I had the pleasure of being part of a panel on the business aspects of the Internet industry in China on Friday during the Wilber K. Woo Greater China Business Conference at UCLA Anderson. I was a last minute sub for Sage Brennan of Enovate, and shared the panel with Bobby Chao of DFJ Dragonfund (seed investors in Baidu) and Eddie Chen, CEO of THQ*ICE (a gaming joint venture between THQ and Shanghai’s ICE) moderated by Richard Colback. It was a fun conversation in a lecture hall setting, and was mainly attended by Anderson students and a few China enthusiasts from around Los Angeles.
One of the more interesting parts of the discussion was the question of whether Mainland Chinese MBA students (of which there were a good many in the room) would – and should – go back to China once they get their US degrees to be Internet entrepreneurs. Continue reading “Internet Opportunities Knocking Across the Pacific for New MBAs?”
With their business prospects dwindling by the year – including in search (Google.cn), online video (YouTube), blogging (Blogger) all at best playing second fiddle, Google today announced that they will take off the filters from Google.cn in a “what the hell? we might as well go out swinging with head held high” blog post. Whether you think it’s brilliant, courageous and/or desperate (I think it’s some of all, with the caveat that I also want a completely free and uncensored web for everyone, everywhere), it certainly marks another milestone in this ongoing clash between one of the world’s tech darlings and China. Continue reading “Google Decides to Throw Haymaker at China”
China’s GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication) announced yesterday that foreign investment in China’s online gaming industry won’t be allowed (I presume from this point on and not retroactive). In this case, foreign investment includes foreign entrepreneurs, as the edict from the GAPP also denies foreigners from setting up wholly owned enterprises (WOEs) and/or joint ventures. Continue reading “China’s GAPP to foreign investors: You Don’t Have Game”
Today, a day after MMS was finally released for the iPhone in the US (I like the quote “now you can do what you did with your Razr in 2003!”), I was just using the Yahoo Instant Messenger iPhone app (yes, I still have some friends and relatives that hangout there so I go on once and a while begrudgingly), and it got me to thinking about what the iPhone means for IM-focused companies in China. Continue reading “QQ and the iPhone 3G & 3GS – the penguins are aligned”
This is somewhat in response to Ben Parr’s Mashable article and the subsequent comment stream, and following up on a thought I had last night after hearing about Twitpic being GFW’ed. In case you haven’t heard, after yesterday’s explosion, Maggie Rauch posted a few images of the rubble and the police response to Twitpic. The images quickly made the rounds on Twitter and soon thereafter Twitpic itself was blocked in China. Continue reading “Is Twitpic the first Twitter app to be GFW’ed? And should anyone care?”
