Internet use and culture in China

For some months now I’ve been taking more interest in scanning Internet use trends in China. Intuitively, I feel that China will be a centre of innovation and influence in the emerging Internet culture globally. The latest stats reported in the China Web2.0 Review reinforce my view.

At 253 million users, China now has more Internet users than any other country. Internet users with broadband amounted to 214 million. Sure, there is some way to go in terms of penetration overall, but the growth rate remains high (43 million new users were added in the first half of 2008 ) and the number of mobile Internet users now stands at 73 million. Mobile Internet growth rates exceed PC rates.

Overall use figures in themselves are of considerable interest. But it’s the social change indicators in the use stats that are more fascinating to me. 107 million users (or 42% of all users) have blogs or ’spaces’ online. Many users write posts on social networking sites. 70 million updated their blogs or spaces in the last six months. Over 80% of users listen to music online, use IM and read news online.

To me these figures say that Chinese Internet users have taken to the Participative Web in a big way. I have no doubt that innovative Web applications like Goofy2 foreshadow much more innovation from China downstream.

Goofy2

Goofy2 English version will be live in about one month! Here is what I had to say about this a few weeks ago….posted by Kashgar (Goofy2 co-founder). Nice one.

Goofy2 seems to me to have an appealing interface. It’s open, participatory and has a global reach. You can have rich connections with friends and colleagues around the world… to co-create, contemplate or just have fun.

I’ve copied the ‘About’ section (English translation) of Goofy2 for ease of reference:

• Goofy2 is a web-based easy-to-use software that people can use to post ideas in short text plus a rich media attachment, and share with friends and the world.
• You can use it to have discussions on topics that you choose;
• You can embed rich media codes to share music, images, videos and flash with people;
• You can brainstorm on things with colleagues;
• You can just talk when you need some listeners;
• Or, you just want to check out “what the world is thinking about…?”

WiFi hotspots

I’ve been on vacation at Palm Cove in tropical Queensland…one of my beautiful spots. We took just the essentials (which includes our lap top). It was 10 years from our last visit. 10 years ago, we did not know about WiFi. But in 2008, different story.

WiFi hotspot quality and pricing varied considerably. Our accommodation was close to having WiFi in the apartment…but close was not good enough. So we had to go mobile.

At one resort we experienced very patchy performance…for $15 per 1 day of use. Result: money back. The accomodation agency had WiFi on offer…$10 for 40MB, no thanks. We took the local ice-cream/Internet cafe offer of $6.00 for one hour. There were several other resort-based hotspots available to choose from.

Whatever. I would have preferred to roam onto whatever hotspot best suited our location. As a consumer, all I want is access – I don’t care who provides it.

With WiFi connectivity available in many smart phones now, the demand for this form of wireless connectivity must be a factor on the minds of those that run holiday resorts. At least, I hope it is.

Our next vacation will be in October…this time Waikiki. I’ll be comparing WiFi experiences.

Disconnected Institutions

People have told me I am good at asking the right questions. Here’s a few.

What is the best way to keep pace with social, technological, economic, environmental and political developments?

If your answer was social networking over the Internet, pat yourself on the back. If not, you have some other questions to ask of yourself.

Social networking over the Internet transfers power & influence from institutions to networked individuals. As I’ve said before, mainstream media go to Twitter as a source of breaking-news. Want to know what’s happening on the ground in an emergency, go to Twitter. Want to connect to thought-leaders and their networks? Sign-up to FriendFeed. Want to run a check on what’s hot? Try Digg.

For those that got the right answer to the first question, now ask: What would your organisation’s answer be?

If your organisation is not participating on social networking over the Internet, your organisation is disconnected from an increasingly valuable stream of knowledge and information.

Cloud Media

Ross Dawson has launched the Future of Media Lifecycle framework developed for the Future of Media Summit 2008. Again, I do like the imagery created by Future Exploration Network.

I like the ‘personal cloud’ imagery to capture the way people store, create and consume content. Including ‘conversation’ in the Sea of Content  helps to capture the participatory nature of social media, although ‘life streaming’ would fit just as well.

Viewing media as a personal cloud captures the way people consume and create media at work, socialising, in transit (mobile) and in the home. I agree that personalised location-specific and outdoor media may well be more interesting – i.e. of value – to people than mass-market marketing.

Reading Ross Dawson’s blog posting got me thinking (as you do). I would say there are more clouds in the media lifecycle:

• Social clouds – clouds where networked people store and share their sea of content
• Community clouds – a community sea of content, created and maintained by groups of people with shared interests, including communities that endure over time, transcending individual influences.

In other words, fundamental social elements and actors map to the Cloud. And likewise, participation is in the home and mobile. Social and community clouds – as well as personal clouds – are wherever, whatever, and however you like.

Less is more. Simplicity is the key

Great posting by Stan Schroeder in Mashable a couple of days ago – Why less is more and how to unlock the Web.Stan uses Twitter, FriendFeed, Google and WordPress as examples.

I’ll cover the last bit first. I agree with Stan: unlock the power of the Web and be influential in as many important networks as possible. I am new to Twitter (@conem) but so far, I’m really impressed with the scope and reach. To me, Twitter is more than a ‘one-to-many short message broadcast’. It’s a conversation. It’s about knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. It’s about sharing your life with others…which is a very powerful basic social need. It crosses organisational, geographic and cultural boundaries. Twitter’s track-record in emergencies is outstanding (Katrina, Sichuan).

The power of the Web lies also in it’s open, distributed and global connectivity, over multiple platforms and terminals. Opening up applications to the full distributive power of the Web is a no brainer.

Now for the ‘less is more’ bit. Enough has been said…by many, many people…about Google’s home page. There is a magic in simplicity.

Twitter is also really easy to use. I determine the level of my engagement with others. I am connecting with people that I may not have (or not very likely to have) otherwise. I can put up with the technical issues because the benefits outweigh the irritations. Remember, people used to put-up with brick-sized mobile phones, poor coverage and low battery-life.

And Twitter links to FriendFeed. I’ve just started with FriendFeed, but his looks to be very promising too. Easy to set up. FriendFeed may be the social networking/lifestream aggregator I’ve been waiting for…the inter-connections are amazing.

For application developers, Stan’s message is clear: create a service that meets a basic need in the simplest way possible, and open it up.