Future

Empowering Self Expression on the Web (posted by Brad Bowers)

Over at GigaOm, Robert Young has an interesting post about the growth of social networking as "a micro-phenomenon of a much larger macro-trend that the Internet has spawned since its birth… digital self-expression."

He points out how regular people now have many ways to express themselves, especially on the Web. We see this to be true in blogs, podcasts, MySpace pages, Flickr albums, and more. 

This phenomenon can clearly be seen in China:

• The number of podcasts is booming (China Web2.0 review points to a study saying there are approximately 145,000 Chinese podcasts, showing nearly 300% growth in the last four months.)
• One report predicts that there will be more than 60 million bloggers in China by the end of 2006 (up from about 36M currently).

Add in the success in China of the American Idol-type show Super Girl, where citizens in China can watch amateur female singers perform and then vote for their favorite winners via SMS, and personal expression is obviously raging in China.

I think that what is happening in China is particularly interesting, given that until recently there weren't very many ways for the citizens to speak out, much less be heard.  Clearly Chinese citizens (particularly the younger set) are rapidly embracing the new technologies that are giving them a voice.  This bodes particularly well for China web businesses that can tap into this fervor, and then build a scalable business model around it.

Yahoo!, eBay, or Google?

On a day like today with the announcement of a huge multi-year deal between Yahoo! and eBay in response to Google, who would you rather be?  Yahoo!, eBay, or Google?

CRV Invests in Maxthon (posted by Brad Bowers)

Congratulations go out to our friend Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures on his just completed investment in the Beijing-based company Maxthon, which makes a browser by the same name.

We've known Bill a few months now, and find him to be one of the most genuine, friendly, and sharp VCs around.  It's great to see VCs such as Bill getting more active with investments in the China market.

Maxthon's browser has reportedly been downloaded over 55 million times, and is doing upwards of 1 million downloads per week.  Also, notably, it is the second most popular browser in China (just behind IE).  Not a bad place to be with the China net population set to surpass that of the U.S. in the next year or so.

There's more on the investment on the Maxthon blog.

In talking to another upstart browser company a few months ago, I was told that Mozilla is making a ton of money (millions and millions) just off of their deal to have Google as the default browsing partner.  Given the success of AdWords, this is not hard to believe, and a given Maxthon's reach and continued growth, it clearly has a platform to generate lots of revenues, both in the U.S. and eventually in China as the ad market matures.

Y! and MSFT new ad systems (posted by Matt Comyns)

Today Yahoo! announced their new ad system roll out.  Perhaps their new platform and MSFT's AdCenter will give Google a run for their money.  However, I have a few observations:

*    If they both have so much confidence in their new ad systems, why have they been talking about partnering in a major way to try to compete with Google?

*    I saw that MSFT Ad Center has 6000 businesses in its system now.  That compares with over 400,000 in Google's AdSense.  Seems like a lot of catch up to do, even with the web's ubiquity.

I was with a multi-billion dollar media company on Friday who commented to me:  "I think it's over.  Google wins, and the rest of us will fight for the scraps." 

Regardless of where you come out on this arguement, the rest of this year will be very enlightening because we should know a lot more about Google dominance or lack thereof by December.  With the last quarter, they appear to be pulling away.  If that is the case, the following quarters will be even more obvious.  We'll know whether or not these new ad systems of Y! and MSFT are really competitive, whether or not MSFT's new search technology can make a dent in the market (they are currently at 11% marketshare), etc etc.

In the meantime, GOOG's stock will whiplash with rumors and speculation on where search is going.  So, be careful.

Business Week Proclaims "China's Online Ad Boom" Posted by Brad Bowers

This week's issue of BusinessWeek has an article that gives a great overview of the rapid rise of online advertising in China.

The article states:

"The migration of advertising from print to online is an accelerating trend in the U.S. Now, the same thing seems to be happening in China's fast-growing ad market. With 111 million Internet users on the mainland -- typically trend-conscious, young, and relatively wealthy."

Another passage states:

"Online ad spending has been growing by more than 75% annually for the past three years. It's expected to reach $812 million this year and top $1 billion in 2007, according to Shanghai-based IResearch. While Net advertising today represents just 2.3% of the total ad market in China, the balance is changing fast. "New Media's advertising revenues are starting to catch up" and will surpass traditional media's within 10 years, says Cui Baoguo, director of the Center for Media Management Studies at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "There is huge space for growth."

The article also talks about the struggles that Chinese print publications are facing, which is a topic I covered recently in a previous blog post.

Clearly online advertising is still in the early stages in China, but there is no denying the trends, which are all "up and to the right".  Further, as lessons, technologies, and methodologies from the U.S. Internet ad market are applied in China where possible, the online publishers will be able to avoid some pitfalls, and apply best-practices more quickly.  This should help accelarate growth even more quickly.