Nǐhǎo from Beijing! As part of our 2010 planning, I’m visiting internal teams and vendors in Southeast Asia to share planning information and to gather perspectives on social media adoption and use in local markets. It’s been a whirlwind so far, and I have two more stops to go!
My first stop was Beijing. I landed at 3:15 p.m. on November 16—9 hours before President Obama flew in on Air Force One. Obama has been met with a lot of enthusiasm, and I must say that there’s no shortage of enthusiasm here in general. In fact, people seem to be embracing new technology with the spirit of Silicon Valley in its heyday.
Part of what’s driving the development of online media in China is what even locals refer to as the “Great Firewall.” Though it’s not impossible to reach outside sites like Facebook—all you need is a VPN tunnel—Chinese entrepreneurs are developing their own parallel solutions for every popular site you can think of: they can “Google,” but Baidu is the leading search engine. They may use Pandora, but Kuwo is a more popular way to discover new music.
Chinese Internet usage is quickly growing—44.7% of users spend between three and eight hours online—but the average user’s age is still only 18 to 24. Within the next decade, as these young adults enter the workforce, this represents a tremendous opportunity.
Kuwo CEO Huai Qi, a Stanford graduate who turned down a high-paying job stateside to start her company in China, is ready. “We rented a flat close to Tsinghua University and hired part-time students, learning from the US model of starting a business in a garage,” Huai says.
It’s that kind of resourcefulness that’s going to make Chinese Internet companies a force to be reckoned with in the years to come. But this is no secret: Obama certainly seemed eager to sit down and speak as equals.
