Sunday, October 11th, 2009
The Internet in China
The other day we had a guest speaker at the college, Kaiser Kuo. He was at UNL speaking at the E.N. Thompson Forum and gave a great talk about the Internet in China, the usage stats and their online culture. A few highlights… he discussed how internet cafes in China are widely popular with younger crowds. This lead to a brief discussion on advertising efforts in online and P2P games. The advertising seems similar to the states, but they have large numbers of youth hanging out at these cafes gaming for hours on end. The other interesting area he discussed was the usage numbers of IM in China. It is regularly used and is an effective communication tool in their country. In the US it has faded away, but still used in tighter circles. He made a great point that the digital communication in communist China has created a forum for people to discuss issues, ideas and thoughts even with the so called “great firewall of China.” To an extent this is true for every country, more so than others, but was interesting to hear his experiences.
Kuo also talked about video sites and the high usage numbers in China. (he also works for one) His company is a mix between Hulu and YouTube. He also mentioned P2P sites that allow people to share music and video, which I read about this in FREE by Chris Anderson. It is very interesting the thoughts on “intellectual property” and copyright laws. This will definitely continue to be a topic of interest for everyone.
Overall, a great talk and very entertaining to listen too….must be his musical background!
