Citizen journalism takes off at QQ

the Jinan-page at qq.com

The China Media Project points at a first experiment at Tencent's QQ in mobilizing citizen reporters. On July 18 Jinan was hit by a devastating flood that killed 26. At QQ of Shenzhen-based Tencent editors asked for input of their users:

how is it we have only this frosty [unfeeling] information about "26 dead", 6 missing and 171 injured? We want to know how those deceased passed away, and why ... ( in a translation by the China Media project)

In a few hours time, the dedicated webpage was flooded with material from local citizens, hinting a a failing local government:

Yesterday, the water flooded into our house. Our house is on the first floor. We were just sitting down to eat. Dad went off right away to find sand to fill up bags, but the water came too fast and washed the bags away. It looked like a dam had burst, and the water was putrid. Today Dad's busy building up the threshold. It's too thin and needs to be replaced. No one cares. Our government is just busy making money.

QQ is a highly successful internet service provider, belonging to the top-3 internet companies in terms of traffic and organizing a large portion of the now 162 million internet users in China. Because of that position they are very well positioned to experiment with this kind of citizen journalism and are likely to follow up after this initial success. Citizen journalism is here to stay, how to organize it, that is the question. Officially internet portals can only republish news that has been already in one of the censored traditional media, but this new feature could mean a diversion from those old restraints, if the regulators take it easy.

Update: Global Voices has a thorough overview of all the citizen reporting in China concering the floodings. Nice pictures too.

Google and Sina team up

The battle of the giants is getting into place now Google and Sina have announced a strategic partnership, say reports all over the internet. The question is now, who is going to be the biggest, Sina, Baidu or QQ, and does it matter. Interesting times.

Tencent goes into search

The succesful Shenzhen-based IT-company Tencent is now moving into the search business, reports China Tech News. The company is said to have bought in April the domain name wenwen.com ("Ask a question") for 80,000 rmb.
Tencent started off as an IM-company with its popular QQ and has used its over 200 million user accounts to successfully take on weblog hosting, video hosting and now moves into search, where Baidu and Google are still the number one or two.

Update: China Web2.0 review has more details.

Baidu might go into video-sharing

Billsdue notes that China's largest search engine has become a shareholder of video-sharing site KU6.com. It is obvious that they might not only be on board to the money, but are looking at a more strategic cooperation on this tough market.
It would make sense that, after Tencent, also Baidu tries to make most out of the huge traffic they already generate.

VC's planning to leave video sharing

Silicon Hutong points at this Reuters' article on the upcoming collapse of video sharing in China. I have been writing about the upcoming problems earlier this year, but now we seem to see a clear "abandon ship".

"If video-sharing sites rely on their own resources and capabilities, I don't see much prospect for profit," said Liu Bin, chief analyst at the Beijing research firm BDA China.

While the loses are still relatively small for the VC's, the lack of money-earning capabilities has been one of the weak points of the industry anyway. Reuters mentions a study by data firm iResearch trying to make us believe the industry can generate 3.4 billion Rmb by 2010, but that seems an extreme form of wishful thinking. An overwhelming majority of the now close to 500 video sharing ventures seem unable to make any substantial money.

Established Web companies like Tom Online, SINA, Sohu.com and Netease.com, which market watchers believe are considering expansion into video sharing, have a
bigger chance of success in the online video business, as they already command a high level of traffic and have deeper pockets, analysts said.

And Tencent of course.

Heineken's first ad in HiPiHi

That's China points at the first ad showing up at the virtual life site HiPiHi: from Heineken. The Dutch beer makers has a reputation for good ads, better than their beer and their sales in China.

Do not hurry out to get your virtual pint: the launch is only planned around the summer. They do have already information available in English, suggesting that they do not want to stick to the Chinese market, just like giant Tencent. This promises to become a very interesting year for the internet in China and outside.

Tencent, Microsoft struggle for world dominance

Today, my radar screen works and I picked up some interesting tidbits about Tencent and its struggle with Microsoft for world dominance. Really interesting to have a Dutch peek behind the scenes, although there is not too much I did not expect.

Thijs tells us how both companies struggle now mainly on the Chinese market with mainly Microsoft, but certainly have aspiration that go further. Interesting he does not mention the other giants.

Tencent's famous IM-application QQ has now also an English edition. That is still rather primitive, but a major upgrade is on its way.

Its video site (I reported about that earlier) is now widely available and you can expect an English edition soon - at least that is my speculation.

Much more is in the makings.

How to stop the virtual money?

The decision by the central authorities to limit the use of virtual money got quite some attention. But none of the news articles I have seen went into details on how to do that, most likely because there are no details.
That means most likely that for a long while nothing might happen, as is the case more often when an issue is really difficult to handle.
The same goes for the internet cafes. Not issuing any licenses for new internet cafes does not mean that much when most are illegal anyway.