the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Web Tidbits - IE and Internet Status

The Global Information Technology Report was released today.  The report prepared by INSEAD and sponsored by the World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. as fourth in Internet infrastructure following Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.  China advanced in the rankings to 57th.  Other country rankings show up in their table "The Networked Readiness Table 2007 - 2008".  Ranking at the bottom of the list was Chad.  The Executive Summary of the report finds a world of growing interconnectivity with Less Developed Countries leapfrogging older technologies with the installation of WiMax. 

In other interesting statistics, Forrester Research reported a precipitous drop in Internet Explorer's market share with a drop of 11% in 2007 from 88.7% to 77.7% as Mozilla Firefox continued to gain share not only in the consumer market, but also in the enterprise market according to Information Week.  The article also reported that many companies had not migrated to IE7 sticking with the less robust IE6.

Global Tastes - Chinese Internet Use

The Wall Street Journal reported on official estimates from the China Internet Network Information Center that the number of Chinese Internet users now exceeds that in the United States.  The US is estimated to have 217.1 million users, while the CINIC data shows that China now has 225 million Internet users.  This data is supported by other research from BDA China, Ltd, that found 228.5 million Internet users in China.  While the absolute number is now reportedly higher, as a percentage of the total Chinese poplulation it is only 19.1% according to CINIC.  BDA also reported that only 5% of advertising spending in China is on the Internet.

In other Chinese Internet news, Reuters reported on how Chinese bloggers have for the most part been very nationalistic in their coverage of the unrest in Tibet.  While the Chinese mainstream media has not covered this in much depth apparently the "freedom" in the blogosphere has precluded the shut down of opinions from bloggers.

Web Tidbits - global and hispanic blogs, e-cards

I've been catching up on my blog reading and doing some general Internet exploration.  As part of this effort, I've come across a few posts that offer information on some interesting developments in e-business and marketing.

Innovation.net references IdeaBlob, a social network for idea sharing where community members vote on the best idea of the month, resulting in a potential award of $10,000.

Curious about marketing developments around the world?  Take a look at GlobalThoughtz, a consortium of bloggers from ten countries around the world (Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Russia, Scandinavia and the UK).

For a slice of the American demographic pie, you might want to take a look at Juan Guillermo Tornoe's Hispanic Trending blog.

Want to send a racier e-card?  Check out Someecards. (hat tip to Ad Freak)

Global Tastes - Chinese e-Marketing

iResearch reports that China's e-marketing expenditures rose 44% with online advertising (game ad revenue, e-mail revenue, online advertising revenue, digital magazine ad revenue and misc) spending increasing to 4.66 billion RMB (renminbi) and search engine marketing increasing to 1.35 billion RMB in 2006.

Meanwhile the CNNIC reports that 144 million Chinese are now online with 77 million broadband subscribers among them as of the end of 2006 according to Internet World Stats.

Global Tastes - Internet Censorship

The BBC reports on a study by the Open Net Initiative ONI (a consortium of researchers from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and University of Toronto) that found that 25 of 41 countries showed evidence of some sort of content filtering.  The filtering was reported to be for 3 reasons politics and power, security concerns and social norms.  The ONI identifies filtering into 4 buckets technical blocking, search result removals, site mandated takedowns and induced self censorship and that the locus of the filtering can be at four levels the Internet backbone, ISP, institutional and/or individual computer level.

Bad Baidu Beats Google in Beijing, Shanghai and China...

PC World reports on how Baidu has out-gunned and outmaneuvered Google to become the number one Chinese language site in the world and number one search engine in China with 62% of all searches on their site.  In a rare setback, Google the world's number one brand according to Millward Brown and number one visited site according to ComScore (reported at SFGate.com) has some lessons to learn to get China right. 

So what are the factors that have made Baidu successful?  One key to Baidu's success is reported to be their .mp3 search capabilities, a feature that due to copyright reasons has not been pursued by Western search engines.  Another success factor might be the simple user interface that Baidu seems to have borrowed from Google.  Yet another is reported to be that their search results are heavily weighted towards advertising rather than organic search results according to the New York Times.  A final reason is their willingness to allow search results to be heavily censored, a factor that leads to government support for the search engine.  

The Baidu IPO on August 5, 2005 was the "hottest" since Google according to Investor's Business Daily with an initial offer price of $27 a share that rose to $122 by the end of the day.  Today it is trading at $127.39 following first quarter results showing that advertising revenue had led to a profit jump of 143% in the first quarter of the year.

With only 10.7% or 137 million Chinese now online according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), there are still immense opportunities for growth for Internet players in the world's most populous nation as Internet access continues to expand.  CINIC published their 17th survey on the status of the Interent in China in January.  You can download the 83 page report from their site.

Global Tastes - Net Use Rises

BBC reports on the Economist Intelligence Unit findings that global internet access and use has accelerated.  The report found significant improvements in Asia and Africa with Hong Kong and Singapore leaping ahead due to government policies encouraging online access and Nigeria and South Africa seeing improvements due to both infrastructure enhancements and government policies.  Leading the pack in e-Readiness according to the report was Denmark followed by a tied 2nd place US/Sweden, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore.

Global Tidbits - Forbidden City Blog Attack

The Wall Street Journal (see video interview above) and Times online report on the growing strength of Chinese bloggers.  They site an example of a Chinese blogger who has attacked Starbuck's outlet in the Forbiden City.  The blogger Rui Chenggang posted about why the outlet was out of place and within days over half a million Chinese Internet users had agreed with his position.  This groundswell of citizen anti-marketer's could lead to a decision to close the small outlet.   

With the number two position in the number of Internet users (following the US) at 132 million, the 20 million estimated blogs are providing an important outlet for unhappy Chinese consumers to vent and complain according to The Wall Street Journal.  The nationalistic feelings and inherent conflict between the old and the new that are evident in this response could be an indicator of future problems for other multi-national companies.  In fact The WSJ reports that other companies that have faced consumer attacks include KFC, Dell and P&G.

Global Tastes - Ecuadorean e-Commerce

Global Technology Forum, a publication of the Economist, has an interesting article examining e-commerce in Ecuador.  Having lived in Ecuador for a couple of years when I was growing up and also having visited it for a couple of weeks two years ago, it was interesting to see how e-commerce is evolving. 

Ecuador, a country of 13 million, has a very low Internet penetration rate, with only 713,277 users according to government data reported in the article.  There are 70 ISPs reported to be in existence in the country.  This rate stems in part from the high cost of Internet access and less developed infrastructure.  e-Commerce is impeded by the lack of credit card holders and distrust in the delivery capabilities of the Postal Service according to the article. 

For other information on Ecuador, see the CIA Fact Book, a great reference for country profiles.

Global Tastes - Indian Internet Statistics

Red Herring has an interesting article looking at efforts to increase the number of bloggers in India.  The article quotes "Blogger Shard Sharma believes that blogging has not taken off in India because of cultural inhibitors.  He says Indians grow up to be reicent adults because all their school lives they are told to keep their opinions to themselves".  If this statement is supported by empirical data it would show an interesting implication of cultural variability impacting blogging practices.

The article also references data from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) (PDF document) about the status of the Internet in India.  The associations research has found or projects the following utilization in Internet access:

• September 2006 - 37 million Internet users
• March 2007 - 42 million Internet users (projected)
• March 2008 - 54 million Internet users (projected)

In developing countries like India and China, we're seeing that some of the Internet access is happening over cell phones, a trend not as prevalent in the United States where wired and wireless "traditional" devices still hold the lead.