IntEnablEvision cont...

In a previous blog I wrote about Internet-Enabled T.V. in China and it's increasing potential for growth in China. According to iSuppli.com," [s]ales of Internet-connected TVs in China will reach 500,000 this year and grow to about 14 million by 2013, technology consultancy" (Pcworld.com). However, this new medium poses a serious threat because it is combining two media that currently operate according to two different "social etiquette." While the Internet is bombarded with piracy that can go undetected and resurface in various ways, television does not leave room for copyright issues and operates "by the book."

The combination of the Internet and T.V as IntEnablEvision in China is now feeling the heat as television watchers are literally able to watch pirated media (TV shows, films, etc...) on television in the comfort of their own homes. There have been many lawsuits against the Internet-Enabled T.V manufacturer, Haier such as, "Chinese online video content provider NetMovie.com [that] plans to file a copyright infringement lawsuit against Haier and three other major Chinese vendors selling Internet TVs, Changhong, TCL and Hisense. Online film distributor Union Voole Technology has filed a separate suit against TCL, the company that manufactures these Internet-Enabled T.Vs because of piracy" (Pcworld.com). Because this media is so new, restrictions have yet to be determined and lawfully written, but it will be interesting to see what measures Chinese government takes to govern this unity...till ban do they part




Also, check out a video talking about a new IntEnablEvision-like product Sony has introduced

World Expo... Meet the Internet!

The World Expo 2010 will be hosted by Shanghai, China, and for the first time, accompanied by a complementary "online exposition." According to ExpoChina2010.com, in contrast to the official World Expo website that is informational, providing expo news updates, and ticket purchases, Expo Shanghai Online will enhance promotion and education functions... and provide more interactive exhibition and the "virtual tour guide." Because this is the first time any world exposition will be accompanied by an online exposition, it will provide endless avenues for online advertisement and international exposure through Chinese Internet. With the current world-wide economic state, many companies, especially media companies can use an event such as the world expo to help rejuvenate their organizations by making connections and tapping into new markets. With the increasing use of Chinese Internet and vast amounts of nations and outside visitors that will be entering China, the most interesting part will be seeing how online censorship affects the expo. Take a look at this online survey to see what type of questions Shanghai Expo planners are asking to get insight into how to make Expo Shanghai Online most "effective." Also, check out this Youtube clip introducing Expo Shanghai Online...

CHINESE INTERNET: Tudou.copyRight or copyWrong? cont...

Watch an interview with the founders of Tudou.com, and hear some of their responses to it's overwhelming numbers in compared to Youtube.com and to Tudou.com copyright issues.

CHINESE INTERNET: Saving Face by blocking Facebook

So I know I said that next we'd be further discussing Tudou.com's effectiveness in China, but there's another story I want to address first! My Chinese teacher from Shanghai, China had a rather "disturbing" status on her Facebook page saying that she apologized for not responding to all of her fellow facebook friends, but she has been unable to access her page because of Chinese governement's current restriction on Facebook access. I found this interesting because while I was studying abroad in Shanghai, China at East China Normal University (the same college that Yao Ming attended), I noticed that many of my fellow Chinese peers had Facebook pages and visited the website regularly to communicate with school friends in China, friends they met from other counties, like myself, who were studying abroad, and to join groups pro or anti a cause.


As noted above, two of the most powerful abilities for the Chinese Facebook users are international communication and voiced opinion. Both of these abilities are threatening to a strict and "dictative" Chinese government that acts as a doorkeeper between its citizens and the outside world. When controversial events take place, such as, the riots in the western region of Xinjiang, China and Olympics protest, Chinese government tends to tighten the reigns on social networking sites that they don't control, and that have potential to leak "confidential" Chinese happenings to the "outside" world. This is currently posing a problem for sites like Twitter and Facebook.

A point that I will bring back up, is the difference between international appeal and limited local appeal. Unlike other networking sites that only cater to a predominately one language speaking audience, Facebook has become a somewhat international website because it is an English (western) based site. The Chinese government restrictions have serious potential to cripple Facebook's future profits, as China is an unsaturated market looking for and craving Facebook's capabilities, games, applications, and interactive capabilities...Facebook has to stratgeize and find ways to succesfully maintain in the Chinese market, especially with competition from websites such as Zhanzuo.com...A comparison on these two sites coming soon...

CHINESE INTERNET: Tudou.copyRight or copyWrong? cont...

Tudou.com is growing in terms of wealth, daily users, viewers, and perhaps most notably, copyright infringement charges. To date, Tudou has given China the biggest dose of its own medicine. The continual controversy over the piracy of American media, such as film, music, and television shows has been debated and addressed legally. With the introduction of video sharing websites like Tudou that cater to the Chinese Internet audiences in terms of language, product advertisements, and graphics, Chinese media has also become a target for online media piracy. According to Chinatechnews.com "about 80 Chinese copyright owners, including Joy.cn, Beijing Polybona Film Distribution, Beijing Orange Sky Entertainment Group and SFS Emperor, are planning a massive legal assault against...Tudou.com for various copyright infringements." While some of these cases, such as Joy.cn vs. Tudou.com and NuCom online vs. Tudou.com, have been either settled outside of court or with Tudou paying a fine to appease the courts and all parties involved, the piracy problem still persists.

It seems that the illegal distribution of Chinese media on video sharing websites is a rather new phenomenon for the fact that: the demand for Chinese media has probably become more pronounced with the increasing popularity of Internet use and video sharing websites amongst Chinese citizens. Although, the bootlegging of Chinese films, music, and television shows existed before the introduction of websites like Tudou.com and Youku.com, it has become more readily available to Chinese and American Internet users alike for free. What makes this situation unique from American media bootlegging and piracy is that Chinese media that is spoken in the Chinese language and focused around Chinese cultural norms is more understood, desired and purchased by Chinese consumers than by any other market. Therefore the Chinese media market has more to loose than a more international and English speaking market such as the United States because Chinese media is less likely to find outlets, demand, and revenue in other markets outside of China. It will be interesting to observe how the conservative Chinese government handles this new type of online media that has potential to affect their entertainment industry; the U.S might just benefit from this new potential "threat." And next time we'll take a look at how Tudou.com's addition of advertisements and content censoring department are making the website more profitable and effective.

Also, take a look at the official Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China and note discrepancies that contradict the current bootlegging and piracy issues in China...hmmmmm

CHINESE INTERNET: Tudou.copyRight or copyWrong?

The above movies are all films that you can watch on Tudou.com from begining to end with only one click. Tudou.com is one of the largest and most popular video sharing websites in China. It is comparable to the U.S Youtube.com, but as in many other aspects of China, is slowly outdoing the U.S in its video sharing abilities. Toudou.com was founded in 2005, around the same time as Youtube.com, but differs from Youtube because it allows its audiences to watch or upload longer amounts of video than Youtube that has a 10 minute limit. According to Shanghailist.com the daily amount of video being streamed from Tudou is around 15 billion minutes, versus Youtube's 3 million. Obviously, this is partly because Tudou allows for longer uploads of video, but that does not change the fact that Tudou's numbers are more attractive to advertisers, especially within the unsaturated Chinese consumer market.

"According to a quarterly report on China online advertising market in the second quarter of 2008 released by Analysys International, the online advertising market of China reached CNY2.808 billion, which increased by 33% compared with the first quarter of 2008 and a year-on-year increase of 72.5%. (Chinatechnews.com)" Now, Tudou.com announced that its high-definition channel hd.tudou.com that the company made CNY11.296 million in the advertising sector in the first half of 2008. So this means that hd.tuduo.com, a specialized extension of Tudou.com made up about 0.40% of the Chinese Internet advertisement market share during the first half of 2008. While one could look at this percentage and label it insignificant, it is really quite impressive because it composed 0.40% in a vast and fragmented Chinese Internet market when it is a significantly small sector, only providing one service (high-definition video uploads/views). This sheds light on Tudou's dominance in the Chinese video sharing market in China, as it overpowers competitors like Youku.com. According to ChinaTechNews.com in contrast of Tudou's CNY11.296 million during the first quarter of 2008, Youku.com profitted only CNY5.48 million at the end of that same period. These figures show the advertising potential of Tudou.com in comparison to other video sharing sites, in that it's a site dedicated to simple uploads of (mostly) previously recorded major television and film media that are more likely to attract general mass audiences of the east and west, however this brings up another complication of copyright on Tudou.com. I will discuss Tudou.copyRIGHT or copyWRONG in the next blog - stay tuned!

Also, check out some of the ads I found on Tudou.com (look beyond the language barrier and note their marketing tactics that emphasize visuals, and how they differ from the U.S)!!!

Levi's

Suzuki

Loreal

Perfect World

Marry5

CHINESE INTERNET: IntEnablEvision

After looking at China's Green Dam Youth Escort and SEM Standard and Regulation, we will now look at a type of fusion media that is buzzing amongst both Chinese Internet users and Television watchers. Surpassing even the United States, China has become the largest market for T.V. and broadband access. China has found a way to merge these two mediums, creating possibly what will attract both T.V. watchers and Internet users. This Internet-Enabled T.V, that I have nicknamed "IntEnablEvision" makes video and web content downloading in the Chinese T.V. market possible.

3 Important factors for IntEnablEvision highlighted by live-pr.com (note: dates of projected figures)

• There are 400 million household TV sets in China, with 1.3 billion TV viewers.
• There are 160 million cable TV households in China, with 30 million digital TV users expected by the end of 2007.
• More than 70 million fixed broadband subscribers currently exist in China, and there are more than 250 million Internet users.

Contrasting the second bullet point above, in 2008 China had 47.65 million digital T.V. users, and according to researchinchina.com that number is expected to reach 136.76 million by 2012 and potentially higher 3 years after, because the Chinese government plans to require all T.Vs to be converted to digital by 2015. China's surprising and exceeding digital T.V. data just goes to show that China really is a market that has great potential for growth. So, what does this "new media" mean for advertisers in China? What new ways will advertisers come up with in order to appeal to both the Internet user and T.V. watcher? We will analyze this tomorrow when we look at Tudou.com, China's biggest Internet-Video destination and analyze its advertising tactics.

CHINESE INTERNET: Standardized Regulation

In my "Chinese Internet: Page Not Found" we explore the Chinese government's extreme measures to censor Chinese Internet users online content access. The social implications of the proposed pre-installation of the Green Dam Youth Escort software were discussed, but now let us take a look at another new type of filter that will potentially affect Chinese Internet business models. The Search Engine Marketing Standard and Regulation was initiated just last month (September) 2009 by three major players in Chinese Internet: the Internet Society of China, China Communication Standards Associations, and Baidu. This new system "represents a new development stage within the Internet search engine marketing sector in China. SEM "provides definitions for industrial terms of search engine marketing as well as the reference regulations and the procedures to be followed for this business. It gives authoritative and universal explanations for definitions and knowledge involved in SEM and helps enterprises learn about the various links for SEM." Also, it gives insight into how the sector could potentially evolve in the future and focuses on "granting SEM scope of business activities to dually licensed SEM advertising agencies rather than the current hordes of companies who use simpler consulting business licenses to provide SEM services."

SEM's filtering properties have the potential to be beneficial to both the producers and consumers. By limiting and regulating the numerous amounts of advertisements that bombard Chinese Internet, it seems that Internet users have a better chance of being "protected" from many product and service scams. However, the companies that are advertising on Chinese websites now have to be weary of the content and depictions in their ads. The art of traditional advertising will be tested with SEM because the usual enticing and appealing ads might not be enough to pass SEM standards to be placed online. Also, it seems that the appropriateness of advertisements would determine which ads get preference over others advertising similar products or services. This could potentially affect the structure of advertising, as advertisers attempt to conform to SEM standards just to be able to get competitive ad space. With the creation of SEM, company marketing divisions will need to come up with innovative tactics to lure Chinese consumers, and at the same time, convince Chinese Internet "filters" that they are "worthy" to be advertised on China's unsaturated and desired Internet...

Check out this website: China Tech News

CHINESE INTERNET: Page Not Found

In China, when the message "Page Not Found" pops up after an online engine or URL entry search, chances are it is not an "Error." Unlike the United States, China's Internet has become increasingly subject to censorship. Many methods such as, self-censorship have been implemented in hopes of limiting the amount of attained forbidden web material by creating regulations that outlaw access to certain online content, and speech against Chinese government. The repercussions for attempting these illegal content searches are punishable by imprisonment, and have led to even greater consequences. The Chinese government is going to new extremes to ensure its Internet users are UNable to access "inapPROPriate" or "politically sensitive" conTENT. Up to this point, Chinese government has used online filters in order to restrict Chinese Internet users, but now it has implemented new technology methods to ensure censorSHIP. Green Dam Youth Escort SOFTware " AUTOmatically downloads the latest updates of a list of [government proclaimed] prohibited sites from an online database, and also collects private user data." It is not the fUNCTION of this software that is controversial, but instead, it's potential required installation on every computer in China. The tentative law to mandate all computers to come with this software pre-installed would not allow Chinese Internet users the option to choose whether or not they were subject to complete government censorship. Because of restrictions on search engines and websites, many Internet users have opted to join social networking websites that allow them to create new identities and voice their opinions without worrying about being judged harshly, or worse, being "identified.” However, government plans to require all internet users to enter their real identification information take away a major attraction of the Internet, especially social networking sites, and chat rooms; anonymity. As we can see, the social implications of China's Internet censorship are numerous, but now let us take a look at how it affects China's business model.

While I studied abroad in Shanghai, China last year, I began to analyze the Chinese government's relationship to Chinese's Internet users; I compared it to a parent - child relationship. The Chinese government represents the parent that guides the child, and acts as a doorkeeper between the child and the outside world. On the other hand, the child is dependent on the parent for knowledge, and as it grows older and is exposed to consumer society, asks the parent to purchase, purchase, purchase! Many projections place China as the forerunner as the world and Asia's largest consumer market. The Chinese consumer market is far from saturation; companies see the potential that lies within this market, and constantly try to figure out how to effectively reach the Chinese consumers. The Internet is probably the one tool that is capable of reaching the large and diverse population of "consumer savvy" Chinese. Now, when I say consumer savvy Chinese, that probably excludes a number of Chinese that do not have internet/computer access and those in rural areas, but even they are increasingly susceptible to the Internet's bombardment. American companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are only three players in China's Internet infrastructure, and like other companies, they have fallen under scrutiny to conform to Chinese societal standards and appease the Chinese government. In the next blog we will further explore the effects and structural changes that foreign Internet companies endure when entering China’s online world.

Another fellow blogger with a recent update on the Green Dam Youth Escort mandate: http://mashable.com/2009/07/01/china-green-dam-celebration/

Guardian.co.uk explanation of the Green Dam Youth Escort Mandate: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/jul/01/china-internet-green-dam-censorship

China predictions: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/china-to-become-worlds-second-largest-consumer-market-by-2015_1002069.html

Third World Internet Social and Business Models

The first country we will look at is one that has the fastest growing amount of Internet users in the world, China. Chinese internet usage is doing something that many other countries have not accomplished; surpassing the United States in Internet usage. Even though China and the U.S appear to be competing in terms of numbers, they do not compete as aggressively in terms of Internet content and structure. We will further explore both the social and business models of China's increasingly popular Internet market in the next blog...

Refrence website...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/business/worldbusiness/26internet.html