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I interviewed Maria and Aaron Contente, who are both native Spanish speakers from Mexico, educated, and are successful professionals in Silicon Valley. Maria Contente manages many of the relationships with our clients at Forrester in Silicon Valley and Aaron is an engineer at a large industrial company.

After enjoying a home cooked Mexican meal (and a spicy cocktail), I asked them for their honest feedback on Facebook’s recent Spanish release. Watch the video to find out that the new version reads awkward.

Apparently, Facebook outsourced some of the translations to the members, in a crowdsourcing effort of 1500 members, but in some cases there’s no substitute for having a professional translator. Apparently, a French version will soon be released, let’s hope the translation fares better than this Spanish one.

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I was just at Intel’s Sales and Marketing event on Tuesday, and was really glad to meet Intel’s EMEA Web Strategist (which is what I call decision makers), Taj Peyton. He’s responsible for understanding each of the unique needs of cultures in his European market and developing localized versions of the corporate Intel site –no easy undertaking.

Watch this video and you’ll learn

-Why you should or should not localize
-What you research
-Other than language, how are regionalized sites are different than corporate website
-How to get started
-Management is a nightmare, what tools to use?

I ran out of memory, so the interview got cut short a few seconds, but there’s a lot of meat in his presentation. If you’re planning on localizing you website, be sure to really understand the demographics (who are they), physhographics (how they think/feel), and technographics (how they use technology) before deploying, otherwise you may have just wasted your resources.

And yes, that’s the Wynn in the background, one of Vegas’s newest hotels. Intel put me up at the brand new Venetian extention, the Palazzo, each room is a suite (3 HD flatscreens), it’s opulent. I’m pretty sure I was the first person to every stay in the room as they just opened up last week, why do I think that? I had to plug in a lot of the appliances, I’m sure that’ll never happen again

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When I first wrote the Irrelevant Corporate Website, I never expected it to grow and spread, it’s now been translated into several languages, the most recent one in Hebrew, thanks to Omer Rosen who lives in, Rishon Lezion, Israel

My colleague Charlene Li recently showed me the Google Translator tools that can do more than babelfish as it can translated an entire webpage, and maintain the look and feel. Enter in a URL, and watch it translated. Here’s a few examples of my post being translated by Google from German to English, Greek to English, Italian to English. Sadly, there is no option to translate Hebrew to English.

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A few months ago, I wrote a post about the impacts of social media to the corporate websites, and how it must evolve, it’s been translated by the community to many languages by volunteers. I’d like to thank Jacqueline Fackeldey (who focuses on human to human marketing) for re-translating it to Dutch.

Original English version

And here’s the updated and slightly modified Dutch version

At the bottom of the English post you’ll see links to other translations. If you know someone that has a blog and wants to translate it to Chinese, Japanese, or any of the other languages listed, it’s pretty easy to do: Translated, send me an email and I’ll promote the translation and add the link to the original post.

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I was in Vancouver last month at the VidFest conference, I was able to attend a regular meetup with the local social media folks, people I really relate to. Over drinks, they told me about the unique web culture in Canada, in my usual form, I whipped out my camera and was able to get their opinion.

What’s the difference between Canadian and US web cultures? I asked them that too, see related video. I’ve traveled a lot, and it’s amazing to hear how culture, (beyond language) impacts web usage, the web is truly a representation of people and the culture they relate to.

In the spirit of Micromedia, or Mediasnacking, I keep these videos short and tight.

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At the recent Boston Bloggers dinner I was able to interview Mark Twomey, his blog Storagezilla, I’ve been keeping track of for a few years since I left HDS. I was surprised to find he was around my age, I expected him to be much older. He came the farthest distance for the event (Ireland) and was able to share with us about “Patty Paddy’s Valley” on how there’s a few web startups that are coming out to Silicon Valley for the next gold rush. Sadly, my camera ran out of memory space, so our interview got a bit cut off. Apparently, I inadvertently outed his true identity by linking to his blog a few years ago and exposing his name, fortunately, it all turned to good, I hope he writes up a post about that experience.

Read Write Web has a list of Irish startups if you want to learn more. Oh, and no, the green lighting wasn’t intentional.

7 comments

(Left: Classical Chinese Garden, Bao Mao Gardens)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is the final report of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“In mainland China, the youth don’t know how to communicate to each other, offline or online. MySpace put a .cn as a domain extension…it was lame”

For the online marketer wanting to reach China’s users, simply re-skiinning a website is not sufficient, understand the changes in design, information layout, content requirements, and cultural technographics differences.

“Xiaonei.com is a Facebook Clone”.

“Clone” is the right word, the design looks copy pasted. There is more reports from VentureBeat on this company and a recent acquisition.

“Linkhurst.com is a linkedin clone”

This business like social networking site offers tools similar to popular LinkedIn. There’s some other interesting resources for internet marketers in China.

“Two types of internet users in China: 1) Lower end surfer, likely less education, and will gravitate towards Tencet. May be rural. 2) The Urban and Educated will have a career focus.

I learned this from a CEO in Hong Kong with roots in mainland China, he suggested there are two widening gaps in Chinese culture, society, and thus the web. Understand which segment you’re aiming for, and build accordingly.

“Chinese may not make virtual friends, as web friends doesn’t make sense, real events offer more value.”

Value, is the consistent theme I heard from this CEO, with the differences in online behavior to connect with others, creators of online events need to take extra special care of purpose. Perhaps start with an in person event first.

“Social Networks will not work in the mainland, as the web is used for entertainment [consumption], if there’s no value, usage will be low therefore, networked games and virtual games work as there’s entertainment value”

If the web is used as an entertainment medium, building sites with large interaction may not work, says this CEO.

“The ability to quickly access copyrighted content, young users don’t feel a need to ‘earn’ money for media and content”

Copyright issues have continued to plague western software, media, and music industries, eCommerce strategies around eMedia should be aware and cautious in developing their strategy.

“The change from Web 1.0 which is Information, to Web 2.0, which is People, is challenging for mainland China, trust is important”

This is not a China phenomenon, it’s happening all over the world, the real value of information is what is being delivered, filtered, and exchanged by networks of common interest, and eventually trust.

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I really enjoyed Paul’s additional commentary, although he questions why I would visit HK to cover mainland. Most of the people I talked to were from mainland, served mainland, or had their users in mainland, it was all tied. Best find? Paul linked to this Ogilvy blog reporting on Asia, I subscribed.

Love to hear your commentary, this concludes my report series. For additional related interviews, see what Shel has been doing with Andrew Mao on the impacts of Social Media, Culture and the Chinese Culture (part 1, and then read part 2). Also related, Alibaba’s IPO may hit 1.3 billion.

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My new friend Kalio has translated the “Evolve your Irrelevant Corporate Website” post, I took Espanol classes in High School, but my translation would never turn out as great as this: “El irrelevante sitio web corporativo, y como hacer que éste evolucione“.

With the concept going global, we’ve translations from many languages. If you want to translate it into your native language, do it on your blog or website, send me a link and I’ll add it to the growing list on the original post.

1 comment

(Left: Teacher and her School Children, Mainland China)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 3 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“China blocked Feedburner when they were acquired by Google”

thus making stats for subscriptions using Feedburner highly innacuriate. Why? China already has more internet users than all of North America combined…any many are learning English.

“Koreans are separated by 2-3 degrees at the most, but don’t feel comfortable chatting”

The old saying that everyone in the world is connected by 7 degrees may still be true, but in South Korea, folks are highly connected and can easily find others.

“Asians don’t have a recovery system for failure, therefore the dating websites are scary”

In American culture singles (and sometimes the married) clamor for online dating services. In Asia, rejection hurts, is fierce, and there is no recovery from it, so Asian dating sites have a very tough time getting started. Web Strategists should be aware of reward mechanisms and failure systems that allow passing and failure, the culture is different. Who told me this? An already multi-successful web entrepreneur.

“Tencent QQ is a chat feature that’s used as a Social Network for young teens”

Active discussions occur on this IM tool, which is the world’s third largest. There are virtual coins that can be used to upgrade one’s avatar or blog.

“BBS (bulletin boards) are popular and China, so why would Social Networking be important?”

asked a CEO of a stealth startup in Hong Kong’s Innocenter to me. Technographics studies may indicate that individuals may like to join networks, participate, but may not want to demonstrate relationships in the world wide web.

“Chinese Culture [mainland] doesn’t do a lot of real world social activities, so applying that to the web is challenging”

He questions if there’s real value in Social Networks, what can an individual learn or gain in such a network. For many, the process should be: Meet, then exchange contact information, then information, then add real value needs to be shown. For many Chinese, the value is not yet realized.

“Chinese bankers don’t have time to use social networks, they’re going to use the newspaper and their blackberries”

Tells one investor analyst. His focus in his career was to provide research to busy bankers, they’re not likely to share online, unless direct contributions will result in return.

Love to hear your commentary, even if you don’t agree. Stay tuned for part 4 next week.

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I met up with Angus at the Office 2.0 conference a few weeks ago, he was a big contributor to kicking off the HK blogger dinner that I attended and share with me what he thought of the Hong Kong and Chinese Web industry. At the time of this quick interview, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the industry, but I can now confirm, for the most part, he’s right. The industry is just starting to get legs.

He answers: His opinion on the web industry in China, what type of tools are they using, and what could change all of this

Angus keeps track of the HK web industry and the regional area at 852 Signals.

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(Left: Shanghai on a dreary morning)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 2 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“Chinese enjoy the web for entertainment purposes, therefore the bright and colorful design patterns are suitable for usage”

A generalization described by developer to me. I too have noticed increased use of animation, bright and colorful fonts, and cute anime like graphics on popular websites. If you compare the top Asian blogs in Technorati 100 to the top Western blogs, you’ll may also see a difference in use of animation color choices, and interaction. Obviously, this needs more research to be conclusive.

“Second Life is soooo 2002”

Said one internet professional to me, as there are so many other virtual worlds that have appeared in Asia, see this limited list by Techcrunch or VW review. Silicon Valley still seems intoxicated with SF local Linden labs without realizing there are over 20 virtual networks that are being heavily used by other cultures. Yet another reason Silicon Valley needs to look out the window more often than look in the mirror.

“In Asia, Cyber Cafes make the web social”

This is a concept unfamiliar with most Americans, the high income of the United States family provides at least 1-4 computers in a home, thereby reducing the need to go to a public facility. In many parts of the world, the Cyber Café is not unlike a real café, where people go to meet, game, play, and communicate. There’s more tactile collaboration and community than Americans may ever know. I had a healthy conversation discussion how web analytics may not be accurate in cultures with cybercafes.

“The internet is an entertainment medium, less than a collaboration medium for China”

Over the discussion with this CEO, he compared the differences between the encouragement of collaboration and sharing within the west online vs the consumption type behavior found in China. If one were to do Technographics research it would be interesting to see the differences in sharing and adoption.

“Since you can’t buy [gaming] consoles in China, the biggest online revenues are online gaming”

One investor told me that online gaming (like Swordsman or World of Warcraft) were very successful, as they meet the ‘entertainment’ value proposition. “Online gaming in China represents one of the largest and fasted growing Internet business sectors in the country. With 137 million Internet users currently active in the PRC, the country now has the second largest online user base in world, second only to the United States of America.” suggests Wikipedia.

“TaoBao, is a consumer version of Alibaba, it rivals eBay of the west”

With the success of Alibaba a consumer version was created, just a few weeks ago, McDonalds and TaoBao entered partnership. BusinessWeek provides some additional insight to the key to branding in China.

Love to hear your commentary, even if you don’t agree. Stay tuned for part 3 next week.

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(Left: Hong Kong Harbor at night)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 1 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“The screen is getting bigger for a reason, some kids are playing 4 MMORPGS at once”

declared Yet Siu, the CEO of Outblaze over lunch at a fine seafood restaurant on Lamma island. He’s noticed that some youths in China and HK are playing up to 4 MMORPGs or web games at the same time…each in it’s own window.

“Mini –Homepy (pronounced mini-home-pie) aggregates one’s network”

Is a new feature coming out of South Korea that aggregates one’s network and is like a filter for an individual. If you want to communicate with an individual, you will go to his mini-homepy and leave a message. It’s a combination of a blog, homepage, aggregator, and message board an individual. I did some searches for this product but didn’t find much.

“America has never seen an Alibaba”

On more than one occasion has a few strategists told me about the success of Alibaba. What is this website? It’s an online marketplace for small to medium sized businesses, a site that has no North American relation or comparison. It sports a storefront (free) for any company, and those that wish to upgrade can add video and other features for a fee. Some companies pay up to $5,000 a year. In fact, the company is due to go public soon, and investors are expecting the stock to split within the first 24 hours of IPO. (so I’m told). Ther are 24 million registered users (compared to how many US users) with

“The internet industry is grouped in the Software industry”

Unlike the United States the internet is listed and categorized as a subset of the Software Industry. In the US, internet is often clearly separated from desktop or enterprise software, and we strive to maintain that separation. Over time, this may change in China as well. For many web professionals, they clearly see the web as an evolution to re-purpose desktop applications in the browser, and then the mobile web.

“There are 1.4 million new broadband users in China every month”

During a presentation from China Mobile various stats were given. Although this growth seems massive only 10% of China is on broadband, I believe the stat in United States is around 70-80% (from memory)

Stick around next week, I’ll be releasing part 2. If this was helpful or even if you have some contradictory information, please leave a comment.

Update: I had a great conversation with Carleen Hawn of GigaOm’s Found|READ, she’s summarized much of what I’m reporting back to you all.

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I don’t want to be American-centric, but I need your help.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll notice that I’ve spent some time in Asia (Singapore, HK, Japan) learning about web adoption and sophistication (Canada too). I really want to be the conduit for my many Silicon Valley readers to know more about what the rest of the world has done, Social Media, and the internet at large is truly a global tool.

I’d like to invite you to share with me some case studies of what other companies have done to use social media (from blogs, social networks, online media, etc) to reach and connect with customers. These stories can either be of success or even hard learnings, so please leave a comment below and let me know, of course, please provide links to the appropriate websites.

Shout out your success with social media in Europe! Tell me: 1) What was the company, 2) who were they trying to reach, 3) what was the problem, 4) what did they deploy, 5) how’d it go? 6) What suggestions would you give to the program, where’s it headed? and anything else you wanted to share!

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For the web strategist, successful deployment of a global strategic requires understanding of different cultures and adoption rates. Culture and adoption can vary even from neighboring countries.

Last night, Tod met up with me after the VidFest conference, he brought out several of Canada’s social media folks to meet up, and I was lucky to catch them as they were walking out! Thanks Tod for organizing, Mark’s on an accelerated schedule, Derek was there, and Rachel Newton, Chuck LeDuc, Mark Blevis, Tatsuya Nakagawa, Andrei Iancu, Vern Baker.

I was on a fact-finding mission to find out how the web industry is doing in Canada, the overwhelming response was it was behind the United States, perhaps over a year, due to conservatism and over self-analysis (their words, not mine). I have another video that will be published in the coming weeks listing some of the top web companies.

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The Hong Kong web community came together in the central district (an area known for great bars and restaurants) at Prive’, on scenic Wyndham street. Of the 70 who showed up, there was a wide range of internet professionals. Outblaze, a white label communications company was the host, and we really appreciate them giving to the community, great job Ibrahim and Yusaf. See the full roster on the sign up page.

I took the time to speak to as many people as I could, collecting business cards and asking them about what they did and how’s the HK’s web community. After talking to dozens, most would agree that the web community is still nasenct, only a few companies have emerged as HK’s largest focus is on Finance, Investment and Real Estate. The morning newspaper delivered to my door, as well as TV channels show an emphasis on Finance, and there’s not even a tech section in the newspaper. I believe that Singapore’s web community is just a little bit farther on.

I encouraged everyone to try to continue to meet on a regular basis, and asked all the bloggers to raise their hands, look around at others and try to synch, same with Marketers (who I suggested should start a Social Media Club) and corporate folks (who should consider hosting a Lunch 2.0). These are ongoing community events that are designed to bolster the industry from networking, sharing, and collaboration.

I did a handful of 2 minute video interviews, you’ll start to see a few of those published over the coming weeks, so I hope you subscribe.

What I learned talking to HK’s web community:

I met Victor Isaac Cheung of CNETS asia blog team.

Aaron Farr of Jadetower says the open source movement slowly grows in China, there’s an event tonight at 4pm

Warren Wong of Typhoon Games tells me that the largest area of the gaming industry is in Shanghai.

JiJiJa provides network based recommendations, I’ve added them to my industry index.

Rita at A8 offers a variety of internet marketing services.

Vivien Chan of PCCW is pushing Video on Demand, they’ve a new feature called “Move”.

Marcel of SynergySynq is a project management company for the web community.

I met Theo who broadcasts the only Technology Radio Show in HK, on channel 94.8 and 96.4

I met the founder of Recruit.net Asia’s version of SimplyHired.

I met Ian Fong who’s an internet marketing professional at TTAsia

Napoleon is helping to organize a local BarCamp, and he’s the founder of Web Wednesday, a first-of-the-month get together.

Edmund Wong has an interesting blog in Chinese called Lifesterblog

Eddie Wong at Sanrio Digital has a thriving community around their brand, see Sanrio Town

Kay Bayliss who is a digital marketing association Director.

PK Chan launched EditGrid, an Office 2.0 spreadsheet application

Leon Ho has some great productivity tips, he runs Lifehack

Leonard is a college lecturer at the HK University

I saw my Singaporean friend Melvin Yuan, he just happened to be in town, how very serendipitous.

Craig Jackson of the Priory is a wonderful host, he gave me directions to the right place, thanks.

To my surprise, Sidekick is not a guy, but a very charming lady, who introduced me to many

In HK, instead of business card, they call it “name cards”.

The tag for this event is HKBloggerSept07. (copy that Technorati code to you blog, and tag photos please.

I take great joy in seeing the web industry grow outside of Silicon Valley, thank you HK for coming out!

Update: There’s a few posts coming out, they are:

Outblaze blog
Yusaf of Outblaze
Sidekick
HongKong Phooey (CNET)
Jacky’s Flickr photos
TinyAu
Bigbrainwave
dfazen

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You’ve never had spicy until you’ve had authentic Szechuan
Think you’ve had spicy food? Guess again! After the event, a few of us went out to dinner to enjoy authentic Szechuan cuisine (learn more).

Yes, that’s a bowl full of peppers, somewhere in there is some chicken bits. It was unlike any type of spice I’ve had before, it was aromatic and made my mouth feel numb, almost like an anesthetic. Normal beer tasted sweet like sugar after eating just one small piece of chicken.

Rebbecca MacKinnon, a Professor at HK University, citizen journalist, former CNN reporter has spent much of ther time in China, and speaks fluently, she put me to shame as she gulped down the spicy peppers and food.

I could barely handle it, it was tough, thankfully, I’m not paying for it the next day, what an experience!

Oh, and if you’re on business in China, here’s a cultural tip I learned on previous times here in HK, if you want to pay for the dinner, then you have to be sneaky, and slip out to the bathroom and pay when no one is looking. Chinese culture mandates a fight (can get violent) for hosts to pay for dinner, I’ve been cornered by one team while trying to wrestle the bill away from others, it’s a funny and entertaining experience in Chinese culture.

Pics below: More chili peppers were served than meat! (expand the first two photos)

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Arrived in Hong Kong, although my fifth time here, the sheer size and energy of the city that’s always under construction always amazes me. The flight over, on Singapore’s luxurious planes was fantastic, I feel rested when fully reclining in a chair after 14 hours of flight (flickr photos). On the way over, I was able to read a ton of Forrester material, analyze a few strategies, and just relax.

Tonight is the Hong Kong Blogger dinner that I encouraged everyone to come to, there’s over 60 folks, and OutBlaze, a white label communications company has offered to be a gracious host. I’ll be hanging with them and other technologists over the next few days to understand Hong Kong’s web scene better.

I’m here as I’m speaking at the CLSA investors conference. CLSA is a brokerage, consulting, event and analyst firm. There are about 2500 investors from all over Asia here at the Grand Hyatt (flickr photos), with speakers from the largest corporations and China, and even entertainment by the band INXS, which I grew up on. I have distinct memories of them in Sixth Grade, although my kid sisters had a blank look on their face when I brought up their name “in excess what?”

When I meet people from the Finance industry, I often tell them I’m in “new Media” first, if they probe farther I’ll explain it as social media or social computing, so far, most understand.

I’m also reading, listening, and absorbing data points about Asia’s web scene. Today, one of the executives of China Mobile presented, she gave quite a few facts, trends and data points. Wireless infrastructure for one of the world’s largest cell phone market (China), will access the web via the phones.

Asia’s Growing Web and Mobile Industry

China Mobile has 21% growth last year

China Mobile has 68% market share in China

They are deploying ‘nodes’ into Rural areas, which can quickly scale

In other reports, from CLSA’s Elinor Leung, I learned that China is 2nd to Japan in Web Advertising

The Beijing Olympics will be a major web advertising opportunity and spike

Beijing is pushing the digital/broadband experience for the Olympics

Broadband in China is 14%

Advertising Spend: Online Growth is 68%, while the second highest, radio is a mere 20% growth.

It’s truly an international conferences, at the back of some rooms, there’s small glass enclosed boxes where translators sit and transmit to wireless devices so everyone in the audience can absorb the knowledge.

Hey Web Strategist! Are you paying attention to what’s happening in Asia? There’s going to be a lot of eyeballs here, what are you doing about it? Here’s some stats from the World Internet Usage.

Have a story to tell?
My schedule the rest of the week? It’s Tuesday right now, but on Wednesday, I’ll be visiting some of the offices of folks that hosted the dinner, and will meet a few other entrepreneurs. I speak on Thursday, and am free on Friday if you wanted to meet for tea or coffee here at the Grand Hyatt to discuss Asia’s web industry, I’m very curious in learning more.

3 comments

I’m a data junkie, and am cruising ComScore’s top web properties reports, here’s a few global and national reports:

Top Global Properties
Many of us have already seen this report, not too surprising: “772 million people online worldwide in May… representing a 16 percent penetration of the worldwide population of individuals age 15 or older. Google continues to lead as the most popular property, reaching almost 70 percent of Internet users…The fastest growing property in the top 10 most-visited sites was Apple Inc.”. Only 16% of the globe is online? This means growth will just continue as this medium moves forward.

Report Rankings of Top French Properties for July
Google still maintained dominance of the 26 million French users, “French social networking site, Skyrock Network, which ranks among the most popular social networking sites in all of Europe, was the eighth most visited site, with 9.1 million unique visitors.”

Report Rankings of Top German Internet Properties for July
Germany’s 32 million internet users use Google, and Microsoft properties. “Dooyoo Group, an online retail property which offers price comparison and consumer opinion postings, was the fastest growing property in July, increasing total traffic by 145 percent to reach 2.2 million unique visitors.”

Report Rankings For Top Japanese Web Properties
The Japanese are very much an online culture: “There were a total of 53.7 million unique visitors online in Japan in June, or 49 percent of the country’s population, age 15 or older”

Reports Rankings of Top U.K. Internet Properties for July
31 million users online. Travel websites indicate seasonal usage: “This was followed by the fastest growing of three holiday and travel properties, lastminute.com, which experienced a 30 percent increase to reach 5.2 million unique visitors. Cheapflights Sites, a flight and travel price comparison property, grew by 22 percent to 2.8 million unique visitors, while First Choice Holidays PLC grew 19 percent to 3.6 million.”

I’m also waiting for Widget reports from comScore, they’ve released a tracker, focused just on widgets. Also, Shel Israel is seeking folks from Latin America to help with his survey, please spread the work.

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I’m coming out to Hong Kong for the week of Sept 16th -21st to speak at at the CLSA (CLSA is an award-winning brokerage, investment banking and private equity group in the Asia-Pacific Markets.) conference.

Are you a tech, marketing, or web fanatic that blogs? I’m hoping to connect with you, by organizing a blogger dinner, where we can all meet up. I’m interested in learning about you, your web projects, and or companies, and will doing blogging and video sharing with all my friends in Silicon Valley and beyond. I recently went to Singapore, and did the same, and built some great relationships.

If you’re a tech blogger and want to help me organize a meetup, please leave a comment. Last time, an organization decided to sponsor the drinks and dinner in Singapore. I organized another blogger dinner in Portland, and Jive Software and Intel hosted with their food, in their office and provided drinks.

Who else do I want to meet? If there are any governmental bodies that encourage web companies from the US to expand to HK, I’d love to meet them also. Just yesterday, I had a meeting with Singpaore’s iDA group.

If you’re interested, sign up on the wiki below, or email this post to friends. Oh, and if you want to learn more about me and my Chinese American background, it’s wrote some of the history on July 4th.

Sign up Wiki (register here by editing and adding your name)

Here’s the guest list so far
-Angus Lau has offered to help, read his post!

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I had the opportunity to meet with Joachim NG, who works for iDA, a government agency responsible for the growth of the Singapore ICT industry. Joachim, who was very welcoming to me, is responsible for all business relations to companies, primarily tech in the United States, his title Country Director, US Office, where he’s station in Redwood Shores near Oracle. Think of him as a business ambassador from Singapore to the corporations (and startups) of US. I was surprised to find out that Milpitas based Creative Labs is actually a Singaporean company, cool!

My interest in Singapore started during a trip this summer, I found the small country to have a strong business focus, and growth in the social media space, I’ve kept in touch with many folks in Facebook, blogs, and even hosted friends. In fact, I’m having dinner with TDM’s Steve Ming Yeow tonight at the Social Media Club at Yahoo.

I asked Jochim a few questions about the Web Industry in Singapore, and he provided me with his personal opinions that; “In the near future, we are going to see a lot of the current Web 2.0 features moving into mainstream enterprise IT products. Also, enterprise software companies are starting to use the building blocks and tools that Web2.0 developers are using today.”

Specifically, he share with me his insights on what the next 5 years could look like: “ I see three major areas to focus on in the future, 1) The internet will continue to evolve and Web 2.0 is driving much of that change, 2) Web2.0 applications will have to include Mobile interaction and 3) The need for personal information Security which is different from enterprise IT security, as mobile devices become dominant in many transactions.”

Singapore’s IDA assembles thought and practices leaders from CEOs of major tech companies to visit the country as well as practice leaders in the trenches, I expressed a desire to continue to try to connect cultures that embrace the web –both Silicon Valley and Singapore can leverage each other.

In our parting conversation, I asked Joachim the following: “What do you want to tell Silicon Valley? Many of them read my blog, what should they know about doing business in Singapore?” His response:

[“Asia is a fast growing market for the products that web companies produce. Asia is hungry for web technology. For example the largest growth segment of 18-25 year olds is in Asia. If Asia is not part of your plan it needs to be on your radar, the market demand is there”]

I’ve invited Joachim, my new friend out to upcoming Lunch 2.0s, Social Media Club events and suggested a few other conferences and events to meet our community, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him.

So let’s hear from the Silicon Valley web community (or outside) what are you doing to plan to expand to Asia? Are you offering your site in multiple languages? Is your UI ready for Asian preferences of design? I find this global internet usage data to be helpful, guess which region has the most internet users?

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A few minutes ago, I asked my Twitter family if the following websites was in French, I just wanted confirmation and got a response within seconds. Thanks to Constantin Bastura via twitter and Kali who confirm that “… translation in French of your post on corporate websites, plus analysis” That the irrelevant corporate website has now been translated to French. PR2Peer has substituted the term irrelevant for inept, which still makes the point come across.

I’ve been getting tremendous feedback about this idea, both in support, as well as disagreements that corporate history, facts, and financial numbers are still very much relevant. Of course, I agree, I’m simply suggesting that prospects are making decisions far before even visiting the corporate website, and often, many product facts may exist on other sites such as blogs, forms, or wikis.

Here’s the translation, by my new friend Stan Magniant of PR2Peer, “Comment faire évoluer votre inepte site corporate” (Original in English).

Stan and I are having an engaging discussion in Facebook (see how communications are dispersing) and he’s conducted survey with facts that support my thesis, I’ve asked for him to publish it.

Stay tuned, a Chinese version is to appear shortly.

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