The Best and the Brightest
In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s classic book on how the United States got itself into the quagmire in Vietnam, he identified several reasons for why a superpower would fall to what...
View ArticleThe Gold Rush Mentality
Local news broke last week that 360buy is looking to outsource its group buying business while 55Tuan appears to be one of the bidders as the two were rumored to be in discussion about the...
View ArticleThe Great Illusion
On April 23, Kevin Kelly touched down in Beijing to have a conversation regarding the future of technology with Pony Ma, the man running Internet giant Tencent. The clash of a titan from the...
View ArticleAre You the Chinese Jeff Bezos?
Lei Jun, the renowned Internet tycoon and CEO of Xiaomi, had a lot to say in the recent Global Internet Mobile Conference, where he shared his thoughts on a number of topics. For example, Mr. Lei...
View ArticleIf You Build It, They Will Come
iPad is a successful product for many reasons, but one of the most significant must be that the design of iPad is so intuitive that an illiterate 6-year-old can use it without instruction. A good...
View ArticleWinter is Coming, For Chinese E-Commerce Companies
“Winter is coming.” It’s as if citizens of Winterfell are describing the state of Chinese E-commerce. Even the best and brightest of the bunch cannot escape doubt. 360Buy has to make repeated denials...
View ArticleThe Bigger Picture
Anyone familiar with office politics is familiar with the phrase that sounds something like “you only see what you are in charge of, but the higher-ups are in charge of the bigger picture”. For...
View ArticleShanda: a Need for Speed to Transform
Recently, there have been many local reports chronicling the missteps of Shanda over the course of past few years, especially in the company’s moves to diversify its offerings. Shanda stepped up big...
View ArticleThe Sound and the Fury
At Technode We produced a wonderful chart a couple of days ago, detailing the Chinese digital reading market. This is all good, and intrigues a bigger question that lingering: what are they fighting...
View ArticleDeath to MP5
Now it’s official: Microsoft has a pad. The ghost of Steve Jobs must be yelling: “finally”. After 30 years of back and forth, it seems (for now) that Jobs was right after all: software and hardware...
View ArticleTiming the Market, and Failing
J.P. Morgan, the titan of American finance, was once asked by an admirer how he accumulated his vast fortune. Had he been a man endowed with a Chinese sense of humor, he would’ve said: “I worked very...
View ArticleThe Game Ain’t the Same
In the beginning God (aka Steve Jobs) resurrected Apple. And then he said, “Let there be light” and there was the iPad. Two years later, The Tablet War is heating up. In the same month that Microsoft...
View ArticleIf It Quacks Like a Duck
When someone ditches the likes of Microsoft, News Corp, and China Mobile to join The Mobile Revolution, then you know the change is seismic and it’s for real. . Moreever, a smart phone is no longer a...
View ArticleThe Penguin is ready for the Dive
Pony Ma, the man at the helm of Tencent, the biggest Internet company in China, admitted in a recent interview that his company has plans to expand its overseas presence through mergers and...
View ArticleDivergent Ways of Failing
If you need another proof that the PC era is gradually coming to an end, here it is: more people are using their mobile phones for internet browsing, surpassing the PC. The market seems so promising...
View ArticleComplex Problems, Quick Solutions
For a man who seemed to know everything and can do no wrong, hiring John Scully surely sucked for Steve Jobs. But then again, no one except Jobs himself thought he would conquer the world by coming...
View ArticleEarning Currency or Credits?
Quick question: would you like to own Chinese top financial media property, or a media player that is known mostly for easy access to illegal porn? If you are willing for forgo prestige and go for...
View ArticleFollow the Money
The New York Times had a report on the booming security trade. The article says that “big companies are expected to spend $32.8 billion on computer security this year, up 9 percent from last year”,...
View ArticleRules of the Game
If TV ratings are fake, in what should advertisers trust? Some is the dilemma in China today, as news leaked that, CSM, the only Chinese company still churning out TV ratings data, may be massaging...
View ArticleOnce You Go Down the Wrong Path
Look here, here, here, even on our very own Technode, you can see a detailed description of the fall of Chinese luxury B2C. The high flying industry of yesteryear crashed and burned after several...
View ArticleThe Curious Case of Douban
It’s one of the rare Chinese successes that is home grown instead of being imported or copied from overseas. It’s also a one of the few social networks that has attracted 100 million users and is...
View ArticlePatriotism is the Last Refuge
Nationalism, or chauvinism, is a destructive force without peer. This is true in other areas of life, and it is true in the technology sector. Exhibit numero uno: Aigo (Chinese name AiGuoZhe, means...
View ArticleThe Many Different Faces of China
I could make a case that I know China pretty well. I was born and raised in Beijing, spent each summer in my hometown except the year SARS ran wild, and came back to live here right after I graduated...
View ArticleGo Bigger, Young Men
While it may be exaggerated to claim that gaming is changing the world, there is no doubt that gaming, and mobile gaming in particular, is changing the landscape of technology business. Since the...
View ArticleOnly Strong Ties Survive
You might know Renren as the Chinese Facebook. But get ready for Renren 2.0: the Chinese Kickstarter. According to a recent news report, Renren get started offering peer-to-peer loan services. Not to...
View ArticleShuabang: The Great Evil in China
In China, if you don’t know what the word “shuabang” means, you are definite out of the loop. It is the hottest topic in the Chinese mobile circle nowadays, “Shuabang” is the practice of using various...
View ArticleMake a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow
Let’s turn our attention to war of words between the tech blog Tech2IPO and Innovation Works, the incubator turned venture capital fund headed by Kai-fu Lee, one of the more renowned and controversial...
View ArticleViva VIVA?
How does a Chinese Newsstand sound? You know, as a platform for contents that could finally solve the content monetization problem once and for all? Sounds great, right? That’s what essentially what...
View ArticleThe Haves
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. And this is the story about how rich people want to make it big and make it bigger. Huxiu, the latest addition to China’s...
View ArticleIs Gaming to be Weixin’s Salvation?
Weixin has more than 200 million users, but no profit to show for it. Many people propose a similar solution to this dilemma: gaming. And they always refer to Kakao Talk and Line, the Korean and the...
View ArticleChinese new media is the future, and it will always be
All in all, media companies are doing alright in America. In China, things are different. Traditional media companies all cry wolf, but are still making money hand over fist, while media, the supposed...
View ArticleWhy Kindle in China Won’t Work
Let me start with a story I heard from an editor friend from Shanghai: a publisher recently ordered all of its employees to delete the Microsoft Office on their computer and replace it with WPS...
View ArticleWords That Don’t Count
Momo, the Chinese LBS provider, has been on a wild ride since the start. Merely a year after the service was offered, Momo has already garnered more than 20 million users. In its lasted round of...
View ArticleWhen Copying Won’t Do
China is good at copying is not news. Many Chinese firms prosper because they successfully emulate foreign firms’ products and business models. In fact, one could argue there are more of these...
View ArticleSina Weibo: Trapped in the Matrix
A Bombshell dropped, at least for the “in” crowd, arrived early this year, when a venerable local media challenged censorship directly on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. What happened next has...
View ArticleWhat? We Need to Make Money?
The New York Times recently detailed the challenges facing entrepreneurs in 2013. The article points out that almost everyone is sombering up from all the hype. Even the much vaunted mobile wave...
View ArticleIs Mobile Already Plateau-ing?
September 1993 is a time few of us remember in vivid detail, let alone commemorate. Yet it was in this “Eternal September” that AOL made the Internet a household sensation. By making the Internet...
View ArticleHaving Ads Is Just Not Enough
As Mary Meeker reports, the eCPM for mobile is just $.75. Meanwhile, the eCPM for desktop is $3.50. Of course, people has been using the PCs for surfing the internet for a long time, while while...
View ArticleHow Residents in a Third Tier American City Use Their Phones
During the Chinese New Year holidays, many writers have dwelled on the theme of returning to their hometown and compare the sights there with that of Beijing. The tech scene is no different; one of...
View ArticleThe Limit of Technology
Last year, a relative of mine decided to come to Beijing. She had just returned after years of studying overseas, and wanted to work in Beijing instead of returning to her hometown. After a very...
View ArticleBenlai: Cut Me a Check
If you have ever taken taxi in Beijing and have been stuck in traffic (a fate impossible to avoid), you might have noticed an ad for Benlai, an e-commerce site promoting healthy food. As the Chinese...
View ArticleMarket Solution for the Anti-Market
Apps that can help hapless Beijingers hail taxis have become all rave recently, but are they really the cure for all? Citizens in Beijing would say maybe. After all, it’s almost a given that it is...
View ArticleAttica! Attica!
Almost everyone was stunned when they found out that Luo Li, a founder of Qidian, was jailed for possible embezzlement. Things hasn’t been well for Qidian, a leading Internet literature site owned by...
View ArticleMobile Health: Destined to Fail?
For many, mobile health is the future. But as a “semi-pro” and keen observer of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, I think mobile health is a tale told by and for “idiots”: full of sound and...
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