The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/the-chinese-internet-why-the-%e2%80%9ccopy-cats%e2%80%9d-win/

by vaksel • 17 years ago

63 39 17 years ago

That was a really good article

  Put another way: Sure the Chinese can learn a 
  thing or two about original Web ideas from the
  Valley, but the Web 2.0 generation can learn a 
  lot about monetization from China.

and it goes to explain with an example with a Chinese version of match.com

liuliu2• 17 years ago

That's true. The virtual good actually made Tencent, the largest IM provider became the most profitable company in China. And few months ago, one of my friends still argued that online-casual game has no market in U.S. because "the market was dominated by game console". The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China). Those randomness (copycat vs. innovation) just amazed me how dynamic Chinese market is. There are too many innovations, but just too many are failed too early.

pyre• 17 years ago

If you had a point I missed it or you need to reword what you said. It just reads like a bunch of information to me. This isn't a put-down, you seem to have a bunch of interesting information, but I'm not sure what you're getting at.

> The virtual good actually made Tencent, the largest IM provider became the most profitable company in China.

What 'virtual good?'

> And few months ago, one of my friends still argued that online-casual game has no market in U.S. because "the market was dominated by game console".

What does this have to do with the Chinese or innovation?

> The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China).

What about these? You've listed them off, but are you relating these to the previous statement about 'online-casual games' having no market in the US? If so how does renren.com related to that? Are they the creators of mop.com? Even if this statement relates to the US having no market for casual online games, what point are you making? That the US is innovation-less because there are no popular/profitable online casual games?

> Those randomness (copycat vs. innovation) just amazed me how dynamic Chinese market is.

You didn't explain why the Chinese market is dynamic. Because of 'randomness?' How do you mean?

> There are too many innovations, but just too many are failed too early.

Too many innovative Chinese companies are failing before they 'make it big?'

est7• 17 years ago

> The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China).

mop.com was the most popular personal website in 2003-2005 then it was aquired by Oak Pacific Interactive. Then mop goes down fail ever since. Oak Pacific Interactive also aquired XiaoNei from WangXing. WangXing operates FanFou, a twitter copycat.

chrischen• 17 years ago

I think Chinese people will just relate better to homegrown stuff.

Good thing I'm Chinese. Hopefully I will have a cultural advantage if I decide to operate there one day.

litewulf• 17 years ago

Have you lived in Asia for a long period of time? There are clear cultural differences between people who have lived in China their entire life as opposed to someone who can speak Chinese and watches Asian music videos.

Just saying that a so-called "cultural advantage" vanishes if you, well, aren't of that culture.

(I was born in Taiwan, but... not so cultured.)

bootload• 17 years ago

"... I think Chinese people will just relate better to homegrown stuff ..."

There are possible explanations to this idea in an article I read yesterday ~ "Welcome to China's millennium", Martin Jacques ~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/23/china-ma...

est7• 17 years ago

> I think Chinese people will just relate better to homegrown stuff.

Under proper localization foreign brand can dominate the market as well. Like P&G.

Localizations is not as simple as just hiring some guy translate the UI language. But that's what most Web companies are doing.

cglee• 17 years ago

I think McDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, Coke, Pepsi, etc etc may disagree with you. Software has a thing or two to learn from those guys wrt China.

jcl• 17 years ago

Agreed. And while the article characterizes the matchmaking service as "a Chinese version of match.com", that doesn't really do it justice -- their methods are actually quite different, even if the end goal (finding a mate) is the same. In this respect, it's something like comparing eBay and Craigslist.

doug_m• 17 years ago

It was a really interesting article but it draws a very general conclusion, that we can learn from the copy-cats "look how much they changed the business model" and listed a few examples, from a very specific example.

I mean, it what way were the job board and twitter clone different if we're drawing this out past a single example of successful dating website building in China

joblessjunkie• 17 years ago

"men are universally attracted to women with a .7 hip-to-waist ratio"?

I suspect that this ratio has been reported backwards.

swernli• 17 years ago

The number is correct, the wording is backwards. Studies have shown that waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) for women considered attractive within their cultures hover around average of 0.7. Interestingly enough, variation in attractive frontal WHR across cultures dissapears when using circumference as a measurement; in that case it collapsed down pretty reliably to 0.7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio

RevRal• 17 years ago

I clicked your link, and I have to say that their idea of a really attractive WHR is really spot on (the example at the top).

The last section is also very interesting. I'd like to see a study done on the people who find smaller hips more attractive, whether this correlates to less intelligence.

amix• 17 years ago

I think author misses that the Chinese market isn't free and most of the western sites are blocked by the great Firewall. I think their market would look at lot differently if their market was free and anyone could compete on it.

padmanabhan01• 17 years ago

So basically the Govt blocks free western sites so that these entrepreneurs can make money. Nice.

FooBarWidget• 17 years ago

Match.com isn't blocked.

And if I'm a Chinese (I am) in China visiting a western website the first thing I'd think is "OMG it's not in Chinese", after which I'd go look for a native version. Some sites do localization, but it's rarely done correctly. For example search results are still polluted with foreign information and some pages are only available in English.

Frazzydee• 17 years ago

Not saying that your points aren't valid, but you should know that I've found western sites generally load far slower than Chinese ones in China. I completely gave up trying to use facebook without turning off images.

nuggien• 17 years ago

Your comment is probably misinformed. But even if it was a free market and nothing was blocked, it's still unlikely a foreign company will win out over a local homegrown equivalent. Like google/baidu, or cyworld trying to take on the US market etc.

maxklein• 17 years ago

You're ridiculously uninformed. The chinese market is very free, and very very few sites are blocked compared to the size of the internet. Don't comment when you have no idea.

dstorrs• 17 years ago

The thing that impressed me the most was the discussion of the quantitative work they have done. Song Li has generated an enormous database of pragmatic, mathematically proven advice about how to be successful with the opposite gender...somehow, using it for nothing more than a matchmaking service restricted to China seems small potatoes. Granted, it was gathered from a Chinese-only audience, so some of it is probably locale-specific. I'd be interested to see the same thing done on a more global scale and then adapted for other uses.

roundsquare• 17 years ago

Yeah. It'd be awesome if they published it the way okcupid was.

ahlatimer• 17 years ago

Am I the only one that's getting 403'd when I try to access this page?

Sam_Odio• 17 years ago

It looks like every article on techcrunch.com is down. Probably some apache rewrite issue.

Aemon• 17 years ago

You're not. I am as well. not sure why though

Dilpil• 17 years ago

Wow, that matchmaking service sounds pretty intense. They literally ask women out for you.

w1ntermute• 17 years ago

And it clearly works; otherwise, there wouldn't be so many women using the site.

bnomis4• 17 years ago

The main reasons local versions are more popular are a combination of:

- it's in Chinese

- it's not blocked by the GFW

- it's faster (the GFW slows access to everything outside of it down)

- it's still accessible when China Telecom has been tweaking the routers and DNS servers (which they seem to do every week)

That is, practical reasons which lead to adoption and growth.

There are, of course, cultural specifics that have to be taken into account but those are pretty obvious if you're building a site in China for the the local market. And these local touches can only add to the site attractiveness together with being inside of the GFW. So, it's kind of obvious that a local site is going to do better than a foreign one.

Occassionally people will talk about designing the look of the site for the local market but I'm not convinced it's an issue. Good taste is good taste everywhere. For example, the iPod is just as popular here as everywhere else. A well designed and functional site in China is always going to win over the equivalent site that is outside of the GFW for the reasons above.

est7• 17 years ago

> the GFW slows access to everything outside of it down

Just FYI: the GFW works in parallel, all backbone cross nation data are copied to GFW equipments, and GFW actively injects RST packets into backbone transmissions. I don't see how this slows the Internet down. It's just the total bandwidth is too small. There has to be more cross-pacific fiber optics.

bnomis4• 17 years ago

Yes the GFW is regional - i.e. there's more than one filter across the country. But the GFW actively monitors and blocks on content. This filtering and inspection takes finite time and hence slows everything down.

There is plenty of bandwidth. Accessing the same sites from Hong Kong is orders of magnitude faster. And BTW less prone to random errors introduced by clueless monopoly operators.

est7• 17 years ago

I don't think the 'copycats' win, it's just the originals didn't do their best.

ChinaHR sucks balls

http://www.google.com/search?q=chinahr+%E7%83%82

any first year college students can write better .asp pages than that, it's just many hiring companies are using ChinaHR exclusively and you have to apply on it.

Digu.com & Zhenai.com has a terrible reputation for spamming and selling private user data.

The real secret for winning in Chinese market? Marketing and PR. Especially good relationship with the right Communist party leader.

The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

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