The strategy is to be on as many of the e-readers as possible

Two interesting points from this clip:

1. Lighthouse Media's Marketing is a really interesting and aggressive competitor in the marketing B2B media space in Asia. It's giving Haymarket's venerable Media a good run for its money these days and interesting to see them experimenting with video as another channel. I wonder how they'll make money from it, though? Google isn't very generous with sharing its YouTube gains.

2. The FT's approach to e-readers, as explained here by Greg Zorthian, global circulation director for the Financial Times is very catholic. They're spreading they're bets across the whole e-reader world and who can blame them. Nobody at this stage really knows where the technology will settle although they can be fairly confident that it's not likely to paper in the long term.

China confidentially

An interesting move by the FT to launch its new China Confidential subscription-based website/newsletter in these trying times. You can get it free for 14 days before handing over any dosh. Editor James Kynge comments that "Through this website and newsletter, we aim over the next weeks, months and years to track and predict the meaningful trends that make China such a riveting phenomenon. We hope to bring to our readership of investors and business people every two weeks a collection of telling insights that identify the real trajectory of the Chinese economy, and its key constituent parts".

I noticed that my old friend Duncan Clark, the telecoms guru from BDA in Beijing, is given a column in which he talks about 3G in China and opines that "3G offers the potential to fuse China's love affair with the mobile phone with its growing addiction to the internet". You can also get access to an interesting BDA 'China Analyst Note' on the online advertising. That basic line is that "While growth is slowing from last year, we believe China’s online advertising market will still grow at a relatively impressive clip of 20% or so in 2009. More internet users and usage, continuing national economic growth, the growing influence of online media and the cost advantages of online vs. offline ads are all fuelling the sector’s development".

There appears to be no connection with the China Confidential blog which has been running since 2005. Competitors presumably include the China Economic Review.

Unless I'm being unusually thick (which is entirely possible), the FT appears to be rather coy about how much it will charge for this so-called "premium investment intelligence". With all the *ankers either leaving town or wondering how they're going to scrape by on the basic US$500,000 and no bonus (poor dears), we're not sure about their timing. But, you can't fault them for their chutzpah in trying in these conditions.

Update: I meant to link to Thomas Crampton's posting on this as he, as is so often the case, pointed me towards this new service. Even if Twitter did "out" him, he'll be a great addition to the Ogilvy team.

FT.com of special significance to Asia

When Tom Gorman and I talked at the SOPA function last week, one topic that we skated past pretty quickly was the way in which online can provide opportunities to launch into markets which may be too challenging for print. I was interested, then to see the interview with FT CEO John Ridding in Condé Nast's Portfolio.com. It's a wide-ranging piece that talks about the FT's apparently maverick strategy and his efforts to ignore Murdoch. Good man...

If memory serves correctly, Ridding was closely involved in the launch of the FT's Hong Kong-based Asia edition. He says that's doing pretty well but focuses on FT.com's contribution to the business in Asia:

"...we think FT.com is crucial for Asia because the nature of the market is there's a large number of medium-sized economies spread over quite a large geography, so the physical cost of distributing newspapers is a challenge. That's where FT.com comes into its own because that is a great way of building our audience and extending our reach. So we're investing significantly in FT.com as a global proposition, but we think it's going to be particularly helpful for our mission in Asia".

He also notes the 1 millionth Chinese reader on which we reported in early April.

FT Chinese hits 1 million

Thomas Crampton has been blogging this week from the IFRA Publish Asia event in Macau. Lot's of interesting stuff and I commend you to browse back through his posts of the past few days.

What caught my eye today, though was the news that Angela Mackay, the FT's Executive Director Asia/Pacific reported that ftchinese.com are now up to 1 million unique users. Overall, the FT's launch in Asia appears to have been pretty successful and the web-focused Chinese language strategy is an obvious way to build up the franchise while avoiding China's prohibitively restrictive regulatory environment.

The video of Tom's interview with Angela is available on You Tube as well as his blog.

FT upsets the censors

I like the 'Pink 'un'. Heck, it's the only newspaper I actually pay for at the office. So, I was intrigued to see the piece Friday from their Tech Blog about how they now appear to be banned in China, a victim of the GFW.

They direct readers to a site I haven't looked at before which lets you see whether you're blocked: GreatFireWallofChina.org.

I certainly have some sympathy with the following comment:

The action against a single corner of the FT's site is also a reminder of the growing technical sophistication of the commissars. They are already targeting particular entries in Wikipedia. How long before the news sections of international papers start getting cut up by the censors' digital scissors?