Record month

Readership of this blog has been increasingly pretty steadily since we started. This month, the first of our third year of blogging I am amazed to see has, however, been particularly striking with a 38% increase month-on-month from April to May. You're still a pretty select crowd and the Google Adwords revenues will buy us one good lunch if we're lucky.

However, with May 2007 up 260% vs. May 2006, there's clearly something here which is interesting you all.

So, thanks for that. It was indeed a merry month of May for this blog. Let's hope for a truly sunny June!

Choosing partners

A couple of interesting pieces catch our eye today and give rise to thoughts about the different partnering options which are emerging in B2B online. China Economic Net talks about Alibaba's tie-up with China Commercial Bank. The deal, it notes, means that "a green passage will be opened on Alibaba.com, allowing quality customers to apply bank loans and financing projects through the website. And the credit score of domestic e-commerce enterprises on the website will become one of the bases for their loans in CCB".

We have to assume that the likes of D&B will be looking very carefully at the emergence of credit ratings acceptable to banks from non-traditional sources such as Alibaba.

Meanwhile, over in India, contentsutra.com reports on the Uttar Pradesh Post Office becoming an e-commerce provider. "Goods can be ordered online, by money order or directly from post offices", it says, adding "More at the Times of India". On the topic of partnering, what caught our eye was the comment that "The post office is open to tie-ups with private vendors. They’ve also tied up with Varanasi’s Kashi Vishwanath temple to allow devotees to order vibhuti packages for Rs. 60".

The post office may not be everybody's favourite institution in many countries. However, the ubiquity of its branches and use in many countries of post office savings banks as the primary financial institution in remote and under-developed areas makes it potentially a very valuable business partner.

CRM-lite from QQ

We last wrote about QQ in February when we reported on its staggering 572.3 million registered users. I was really interested then to read the China Web 2.0 Review post today about QQ's decision to launch an instant messaging-based CRM service.

Apparently, small businesses in China have already been using QQ to maintain contact with their customers but have been running about scalability issues in a service designed primarily for personal communications. This has some echoes of the way in which small businesses in the 1990s turned to mobile telephones to run their businesses at a time when access to land lines was still much more restricted for anything but large, State-owned organisations. A whole sub-culture of mobile telephone-based business practises emerged as a result. Here we now see the same thing happening online. Fascinating.

"Quality Control" in Macau

I have been pointed towards the Destination Macau web site and an interesting piece they have posted on the Guangdong government's decision to tighten controls on independent travellers to Macau. The public response from Macau is that they welcome efforts to tighten up on illegal workers and problem gamblers.

It quotes Anthony Williams, Associate Director, Hospitality Property Management at Shun Tak, saying that:

he personally sees the move as a positive step for Macau. “Overall, I think a controlled slow down will be good for Macau as there is a danger or rapid growth outstripping the ability of the infrastructure to keep pace, which would be problematic and damaging to Macau’s reputation, and take a long time to recover from.”

We're now about one month away from the soft opening of the Venetian (this picture is the April web cam shot). I wonder what they think about all this?

Passing on the Digg-fad

China Web 2.0 Review talks today about the fact that "Digg, as a community driven social news model, has been copied by many startups globally, but it has never reach its tipping point in China". Tangos speculates that this is "partly because traditional news portal website still dominate online news market".

He then goes on to talk about "Netease’s recent initiative to incorporate digg model in some of its news content". We'll see. Maybe news readers in China have just decided to pass this slightly silly fad by. Letting the great unwashed choose the news stories we pay attention to will, in my opinion, pass quite soon and we will revert to the more traditional system of the lesser unwashed in professional newsrooms doing the job.

Shanghai bound

Off to Shanghai this evening for a quick visit. I'll be speaking at a conference on the events industry (to which, for some strange reason, I can't link you) and meeting a few friends and other business contacts. Back in HK Tuesdsay.

I hope the band of thunderstorms which has been passing over Hong Kong this weekend is well and truly gone by then.

IT events take different forms

I am once obliged to Chang, the Korean blogger who is currently based in Japan. His Web 2.0 Asia blog reports on his attendance at the New Industry Leaders Summit (NILS) event in Sapporo. He also posts here and here. I am not as familiar as I should be with details of the events and B2B media/information scene in Japan. As Chang points out, it's not always easy for foreigners to get a real inside feel at these events:

...it was rather clear that the participants were divided into two groups, the Japanese group and non-Japanese group (the latter being the minority and kinda forming a league of their own). I know NILS is first and foremost a Japanese industry gathering, but I still wish the next NILS would be more international, or at least more pan-Asian with more participants from Korea, China, Singapore, and India.

The event doesn't seem to have an easily accessible web site (I certainly couldn't find one) and you have to rely on outside bloggers to find out about it. Ross Mayfield attended last year and blogged on it here.

Meanwhile, it's not all open access in Beijing either. Fons Tuinstra points us to a story on CNET about a reporter showing up to the China Beijing International High Tech Expo only to find some unanticipated challenges:

I made it in and could stay, they said. Unfortunately, the interpreters never showed up. The conference organizers had canceled them.

The event, the reporter says, "is the Chinese government's showcase for the country's technological achievements". Hmmm. Hurry along with those automated translation services guys....and I'll bet there was no Scarlett Johanssen around to amuse him at the bar either.

Focusing on mobile

Well, the gossip and excitement of the stories we've been posting in the past couple of days has been generating record traffic. Thank you. Don't forget to click on those Google ads. Some expensive lunches are looming.

My last post on the mobile world was not a positive one when I bemoaned the news of China Mobile's availability on the summit of Everest. Today, however, I loop back to a familiar theme of business and media opportunities afforded by data services on the increasingly ubiquitous mobile phone in Asia.

Firstly, I read with interest the post on Web 2.0 Asia about Docomo's belated discovery of Web 2.0 in Japan. He talks of the way in which Softbank Mobile has woken up what was looking like an increasingly dozy Docomo:

For Docomo, the obvious pain in the neck is the fast-rising Softbank Mobile, which had long been regarded as the distant 3rd player (from its Vodafone KK years) but is now looking more like a real contender with its superb bang-for-the-buck packages. Many are surprised by how quickly Softbank Mobile has risen, but if you take a look at the programs offered by the Japanese carriers, you'd be surprised that so many people have NOT yet moved to Softbank Mobile. If you become a new SB Mobile subscriber, you can get a nice voice+data plan and a decent free handset at under $20 per month (based on a 2 year contract). That's of course in addition to the unlimited free calls with other SB Mobile users. That's ridiculously cheap, don't you think? Can you get this value in China?

Then, down in Singapore, but with a focus on China, Sun Business Network, finally rid of Bruno Wu, has made a new investment in China acquiring Delta Digital Limited for US$4.5 million. This involves a deal with Beijing Shi Tong Tian Xia Information Technology Co., Ltd (STTX) which has established partnerships with Xinhua News Agency, China.com.cn and Beijing Youth Daily to provide “push” News Services in China. STTX reportedlly wants to expand this type of service across SE Asia which is, presumably, where Sun Business comes in.

Singapore deal?

This may be more worthy of Guy Kawasaki's new Truemors web site, but the market tom toms are beating over a possible Singapore exhibition industry acquisition. Some will surprised by it if it's true although many have looked at this business. $6 million is the reported price. E-mail me on paul at bsgasia dot com if you think you know what I'm talking about....

XFML update

We'll let the picture and Reuters do the talking here:

NEW YORK, May 22 (Reuters) - An investor filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing China-based Xinhua Finance Media Ltd. (XFML.O: Quote, Profile , Research) of misrepresenting material facts about itself.

The lawsuit, brought by Israel Bollag in the Southern District of New York, also names the underwriters of the company's March initial public offering, J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile , Research), UBS AG (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile , Research), CIBC World Markets Corp. (CM.TO: Quote, Profile , Research) and WR Hambrecht & Co., its chief executive officer, Fredy Bush, and its former chief financial officer, Shelly Singhal.

The lawsuit seeks class action status.

To learn more about the fine photo of a Lappet-Faced Vulture, click on the picture.