China

Chinese Online Video Rivals Youku & Tudou Merge In Deal Worth Over $1 Billion - Posted March 12, 2012
After years of fierce competition, online video giants Youku and Tudou are joining forces to create a single service to be called Youku Tudou Inc. in a deal estimated to be worth over $1 billion. For those unfam... [SocialTimes.com]

Pinterest Growing Fast in Asia Pacific Region - Posted February 27, 2012
Pinterest continues its surge as it grows in the Asia Pacific region. The site has attracted millions of users in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The site faces a large host of competitors internationally, including a recently launched ... [SocialTimes.com]

Chinese Flood Obama's Google+ Page with Humorous Comments - Posted February 27, 2012
China's dammed Internet wall is common knowledge -- Chinese users are blockaded from looking at Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other sites that their government doesn't allow. With all that pressure building up, though, the dam seems to have had a small crack, and it led to Obama's Google+ page. Some meddl... [SocialTimes.com]

Renren Stock Gets Lift from Upcoming Facebook IPO - Posted February 1, 2012
Investors have put some serious volume into investing in Renren, the "Chinese Facebook" over the last three days, seemingly identifying the site as a possible social media growth stock that can ride the coattails of Facebook. Between January 29th and the end of the 30th, the stock rose from around... [SocialTimes.com]

China Is Second Country To Applaud Twitter's New Stance On Censorship - Posted January 31, 2012
Twitter announced last week that it would start withholding tweets on a country-by-country basis, at the request of specific governments. And although the company has ... [AllTwitter]

China's Sina Weibo Overtakes Twitter's Record for Most Messages per Second - Posted January 26, 2012
On December 13th, 2011, Twitter users all over Japan broke a record by tweeting about during a television screening of Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky -- it's a famous anime that is known by all Japanese and Japanese tweeters tweeted quotes from the show during the entire program. That was... [SocialTimes.com]

China Expands Mandatory Real Name Policy to Entire Country - Posted January 20, 2012
Over the course of the last few years China has been running a trial of getting social networks to collect the full real names of all of their users. Currently on popular networks like the Twitter clone Sina Weibo and Facebook clone QQ, users have the ability to be anonymous.... [SocialTimes.com]

Vice Keeps Going..This Time into China - Posted January 3, 2012
While some media companies are scratching their heads trying to find ways to become profitable and cut costs, (usually by laying people off), Vice is doing the opposite: enjoying an estimated value of $1 billion (with $100 million in revenue) and looking to expand into China. A recent ... [FishbowlNY]

Cracking Down on Paid Posters with Semantic Analysis - Posted November 30, 2011
According to a new study, "paid posters are poisoning the internet with their untrustworthy content." The article... [semanticweb.com]

Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey: "Twitter Can't Compete In China" - Posted October 20, 2011
Twitter's co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey says that Twitter simply can't compete in China - but it's not Twitter's fault. Speaking at AsiaD, a conference hosted by All Things D, in Hong Kong on Thursday, Dorsey examined the state of Twitter in Asia. The region has largely embraced Twitter with one notable... [AllTwitter]

There's an App to Pay for Vending Machine Products (in China) - Posted September 8, 2011
Developers all over the world have been taking Apple's slogan "there's an app for that" very seriously. The latest case in point comes from China where Ubox has apps for Android, iPhone and Java-based feature phones to provide mobile payment services for products in vending machines. ... [SocialTimes.com]

Banned Chinese Writer Liao Yiwu to Appear in New York City - Posted September 1, 2011
On September 13th, Chinese writer Liao Yiwu will appear in New York City for a reading, a musical performance and an on-stage interview organized by the Pen American Center. Liao (pictured, via) is a poet, novelist, musician, and documentarian, on... [GalleyCat]

Viral Radar: Real Madrid Soccer Team Plays Against 109 Kids...And Wins - Posted August 9, 2011
Real Madrid, voted the most successful football club of the 20th century by FIFA, has got no problem beating teams in their own league, which is why, to celebrate their 109th year, they decided to play against 109 Guangzhou children in China. Real Madrid proved their greatness--through the chaos of... [SocialTimes.com]

Flipboard App Content Apparently Blocked in China - Posted May 16, 2011
Most of us (including me) look at our various connected apps and cry foul when access is limited or unavailable because of wireless data coverage issues, server issues, or some technical glitch. Imagine if your access to content in an app was blocked altogether? That is what Flipboard CEO Mike McCue... [SocialTimes.com]

Renren -- The Facebook of China -- Raises $743 Million - Posted May 9, 2011
Shares of the Chinese social networking site Renren surged on their trading debut in New York on Wednesday. The company raised $743 million from the offering. Renren has been called China's answer to Facebook and is one of the few publicly traded social networking sites and the latest symbol of China's soaring... [SocialTimes.com]

3 Ways China's Weibo Could Actually Compete with Twitter - Posted April 26, 2011
Within China, Twitter is basically non-existent: people use Weibo, instead, a similar service previously available only in Chinese. On Monday, the Chinese company released an English translation of its iPhone app... [AllTwitter]

Is China Finally Accepting Facebook's Friend Request? - Posted April 14, 2011
It's how you plan your Saturday night, keep in touch with your childhood best friend, and snoop on your workplace crush. It's on your laptop, you Blackberry, and your iPad. Ask anyone under the age of sixty; Facebook is everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except China. But, is that about to change? Reports... [SocialTimes.com]

Bi Feiyu Wins the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize - Posted March 21, 2011
Chinese novelist Bi Feiyu (pictured, via) has won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Priz... [GalleyCat]

U.S. Soccer Star Is Bored, Checks in With The NYT From China - Posted January 24, 2011
The United States women's soccer team is currently in the middle of the Four Nations tournament in China. Th... [SportsNewser]

Chinese Bride/Activist Jailed for Single Retweet - Posted November 19, 2010
The past few weeks have been rife with news about people getting into trouble because of their tweets, but this appears to be the harshest punishment dolled out recently: A Chinese bride was arrested - on her wedding day - because of something she retweeted. The authorities... [AllTwitter]

Publicis in Talks with Chinese Government To Launch Comms College - Posted November 8, 2010
Publicis chief exec Maurice L vy is in talks with Chinese government officials to establish a communications university in one of ... [PRNewser]

Smuggled Kindle 3Gs Help Chinese Consumers Bypass Firewall - Posted November 1, 2010
Amazon may not have distribution in China, but Kindles are still making their way to the country through black market channels. These Kindle 3Gs are giving Chinese consumers full access to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which are usually ce... [AppNewser]

Diane Sawyer to Anchor 'World News' From China - Posted October 18, 2010
ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer" will originate live from China November 15-17, the network says. Sawyer will anchor, while correspondents David Muir and Clarissa Ward examine what makes China the second largest economy in the world. Sawyer... [TVNewser]

Third International Workshop Social Data on the Web, Shanghai, China - Cordis News - Posted August 3, 2010
  ... [semanticweb.com]

In China, a new era of Web censorship looms - Christian Science Monitor - Posted June 8, 2009
... [semanticweb.com]

Enterprise 3.0: Semweb Commercialization Options - Posted January 16, 2008
Back when I was an industry analyst (VP, E-Business Strategies at the META Group, since acquired by Gartner), I often had to critique emerging markets.  Unlike venture capitalists, industry analysts are privy to product roadmaps from publicly-traded companies, including the industry giants (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM).  And unlike i-bankers, they are... [semanticweb.com]