Google adds Twitter feed in China, again defying that country's rules

March 25, 2010 | 7:33 am

In a move sure to anger Beijing's censors, Google has introduced a real-time Twitter feed on its search results pages -- in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China.

The feed appears alongside search results on Google's Hong Kong-based website, google.com.hk. Users in China have been redirected there since Tuesday when Google shuttered its China-based search engine.

The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China's Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China.

In another defiant move, Google has also added links on its Hong Kong site to the company's original statement explaining why it was leaving China, but translated into Chinese. The link appears on the home page under the search engine and also as a banner advertisement on some search result pages.

[Updated at 6:05 p.m.: Google said it started rolling out real time search on google.com.hk earlier this month and that it had been fully available for more than a week. "We are constantly releasing new features to international domains as the functionality becomes available and this feature is completely unrelated to the redirection of traffic from google.cn to google.com.hk," Google said in an e-mail statement.]

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Chinese Twitter Clients. An interview with the developer of Fanfou.im

A few days ago we read about fanfou.im on littleredbook.cn.

It appears to be an exact replica of Twitter in Chinese, with lots of useful added features such as the ability to add photos, shorten urls and use "Sogou cloud" a popular Chinese character IME. Crucially though, this is not a clone, it's a client. You can login using your Twitter account and follow your Twitter stream as though you were on Twitter.com (which is of course blocked in China)

We were intrigued, so we contacted the developer of the client Kevin Deng and asked him a few questions.



Ren Media: Hi Kevin. You built Fanfou.im right? Tell us more:



Kevin: Yes, fanfou.im is an interface for Twitter, based on a open-source Twitter web client project named "Twitese" (Twitter + Chinese). I'm just an ex-fanfou user, and in remembrance of fanfou.com I build fanfou.im. So there's no confusion, fanfou.im is just a Twitter client.

There are more sites based on Twitese: http://fanfou.de/ http://rabr.in/ http://tuite.im/ We developers are friends, too. The main contributor of this project is @bang590 on Twitter.



Ren Media: Do you have a business relationship with fanfou.com, or Wang Xing(founder of Fanfou)?



Kevin: Firstly, fanfou.im has no business relationship with fanfou team. It's just a tiny program I built myself. But now I'm working for the "fanfou team" lead by Wang Xing. I'm a college student in Beijing. I used to be one of the active users of fanfou.com. After the closure of fanfou.com, fanfou team started a new site called Meituan (meituan.com) on March 4th 2010, and it's a Groupon clone in mainland China. I became a marketing intern of meituan.com since March, 2010.



Ren Media: Are you working with Twitter? Have they contacted you about opening a China site?



Kevin: I don't work for Twitter (the company). By the way, I don't know if Twitter plans to open a China site. You know, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and so many sites are blocked in China. Google has left China mainland too. Therefore I don't think it's a good decision to open Twitter China, unless there is a new , comprehensive and innovative method.



Ren Media: When did you first open fanfou.im?



Kevin: fanfou.com was closed on July 7th 2009, and fanfou.im opened in November.



Ren Media: What are your plans for the future?



Kevin: I haven't thought that much, building fanfou.im was just to facilitate Chinese Twitter users, esp. ex-fanfou users. It's public welfare. I don't plan to use this site to get profits. And I'm still making efforts to improve it.

I'm a student major in media (communication), I'm not a computer programming professional. It's a hobby for me to build a PHP dynamic website. So I hope "Twitese" developers be united and work together. Twitese is a good project and easy to install on a server, making people in Twitter-blocking-country easier to login to Twitter. I have used microblogging service for many years. It's a significant invention and an intimate tool for the grassroots.

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Social Media Emergence In China

Social Media Emergence In China

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Social Networking Habits Across Asia-Pacific

ComScore today announced some interesting new statistics about Social Networking Habits across Asia-Pacific.

ComScore’s methodology does not include visits from public access computers such as Internet cafes, mobile phones or PDAs. In many markets, including India, Japan, China, Indonesia and others, many people access the Internet in ways other than a home computer that they own. Nonetheless, ComScore’s statistics are very interesting, particularly when looked at in terms of change over time. A major change being the migration towards Facebook.

Half of Asia’s Internet population visited Social Networking sites in February…
According to ComScore, 50.8 percent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, reaching a total of 240.3 million visitors.

…Facebook dominates…
Not surprisingly, Facebook.com ranked as the top social network across eight markets - Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Local players led in Japan (Mixi.jp) and South Korea (CyWorld), while Google-owned Orkut ranked as the top social networking site in India and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc led in Taiwan.

…the Philippines are top users of Social Networks…
In February 2010, Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region averaged 2.5 hours on social networking sites during the month and visited the category an average of 15 times. Across markets, the Philippines showed the highest penetration of social networking usage with more than 90 percent of its entire Web population visiting a social networking site during the month, followed by Australia (89.6 percent penetration) and Indonesia (88.6 percent penetration).

…and the Philippines show the highest level of engagement on Social Networks…
Social networkers in the Philippines also showed the highest level of engagement on social networking sites averaging 5.5 hours per visitor in February, with visitors frequenting the social networking category an average of 26 times during the month. Strong engagement was also exhibited by Internet users in Indonesia (5.4 hours per visitor and 22 visits per visitor), Australia (3.8 hours per visitor and 20 visits per visitor) and Malaysia (nearly 3.8 hours per visitor and 22 visits per visitor).

ComScore’s report can be seen here.

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Social Media in Asia - where are the emerging opportunities

Webinar slides:

Social Media Today recently invited me to present on the state of Social Media in Asia. Below are the slides that I presented along with those from fellow presenter Peter Auditore of SAP. Their blog links to an audio recordingof the discussion, which had some great questions.

Smt 032410 Slides

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Social Media in China: The Future

1) Social media will predominate the digital landscape in China.

2) Digital becomes a gateway into and across the Chinese social media networks.

3) Digital will be measured by its effectiveness to influence, contribute, and add value to social media.

4) All leading brands will adopt a Chinese social media strategy or they will lose relevance.

5) All agencies will build dedicated Chinese social media teams.

6) Social media will become the nexus for most digital strategies.

7) Social media will not be seen as a tactical or executional issue but a primary strategic issue.

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8 Essential China Market-Facts

Total consumption of luxury goods in the Chinese market has reached $9.4 billion annually.

China now makes up an eye-popping 27.5 percent of the world's total luxury goods market. It has become the second largest market for luxury groups in the world, after Japan.

Currently China has 825,000 individuals worth more than 10 million yuan, almost $1.5 million in U.S. dollars. China Daily reports that there are 51,000 people with more than 100 million yuan or almost $15 million.

A Yuan billionaire in Beijing consumes $1 million worth of goods a year. One billion yuan equals $146 million.

By 2015 China will rank fourth in the world by number of wealthy households, with a total of 4.4 million. Right now about 80% of wealthy Chinese are aged 18 to 45, compared to 30% in that age group in the U.S.

China's digital music market will be worth $315 million in annual revenue by 2011. This year, sales will grow by 8.2% to $262 million. More than 90% of China's music fans download music from the internet.

China overtook the US as the world’s biggest property investment market last year.

China already consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined.

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