It’s also worth noting that Japan has added 500,000 users and Korea 347,000 users in the past month – Japan has the highest growth rate (8.01%) of the top 25 countries – so we also expect to see the social media landscape changing rapidly in both these markets in 2012.

Facebook Asia – January 2012 (as quoted from Socialbakers.com).

]]> http://www.asiadigitalmap.com/2012/01/india-now-worlds-second-largest-facebook-country/feed/ 1 http://www.asiadigitalmap.com/2011/11/social-medializing-your-wedding/ http://www.asiadigitalmap.com/2011/11/social-medializing-your-wedding/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:00:36 +0000 Kuan Yew http://www.asiadigitalmap.com/?p=4872 In response to Brian Camen who wrote the Social Media’s Impact on saying “I Do” post in June, I’d like to share 3 ways on how I’ve used social media for my own wedding in September, 2011.

RSVP via a Facebook Event

Announcements on Facebook and Twitter aside, I created a Facebook Event to invite my guests. With a simple message and a few clicks, I reached out to almost all my friends on FB. That saved me tonnes of time when it comes to finalizing the number of attendees and finding out if my guests were bringing their +1s or not. When planning a wedding, especially when the date draws closer, time is a luxury piece and you don’t get to waste much. So this alone saved me much time.

A mini teaser for the wedding via a Wedding Teaser Photo Album

We took some beautiful wedding portraits to be shown during the wedding. If you knew about it and remember, the photography session caused me to miss the Social Media Summit in HK earlier this year! Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!

Anyway, to create anticipation and excitement a few days before the wedding, we released a few of these pictures on Facebook. It was fun, friends were glued on and excited to view the next picture to be uploaded.

A video to tell our little story

They say a picture is stronger than a thousand words, while I disagree SEO wise, we took it one step further and hired a videographer to make us a video instead, and we loved it. The attendees found it entertaining and we get to keep our sweet sweet memories foerever (unless the video file somehow got lost or corrupted, I hope not!). We then uploaded the video on YouTube for all those who missed it and those who would like to see it again, my wife and I especially.

(The video is the one at the top by the way)

IT ALL REALLY STARTED WITH FACEBOOK

So there you have it, 3 ways I’ve used social media for my wedding. If I can only quote ONE SINGLE example on using social media for a wedding, how about this….. I met my wife on Facebook, how’s that for a social media case study!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this. Have you got similar stories to share? How have you used social media for your wedding? Looking forward to hearing your stories, cheers!

The Cantonese term derived for the action of “not honoring the agreed appointment” is specifically phrased “Fong Fei Kei” (direct translation: Let the Airplane Go). Acts of this “Fong Fei Kei” (FFK) culture is often practiced in some Asian Societies; that it has become an expected behavior.

Two brothers here in Malaysia, Eugene Ooi and Eu Veng Ooi have decided to capitalize on this less accepted norm of social conduct by creating a ticket matching service through the power of Twitter and a site cleverly created under the URL http://ffk.me.

All tickets are submitted by registered users of the site and auctioned off to interested buyers. Twitter fits perfectly into the system with its real time abilities to alert followers of the Twitter account @fongfeikei of tickets that are up for grabs.

Users may also tweet @fongfeikei to inquire for specific tickets which will be RT-ed to other followers. Or to sell you tickets/ promote your events.

At least through this service, there is some hope of salvaging some of the lost investment from a person who has already declined your invitation with a questionable excuse.

As a previous beta tester, ffk has managed to turn around a large amount of glum into some relief for folks who have no idea what they can do with potentially under-utilized tickets. Pretty neat idea eh?

I’d personally like to see a mobile app come out of this. Do you think something like FFK has potential in your country?

Spotlight on Malaysia – Education and crime in Malaysian tech focus

Other Asia – Updated Internet stats from all over Asia

China

China Mobile makes far more money than Unicom and Telecom

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/08/25/china-mobile-makes-way-way-more-money-than-unicom-and-telecom/

In the past year, China Mobile made 61 billion RMB (about US$9.6 billion) in profits alone. For the first half of 2011, China Mobile’s profits were six times more than China Telecom’s, and twenty-four times more than China Unicom’s.

China tops US to become largest PC market

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14639021

China passed the US in PC shipments in the second quarter of 2011, marking the first time the Asian nation has done so. 18.5 million units were shipped in China during the quarter versus 17.7 million in the United States. The US is still expected to remain the largest PC market for the year of 2011 but will probably relinquish the throne to China at the end of 2012.

 Microsoft forms cloud-computing partnership in China

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/08/23/microsoft-forms-cloud-computing-partnership-in-china/

Microsoft has announced a new joint-venture in Beijing which will, “develop, market and sell solutions for the booming cloud-computing market in China.”

Their partner is China Standard Software, a Shanghai-based R&D company.

(Thanks to Pete Mitchell for the link)

Chinese TV alludes to US website attacks

http://allthingsd.com/20110825/chinese-state-tv-alludes-to-u-s-website-attacks/

Chinese state television has broadcast footage of what two experts on the Chinese military say appears to be a military institute demonstrating software designed to attack websites in the U.S. The evidence is far from concrete, however some experts believe it to be an example of an official source contradicting China’a repeated assertions that it doesn’t engage in cyberattacks.

Spotlight on Malaysia

Social media helps find lost student in Malaysia

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/asia/22iht-search22.html?_r=1&ref=technology

The hunt for a lost student in Malaysia spread from email to Facebook to a Twitter hashtag and eventually resulted in his safe return home. Malaysians connected with the student’s family in the US and organized to gather information of his whereabouts.

Government donates computers to pondok schools

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=609979

The government is helping some of the poorest schools in Malaysia move into the digital age by giving them computer equipment. At the prompting of ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan, the Malaysian government will give the equipment to five schools in Southern Malaysia. “Pondok” is the word for hut schools.

Cyber casinos busted in Malaysia

http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Crime/Story/A1Story20110819-295158.html

The Malaysian police have been cracking down on an epidemic of corrupt cyber-casinos in the country in recent years, and this week arrested three more suspects in the city of Georgetown. The police have conducted 286 raids since 2009 on illegal gambling centers in the North-East District of Penang and confiscated 4,135 computers and gambling devices worth about RM6mil (2 million USD).

Other Asia

Asia’s Internet by the numbers

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/08/24/asias-internet-by-the-numbers/

Check out these great interactive graphs concerning the Internet in Asia. Great statistics include: 52.2% of Asia’s Internet users are in China (with India, Japan, and Indonesia combined making up 25%); South Korea has the highest Internet penetration with 81% (followed by Brunei(?!), Japan, and Singapore); and Indonesia, India, and the Philippines lead the continent in the number of Facebook members.

 New statistics show that blogs are big in Japan

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/8/Japan_Internet_Users_Spend_Most_Time_on_Blogs_Worldwide

The average blog reader in Japan spends a whopping 62.6 minutes a month reading blogs (on the bog?). This makes it the number one country in the world in terms of blog engagement. Traffic to blogs is continuing to rise in the country as well, quieting murmurs that microblogging is making traditional blogging obsolete.

Social media in India (Infographic)

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/08/24/infographic-social-media-in-india/

India is a social media powerhouse. They are the third largest Facebook country in the world (behind the USA and Indonesia) with 31 million users. 100 million people are online in India, with 20 million of those coming online daily.

Help write this newsletter (please!) – If you see anything interesting send it to me at:

Barney.loehnis@ogilvy.com (@barneylo) & Michael.mcclelland@ogilvy.com

Tencent tests microblog translation tool, opening door for Chinese sites to adopt English

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/06/22/tencent-tests-microblog-translation-tool-paves-way-for-chinese-sites-to-adopt-english/

Chinese Internet giant Tencent has recently partnered with Kingsoft, maker of the machine translation product PowerWord, and Youdao, Netease’s online dictionary, to bridge the language gap among users of its microblogging platform by developing a microblog translation tool. The technology will be responsible for automatic translations to and from English, while Youdao will offer translations for Japanese and Korean. In addition to these two, Tencent is reportedly in talks with several other major translation companies to bring other languages into its microblogging platform.

Cartier joins other luxury brands by getting a Youku channel

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/21/cartier-lv-youku-video-channel/

Cartier has launched a branded channel on Youku.com, China’s biggest video-sharing site. It joins six other upscale brands – Louis Vuitton, Dior, Burberry, Gucci, Omega, and Mido – in opting to engage with Chinese consumers via Youku as a part of their social media strategy in the country.

Apps in Asia – China huge, Japan most expensive

http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/china-app-store-market-study/

China is now the second largest iOS apprket in the world (after the USA). Japan accounts for most of the revenue in Asia, as Japan is the most expensive in the region. The study also found that the majority of popular iPhone apps in Asia are only popular in Asia. This is especially true in China, South Korea and Japan. In countries such as India and Indonesia, app localization is less important.

Other Asia

Consumers in Southeast Asia bought over 260,000 tablets in the first quarter of this year

http://www.gfkrt.com/asia/news_events/news/news_single/008189/index.en.html

261,000 tablets spanning almost ten brands were sold across seven Southeast Asian markets* from January to April this year. Tablets operating on the Android operating system (OS) has been rising in prevalence and is today the most popular platform embraced by users. In April, almost half of all tablets (46%) purchased by consumers was an Android compared to five months before, in November, where the proportion was only slightly just over one out of ten (13%).

Taiwan-based chip developer reveals Amazon’s plans to release tablet PCs in September

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110621PD222.html

Amazon adopts processors developed by Texas Instruments, with Taiwan-based Wintek to supply touch panels, ILI Technology to supply LCD driver ICs and Quanta Computer responsible for assembly, the sources indicated. Monthly shipments are expected to be nearly a million units. The autumn launch will allow Amazon to target Thanksgiving and Christmas shoppers in key markets.

The problem with Facebook in Japan

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/20/problem-with-facebook-in-japan/

In a survey of Facebook users in Japan, all participants agreed that Facebook is less secure, has a more complicated user interface, and is definitely not popular compared with Mixi. Many also had issues with Facebook’s real name policy. Participants also pointed out the Facebook goes against the traditioncal Japanese values of harmony and also is too literal for the very escapism and fiction-frenzied culture of Japan.

Tsutenkaku Tower to get LED lights

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110622f1.html

Hitachi will replace most neon lights for its advertisements on Osaka’s signature Tsutenkaku Tower with light-emitting diodes in a bid to cut electricity consumption by half and contribute to nationwide energy-saving efforts.

Southeast Asia to ship over 100 million smartphones this year

http://www.zdnetasia.com/sea-to-ship-100m-phones-this-year-62300828.htm

106 million mobile phones are expected to be shipped across Southeast Asia this year, marking a 19 percent increase from 90 million units last year. The number will increase to 163 million by 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 39 percent. This region encompasses Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

South Korea – eCommerce Cannes winner for Tesco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPM4Ui6Sjfk

Sina Weibo launches a user data center as a potential revenue source
http://techrice.com/2011/06/15/sina-weibo-launches-user-data-center-a-potential-source-of-revenue-infographic/
Sina Weibo is offering their 140 million users tools to track and monitor their own Weibo accounts through data.weibo.com. The site allows users to monitor their own accounts on a weekly basis in five categories: influencer rating, followers, people followed, weekly top weibo, and top trending topics.

Renren to issue social credit card
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/06/15/renren-partners-with-china-merchants-bank-to-issue-credit-card-with-social-features/
Renren has just announced its partnership with one of China’s leading commercial banks, China Merchants Bank, to create a co-branded Renren CMB credit card that takes advantage of the social network’s features.
This credit card program takes advantage of social, location, and mobile services, where credit card holders will be able to “check in” from their current locations to receive promotional information from any of the ten thousand Merchants Bank merchant partners who happen to be located within the vicinity.

China: Truth, rumors, and a basket of fruit
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/06/truth-rumors-and-fruit-baskets.html
China has been awash with rumours and uprisings in recent months. Part of this is due to access to the Internet. Though sites are censored and rumours are eventually erased from the public forum, authorities are still struggling to balance the release of information and public opinion.

Yahoo/Alibaba/Alipay/Jack Ma/Carol Bratz: What happened an what it really means
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/06/yahoo_alibaba_alipay_jack_ma_and_what_really_happened_and_what_it_means.html
Yahoo owns a part of Alibaba, which owned Alipay, the online payment business. According to Chinese law, this means it cannot be foreign owned. Yahoo alleges it just recently learned that Alibaba had transferred ownership of Alipay to a fully domestic Chinese entity. Alibaba is saying it did that so as to bring Alipay in line with the laws prohibiting foreign ownership of an online payment company.

Chinese E-Commerce Giant Taobao Splits Itself Up
http://www.businessinsider.com/taobao-split-jack-ma-2011-6?
Taobao, the biggest commerce site in China, is splitting itself up into three sites and entities. Taobao is often referred to as the “eBay of China” but it’s a much broader e-commerce platform and the split reflects that. Now there will be Taobao itself, a consumer-to-consumer marketplace (i.e. like eBay), Taobao Mall, a business-to-consumer marketplace (i.e. businesses open storefront on Taobao Mall to sell to consumers) and eTao, a shopping search engine. Despite the split, still no IPO of Taobao, on the horizon.

Chinese now spend 41% of their online time on social networks
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/06/13/chinese-now-spend-41-of-their-time-online-on-social-networks-in-lieu-of-news-sites/
A new report reveals that the Chinese now spend 41% of their time online on social networks, which indicates a major shift in how Chinese netizens are no longer purely consumers of web content, but are now more open to communicate, share, and engage online as well.
(Thanks to Sascha Engel for the link)

Chinese Secretly Copy Austrian UNESCO Town
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,768754,00.html
Residents of the Austrian mountain town of Hallstatt, population 800, are scandalized. A Chinese firm has plans to replicate the village — including its famous lake — in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, Austrian media reported this week.

Other Asia

Ebay, Yahoo, Google, Nokia, and Skype announce Asia Internet Coalition
http://www.campaignasia.com/Article/260505,ebay-yahoo-google-nokia-and-skype-launch-asia-internet-coalition.aspx
Ebay, Yahoo, Google, Nokia and Skype have joined forces to launch a new industry association, The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), which aims to promote understanding and resolution of Internet policy issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

Village in India named after a Groupon clone
http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/15/village-in-india-named-after-a-groupon-clone
An Indian Groupon clone has adopted a village called Shiv Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, India, and renamed it to Snapdeal.com Nagar. The one-year-old online group-buying start-up will develop the village’s infrastructure, including installation of water pumps and support of the local school and hospital.

Taiwanese newspaper pre-announces iPad3
http://allthingsd.com/20110614/taiwan-newspaper-pre-announces-7-inch-ipad-3/
Taiwan’s Economic Daily, which correctly predicted some of the specs of the original iPad well ahead of its debut, has stated that Apple has another iPad in the works and intends to launch it before the end of the year. Rumour states that it will have a 7-inch touchscreen with an image resolution five to six times greater than the iPad2.

Malaysia braces for cyber-attacks
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110615/tc_afp/malaysiaturkeytechnologyinternethacking
Malaysian officials are bracing for hacker attacks on government websites by a group which sabotaged Turkish sites last week to protest against Internet censorship. Internet activists Anonymous warned on a website that they would target Malaysia’s government portal www.Malaysia.gov.my.

Singapore promotes healthy eating with apps
http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/10/singapore-promotes-healthy-eating-through-iphone-app/
To promote healthy eating, Singapore’s Health Promotion Board recently launched ‘Healthy Chef,’ an iPhone app that provides healthy cooking recipes for Singaporeans. The app provides over 70 recipes created by renowned chefs in Singapore with choices over Chinese, Malay, Indian or Western cuisines. A user can search for recipes based on calorie level and save them within their shopping list for future reference.
(Thanks to June Saowanee for the link)

In defense of his friend, social activist @fahmi_fadzil  tweeted in reference to the HR policies by a local publishing company for “giving her so much s*** because she was preganant” This went on for a number of tweets with responses by angered folks on Twitter with word such as “angry” and “retarded”

*Screenshot taken off Malaysiakini.com

In a twist of fate, legal action has been issued by the publishing company with a most idiosyncratic pronouncement. Fahmi was sentenced to tweet an apology 100 times a day for his act of defamation along a total of 3 days to his 4,300 odd followers.

What is happening now is a stream of media attention directed at the company with more severe name calling and messages. Social media has started to react.

The term in the last few hours to use is “#defahmi” (An obvious wordplay between fahmi’s name and defamation). The question to bear in mind is “what kind of statement was the ‘defamed’ trying to get at?”

 It definitely now has more attention than it cried out for when most Twitter uproars in the country are a “let bygones be bygones” and usually quelled downed in a day or two (unless there is persistence of course). A situation that could have been kept off the radar if it now isn’t repeatedly tweeted 100 times a day.

With new media laws still being freshly popped in and out of the oven, legislations and settlement forms for platforms such as Twitter are still unclear for now. Defamation itself too is a loose belt of the law that’s hard to justify and find evidence for.

 It’s becoming plain to see though, that some parties should consider the reaction of the hyper-reactive Social Media stream before hitting the “Send Tweet” button.

For Twitter-holics like myself (where tweeting is like verbal diarrhea), this serves as a reminder to pay careful attention to what is being tweeted.

Fahmi is now an International sensation (with 400 new followers since appearing in the headlines), appearing on the 7th Twitter trending topic, and is one case that would be interesting to continue to observe.

John lists three categories for evaluation with critical questions for each (full post here).

1) Enterprise Readiness

2) Local Market Readiness

3) Market Conditions

I’d offer up few specific points worth investigating for enterprises with priority markets in Asia:

1- Don’t Build in a Vacuum

The reality is enterprise readiness is not easy. It takes considerable organisational horsepower to build consensus on measurement, putting pen to paper on the brand playbook, leaping over the sales, marketing, pr silos. It’s messy and takes time.

Brands at the twilight of phase one – nearly but yet not complete – should already be activating and training local markets. This evaluation process is not liner. In fact, the leading enterprises I’ve worked with run this simultaneously with a built in feedback mechanism so the important lessons bound to pour out while building capacity at the local level are channeled back up to global.  Ready the enterprise while simultaneously building local capacity and both hub and spoke benefit.

We often subscribe to the multiple hub and spoke model for clients (it works for us at Ogilvy) and we’ve learned that those spokes need to flow both ways. See below for reference from the Altimeter Career Path of the Corporate Social Media Strategist.

2- Two-way Hub and Spokes

Successful enterprises know that Asia is an exporter of ideas and creativity in social media. Show up at a brand or agency brainstorm in Ho Chi Minh City, talk to digital creatives in Beijing or ask your Taiwan team to give you a demo of their wildly popular BBS ingeniously run off of Telenet.

A UK or US-headquartered client cannot toss the enterprise social strategy and brand content to Hong Kong or Shanghai and expect a word -by-word translation.

This import model doesn’t work in social media because enterprises risk serious innovation leak if there’s not a pipeline in place designed to channel the creativity and ideas destined to come flowing back to global HQ.

Be warned: do not make the mistake of dividing your Asia social media efforts based on the number of Facebook fans by country (see below from Tom Crampton) or any other stat your Intern googled. Indonesia, as an example, is the second largest Facebook market in the world, and also home to a fascinating and jaw-dropping complex cultural and business environment that may consume resources at a faster rate than other markets.

3- Pilots to build local teams

The following are must-have stats that your local team can and should easily pull (riff off of John’s post) and the second list of questions will yield deeper insight when planning and evaluating long term engagement:

• Dominant social networks (local vs global socnet)
• Dominant search engine
• Mobile penetration
• Broadband penetration
• Trust in WOM
• Censorship Level in Social Media (reality of some Asian countries, particularly China and Vietnam)

In order to know where to focus your efforts long term, a pilot program in a carefully chosen market answers to deeper questions designed to assess local market readiness:

• Is the local market an influencer or grassroots driven web ecosystem? Hint: No market in Asia is a symmetric 50 /50 split
• Does that social media monitoring tool really work in Vietnamese, Bahasa Malaysia, etc?
• Does this global enterprise program need further tweaking to “fit” in China?
• Can we really get general consensus on measurement?
• Do we need a regional hub serving Asia for added support – a mini-hub in cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai that can serve as a single contact point for global HQ while coordinating 23 cities in Asia.

With so many languages, cultures and different web-climates, Asia warrants an extra level of attention and evaluation. Curious to know lessons learned from others as more and enterprises assess market readiness in social media.

Amid street protests, Twitter shuttered in Egypt…. and shortly after AP’s
report on a man being shot, the Internet and RIM are turned off.
www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/twitter-revolution/
Egypt’s ruling Mubarak administration has pulled the plug on Twitter,
underscoring the power of the site and other social networks as tools to
both coordinate and disperse news of a citizen uprising. Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube were widely used in Tunisia’s recent uprising and in Iran last
year.

Twitter topples Tunisia?
www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Twitter+topples+Tunisia/4148834/story.html
Excellent compilation of opinions from global experts regarding the
Tunisian uprising. According to the experts, Twitter was not responsible
for the success of the uprising, but rather served as an incredibly useful
tool thanks to its short message format, multi-platform access and the
ability to use it on cell-phones.

Human Rights Watch condemns Vietnam for media and Internet censorship
www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1614312.php/Human-Rights-Watch-condemns-Vietnam-for-repression-of-human-rights
The Human Rights Watch reports that bloggers, human rights defenders,
workers’ rights activists, democracy and anti-corruption campaigners have
faced intimidation, arrest, torture and imprisonment in Vietnam. The
country’s government has extended its regime of media and Internet
censorship and introduced new regulations for monitoring Internet use.

Thailand: Serious setbacks in respecting rights
www.trust.org/alertnet/news/thailand-serious-setbacks-in-respecting-rights
The Human Rights Watch also addressed recent setbacks in Thailand, where
freedom of expression was a casualty of a far-reaching government
censorship campaign that shut down thousands of websites and dozens of
community radio stations, TV and satellite broadcasts, and publications.

China – cheap shots at an increasingly open internet
http://www.chinahearsay.com/nick-kristof-discovers-net-censorship-in-china/
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tried his hand last week at
investigative journalism. After a thorough investigation, he announced in
his column that . . . China is censoring Internet content… I actually
like Kristof and respect his commitment to important topics.. this cheap
gimmick is beneath him and ridiculous.
Here Kristof outline his “ridiculous experiment” which rewards readers with
the one insight, “A Chinese moderator once explained to me that grunt-level
censors are mostly young computer geeks who believe in Internet freedom and
try to sabotage their responsibilities without getting fired.”
http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/01/24/article/nicholas_kristof_banned_in_beijing

psfk.com/2010/11/which-nation-is-the-most-innovative.html

Japan leads in terms of total patents granted, but it’s the Republic of Korea that is the most efficient in its innovation – each dollar spent on research is likelier to result in a patent.

Tencent Profit Increases 52% on China Online Games Sales, Advertising Surge

bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-10/tencent-profit-rises-52-on-china-online-games-sales-update1-.html

The company had 636.6 million active user accounts for its QQ instant-messaging service at the end of September, compared with 612.5 million three months earlier, it said. The online- chat program had 18 times more subscribers than Microsoft Corp.’s MSN service in China at the end of last year, according to research company Analysis International.

How Baidu Won China

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm

The company has a 73 percent share of the world’s largest Internet market by users, and has the fifth-largest market capitalization ($38.3 billion) among the world’s pure-play Internet companies. It’s now 57 percent bigger than Yahoo!.

Baidu’s stock price has more than doubled since January, when Google first disclosed … “a new approach” to China, with the company saying it would no longer censor search results.”Every once in a while a gift is handed to you. We handed one to Robin,” says Eric Schmidt CEO of Google.

Social Media Booming in Indonesia and India

While you weren’t looking, Indonesia became Facebook’s second largest market, Twitter’s fifth largest market, and the number ONE Foursquare nation. The social media boom in Indonesia is also spreading its influence to other Asian nations.

techcrunch.com/2010/11/06/hey-facebook-twitter-and-foursquare-zynga-and-i-are-in-indonesia-where-are-you/

The mobile social network Mig33, which boasts over two million Indian users, has just secured US $8.9 million, most from an Indonesian entrepreneur.

watblog.com/2010/11/09/mig33-raises-8-9-million-from-indonesian-entrepreneur/

India’s Challenge to Facebook

bbc.co.uk/news/business-11525627

Ibibo is making a good challenge on Facebook by developing a range of local relevant games. Those games include “The Great Indian Parking Wars”, where users collect points by parking “legally or illegally” and – in a very local touch – removing idle cows. Like its home base of Gurgaon, which has turned from a village near Delhi to a shining new city in a matter of years, Ibibo has come seemingly out of nowhere. Since it was set up in January 2007, Ibibo has massed 3.7 million users, making it the largest locally based social network in India.

Kik, the Skype of Text Messages, is Registering 250,000 New Users a Day

venturebeat.com/2010/11/05/kik-sms-growth/

(Thanks to Rohan Deshpande for the link)

Fashion Forward in China’s Booming E-Commerce Market.

bloggerinsight.com/blog

Chinese business to consumer fashion e-commerce has grown by 100% in the past three years. TaoBao controls 76% of China’s eCommerce, but increasingly growth will be driven by more sophisticated offerings that can differentiate on service and style. With Gap joining established Chinese forces such as VANCL and Taobao, the industry is poised to grow even more.

Bain & Co on Luxury in China

What luxury goods to Chinese consumers buy? Bain and Co. have just released their new study of the Chinese luxury market. Research points to a new generation of luxury shoppers. 67% of the growth in 2010 is from new consumers. Also, luxury interest in expanding from Tier 1 cities to China’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

bain.com/bainweb/PDFs/cms/Public/China_Luxury_Market_Study_2010.pdf