If at first you don't succeed....

The news that eBay is having a second crack at Japan set me thinking. What do the big US Internet brands have to do to be successful in Asia?

I had just got off the phone with a reporter who was asking me what was the significance of the Li Ka Shing/Facebook deal. Speculations is rife in Hong Kong that the real significance of this will be a Facebook link to the Tom Group, giving them a leg-up into China. Murdoch's MySpace is already there along with a raft of local Chinese sites.

I'm not clear how big a deal the social networking phenomenon is yet in China. There seems still to be a strong preference there for more BBS-style communities. I am not, though, really an expert in this field and am very ready to stand corrected if I'm wrong.

Update: BusinessWeek's view on the eBay/Yahoo! Japan deal is an interesting one. They say its "less a comeback than a shrewd move to tap into the Japanese market without having to start from scratch".

Another update: Tangos, as often, has more meat to put on the bones here over on his China Web 2.0 Review blog. There's some interesting stuff here, particularly about Facebook's possible China acquisition strategy and company called Fenbei.com.

The perils of Chinese press conferences

Anybody who has ever done business in China will know that the world of press conferences there is fraught with complications: from the wide-eyed amazement of western executives when told by their Chinese PR people that they have to bribe journalists to come (envelopes of 'taxi money' are routinely inserted into press packs and many will not write stories if they are forgotten) to the potential for miscommunication.

Several people (including Fons Tuinstra here) report on Business Week's story about the MySpace China press conference snafu which is worth passing on. The article more generally reports on MySpace's 'slow start' in China. In particular, it notes "Luo Chuan, chief executive of MySpace China, told reporters in Shanghai that the new Chinese version of News Corp.'s popular social-networking site aims to launch an instant messaging (IM) service "as soon as possible." Local scribes took him at his word. The Chinese media began reporting that MySpace China was calling its new IM product "ASAP." MySpace China quickly issued a clarification explaining that the company had not actually decided on a name yet and cited a communication failure for the mistake".

Page 3 girls for the Wall Street Journal?

There must be more than a few contemplating the implications of the Dirty Digger's $60 a share bid for Dow Jones. We were only talking about him and his tasteful London tabloids just the other day.

Not the least interesting aspect would be the return of a Murdoch-owned paper to Hong Kong. His tenure as Digger-in-chief at the South China Morning Post in the last 80s and early 90s was brought to an end by Hong Kong's cross-media ownership laws and his acquisition of Star TV. The Wall Street Journal's newly comfortably-sized Asia edition has been published out of Hong Kong for 20+ years now.

We wonder how the 'new' look Far Eastern Economic Review would fare under Murdoch leadership. Editor Hugo Restall will presumably be hoping that he doesn't notice that it's still there. Altogether too worthy for Rupert, surely. Mind you perhaps the terribly hip and trendy "Traveller's Tales Blog" could be ported across to the new MySpace China which, China's media ownership laws being what they are is of course entirely independent of News Corp., Wendi Deng's presence on the Board notwithstanding...