About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

I have been following Yeeyan (译言) - a community for people to translate articles in foreign languages (mostly English) into Chinese language volunteerly, since Aug. 2006 when it was called “言多必得”. I personally like the old name which means”you will certainly get something if you express more”. It is form a Chinese idiom “言多必失” means the opposite: you will certain leak some secretes if you keep talking. The current name is more straightforward: “translation” and “language“.

In a presentation by Zhang Lei(张雷), one of Yeeyan’s founders in CnBloggerCon 2007 in Beijing, Zhang Lei compared the online resources about “Breast Cancer” in Chinese (乳腺癌) and English. In the example of Sohu Health Channel, there are less than 30 articles about the general knowledge and treatment. But in a single website of http://www.breastcancer.org/, there are more than 8,000 pages. Statistics show that 1/7 of women will suffer from breast cancer in the world.

• Baidu: 乳腺癌: 8,210,000
• Google: breast cancer :38,800,000

According to Lei, the huge gap of quality contents between Chinese language and English was one of the motivation that Ding Ding (丁丁), Zhao Jiamin(赵嘉敏) and himself found Yeeyan. These three founders from Silicon Valley saw the opportunity in “High Quality Chinese Contents” on the web with the inspiration to encourage Chinese to “discovery, translate and read the best of the Web“.

Yeeyan is a bridge of KNOWLEDGE in Chinese and other languages. I found 140 results about “earthquake” (地震) on Yeeyan 9 days after the earthquake, and more than 100 translators joined a translation group. These articles include the reports by western medias (such as CNN, Newsweek, BBC, etc), knowledge about earthquake forecast, rescue, disease prevention. For example, one translator finished <Epidemics after Natural Disasters> by World Health Organization 4 day after the earthquake. Webtizens have helped to spread the word about these great resources on what to do scientifically after the disaster. (see here, here, here and here)

Zhang Lei even contacted Dr.Barbera Joseph from George Washington University and consulted him about crisis and disaster management. Here is the abstract of his post on Yeeyan blog:

请译言的读者、译者、合作伙伴、媒体广为转载本文！
今天，我与美国乔治华盛顿大学灾难、危机、风险管理学院（ICDRM）主任约瑟夫·巴贝拉博士（Barbera, Joseph）通了电话，听取了他对 四川地震紧急应对状况的看法。巴贝拉博士提出下述几点呼吁：
*第一：目前最关键的问题，是救援的决策者**决定**何时停止**对被掩埋者的搜救工作。* 巴贝拉博士紧急呼吁，*搜救工作至少应坚持到震后14天！*他提供了这样一份研究报告：《地震垮塌房屋受困幸存者时间与存活分析》（译言正在紧急翻译)…

Thank you! Yeeyan and all volunteers who have built a bridge in knowledge in face of such crisis.

I have also Interview Zhang Lei on phone about two weeks’ ago. Here is what I learned from him about the team, product and plan.

Q: Why did you and your other two founders get this idea?

Lei: We are very interested in translation. And when we are able to read some many great and fresh contents online, we want to share them with more people in China.We were the first translators of Yeeyan.

Q: What’s your background?

Lei: I am a Tsinghua 96 alum. After I got my Master Degree on Operation Research (OR) in US I worked for Oracle in Silicon valley. Yeeyan is not my first start-up. We tried to launch fantansy sports product during 2006World Cup. As you know, it is very common that first startup fails. Yeeyan is our second baby.

Q: Could you briefly share with us the milestones Yeeyan has achieved today?

Lei:

Jul 2006: 言多必得 found; it was a platform for volunteer translators to publish articles.

Dec 2006: Yeeyan launched. It is a more open platform with more support for translation. For example, users can copy and paste the original contents into an editor, and can run machine translator before editing. Users can tag the article and join different group,such as business, literature, current issues.

Mar. 2007: Yee Pro Beta launched. It is a wikimedia platform also translators to work together for larger projects.

Q: Why do you want to turn Yeeyan into a wiki? Isn’t wiki difficult to use for most users?

Lei: We believe in the social collaboration(SC), and wiki is a great tool for SC. In the past year, we have learned that translation is addictive. It is also very time consuming. In a wiki platform, we will enable more users to work together for big projects. We want more volunteers to join us, even though they don’t have time to finish a long article, but just editing a paragraph whenever possible. A wiki platform creates the possibility.

Wikipedia is successful. I have written a very detailed guide on how to use wiki on editing. I don’t think the technical aspect is a problem.

Q: What’s the status after you launched Beta?

Lei: There are 4 completed projects (including “Long Tail” which has been completed before) and 14 on going projects. It is pretty amazing.

Q: What are the difficulties you have in the past 18 months?

Lei: In Chinese websphere, except of Baidu Zhidao(百度知道), there are not many communities generating high quality contents. Good news is that we don’t need to translate ourselves now. lol. The community is generating 30+ pieces a day. The one big challenge we are facing is that we don’t know much big the UGC market is in China/Chinese.

Q: I know you have quite some Techcrunch translations. What are the most popular contents ?

Lei: A lot. Yes, technology, entrepreneur, business, these are what we ourselves are interested in. Arts and literatuer, current issues are also very popular. Curently, we have 5000+ articles contributed by 1500+ active translators.

Q: How do you guarantee the quality of the translating works? What about copy right issue？

Lei: We have a feature called “眉批”, a sticky note like feature with which readers can always comment on the translating for correction or improvement or whatever. Readers can also rate the work.

We think a published piece of content online is meant to be distributed and shared, especially blog posts. We encourage translators to inform the authors before publishing. And we will take down the contents if the authors disaprove. So far, we get permission from some prominent bloggers such as Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson (A VC)and haven’t received any ”complaints” from the authors.

Q: What about your other team members? Are you full time?
Lei: The other two founders are Ding Ding (丁丁) and Zhao Jiamin (赵嘉敏). At early stage, we three did technology, product and marketing together. Now, Ding Ding is more focusing on product, Jiamin is on contents/editing and I am repsonsible for media and marketing. Jiamin and I are full time for Yeeyan. Jianmin is now in Beijing leading a team.

Q: Are you in need for any financial funding?

Lei: We are talking very closely with a few VCs.

-End

More coverages of Yeeyan from the web and media:

• YeeYan Translates Blogs Posts Into Chinese - ReadWriteWeb
• A window to the world (China Daily)
• web2.0时代背景下的网络翻译与创业 (Chinese)
• Interview of Zhao Jiamin (Life Weekly,三联周刊) (Chinese)

The current projects on Yee Pro.

A Yeeyan fans meet-up in Beijing early this year.

The China Business Network (TCBN) is sponsoring an invite-only cocktail party this Friday May 23 at the JWMarriott (北京JW万豪酒店, Beijing JW wàn háo jiǔdiàn) in Beijing. CNReviews is also a co-sponsor of the event. Space is limited to 150 people. If you want an invite, see the bottom of the post.

Originally the event centered around tech and VC attendees of the Asian Venture Capital Journal Conference and the CHINICT Conference in Beijing this week. But after the Sichuan earthquake, Christine Lu, Founder of The China Business Network decided to donate all proceeds to earthquake relief. From Christine:

The Library Project has created a program, “Project: Earthquake Relief”, to help rebuild the educational system that was affected as a result of the earthquake. It is projected that hundreds of elementary schools have been damaged in the Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces. The Library (more…)

Being an UpTake (formerly a Kango) for more than 400 days, I am proud to share with you that UpTake officially opens its Beta doors to everyone TODAY! Uptake is ”

a new vacation search site that has amassed the travel industry’s largest database of hotels and attractions (more than 400,000 in US) and analyzed more than 20 million online opinions from other travelers.

In the age that the “wisdom of crowds” are generated faster than ever, Uptake offers to collect and filter word-of-mouth from the web to make vacation planning easier. UpTake also got press at ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, SemanticWeb, SearchEngineLand, Les Explorers and the UpTake blog itself. It is only for United States for now. But Winser Zhao of SinoHotelReservation also wrote about us.
To describe the Uptake services using the geek’s vocabulary, it: uses a travel ontology and natural language analysis to extract meta-tags from the collective intelligence it has collected and returns unbiased, personalized recommendations based on travelers’ facts and feelings.” So how much do you (more…)

Occassionally, CnR is approached by individuals and companies with various business propositions and opportunities that may be of interest to our readers. We cannot, however, make any guarantees and, as with any business activity, interested parties are advised to do their own due diligence. If you have a business opportunity you would like to promote on CnR, please e-mail the details here.

Each year, 20-50 million metric tonnes of “electronic waste” (eWaste) are discarded by businesses and consumers worldwide. An eWaste recycling company in Guangzhou, China wants to source large quantities of eWaste (old computers, electronics, household appliances, etc.) from outside China to be shipped over to China for processing and recycling.

They’re looking for people who are familiar with and/or reside in their respective home countries that can help them locate and purchase such stockpiles of electronic waste from municipal, regional, national, public, or private electronic waste collection centers, junkyards, etc.

Your level of involvement depends on you.

Upon finding such stockpiles, you would initially be responsible for gathering and communicating information to ascertain and negotiate the value of the waste with the company. You can then choose to either invest in purchasing the waste yourself from the source and resell it to the company for a profit OR you can negotiate a finder’s fee and the company will send their own people out to deal directly with the source.

The company currently purchases its waste from a Chinese waste importer and would prefer to import the waste themselves directly from abroad.

Should you be interested and would like to be put in touch with the company’s representative, please contact me directly here.

Zhang Liming (张黎明) from Beijing Morning Post (北京晨报) has a report titled as “Tencent learned from Korean Model to Hire a 3000-people Human Flesh Search Army” (腾讯参照韩国模式招三千人肉搜索军团) on April. 10, 2008 on Sina Tech. The author learned the news from industry insiders and quoted quite some comments from CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) of Tencent Inc.- the largest and most used Internet service portal in China with annual revenue of $520 MM in 2007, about this big bet action. Here is the summarized translation of the report.

Tencent Inc. (QQ.com) is building a 3,000-person search result editor team. The employees will be/are hired as engineers but in fact, their job nature is to edit search results of its search engine called SOSO (搜搜, means “search search” in Chinese) soso.com (which was launched in Dec. 2005).

CEO Huateng Ma (马化腾) didn’t comment on the size of the editor team directly, but compared with the practice in Korean search engine industry: “a 700-person search result editor team in Korea is very common.”

Ma continued to explain why “it is common”: “for example, 20 users might search one same key term, and what they need might be the same information in two paragraphs. But nobody locks the two paragraphs (on the top of search result thus enables a more efficient search for majority of users). So actually people want editing of search results.”

“Tencent is experimenting with ‘human+search’ model. In domestic market, Baidu Zhidao (百度知道) is a similar model, but its editor team is not strong enough.”

When continuing to compare SOSO with other human-powered search engines in Korea, Ma admitted that “one key reason that Korean local search engines beat Google and Yahoo to win the local market is that there are relatively less pages in Korean Internet (for Google and Yahoo to crawl). So I don’t know if human-powered search engine will be successful or not in China. I have a question mark for this model. But Tencent has a portal (qq.com), the edited search results are valuable to the portal anyway (so it worth a try).”

Other posts about Tencent (QQ.com) and SoSo here:

• Techcrunch: Soso.com partnered with Google
• Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvyy Digital Watch: Coin of the Realm, revisited
• Paul M. Denlinger from China Vortex: Understanding China’s Youth Through Tencent’s QQ: A New Must-Read Report

UPDATE Elliott: 4/14 made minor edits

Caught this GOOD Magazine feature by Thomas P.M. Barnett via China Law Blog and felt violently compelled to share this with as many people as possible. Sure, it doesn’t cover everything, but it should be a required reading for a basic foundation of non-idiocy for everyone (especially Americans) when it comes to understanding the relevance and importance of China. 

Put down your rifle (no offense, Mr. Heston), pick out another cold one, and get your read on:

10. Because Nixon went to China and your world was born.

9. Because China may be an ancient civilization, but it’s a young society that’s growing up very quickly-and unevenly.

8. Because China’s transformation echoes much of America’s past: not only the good, but plenty of the bad, and the ugly too.

7. Because China’s rapid and deep integration into manufacturing means that Chinese products permeate your life-at some risk.

6. Because China’s demand for resources is altering global markets in ways both profound and perverse.

5. Because the panda “huggers” versus “sluggers” debate is a lot of hot air-until Washington scares Beijing into raising your mortgage interest rate five points overnight.

4. Because as China builds out its infrastructure, it can set a good or a bad example to developing economies struggling to deal with fragile environments.

3. Because China is globalization’s general contractor: always happy to take the job and your money, but hard to get on the phone once you discover problems.

2. Because China will not be our biggest future enemy but our most important ally.

1. Because we’re less than five years from a new generation of Chinese leaders with whom a far stronger relationship may well be built.

I’m particularly amused that the list ends with something that could be construed as a point of hope.  

UPDATE: Part 2 of 2 posts on China Proxy Server Tips. Part 1 by Min Guo is here.

I hate to make a second post for this but given that I cannot simply edit my additions into Min’s post, I decided I’d have to throw up another post for the benefit of readers like Sue who are having trouble with the Great FireWall (GFW).

Note: In order for Min’s Option II to work, you’d have to be able to get the RSS feed link, which can be hard if you can’t get to the blog in the first place. Of course, you can have a friend get it for you, but that requires you discovering the blog first. Moreover, certain feeds burned through Feedburner have difficulty getting into China, which is why you’ll see some blogs using Feedsky, a Chinese equivalent to Feedburner.

Option III: Anonymouse.org

Probably one of the more famous casual proxies, Anonymouse has the added benefit of being available in German and English. Well, that’s actually pretty unimportant, but I guess the Germans never know when Germany is going to block popular Chinese portal sites like sina.com. Using Anonymouse is about as simple as inputing the URL address for the website you wish to visit. In return for their service, they’ll pop up a window and overlay an ad on the targeted webpage (both of which you can close easily). Anonymouse isn’t hardcore enough to get through everything, but it works most of the time.

Option IV: T0r Pr0j3ct (note: l33t used to mask sensitive keywords)

I’ll quote Black and White Cat for Option IV and V:

Since the block is a strong one and Youtube has also been harmonized, now is perhaps the time to mention two of the serious proxies that get through to everything, including BBC news video, can handle Youtube and enable you to watch Google videos.

1) The first is maddeningly slow (though one enthusiast assures me it works quickly on his computer) but you need it if you want to download the faster second option. Tor works in Firefox. Once you’ve installed the program on your computer, you will see a red notice at the bottom right of your brower saying “Tor Disabled.” To turn the proxy on, click once on that notice and it will turn into a green “Tor Enabled.” You can now read or watch anything you want, but slowly. Tor also offers high-quality anonymity and privacy, but only if you read, understand and act on the instructions. For most of us that is not necessary since we simply want to get past the blocks.

Option V: Ult——h (sensitive keyword)

2) The second, faster option only works in Internet Explorer. I’m not going to name it in full because it is blocked at the keyword level in China. I’ll refer to it here as U. If you want it, it’s the first result for this search (look for the word Download on the U page). Don’t even bother Googling it on the mainland unless you are using a powerful proxy like T0r. Unlike T0r, U is an executable file that you save onto your computer, but do not have to install. If you decide you do not want it anymore, delete the file. As with option #1, you can read anything or watch anything, though it often messes up Youtube - if that happens, close down IE and U and try again.

If you choose Option V, you should be aware that it is a creation of FLG and financed by the US government. Bear that in mind when deciding whether you want it on any particular computer. Both these proxies function only in one browser. So if you use Tor in Firefox, you can carry on browsing in Internet Explorer while you are waiting for the page/file to download.

There you have it.

Anyone have any opinions about all these methods? BTW, please be discreet about using sensitive keywords in comments so CNReviews doesn’t get harmonized! It is already slow enough as it is in China. — Elliott

Note: Contributing Editor David Feng will be posting a more detailed follow up post on the 1st Beijing TweetMeet, coming soon to CN Reviews.

Anyone who pooh-poohs the social impact on Twitter should be put on notice by the two Twitter Firsts that happened last night.

Twitter History: First Marriage Proposal

Mashable just broke some news that we may have witnessed the first wedding proposal over Twitter from @maxkiesler (website) to @emilychang (eHub).

His proposal: To @emilychang - After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage? 03:13 AM March 20, 2008 from web

Her response: @maxkiesler - yes, i do! 03:14 AM March 20, 2008 from web in reply to maxkiesler

Congratulations to both @emilychang and @maxkiesler!

Another Twitter First: Beijing TweetMeet

I discovered this Twitter first through another Twitter first: The 1st Beijing TweetMeet, held Friday 3/21/2008! My friend and fellow CN Reviews blogger @DavidFeng posted the link to Mashable and that’s how I discovered this, even though Mashable is on my Google Reader.

The more complete TweetStream is below, but here is @DavidFeng’s take:

This is the first-ever Tweetup in Beijing. Ladies and gents, you are witnessing Twit-stery (Twitter history). ….

For those of you who have never been at a Tweetup, the whole thing feels surreal. People are literally GLUED to their laptops, tweeting!…

We are twittering like mad. We are actually thinking if the server is about to go down chez Twitter ‘cos of the Beijing TweetMeet!…

Question: How did Twitter generate such emotional attachment from its users, so that people would meet up to Tweet together and that other people would get engaged over Twitter?

Just one month ago, I didn’t “get” Twitter. Now I see it in MMORPG terms.

Just 1 month ago, I “didn’t get” twitter and thought of it solely as microblogging. But the fact that a small group of Twitter fanatics met at the Beijing Bookworm (Building 4, Sanlitun South Road near Gongti North Road in Chaoyang District of Beijing) this Fri evening to Tweet to each other highlights how Twitter can be much more than a blogging platform. It can become a nexus of personal relationships and social exchange that makes it similar to Social Networks like Facebook or MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

To non bloggers and non Twitterers (Tweeters? Twits?), microblogging and blogging can seem like information exchange and a process of social discovery of information. But in fact, it is not just that…it is space and place for social exchange. Microblogging far underestimates the power of Twitter. In fact, Twitter is a specialized form of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) but one in which the “role” is tightly bound to your real identity (in most cases).

Amy Jo Kim of Shufflebrain has a brilliant exposition of game dynamics. As an expert in game design, she identifies 5 factors that make games addictive. Here’s how I think it applies to Twitter:

• Collecting - # of followers, # of “friends” that you follow
• Points - # of updates or tweets
• Feedback - people follow you back! And you get an email with an exclamation point! It’s flattering when @JasonCalacanis is following me on Twitter! (before I followed him)
• Implicit Exchanges - Implicit exchange represents the positive feedback you receive as you “follow” more people and see more of who they are through their tweets. You implicitly exchange with your followers when you tweet and share what’s going on with you.
• Explicit Exchanges - Direct messages are explicit exchanges. But @twitteruser messages directed to someone else but visible to everyone’s followers, is also an explicit exchange recognized by the entire community. You are on stage, in the commons, sharing your life with everyone in the village commons.
• Character Customization - Yes you can reskin your Twitter profile page. But more importantly, you can customize your character and your persona by modifying the composition and mix of your Tweets.
• Interface Customization - Web? IM? Gtalk? Twitbin? Tweetbar? Twitterfox? Twirl? Twitterific? Directory here at the Twitter Fan Wiki. Enuf said.

If you are not already familiar with her work, you must go flip through her Game Developer Conference 2007 slides available at her website. Her blog is here.

And now back to the Tweet-by-tweet coverage of the Beijing TweetMeet

I don’t know all the people at the Beijing TweetMeet. But from the TweetStream of @DavidFeng, this is what I captured (in reverse chronological order):

• @sioksiok OK, OK… You will see me with TWO laptops next time! about 1 hour ago from web in reply to sioksiok
• OK, that was my MacBook. Now tweeting on my iPod touch… about 1 hour ago from web
• OK guys, my MacBook’s battery dies in 5 minutes. No sweat - that’s why I’ve the iPod touch!… about 1 hour ago from web
• @davidavdavid The Beijing Bookworm, we are 8 strong live… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to davidavdavid
• @webleon You want my iPod touch to tweet with? Sheetake, I should have brought my PowerBook G4 17-inch along!… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to webleon
• I think I can easily hit that magical 2,500 mark in terms of updates this weekend. Unless an Act of God happens in the Twitter world… about 2 hours ago from web
• @BlogAndGrow QQ = China’s biggest IM service. This thing is MASSIVE. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to BlogAndGrow
• @BlogAndGlow I think so! about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
  OK guys I am floating this proposal around - a KTV fest for all Beijing Twitterers. Tweet back if you’re in for this! about 2 hours ago from web
• @BlogAndGlow Welcome to read Chinglish. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
• @elliottng OK, how many Web 2.0 services are you on?… about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to elliottng Icon_star_empty
  This is scary: QQ + Twitter + CN = http://www.taotao.com/ about 2 hours ago from web
• Tweeting AND eating… a David Feng tradition… now shared with all fellow Twitter-ers… about 2 hours ago from web
  Late dinner - Spaghetti for me… ricey-kind of stuff chez
• @sioksiok… about 2 hours ago from web Icon_star_empty
  OK ???: ??????… http://fanfou.com/DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from web
• @isaac @thecarol ????! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to isaac
• @sioksiok ?, There are no secrets in the Twitter world… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to sioksiok
• @kaiserkuo One of your fans (and Twitter-ers) greets you. Musically… (hint hint) about 2 hours ago from web in reply to kaiserkuo
• @thecarol NOW we are ready for you! TweetMeet ?? featuring… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to thecarol
• @elliottng Zhichunli ;-P about 2 hours ago from web in reply to elliottng
• @WebLeOn about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @elliottng THIS is the hair that I’m — well, after for better or worse… about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to elliottng
  I just got a haircut, so if you’re seeing me look a bit funny, that’s… the hair. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
• @thecarol @webleon No sweat! ???! (We all make mistakes…) about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to thecarol
• @WebLeOn @thecarol They probably mean @DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @WebLeOn @carol They probably mean @DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @isaac Greetings from us from Beijing. You in Shanghai right now? about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to isaac
• OK folks, first pics from the Beijing TweetMeet reality: http://www.flickr.com/photo… about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Salve* @chengfen (* Latin greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• This is the first-ever Tweetup in Beijing. Ladies and gents, you are witnessing Twit-stery (Twitter history). about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• I think everyone’s Twitter list at the meetup just went that bit more stratospheric. The ISS is next in terms of altitude. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Allegra* @zhengle (* Rhaeto-Rumansh greeting) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Cute baby pics at the Tweetup! about 3 hours ago from web
  With horror, fellow Twitter-ers at the Tweetup discover that yours truly speaks 10 languages. Gasp! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• We are talking about Swiss nationality at the TweetMeet since I’m a Swiss national with Chinese ethnicity… about 3 hours ago from web
• We are twittering like mad. We are actually thinking if the server is about to go down chez Twitter ‘cos of the Beijing TweetMeet!… about 3 hours ago from web
• Bonsoir* @webleon (* French greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Buonasera* @nickcheng (* Italian greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• For those of you who have never been at a Tweetup, the whole thing feels surreal. People are literally GLUED to their laptops, tweeting! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Link for tonight: AllTop: http://twitter.alltop.com/ about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• (Guess who is the 1/2 Mac / PC user…) about 3 hours ago from web
• 4.5 PC people, 2.5 Mac people. This is an INSULT for the Mac citizenry, having a BeiMac meet just tomorrow! LOL about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• (Bad keyboard!) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
  Grüezi* @PhilipJohnson8 (* Swiss-German greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Grüezi* @PhiipJohnson8 (* Swiss-German greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• @sioksiok and @davidfeng hosting the first Beijing Tweetup… enjoy about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to sioksiok
• OK Ladies and Gents! Live Tweetcast! Live Tweetcast! Beijing Tweetup! Live Tweetcast! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
  3 more people with the fellow Twitter-ers in Beijing. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Venue: The Bookworm, Nansanlitun Road. See: http://www.beijingbookworm…. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• People are getting married via Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/36tcys about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Bilingual tweetup, English and Chinese about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Grüezi* @JoMangee (* Swiss-German greeting) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• I am seated at the long table at the front entrance. about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Am at Bookworm… @sioksiok and others? about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Heading to the Bookworm. God pray for no traffic jams! about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Äh… Twitter meetup… silly me… about 4 hours ago from web
  Facebook meetup in about 35 minutes. Will be on the road soon for the big meet-up. about 4 hours ago

If you read carefully, @DavidFeng is threatening to combine his two addictions: Twitter and KTV! I will have to come out to Beijing for that combination. I will have to break out my Wang Qing Shui (忘情水) rendition for that event.

So Twitter, the MMORPG, has kept me from my day job at Kango of helping people plan family vacations to San Diego, Santa Barbara family hotels, and other such places. OK, David Feng will follow up with a full report once he recovers from a long night of Tweeting and networking with other Twitterers.

A combination pool hall and bar lounge with dark and sleek decor, Racks is an impressive space. The mechanical bull by the DJ booth and bar is definitely a nice touch, but getting to the hidden-in-the-wall restroom brought back nervous People 7 flashbacks. As it is, Racks is located across the bridge from the G-Plus nightclub at the south end of Shanghai’s XinTianDi, where the old CK Why Not nightclub use to occupy.

Yeah, “why not name our club CK?” That’s a real forehead slapper.

Like Volar, Racks has a sister venue in Hong Kong and also promotes a certain members-only exclusivity. But if Volar Shanghai’s experience is of any indication, that’s a policy with its obituary already written.

The China Business Network and The Shanghai Business club hosted a “Joint Happy Hour” at Racks this past Wednesday, and Elliott suggested that I attend after twittering a pseudo-invitation out of the event organizer, Christine Lu. After an afternoon of plotting world China domination with the Regional Director of admanGo, Herman Yueh, I managed to convince him to come along. After all, we’re looking for a few good men and these sort of international-minded/expat professional mixers just might be a good place to do some network recruiting, especially after one gets fed up with local talent (more on this in a future interview piece).

We arrived fashionably late. Greeted by the vast and empty black expanses of Rack’s, we almost walked right back out the door. To be sure, a splatter of people for the event were lounging in the corner, but the relative emptiness (and vastness) wasn’t particularly inspiring.

I’m glad I forced us to stay.

We ended up spending about a couple of hours there, and while we didn’t meet an army of people, I did get to network with a handful of great individuals across different fields (FMB, international trade, publishing, expat services, logistics, chemicals, contract manufacturing, architecture headhunting, etc.). With that came ample discovery and discussion of various potential business opportunities, both for admanGo and my own travel start-up, adex360. As far as I was concerned, that made for a productive evening.

I never did end up meeting Christine Lu, which I felt would’ve been common courtesy due to her and Elliott’s twittering relationship. I recall recognizing her (from her Facebook picture) early at the event but later she was nowhere to be found, ostensibly busy interviewing for her video profiles. Too bad, quite a few of us were curious to meet her.

One last thing, and I hate feeling compelled to ask this but, did anyone at the event catch those two (questionably) stunning ladies? Someone tell me those two dolls were, uh, professional models (yeah) and not, uh, the stereotypical gold-digging Chinese huntresses that prowl Shanghai wherever relatively affluent foreigners with the scent of money can be found (of which XinTianDi is not unknown for).

If you are a blogger, you have to read Avinash Kaushik’s blog Occam’s Razor. We met with Avinash yesterday and he generously shared some great advice. Avinash was my former colleague at Intuit, who started his blog in May 2006 and has built what may be the #1 Web analytics blog (Technorati Authority of 1106 as of 02/08). He posted some great tips here and here, and I’ve repeatedly gone back to read this post.

I haven’t completely synthesized all the input he gave us yesterday. I might do that on a follow on post. But I’ve adapted his 20 tips into the best 10 tips I will try to follow here at CN Reviews. I am hoping that we will have some other guest bloggers on CN Reviews, so I hope this inspires some dialog between current and potential CN Reviews bloggers on what we should do here.

Here are the tips:

10 - Nobody cares about you, they care about what you do for them.
9 - Be as simple and succinct as possible.
8 - Pattern your readers by being consistent.
7 - Create a dialog with your readers.
6 - Add one “correct” reader, one at a time.
5 - Blogs need constant promotion, participation, and evangelism.
4 - Make it personal with your own point of view.
3 - Pick a subject matter you are passionate about and/or that you are good at.
2 - Have clear goals for the blog.
1 - Become very good (top 25% in the world) at two things.

And now for more thoughts on these 10 tips.

10 - Nobody cares about you, they care about what you do for them.

This was a bit of harsh truth from Avinash, but I think he is right. People will spend their scarce time reading our blog only if we are doing something for them. Prospective target readers for CN Reviews: (a) people who know both Chinese and Western cultures but more of one than the other, want to learn what they don’t know, and share what they do, (b) people who want to learn more about travel and entrepreneurship in China.

9 - Be as simple and succinct as possible.

Awflasher told us: “don’t make the post too long but make it very readable.” We are not achieving this right now. We should target 250-350 words per post. If the post is longer, then it should have a short summary. We should aim to write at the 6th grade level. We should also embrace Globish, language easily written and read by non-native speakers. Livid also gave us the same tip to keep it short.

8 - Pattern your readers by being consistent.

We’re doing this! When David joined us, we created three specific posts: Monday Metro(pol) which talks about Beijing transportation and infrastructure, CN Reviews Mind The Gap Wednesday which talks about cultural differences from David’s point of view, and an unnamed “Lifestyle” Saturday (or Sunday) post. Min and I have been relatively less consistent.

7 - Create a dialog with your readers.

Yes, but how? What I’m doing is: (a) commenting on the blogs of our readers if I know what their blog is, (b) emailing a quick thank you to people who comment on CN Reviews, (c) trying to ask questions at the end of the post, and (d) doing shorter posts that are focused on getting readers to give us their feedback. But I think comments is one of our most important metrics to drive and to track. I just started experimenting with Twitter and Facebook, which both seem like a good way to create dialog with readers and friends.

6 - Add one “correct” reader, one at a time.

Avinash wrote this in the context of getting Dugg and comparing his Digg traffic to his Yahoo! Groups traffic. Here is his chart:

Lesson: you just don’t want traffic. You want the right readers. I’d love to have a community of bloggers, contributors, and readers who care about bridging China and the West. So for us HaoHaoReport is more important that Digg.

5 - Blogs need constant promotion, participation, and evangelism.

There is no silver bullet. Here’s my short list of ideas: (a) post and link to other bloggers, thus generating a trackback link from their blog; (b) comment on other blogs, (c) build up Twitter as a distribution method, (c) social bookmarking at HaoHaoReport and De.licio.us, (d) occasional posting links on Facebook, (e) write about popular topics that people have set Google Alerts for, e.g. people’s names, (f) emailing commenters to engage in more dialogue. I also like participating in wangjianshuo’s community and ifgogo.com as well.

4 - Make it personal with your own point of view.

Livid gave us some advice: make it more of a journal than an essay. Avinash gave us some other advice: think about writing a book, not a diary. Here’s how I synthesize this: Be sure you can answer the question, “If I had to write a book from the blog, what would the book be about and what is the table of contents?” But then, “Make the book personal, infuse it with your personality and your unique point of view.”

3 - Pick a subject matter you are passionate about and/or that you are good at.

Blogging takes a lot of energy. Everyone is really busy. In the end, you can only really blog about what you care about. Which means you can’t be too theoretical about tips #10 and #6. “Correct” readers mean people who care about what you care about. “What you do for them” is ultimately tied to what you care about most.

2 - Have clear goals for the blog.

Have clear objectives (as stated in words) and clear goals (as stated in numbers or metrics). Well I saved the hardest tips for last. Yes, we are not clear yet what our goals are for the blog. But Avinash’s advice was to focus on one thing first, and then expand from there. He gave his own example of starting with Web Analytics, then moving on the Competitive Intelligence, then to Qualitative Insights…but always under the overall umbrella of Data for Decision Making on the Web.

1 - Become very good (top 25% in the world) at two things.

Well, I’m still figuring out what this is. But I think the direction that Avinash is giving is good.  Thanks Avinash! There was much more that was discussed but I need to digest it further.  Topic for another blog post.

What are your goals? And what are the two things you want to be world class in?