China all set to overtake US in internet race

Timothy Chui
Hongkong Standard: Thursday, April 03, 2008

China is set to surpass the United States in the number of internet users,
according to a year-long study by the Internet Society of China.
The ISC believes the number of mainland users will reach 244 million by the
end of 2008 compared with 182 million last year. The United States has
roughly 200 million internet users.

The number of mainland websites and integrated portals such as Sina, QQ and
Baidu, which yielded 161.9 billion yuan (HK$179.6 billion) in revenue in
2007, is set to grow by 31.3 percent this year.

ISC director and China Internet Survey Group supervisor Hu Yanping said 2008
will be a year of exceptional growth due to the proliferation of online
sports content - such as NBA basketball and Formula 1 racing - and
Olympic-related websites.

Hu does not believe the blocking of websites during the riots in Tibet or
the call by the International Olympic Committee for Beijing to keep internet
traffic open during the Games in August would have any effect on the
forecasts.

He also dismissed comments the figures may have been underreported due to
regular blocking of "sensitive information" in the mainland.

The ISC is forecasting a 109 percent growth in revenue from online sports
networks, from 4.7 billion yuan in 2007 to 9.8 billion yuan this year.

By 2011, the internet is expected to be the second largest medium of
advertising in the mainland with revenue forecast at 500 billion yuan.

Guangdong had the most number of users at 30.1 percent of the national
total. Shandong was second with 8.4 percent and Jiangsu third with 7.5
percent.

The yearlong study was compiled by a survey of 50,786 users and by
monitoring the activities of an additional 50,786 users with the help of web
portals.

Another survey looking at the internet habits, this time of Hong Kong users
and conducted by ISC partner Internet Professional Association, found a lack
of business-to-business transactions among the territory's firms.

"One of the reasons is that many small and medium enterprises prefer to
interact with their partners face-to-face, instead of going through
portals," said Simpson Poon Ping-hong, vice president of iProA.

The survey found the territory's favorite search engine was Google with
Yahoo a close second. Yahoo was the most commonly used e-mail service with
Hotmail second.

Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world

The Star: Thursday April 3, 2008

MALAYSIA has about 500,000 active bloggers, ranking the country among the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union, Utusan Malaysia reported.

According to Universiti Malaya media department lecturer, Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah, this showed the power of blogs in influencing the thinking of the people, especially about politics.

He said blogs currently had a wide reach considering how many Internet users visited these sites everyday.

"Our research shows that 70% of the election results were influenced by information in the blogs," he said.

Dr Abu Hassan said the ruling government could use blogs but pointed out that it would take a long time for it to be popular.