Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Shanghai-based social market researchers Kai Lukoff and Lucas Englehard from BloggerInsight, a company spun off from Web2Asia which crowdsources market intelligence through an online expert panel of bloggers.

On the Chinese Internet, “harmony” is a euphemism for censorship. Mafia games were “harmonized” over the Summer, for example, as they “embody antisocial behavior like killing, beating, looting and raping” and “gravely threaten and distort the social order and moral standards, easily putting young people under harmful influence” according to the Ministry of Culture.

Foreshadowing the government’s imminent policing of social games, Chinese netizens are now picking—not stealing—crops from their friends’ farms.  Five Minutes, the developer of the smash hit Happy Farm (the first SNS farm game), confirmed that the terms had been voluntarily changed in an interview with BloggerInsight.  This comes as the government is “considering specific social gaming laws and regulations, to be enacted as early as next year… to end the chaotic market conditions,” according to ChinaNews, which scooped the story on Wednesday last week.

A string of negative press has hit social games in China, which may signal a propaganda campaign by the government to besmirch social games.  Many of the stories are fake, according to industry insiders. Just last month, a doctor’s fatal neglect of an infant in critical condition wasblamed on his play of Happy Farm while on duty, though further investigation concluded that he was on a QQ Chinese Chess Game. Happy Farm is also blamed for destroying jobs and relationships.

The Chinese government does not shy from bold action to fight social ills. New regulations were recently enacted to prevent virtual currency inflation. A survey by the National People’s Congress classified more than 10 percent of China’s youth as “addicted” to the Internet, a serious statement in a nation where boot camps are built to combat Internet dependency.

The Chinese government is exerting control over social networking sites. Since the ethnic clashes in Xinjiang, a combustible Western province, the government has launched The Great Internet Shut-Down, with a focus on social media. Facebook, Twitter, and most Chinese microblogging sites are blocked. Intellectual property violations (rampant) and scam offers (rare) are of tangential concern, if an issue at all.

Social Game Platforms and Developers Beware!

Although the SNS landscape is splintered, the government is determined to maintain control. There is no Facebook, no single dominant social network for all of China: the top 3 are Qzone, Kaixin001, and RenRen (see chart).  When it comes to games, Qzone and Kaixin001 develop everything in-house with games inspired from Facebook, while Renren has a mostly open API so it can tap into outside developers to copy games for them. All have keyword lists and teams responsible for the instant removal of “objectionable” content.

Platforms have borne the responsibility for game regulation until now, but developers may soon become practiced in self-censorship too. The new regulations will likely be similar to those for MMORPGs: a list of “do’s and don’ts” for Chinese social games, according to an industry insider. This could include age ratings or a requirement that social games be suitable for players of all ages.

“Game developers and platforms in China should consider themselves as casino operators or cigarette manufacturers,” said Toine Rooijmans, Director of Strategic Operations at Circle Pleasure, “developers design it to be addictive, and the platforms maximize utilization and promotion of addictive content.”

Social Game Addiction

Social games are wildly popular in China. Statistics are impossible to come by: user data is available only for RenRen and 51.com, which are far smaller gaming platforms than Qzone and Kaixin001 (which have strict “no comment” policies). BloggerInsight estimates that 27 million daily active users play Happy Farm across all platforms in China, which is about as many as the 29 million daily users who play Zynga’s FarmVille on Facebook.

China’s social games are similar to those on Facebook: the top 10 social games includes farm, aquarium, pet, and restaurant games.

One notable difference is that Chinese games are more competitive: status and stealing play a larger role. In Wonder Hospital, the game actions are especially nasty. When visiting a friend’s hospital, players can enforce fines, steal patients, throw rubbish, let a dog loose, park a truck to block access, and create “mystery mischief’” indicated by a bomb icon. The one cooperative option is to send medical experts to assist. That balance could change as the government “integrates” social games into its harmonious society.

Now it appears that even stealing crops is sensitive; Happy Farm game developer Five Minutes wanted to stay ahead of the trend in regulation by changing its language.

The Next Opium War?

Nevertheless, Western social game developers are knocking on the door, with Popcap Games as the first major entrant with Bejeweled Blitz 2 on RenRen on Nov. 23, 2009. The implications of stricter regulation are especially serious for such foreign game developers. For in this war, the Chinese government holds all the power.

As Blizzard’s World of Warcraft can attest to, a shrewd political strategy is essential to success in China. Their case is now a convoluted mess of bureaucratic infighting between two Chinese government agencies, the same bureaucrats who will soon regulate social games.

The China market is seductive, but outside game companies should proceed with caution.  Foreign developers would be wise to cultivate political ties and partner with or build a local studio, as Popcap Games did. Also, be sure your games promote “harmonious social values”—Mafia Wars need not apply.

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HubPages, a content community based around topics, is adding a new real-time feature this week: feeds. The site lets anyone create “Hubs” around any type of topic, and divided content into forums, questions and answers.

The new feed makes it more easy to read all components of a particular hub or topic, where you can comment, ask and answer questions and participate in forums. Hubbers (HubPages authors) can earn money by publishing their Hubs and then collecting ad revenue (which is split with HubPages). Paul Edmondson, founder of HubPages, tells me that several thousand new Hubs are created everyday. Edemondson adds that the new feed hopes to make Hubs a “living, breathing piece of content.”

HubPages is also growing, seeing 20 million unique visitors in November and growing 112 percent in traffic over the past year, according to Google Analytics. HubPages faces competition from Squidoo, Mahalo and About.com.

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Andover, MA-based SeeWhy has raised a second round of funding from most of its current shareholders, adding $2 million to the $4.5 million it secured earlier this year. The company plans to add additional investors alongside those investing in this round through 2010.

The startup markets tools that help ecommerce sites and online retailers up their conversion rates by giving them the opportunity to automatically or manually try to make people who were close to purchasing goods or services on their website but left the process before completion, for whatever reason, come back and finish the cycle.

SeeWhy refers to this concept as ‘re-marketing’ or ‘re-conversion’ and claims rapid follow-up of people who drop out of the buying process can increase conversation rates up to 50%. True or not, I think it’s an interesting idea, particularly for vendors who have the resources needed to follow up those guilty of ‘abandonment’ practically in real-time.

The company’s suite of products is named Abandonment Tracker, is entirely SaaS-based, and comes with a free version with a limited feature set so website owners can test the waters before going pro. Companies like Mastercard, Diageo, Radware and eCourier.co.uk are some of SeeWhy’s current customers.

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The EU said this morning that it is dropping antitrust charges against Microsoft after the software giant agreed to give Windows OS users a choice of up to 12 other Web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Microsoft will need to implement a ballot screen that lets users in Europe replace Internet Explorer with another browser, starting March 2010. The deal also means computer manufacturers will now be able to ship PCs in Europe that do not come pre-installed with IE.

If it honors the agreement, Microsoft will avoid further EU fines.

The company did get a warning, though: Microsoft can be fined up to 10 percent of yearly global turnover – without regulators having to prove their case – if the company fails to stick to its legally-binding commitment for the next five years. This commitment will be checked by regulators every other six months, the EU said. The European Union is also able to review the entire deal at the end of 2011.

European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in a statement says millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by gaining “free browser choice”, and that it will also spur browser makers “to innovate and offer people better browsers in the future”.

In December 2007, Opera Software urged the European Commission to investigate Microsoft’s abuse of its dominant market position and the company’s bundling of Internet Explorer with its still dominant Windows operating system. After a two-year investigation, in January 2009, the EU charged Microsoft with monopoly abuse. The anti-trust suit was later joined by Google and Mozilla.

Opera Software was quick to release a statement following the announcement of the settlement. Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO:

“This is a victory for the future of the Web. This decision is also a celebration of open Web standards, as these shared guidelines are the necessary ingredients for innovation on the Web. Opera has long been at the forefront of Web standards, which ensures that people have equal access to the Web anytime, anywhere and on any device. We see the outcome of the EU’s investigation as a testament to our mission.”

The European Union estimates that some 100 million computers will likely display the screen by mid-March 2010, and around 30 million new computers will show it over the next five years.

Microsoft has already paid €1.68 billion ($2.44 billion) in fines over EU antitrust actions in the past 10 years.

(Image via Komonews)

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Google is really serious about using offline media to push its Web browser. After running ads for Google Chrome in the UK, it has today started a similar campaign in The Netherlands, too. Like in the UK, we’re getting reports on billboards appearing all over the country in combination with digital advertising appearing on Facebook and other sites.

Also like in the UK, Google is distributing its message through Metro, a free daily that can be picked up in many public places all over the country. You can access the online version of the newspaper right here, and you’ll see the ad when you click through to the Issuu-powered digital edition.

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Mozat, the mobile social networking platform formerly known as Morange, is making strides in Asia and the Middle East. The eponymous company behind the app has just announced that it has surpassed 10 million registered users, predominantly based in those regions.

The startup has also disclosed that it raised a Series A funding round led by JAFCO Asia earlier this year, although it didn’t disclose the size of the investment.

Mozat is in the mobile social networking business, and markets free J2ME and Symbian clients, a Windows Mobile and an Android app. The company currently doesn’t offer custom apps for iPhone, BlackBerry or Palm WebOS devices (yet), but we should note Mozat targets consumers in regions where those are not nearly as popular as in most Western countries.

Mozat is similar to apps like eBuddy and Nimbuzz, as it enables users to connect and communicate with friends on MSN, YAHOO, ICQ and AOL using a single application. It also boasts other tools like email, chat, photo sharing apps and games, which it distributes through a custom ‘Application Center’ which functions much like Apple’s App Store or the Android Market.

Mozat’s main objective for 2010 is to sign up more mobile operators and ISPs in Asia and the Middle East in order to increase their foothold as the carriers in those regions prepare to roll out more powerful networks in the near future.

Mozat was founded in Singapore back in 2003 by a group of Ph.D. scholars and professors of the National University of Singapore.

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Yep, it’s still happening. You can still become a millionaire on the iPhone without a marketing budget and a brand name. Occipital, the company behind RedLaser [iTunes Link], has struck gold with its barcode-scanning iPhone app. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s much harder to be an indie developer on the iPhone these days.

The App Store is riddled with brands and much of the Top 50 selling apps are backed by marketing/PR budgets or legacy users (meaning they’ve been on the store since the beginning, and have an install base that can boost future app sales via cross-promotion). In fact, almost every developer I talk to nowadays says the App Store has become increasingly difficult, and that it would be “impossible to get noticed” if you just stuck your app in the store. Well, if you create a good enough product on the App Store, people will come, and they came to buy RedLaser – in droves.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

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Zynga, one of the stars of the Scamville drama, has raised a big round of funding – $180 million. Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz all participated in the round. The company has now raised $219 million in total.

DST, which has invested $300 million in Facebook this year, led the round. As with Facebook, some of DST’s investment will be used to buy shares directly from employees.

The NYTimes notes that one of DST’s major shareholders, Alisher Usmanov, spent six years in an Uzbek jail for fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s. Usmanov says he was jailed for political reasons, and Zynga investor Kleiner Perkins says there’s no problem with DST.

That won’t stop people making cracks about the Russian Mafia investing in Mafia Wars, one of Zynga’s popular social games, though.

Zynga is clearly on a roll, and some people have speculated that their revenue may be greater than Facebook’s. One thing is clear, Facebook and Zynga are very, very close. Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser, say multiple sources. And they now share DST as a major shareholder. And Marc Andreessen, now a Zynga investor, sits on Facebook’s board of directors.

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Boondoggle, a Belgian interactive agency, has cooked up a deliciously useless product called TweetNotebook that basically lets you create a physical notebook that features a random set of your Twitter messages.

No joke.

Here’s how it works: you go to the website, enter any username (make sure the owner’s tweet aren’t protected) and let the app browse through the account owner’s 3200 latest tweets and automatically select some to populate the bottom sections of your notebook pages.

While you wait for the tweets to get selected, you can enter a custom message on the cover of your notebook (max. 140 characters, of course). Once the app is done selecting, you’ll get to preview your custom 320-page notebook, tweets included, before you order. You have three color choices: white and turquoise, black and turquoise or plain white.

The cost of the überpersonalized notebook is €12 (roughly $17.5), not including the shipping costs, which obviously differ from location to location.

I wish there was an option to select your tweets manually, or have them fetched from the Favstar.fm site, although that would create unwelcome copyright issues.

All in all, @TweetNotebook is a fun concept, which reminds me of Nick Douglas’ book Twitter Wit (which I enjoyed reading).

Now let’s see if they can get some traction on Twitter.

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Digital memory aid and note taking service Evernote already has mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry, among others, but so far it wasn’t part of the now more than 20,000 applications for the Android platform. Expect that to change real soon, because we hear the startup is making the app available in the Android Market in the next few hours.

(Update: it should be available now)

Evernote says the development of the app, which will be offered for free, took months to complete.

Evernote for Android allows users to create text notes, take photos and record audio. They’re also able to attach files to notes, although free subscribers are only able to add PDF, text, audio or image files. Premium subscribers – who fork over $5 per month (or $45 per year) for the service – can attach any file they like, as long as the total note size is under 25MB.

Any note users create in the desktop or web versions of Evernote will be instantly accessible from their Android phones thanks to the app’s native synchronization capabilities, and a note browsing feature enables users to browse and search through all of their notes. Evernote for Android is also able to capture a user’s location whenever he or she creates a note, and enables them to find notes based on proximity to their current location.

The Mountain View-based company, backed by $25.5 million in VC funding and gaining traction fast, promises more updates to the app will be pushed in the coming months.

You’ll to have to exercise a bit more patience before its app hits the Android Market, but here are some screenshots to whet your appetite:

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