I wanted to share some personal news with you, but first, I apologize for having neglected this blog for much of 2010.  I wanted to thank fellow blogger Baoru (aka Katherine Tanyu) for publishing some great content on the World Expo and I appreciate her keeping the blog alive while she was in Shanghai in 2010.

I just accepted an offer to join Google as head of product management, based in Beijing.  I wrote about this on my personal blog, and since no one even knows about that blog, I’ll excerpt from it liberally here:

In this role, I’ll be leading a small, very-talented team of product managers who are doing two things: (1) launching products and supporting global R&D projects focused on Google’s global markets, and (2) driving a product roadmap serving the domestic Chinese market.  I’ll be commuting to China from Mountain View until June or July, at which point my wife, our 3 boys, and some subset of our accumulated “stuff” will lift off from our home near Mountain View and land in a new home somewhere in Beijing.  In the meantime, I’ll have plenty of time to rack up frequent flier miles, become “Googly” (aka programmed in the Google global culture) and build important relationships in the global R&D organization at Google which is Mountain-View centric.

If you’re reading this post, you probably already know that I think China is “one of the biggest stories of our time.”  Like most of you, I also firmly believe that when the history of our period is written, the internet will be another one of the biggest stories of our time.  In this role, I’m excited about the chance to play my part in both of these stories at the same time.

In many ways, I can’t think of a better vantage point to contribute to China’s development and to contribute to the development of the internet.  And because the role is intensely cross-border and global in nature, it is something that plays to my strengths as a foreigner.

I also shared about the loss of the naive enthusiasm I once had about all things related to China back at the very beginning…

But during the past 5 years, I’ve come to appreciate an apt characterization of China made by James L. McGregor (now on Twitter), former Wall Street Journal bureau chief and Dow Jones China chief executive, who called China “the world’s greatest startup” and “the world’s greatest turnaround.”  I now try to understand everything in China in terms of these two faces–or aspects–of China.

Just about one year ago, Google announced it’s new approach to Chinawhich some later characterized as “the pullout.”  Some others have characterized 2010 as a “bitter winter” for the Chinese internet overall.  In fact, according to the saying “guo jin, min tui” the rest of Chinese entrepreneurs and non-state owned businesses also faced a bitter winter of challenges in 2010.  Even Jeffrey Immelt went off script to express his frustration.

So I’ll seek to recapture and use the energy that comes through youthful optimism…while keeping a realistic eye toward the situation at all times.

A little bit more about joining Google China at original post.

So what does this mean for the ol’ CNReviews?  I’m not sure.   I expect the job to be pretty demanding from a time standpoint, especially given the heavy travel required between Mountain View, CA; Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei.  But I know I’ll be needing a place to write about life, people, and business in China and I can think of no better place than here.

I’ll be thinking about how to resume blogging on CNReviews with a narrower focus and with a mission that gets me posting more often!  Your thoughts and advice about what to write about on CNReviews is welcome.

photo: CC courtesy of veen on flickr.

(Truth to be told, it’s time for the first person.)

My goal: tweet the whole thing out, as I had done at tech events of years gone by — including 2009′s CHINICT. I’m still there tomorrow, so for live tweets of the entire event, follow @DavidFeng and @DavidFengTwo (Twitter can and has locked folks (like me) out who tweet too much over a given period of time). You can also go to techblog86.com or follow @techblog86 for updates — drafts of the tweets sent out in summary form will be posted at the end of every speech, and we’ll go through the cleaning up within the day to make it more legible.

Day 1 saw an upbeat kick-off to the event with Franck Nazikian (@franckn5) interviewing Aigo, who started out by making computer keyboards and is now onto the next-generation personal multimedia player (MP7s, anyone?). The showstealer, though, came in the afternoon, with Dave McClure (@davemcclure) and Mark Suster (@msuster) stealing the spotlight — after all, they came in all the way from America.

Full, complete coverage is available at techblog86: here comes the links for Day 1:

• Morning coverage: Kaixin001, Aigo, Wukong, Exmart, Borqs, Ushi.cn, Tencent

• Afternoon coverage: 3g.cn,Dave McClure, Mark Suster, KookyPanda, PPLive, Yeepay and 360.cn

The interviewers were mainly Franck Nazikian and Jeremy Goldkorn (who also did things in Chinese!). Lara Ferrar did the interview with Kaixin001. And, of course, TechCrunch TV and InformationWeek TV livestreamed the whole thing, as did Sina and local media.

The action continues tomorrow with Kai-Fu Lee kicking things off at 09:00 sharp. Stay tuned to techblog86 for more!

Calvin Chin, founder/CEO Qifang.cn

I got a chance to speak with Calvin Chin, co-founder of Qifang.cn, during his recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Qifang is a for-profit venture in China that can be considered a “microfinance”  startup focused on sourcing educational loans for Chinese students.  It is focused on delivering the social outcome of more affordable education in China for students, and if it were in the US or Europe would probably be set up as a non-profit or Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).  But in China, NGO status is more difficult to get and can be problematic.

We first interviewed Calvin at the CHINICT 2008 conference when he was just getting started.  Here are some notes from my discussion with Calvin this time.

Elliott:  So catch me up on how Qifang is doing since we last interviewed you.

Calvin: Well, last time we talked we had basically just gotten started.  We started the company in August 2007, and we are 2 years old this year.  [Back in 2008] when we talked, we were just doing R&D, calling prospects to get some customer feedback, calling a bunch of school administrators to get some pilots going.  The rest of 2008, we did a few pilots, and then started fundraising at the end of 2008.  We’re raising money from socially-conscious Angel investors.

Elliott: Why is Qifang a for-profit company?
Calvin: There are two factors, “push” and “pull”.  First, “push” – impossible to actually set up non-profits in China.  There are many structural difficulties around licensing.  Secondly, “pull” – got early interest from angels with a social venture perspective.  If we want to solve education finance, then growing like a [profitable] tech company could be catalytic to transform to the space.  It will make the venture viable and independent.

Elliott:  What financing have you received?
Calvin: We received seed capital of $250k in end of ’07 and are working on a second round of Series A.

Elliott:  what were your initial pilots like? What is your basic model?
Calvin: In some ways, we are like Kiva and like Prosper.com [which was shutdown by the SEC for 9 months].  Kiva partners with 3rd parties, such as microfinance institutions (MFI) in Vietnam.  Qifang has the schools as 3rd parties.  We find borrowers through the school, who screen for need, verify identity, and channel money to the students.

Elliott:  As the CEO, what are you focusing on personally?
Calvin: I’m looking different lender channels, such as Give2Asia.  Other groups include foundations, clubs, fraternal organizations.

Elliott:  how has model changed (since we last met in 2008)?
Calvin: A few things are fundamentally the same.  First, our service is delivered via the web.  Second, our service is a P2P (person-to-person) lending platform.  However, many things have also changed.   First, charitable donations are a component – we didn’t anticipate the power of this model.  Second, in 2007 we thought we would build Prosper China by starting in Education and what we realized is…there are structural flaws in that strategy in China.  The Key Performance Indicators for a Prosper model is loan volume.  The problem is that if we prove that this is a good business, as we grow, then we become head to head with traditional finance industry.  Banks and credit cards own the market.  Given regulatory environment and market dynamics, we didn’t want to do that.

Instead, we want to focus on getting good at screening small borrowers, finding borrowers at low-cost, and servicing loans at very low cost.  We no longer want to build a loan marketplace, but to do things well where we can partner with the traditional finance industry to serve an underserved market.  For example, we want to build a pool of data around student loans.  Commercial banks in China could ultimately access data across the market.  We could provide non-traditional credit scoring data and other social metrics that help banks underwrite loans.

Elliott:  What advice would you give a foreign CEO trying to lead a Chinese startup company?
Calvin: there is a Yin-Yang balance toward applying foreign methods and expertise.  Bringing an international perspective, a culture, and a Silicon-Valley style of operations, for example, can be valuable and leveraged judiciously to provide advantage.  But you have to be careful because all the things that you think that you know may not translate well to the local environment and the local team.  You can’t be all mouth and no ears, but also can’t be all ears and no mouth.  If you only listen, you don’t bring any value.  If your only talking, you could get yourself into trouble.  You’ve got to be judicious about deploying foreign expertise vs. adapting and learning and listening.  Don’t squander your advantage.

Thanks Calvin, for your thoughts, and best of luck with Qifang!

It seemed like a no-brainer idea to me. What better subject to blog about than advertisements, right? Their very nature usually involves eye-catching pictures and interesting ideas! Both are key to grabbing people’s attention and keeping their interest! I thought to myself, a well-done blog on interesting Chinese advertising would surely attract tons of readers, not just those involved in advertising but the mainstream audience as well.

So, I recently hunted down LRB’s founder and mastermind, Rand Han, for an interview. He obliged and shared his insights into advertising in China, the evolution of LRB, and how he’s using internet social media to promote his businesses:

CNR: Rand, tell us about yourself, who you are, where you’re from, and what you do.

Rand: I’m Chinese-American, born in California. I’ve worked in several big agencies before starting BA360, my boutique ad agency; this was done initially with copywriting clients, then reinvesting commissions allowing me to organically build the company from nothing. I created LRB late last year as an alternative advertising method to Google AdWords; as with AdWords, you pay a lot, and when you stop the campaign, its done… but with LRB, we spend a lot of time, but that effort never goes away, and only builds on itself over time. Strategically, building LRB was a smart move… though at 4 months old, LRB doesn’t outpull AdWords for leads – though I’m optimistic that after a year it will, and the quality of the leads/business partnerships will be far greater.

CNR: When I first visited LRB, I was instantly attracted to the subject matter, and thought LRB would easily appeal to the mainstream audience. Tell us a bit about your thoughts on LRB’s subject-matter, beyond it being a natural complement to your boutique ad agency.

Yeah, you’d think that blogging about ads in china would be interesting; but its a bit harder than it looks. When you blog about advertising overseas (adsoftheworld.com; frederiksamuel.com/blog) the ads really speak for themselves. In China though, you need to explain an otherwise dull ad in a cultural context, allowing western readers to understand it.

I’ve always had a belief that you can tell a lot about any given culture by that culture’s advertising; cause what is advertising anyway? It’s businessmen spending HUGE amounts of money trying to communicate about their products in a culturally relevant way to the buyer. These businessmen run focus groups, research studies, etc. ad infinitum. This leads to the idea that by studying China advertising, we can begin tracing back the business logic to uncover modern China advertising/marketing/cultural insights.

CNR: Going back to you mentioning that LRB was set up as an alternative to Google AdWords for BA360, what is the relationship between the two?

Rand: LRB was originally going to be BA’s blog, but since LRB covers creative from other ad agencies, and stories/content that don’t relate to BA’s service offering, we figured to separate LRB from the BA brand. BA360 does have a blog, but it’s embarrassingly out of date, since most time is spent focused on LRB (in fact the last post on BA’s blog is a link to LRB). Generally, you can think of LRB being BA360, but with the freedom of not being restricted to the BA360 brand.

CNR: Since you’re the big cheese behind it all, how would you most accurately characterize yourself and your efforts with LRB? As a blogger blogging, an entrepreneur developing a business, or a business owner further marketing his brand?

Rand: LRB was originally about building my company, BA360. However, it seems to have built my personal “Rand” brand more than that the company brand, which is fine, as it’s all connected. The strategic intention is to consistently funnel targeted traffic on China advertising and marketing through the blog, and then fish for new business through implication/association (ie: various BA360 branding scattered through the site along with contributor bios referencing BA). It’s a soft sell, we lead with info that is interesting to readers – but always want to remind them that we’re here to serve beyond the articles.

The BA360 website. The kid? That's Rand...probably.

CNR: Recently, you’ve redesigned and piled on a lot of new social media features, sections, or spin-offs to LRB, including Blog Aggregator and Social Network. All of this has led me to characterize LRB as something of an aspiring “advertising media portal.” What are your plans and goals for LRB (or BA360)?

Rand: Yes, you are correct with the “China advertising portal” goal. One of the main challenges with social media I find is optimizing the value of generated traffic. My off-the-cuff-2.0 answer to this is to create other complements that will help retain some of the traffic and encourage interaction/retention.

CNR: With the exception of Sherry and her previous City Snapshot posts, I’ve noticed two new contributors, VeronicaYinise. So now the peon has underlings of his own, eh? Tell us a little about these new personalities and, if they haven’t been misbehaving, feel free to give them a little love here. and

Rand: Veronica and Yinise will be joined by Vance soon; they are all interns at LRB. Finding good stuff isn’t easy, and as you mentioned before, my initial posts in December were inconsistent. This is mainly because I’m juggling finding/writing content along with developing/pitching new clients, directing the design advertising and websites for current clients, building LRB, plus other in-house projects. To remedy this, I hired a bunch of interns over the last few months (Veronica and Yinise are the newest) to search for content online. One of my primary aims with anything I do is to pass it on to others to execute, so I’m in the process of training Sherry, Veronica, and Yinise to find good content and write and post it up themselves, though I still write most headlines. By seeing the results from their efforts viscerally, it motivates them to build their skills.

CNR: In the context of LRB being an advertising blog that helps promote BA360 the marketing agency, I understood the advertising case studies and City Snapshot posts, but I’m having a hard time understanding how the recent chinaSMACK-esque posts fit into the big picture. Are you expanding the subject-matter scope for LRB and why?

Rand: chinaSMACK traffic stats are amazing when you consider the amount of work put into the articles. In one day, Sherry found several great articles, translated them, and posted them up, and we experienced a significant traffic spike, so the simple answer is: lots of traffic / little effort.

When you look at the Google/Baidu entry, or any other good entry on LRB, they take a lot of time, and thinking, and analysis. Whereas with using chinaSMACK-ish articles, you really only need the ability to read Chinese, surf the Chinese web, and a bent sense of humor.

However, it does tie into LRB, albeit distantly. I always liked chinaSMACK for its translations of Chinese comments, or its “chinese people’s secrets” translations because it lends insight into how the modern Chinese think. A lot of times when we look at articles in China, we see this whole “Asia mystery” thing to it. That’s nice and all, but ultimately misleading. By translating comments from Chinese on LRB as it relates to interesting cultural stories, we’re also giving readers an idea of how Chinese people really are, to a certain extent. You can argue this is good content for marketers trying to figure out China, and who are looking for analysis beyond BA360′s perhaps biased opinion.

Additionally, by mixing in CS-ish articles with LRB’s normal fare, we can quickly build more traffic and awareness; which feeds the previous strategies mentioned.

CNR: As an advertising and marketing man in China who may be aspiring to be the next Tom Doctoroff, what are the top three things you think people should note about Chinese advertising and marketing?

Rand: I don’t assume to be anywhere near Tom Doctoroff’s level; if he were an opera singer, I’d be the guy singing dirty limericks on the street.

I can say a lot about advertising in China, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just say this: Advertising in China is significantly different than advertising elsewhere; the message needs to be relevant on a local level. Yeah, that seems glaringly obvious, but too many times I see clients try to bring their brand culture into China, and it can be frustrating balancing client brand needs against Chinese cultural interests.

CNR: Do you follow any other English China blogs or websites? Which, if any, do you strongly recommend for anyone interested in China or the Chinese?

Rand: I follow a lot, you can check LRB’s media aggregator for a short list.

Rand is a bit camera shy, but if you’re craving more Randtasticness, visit his China Advertising and Marketing Insight blog at littleredbook or his boutique agency at BA360.

I had the chance to speak with Franck Nazikian during the China 2.0 Tour, that was supported by Franck’s conference/event organizing firm, CHINICT.  Here is some notes from that meeting:

1.  What was your motivation for starting CHINICT (pronounced “china-eye-see-tee”).  Talk about your background and experience and how it brought you to start CHINICT?

I started career in telecom engineer at GemPlus, then went to Silicon Valley to create a Venture Capital fund in 1997-1998 that was invested by limited partners like GemPlus, NTT, Brunei Investment Authority.  I later started a company with a friend and sold that company to Oracle.

In 2005, I started CHINICT.  For the past 16-20 years, I had a desire to come to China, but I didn’t know how I would do that.  I knew Spanish, Portuguese, English, French but not Chinese.  My initial model for coming to China was that I would simply come and do some angel investment on my own.  Then, based on my success, I would start a fund.

I quickly understood that I didn’t understand anything.  I didn’t understand the country, the culture, I had no network.   I didn’t know “who was who.”  In China, relationships are important.  This is not that unique to China.  In all countries I’ve worked in, it is very important to know who you can trust or not trust.

My conclusion was that I needed to get connected to the main players in the field.  I proceeded to organize an event that I would have wanted to go to, with the right players in six key categories:

• Government
• Media
• Venture capital
• Stock exchange
• Service providers (lawyers/accountants)
• Fortune 100 sized Information Technology companies

2.  What is CHINICT’s objective?

Our founding premise of CHINCT was that China would become new “El Dorado” of IT Entrepreneurs.  Before, top entrepreneurs would focus on moving to Silicon Valley, but now would move to China and build successful businesses that could expand to the rest of world.

CHINICT’s mission was to support these entrepreneurs.  That’s why the core of the event is the “Rising Stars” – the most talked-about companies in the startup community.

Surrounding these “Rising Stars” I want to make sure everyone in each of the six categories (listed above) are sponsors and speakers…and paying money for coming.  Companies like Bloomberg, Tencent, People’s Daily, Sina, The European Union Commision for Information Society and Media, The United States Government (Foreign Trade Bureau), and the Beijing Municipality.  I also seek top companies and service providers like Price Waterhouse Coopers, Baidu, Alibaba, and Microsoft.  Finally, VCs like Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia.

3. Why would you launch a global business from China?

In some ways, its easier to start a company in China than in Silicon Valley.  Laws are more flexible, in a way you can do whatever you want.  In the United States, there is actually more bureaucracy.

Talented people are also less expensive to hire than in other places.  Talent used to be scarce but is now is getting more plentiful.  I’m also talking about foreign people-now the best foreign people are coming to China now.  With Chinese people I focus on finding people who are loyal.

Thanks Franck!  Hope to see you at CHINICT 2009!

photo: CC by-nc-sa CN Reviews

He told us something about V2EX that was totally unexpected. He said:

“Most things will eventually be turned into memory. So I’ve decided to shut down V2EX.com within 24 hours. I wrote down some of my thoughts on: http://www.livid.cn/doc_view.php?doc_id=5731“.

Then I checked the V2EX site using a proxy server just now and it says only 4 letters “ciao” on the big white screen, as said in the post <消失的未来> (Fading Future) he mentioned. It is a sad news.

Here is my translation to his post. I didn’t do it in word-to-word, but tried to keep the original ideas.

V2EX.com was a website with black color background to originally designed to present my personal stuff. But all the applications I developed (including an RSS aggregator lividot and a dictionary lividict) disappeared in the unplugging “accident” in early 2007.

Maybe I can tell you the exact reason why I built a site like V2EX two years’ ago. To prove something? But I can’t tell the reason now.

I don’t want to use the word “to get hurt” to describe what we have experienced. Maybe this is the best, no better way out. My thoughts have changed a lot in the past two years.

I think I spent too long hours before my computer, and I don’t think this is a good thing, for many reasons.

I believe there are a lot of people who spend at least one hour a day on Google Reader or reading blogs for a variety of complicated reasons. Is “being bored” one of the reasons?

Why can’t we spend more time on tangible things? Why can’t we spend more time to travel or to love a real person? Why must we spend more than 8 hours sitting before a computer? When is the last time the skin of your feet touch the sand on a beach or earth? Is that true the green in your eyes are only the trees along the roads in cities? Is Twitter a must have in our life?

I want to focus on what I really care about, and those are not only limited to the scope of the Web, such as douban and facebook. All these tools are trying to bring to the digital realm the realness and beauty in our life. But then some of us, even all, will consider the digital form as the backdrop of our world but not part of the world. Why?

Chinese abstraction from his blog:

最早 V2EX.com 只是一个有黑色背景的用 ColdFusion 做的陈列我的一些作品的网站. 那些作品已经悉数消失于 07 年初的拔线事件. 包括一个 RSS 聚合器 lividot 和一个词典 lividict.

或许 2 年前我会很明确地说出自己做一个像 V2EX.com 这样的网站的原因, 为了证明一些什么东西? 而现在我说不出任何明确的理由.

我不想用 [ 受到伤害 ] 这样的字眼来形容我们所有人在这个过程中所经历和体会到的. 或许, 青春本来就应该是这样的. 全无更好的出路.

2 年了, 我的很多想法改变了.

我觉得自己在电脑前坐的时间太长了. 我想, 这并不是一件十分好的事情. 原因很多.

我相信这里或许有很多人每天实际上都花超过 1 个小时甚至更多的时间在 Google Reader 或者别人的博客上, 这么做的原因很复杂, 不知道其中是否有任何 [ 无聊 ] 的因素?

…

为什么我们不能将更多的时间用于旅游, 用于去爱一个真实的人, 用于接触这个世界的更多角落呢? 为什么我们一定要这么每天在电脑面前坐超过 8 个小时呢? 你的双脚的皮肤有多长时间没有接触过泥土和沙滩了? 你眼中能看到的绿色是否只是城市里的行道树? 难道我们听的音乐只能是从 iPod 耳机中流出的而不是亲自坐在演奏者面前? Twitter 对于生活难道是必要的么?

我想关注那些我真正想关注的, 而关注之物的选择范围不应该只是从 www. 如豆瓣和 Facebook 这样的东西在试图把我们生活中一切真实的, 美好的东西都映射为电子化的存在形式, 然后我们中的一些甚至全部人则把这样的映射当作了世界的背面而不是部分. 为何如此呢?

…

Even though I only met Livid once, I feel sad about it, especially surmising the reason why he shut the community down from the post above. As our commentor Charles mentioned, Livid is working on another project, footbig. I wish him good luck!

I want to reponse to Livid’s questions in his post:

1. I spend long hours at the computer because: a. I need information for decision making, for fun, for education and just for no reason; b. I need it for my work at Kango;
2. I read blogs because I am seeking the wisdom of both the crowds and the leaders.
3. I want to spend more time travel too; but I have many friends who simply HATE to travel. Does everyone have to want to travel, Livid?

What do you think, CN Reviews readers?