Different? No…not really

February 8, 2008 in Blogging
Tags: Internet China facebook IM

Newsweek got an article on China’s young Internet gurus. The article suggests that China young Internet users are a different base compared with U.S.

I won’t say this article is bad or what,but I don’t see reliable data and persuasive reason in it. It is just not a proper article that should appear on a magazine like Newsweek.

As for the article, I think the key point is the ratio between mobile phone users and PC users and the order of introduction. Similar situation happens in Philippine, where people learn to use mobile phone and log onto internet before accessing to desktop PC. Mobile phones are cheaper, more private, more personal, and multiple usages of mobile phone have been developed to fulfill users’ needs even with low connection speed.

Another simple reason that Chinese users use more IM than social networks like facebook is merely because of the order of introduction. The article does not point out that IM has cultivated for a much longer time than new social network sites. So simple comparison between China and US is just not get the point.

Here is a blog post written in Chinese by a friend of mine focus on micro-blogging. no English version yet.
Here is another post by a new media researcher and blogger on twitter. still no English version.

Here is an interesting article on Gurdian which you might have read. This article is translated into Chinese and many readers seems to feel the same.