Google officially launched its free music site in China where any Chinese user can download free Chinese music from Chinese artists signed by Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music. This noted as an actual effort considering that Baidu offered free music that for awhile has hurt Google’s search market share:

Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market was because it did not offer music downloads, the missing piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader Baidu.com.

“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads,” Lee told reporters. “We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”

Not surprisingly, this is limited to only China and if you want to get your fair share of music that is being unfairly regionally blocked, then there are only two things hindering you:

1. Learn Chinese
2. Use a proxy that is based in China

If you can do those two things, then enjoy downloading free music.

Now the legal question: If music is available for free in China, then can the music industry here in the United States actually still claim you are costing them money?

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A fascinating article by The Telegraph about the possibility that the new Zipingpu Dam actually helped to trigger the horrendous Sichuan quake.

The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.

Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.

In fact, there is some evidence of this occuring elsewhere in the past with the article noting that earthquakes did occur with the completion of the Hoover Dam, but no where near the scale of the Sichuan earthquake.

The idea is very contentious and not surprisingly (and unfortunately) the Chinese government is refusing to allow studies about whether the dam may have actually caused the earthquake for the obvious reason that this would firstly place the blame on the Chinese government (which is never at fault of course) and stop the development of other dams around China that would prevent the much needed expansion of electrical power.

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If you are in or around Shanghai and work in the gaming industry, take consideration into the upcoming event:

“China Game Licensing and Investment Forum 2009”, a B2B event, will be held in Shanghai, China in April 2009. The B2B event is a platform for Chinese online and casual game developers to present their products in front of China’s top publishers and investors to make licensing and investment deals.

Previous participants of the event include all major Chinese online game publishers such as Giant, Tencent, and Shanda. Online and casual game developers from around the world who have products they want to license to China are welcome to participate. For more info about the event, please contact Mr. Zhan Ye at zhanye [at] gamevisiongroup.com.

Wish I could check that out.

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The stronger the rule of law becomes in China, the more cases such as Gooogle’s become the norm. A Chinese company, Beijing Guge Science and Technology Co., sued Google China for using the same Chinese name, Guge (谷歌).

A year ago, the Chinese courts dismissed the case against Google China as Google had registered the name seven days prior to Beijing Guge. More startling was that Google actually responded with a counter-suit and today won 100,000 yuan compensation from the previous lawsuit and ironically forced Beijing Guge to change their own name!

This was a major mistake in their ability to research or a corrupt attempt to forcibly change a foreign company’s name that really came back to bite Beijing Guge. Either way, this is a just another example to show that companies can safely do business in China even when the Chinese government does not like the industry very well.

In any case, would it be too over-the-top to say that Beijing Guge should have used Google for their research on trademark registration dates?

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TED, as usual, has the most amazing videos on any kind of topic possible that should become a daily watch for anyone interesting in… well, everything.

The title of the video below is “Who is General Tso and why are we eating his chicken?” by Jennifer Lee. I highly recommend watching the video, but here are some snippets that should entice you to watch.

• Beef with Broccoli (西兰牛肉): The common theme of what you see with broccoli is actually from Italy–Chinese brocooli is completely different and was not combined with beef.
• Fortune Cookies (财富曲奇 [not sure this is correct]): I even knew this was not a Chinese thing, but had thought this was created within the United States. Turns out this was actually first invented in Japan!
• General Tso’s Chicken (左宗棠鸡 [not sure this is correct]): If it’s boneless, sweet, and fried–you can pretty much guarantee this was not the original dish.
• Chop Suey (杂碎 [not sure this is correct]): This one was created a very long time ago in the US.

Another one that was missing from the presentation was Mushu, but truth be told, Kung Pao Chicken (宫炮鸡丁) is a real Chinese dish, just not with cashews.

If you know of any other dishes claiming to be Chinese send them my way!

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An entrepreneur capitalizing on millions of World of Warcraft fans within and outside of China, is opening the first unofficial WoW themed restaurant in Beijing, China.

The restaurant plans to have all kinds of WoW paraphenilia and other goodies that should make any fan proud, least of all the themed dishes with a large variety of names recognizable to any basic WoW player.

CCTV International has some pictures and a video of the restaurant in Beijing with the main area called the “Hall of Snow Storms.”

Honestly enough, I am surprised it has taken this long for a thematic restaurant to open up, althoguh I am not surprised about it opening in China with a large population playing (some say “gold-mining”) the game through the many cyber cafes dotting China.

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In what is a yearly tradition now, the major search engines have released their top ten lists of searches, with some interesting ones coming from Google China. Now, keep in mind that the list below are from more educated and English-speaking China searchers (not counting the fact that most Chinese people use Baidu), but nonetheless provide some insight into China’s net generation.

From Sina Tech, the top ten fastest growing searches:

1. 陈冠希
2. 奥运会开幕式
3. 四川地震
4. 不合格奶粉名单
5. 艳照门
6. 画皮
7. 赤裸特工f.b.i.
8. 国足欢迎你
9. 刘翔退赛
10. 神七

The one I personally like the most is the humorous spoof on the “Beijing Welcomes You (北京欢迎你)” Youtube video shown below:

The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal also has some of the hottest new vocabulary for those who have a real interest in the current/modern net culture of China:

New vocabulary

1. Shanzhai: Originally referred to the mountain strongholds of bandits. Now, the term refers to all manner of knock-off, substandard or improvised goods, such as these makeshift vehicles.
2. 囧 : This is an ancient Chinese character, pronounced jiong, used to mean “light shining through a window” several thousand years ago (kind of what the character itself looks like), among other things. Recently it has found a new life among Chinese youth as an emoticon to express a bad mood, since it also looks like a face crying out in a pictographic version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
3. Very yellow, very violent: The year’s first Internet catchphrase came from a CCTV interview with a 13-year-old girl, part of a program on the government’s new regulations on Internet censorship. Netizens who believed the girl had been coached by CCTV into making the statement lashed out against her, launching a human flesh search engine and numerous parodies.
4. Psoas Muscle: Another musical spoof regarding the Chinese soccer, this one aimed at the women’s team. It comes from one theory about the poor showing of the Chinese team: that it was due to the players’ relatively weak lower back muscles.
5. Three push-ups: Another Internet catchphrase, this one derived from an unconvincing alibi used in the death of a high school student.
6. 槑: This character, pronounced mei, is actually a variant of the word for plum blossom. But it also happens to look like a double version of the character 呆 (dai), which means silly or stupid. Hence 槑 now means “very silly or very stupid.”
7. Getting some soy sauce: Another catchphrase that originated with a man on the street’s don’t-bother-me response to an intrusive reporter.
8. Pick-up artist subculture: Men who see themselves as modern-day Don Juans, seducing women who are often married, sometimes targeting them for their money.
9. Phoenix man: Refers to a man who grew up poor and in the countryside, but thanks to their efforts and the support of others, is able to move to a big city and become successful. Phoenix men often hope to marry city girls but often encounter problems resulting from their different cultural backgrounds and habits.
10. Don’t Be Too CNN: This phrase emerged as a viral response to foreign media coverage of the protests in Tibet, interpreted by many Chinese as biased and inaccurate. A variant of the existing phrase “don’t be too CCTV,” which meant something more along the lines of “don’t be so serious.”

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If you had to narrow the difference down to some key points, what would be a simple difference between a viral campaign and a social media campaign? Actually engaging users.

In China, Lenovo was promoting its new kind of netbook, the Ideapad S10, through a social media campaign using BBS, QQ emotional icons, video, widgets, etc:

A lovely Kuku Bear is the brand image of S10, therefore Lenovo mainly promoted this bear image with some touching love story. [...] Its video on Youku was viewed for over 1.7 million times, its application on Xiaonei.com ranked No. 6 most popular apps on the platform, with about 58,000 daily active users. And its sales on Taobao shop is quite good.

Yes, the marketing campaign succeeded and in fact the viral campaign (the part of it that is) succeeded, but in terms of a social media campaign it was a complete failure (minus any comments on their application page, if any, on Xiaonei).

Hopefully the advertising agency or marketing department was not a functional team calling itself social media marketing as they do not understand the meaning of social media then.

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Shanghai is starting on its next major skyscraper in the Pudong district dubbed the Shanghai Tower. Set for completion in 2014, it will be obviously larger than the previous two skyscrapers (Jin Mao and Shanghai World Financial Center) that will certainly dominate the Shanghai skyline.

I had thought that all construction was put on hold or stopped after it was found that that area of Pudong was sinking some amount every year (it was a swamp afterall so the ground is not that compact or stable), but it seems that the construction is continuing.

Nonetheless, the fascination with skyscrapers by the Shanghai City government (and myself) is not shared by everyone with the China Daily noting the following issues:

1. Shanghai is sinking, and a new skyscraper isn’t going to help;
2. Traffic in Lujiazui is congested enough and a new building is going to make rush hours all the more “nightmarish”;
3. The “urban heat island effect” is going to make Shanghai feel even more like a sauna in summers;
4. Skyscrapers are vulnerable to attacks and disasters;
5. The economic risk of building the Shanghai Tower will be shared by various state-owned enterprises and the money could be “better spent elsewhere”;
6. Shanghai should instead save its old buildings from demolition;
7. Shanghai’s public transportation sucks. Why not spend more money there?
8. It also has the fastest graying population in China and should build more facilities to cater to the elderly.

Still, at least it looks better than the Oriental Pearl Tower?

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Baidu has recently come to terms with media criticisms over whether Baidu allows its paid results to influence what happens in the organic results. The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal covers this in a little bit of detail noting about Baidu’s paid results response:

Last night, in a conference call with analysts, Baidu unveiled its response: A new system that more clearly separates its paid links from ordinary search results.

“We are doing this because we care. It is important to us. We want to be a responsible corporate citizen,” said Baidu chief executive Robin Li.

They asserted again that the search company doesn’t exclude Web sites from search results because the companies behind them failed to pay for links. But Baidu executives also said they are speeding up development of the new system, called Phoenix Nest, in part to quell confusion. Under Phoenix Nest, paid ads will appear in a clearly marked section on the right side of the search results page.

Baidu has long argued that its paid links are marked, but yesterday CEO Robin Li said, “We do hear from the press from time to time that some of our users were confused by paid and non-paid content.”

This is nothing new for what search engines have had to deal with as even Google has been accussed in the past for possible monetizing their own organic results based off of their paid results as well or not adequately separating their paid/organic results.

Oftentimes those of us in the online advertising industry take for granted that what we understand about search the average Internet user does as well. In fact, most Internet users do not know all of the paid areas of the search results. Let us take an example of someone interested in looking for “gaming computers:”

You would likely get most people able to answer that there are at least one are of the above results being paid search, but that will hinge on whether the browser’s monitor coloring can differentiate the off-color yellow.

Fewer would realize the results on the right are paid, even with the sponsored links showing up. It is not the fault of a user being an idiot, just that the user does not look for the phrase “Sponsored” as a way to tell what is organic or what is paid. This is entirely different from when you use another color to separate the results as Internet users have gotten used to seeing ads in boxes that are of a different color.

Lastly, I would be surprised if many would name the shopping results as a paid search function from Google Base. These results are certainly not a part of organic search (you can argue if it is a part of paid) even though they will vary in positioning (top, bottom, middle, etc).

The point of all this is to note for the Chinese media with knowledge of the online marketing world, that even in the US for Google, most people still do not know the difference between paid and organic results. The search engines are naturally going to muddy the waters in order to get more people to click on the paid results, so without specifically noting what should be done for all engines, there is little point to complain about the current layout.

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