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.
Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Internet, Media, China, Blogs, Recommendations, Movies, Books, Music, web2.0, Chinese
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.
- Build a fantastic business network & made new friends
- Helped companies in generating new business
- Launched Samsung Mobiles “Anyfilms.Net” blog campaign through my cooperation with Hyper Happen.
- Helped some talented people getting new jobs
- Adviced media agencies on blog strategies, viral marketing and what makes people tick’
- Connected people
- Inspired others to blog too
- Launched my company Mash Up Media – (MUM)
- Connected start-ups with Venture Capitalists & vice versa
- 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.
Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Internet, Media, Blogs, We Media, Citizen Media, Citizen Journalism, Advertising, Anyfilms, Samsung Mobile, Business Developent, Blogvertising, Online Media, Hyper Happen, Networking, Mashups, Mashup Media
Regardless of whether you attended the Huber Burda’s Digital Lifestyle Day last week (as I did) you might enjoy what Go Flock Yourself has to say after having watched the video from “Cool Tech from a Hot Country”. Hilarious! Say no more…
More CES stuff: Today I was invited to DivX for a private demonstration of their latest technology. Maxthon‘s VC – WI Harper is actually the biggest shareholder in DivX and have mentioned them to me many times, so it was great to finally get to meet with them. Just when I was entering their private showroom I ran into Mena Trott (founder) and Andrew Anker (VP) from Six Apart…seems like they are shopping for a good video codex for Typepad and Movable type ( I told you that Video Blogging is going to be big 2006) If so, its an excellent choice. DivX is conquering the world with its fantastic video codex and we got a good demonstration of what you can do and it looks great. I will transfer my videos to DivX now since it demands only have of the storage compared to other formats.
Alot of funny things happen here, the other day I was having breakfast at my hotel, when suddenly AOL’s Ed Fish asks if he can sit down with me. Ed was responsible for AIM and ICQ when I was at ICQ and is now responsible for a number of things at AOL among other things AOL Music. We had a great chat about old times and some new interesting stuff that AOL music is working on. Ed is a great guy always full of passion for what he is doing.
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