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

How has this happened?

• In Taiwan, Facebook has exploded from 400,000 to nearly 7 million users in only 12 months
• Significant growth in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia
• Indonesia is now the world’s #3 country in terms of total Facebook audience size (behind US and UK)
• Facebook has overtaken hi5 in Thailand and Friendster in the Philippines (formerly the top social networks)
• …But Facebook has seen little growth in Japan and S. Korea

Taiwan’s rapid adoption of Facebook is a particulary interesting example, as it is now one of the few non-English speaking countries with over 30% penetration, joining Hong Kong and Singapore as one of Facebook’s Asian sucess stories.

Why Taiwan?

• A key driver for this growth has been social gaming apps, like Happy Harvest, Pet Society and Restaurant City
• These apps pull users away from other social sites without games, like Taiwan’s other social network Wretch.cc
• More games are being developed in or translated into Traditional Chinese, such as Mahjong by Godgames

Though perhaps Taiwan doesn’t represent a gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia,  it does show that Facebook can be successful in the region. Perhaps social gaming will also open doors for Facebook in tougher markets like Japan and South Korea…

How many BFFs do you have?

Dunbar’s number is the famed 150 friends with whom humans are supposed to be able to keep close relations. For Asian youths, however, the average number of friends is 107.

Ian Stewart of MTV recently gave these statistics from an MTV and TNS study in a presentation about youth and social networking in Asia.

The friendliest youth of all are in Thailand – often called the land of smiles – where young people have an average of 170 offline, online and close friends. This is more than twice as many as the 80 friends whom youth in neighboring Vietnam have.

As for online friends, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and India all tend to have about 30 or fewer online friends, while Thai, Malaysian and Chinese youth all have more than 50 online friends.

The online friends number is not entirely related to broadband penetration or level of economic development. Young people in Australia, Korea and Taiwan have fairly low numbers of online friends.

One of the most striking cases, however, is China: The only country in Asia where people have more online friends than offline friends. This is yet another example of China tremendous engagement in Social Media and the Internet.