The US State Department has started looking for feedback from journalists in Asia about Obama’s speech tomorrow. (No pressure, Mr. Speechwriter!)

Here’s the email that has been sent to local media in Hong Kong.

What do you think?

Seeking your reaction to President Obama’s speech

U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong

Technorati Tags: Mark Ndesandjo

Compared with 2005, additional 320 million people will enter India’s working age population by 2030…

…and India is becoming more urbanized than China, BUT not yet spending on infrastructure.

This estimate for online adspend in ASEAN, released in December 2008, is the The Yahoo!-Nielsen “Online Industry Review” study.

Here’s how they describe this study:

While there have been some online advertising estimates put forward by different firms in the past, these are mostly ad-hoc, general or cover only specific markets in this region. The Yahoo!-Nielsen “Online Industry Review” study is the first-of-its-kind formal study of the online advertising industry in Southeast Asia and aims to provide media practitioners a critical overview of the expected growth of the online industry, its challenges and potential solutions. The study covers robust two-year forecasts of Search and Display advertising as well as the media landscape overview of the six countries. The findings will help marketers create smarter media plans through a more in-depth understanding of cross media usage behavior of their users.

The table above reveals the forecast expenditure on online advertising across each of the Southeast Asia markets under investigation. The study shows that the online advertising industry in the region is expected to grow more than 60% between 2008 and 2010, across all the included markets. Display advertising will continue to take the lion’s share of the online advertising pie although Search advertising is expected to close the gap in Singapore and Malaysia by 2010. Strong growth is also expected in Search Advertising, particularly between 2008 and 2009 and for the less mature online advertising markets such as Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.

What I find interesting about this study by Mastercard and IPSOS, in fact, is that a great many people DO NOT search before making an online purchase.

What’s up with Thailand and Japan? They really like to search!

Technorati Tags: Mastercard, Search, TNS

As pictures from Wen Xue City show, the T-shirt vendors are already warmed up, Mr President!

(While in Ireland this summer, people referred to the US President as O’Bama, as in O’Brien.)

My question: Will Obama meet with his half-brother Mark Ndesandjo who lives in Shenzhen?

Technorati Tags: Mark Ndesandjo

Not surprising to see Hong Kong off the charts, with a combined paid-for and free daily circulation of 590 copies per thousand adults.

What is interesting about Hong Kong is that a huge portion of newspapers (probably 95 percent or more) in the territory are sold off of the newsstands (not via subscription). This creates a fierce tabloid culture where publishers must literally grab readers each day.

Some other highlights:

Newspaper circulation in Asia grew +3.44 percent in 2008 over the previous year, despite the global downturn, and has grown +17.52 percent over the past five years.

The Asian edition, which includes reports on 25 countries and a wealth of summaries that provide a detailed picture of the newspaper market in the region, shows:

  India and China are the world leaders in the newspaper industry, in terms of size. The two countries account for 45 of the world’s 100 largest newspapers. India has more daily newspapers than any other country and leads in paid-for daily circulation, surpassing China for the first time in 2008.

  The number of Asian Internet users rose 23.51 percent last year from a year earlier, to more than 704 million. Over five years, Internet usage jumped 116 percent. There are more broadband subscribers in Asia than any other region - nearly 158 million. The number of broadband subscribers grew 23.33 percent last year and 145 percent over the past five years.

That compares with 123 million broadband subscribers in Europe (up 7.4 percent last year), 97.5 million broadband subscribers in North America (+11 percent), 19 million in South American (+36 percent), 6 million in Australia and Oceania (+6.6 percent) and 2.5 million in Africa (+28 percent).

  Asia also leads the world in the number of mobile cellular subscriptions - nearly 2 billion. The number of subscribers rose by one-quarter in 2008 and by 163 percent from 2004.

That compares with 894 million in Europe (+7 percent in 2008), 425 million in North America (+7 percent), 365 million in Africa (+33 percent), 328 million in South America (+21 percent), and 28 million in Australia and Oceania (+5 percent).

  Paid-for newspaper circulation rose in eight countries in which figures were available last year: Afghanistan (+11.11 percent), Bangladesh (+7.14 percent), Burma (+13.51 percent), Cambodia (+9.09 percent), India (+8.26 percent), Indonesia (+6.86 percent), Nepal (+2.94 percent), and Thailand (+0.68 percent).

Circulation fell in eight countries and territories: Brunei (-8.89 percent), Hong Kong (-2.44 percent), Korea (-1.04 percent), Malaysia (-4.92 percent), Singapore (-1.48 percent), Sri Lanka (-2 percent), Taiwan (-5 percent), and Vietnam (-0.71 percent). Circulation remained stable in North Korea, Laos, Macau, Maldives, Philippines and East Timor. No figures were available for 2008 in Bhutan, China and Pakistan. Japan was excluded from the regional summaries, which focus on the developing markets in the region.

  Over five years, paid-for circulation rose in 15 countries and territories: Afghanistan (+50 percent), Bangladesh (+36.36 percent), Brunei (+64 percent), Cambodia (+20 percent), Indian (+45.5 percent), Indonesia (+12 percent), Laos (+8.7 percent), Macau (+5.6 percent), Malaysia (+71.74 percent), Maldives (+75 percent), Nepal (+27.27 percent), Singapore (+18.69 percent), Thailand (+7.3 percent), East Timor (+50 percent), and Vietnam (+1.45 percent).

Circulation over five years fell in six countries and territories: Burma (-10.64 percent), Hong Kong (-10.31 percent), Korea (-3.28 percent), Philippines (-0.79 percent), Sri Lanka (-2 percent), and Taiwan (-15.56 percent). Circulation was stable in North Korea. No figures were available for Bhutan, China, and Pakistan.

Of those 51% login in daily, spending an average of 22 minutes per user per day on the site.

The average number of visits in Australia is 2.2 visits per person per day.

The city profiled is Lishui, a third-tier Chinese factory town in Zhejiang Province, with a population of around two hundred and fifty thousand.

The city economy ranges from impressionist paintings done for export to gold farmers in the online game World of Warcraft.

A few choice quotes, full article here (Registration required) and Audio Slide Show here. (Disclosure: The New Yorker sends me PDFs of their China-related stories):

Lishui’s copy-artists view on world art tastes

Chen and Hu could rarely identify the foreign scenes that they painted, but they had acquired some ideas about national art tastes from their commissions. “Americans prefer brighter pictures,” Hu told me. “They like scenes to be lighter.

“It’s stupid, something a child would like. Chinese people have no taste. French people have the best taste, followed by Russians, and then the other Europeans.” I asked her how Americans stacked up. “Americans are after that,” she said. “We’ll do a painting and the European customer won’t buy it, and then we’ll show it to a Chinese person, and he’ll say, ‘Great!’ ”

Gold farmers recognize each other online
Wu couldn’t understand any of it; his ex-cook brother-in-law had taught him to play the game strictly by memorizing shapes and icons. At one point, Wu’s character encountered piles of dead Sandfury Axe Throwers and Hideskinners, and he said to me, “There’s another player around here. I bet he’s Chinese, too. You can tell because he’s killing everybody just to get the treasure.”

“I told you he’s Chinese!”

Final thoughts on gold farmers

After I returned to the United States, I talked with a cousin who played World of Warcraft. He told me that he could usually recognize Chinese gold farmers from their virtual appearance, because they stood out as being extremely ill-equipped. If they gained valuable gear or weapons, they sold them immediately; their characters were essentially empty-handed.

I liked that image—even on-line the Chinese travelled light.

Her list (slightly edited):

Quality, not Quantity - In Friendster times, our main goal was to get as may friends as possible. We wanted was to show the world that we already have a second, third, fourth, fifth (and so on) accounts because previous accounts reached the limit for the number of friends. In Facebook, we treasure each contact and really know all the people in our list. We learned from Friendster that it’s quality over quantity.

Tagging - Facebook tells us that we do not have to repost every picture of ourselves that our friends have. Just by tagging, we all have a copy of the pictures we want.

Newsfeed self-control - In Friendster, flooding the bulletin board is acceptable. But don’t we just hate flooding? In Facebook, flooding the newsfeed is like humiliating yourself. You are not disciplines!

Quiz interface - Friendster surveys and quizzes require you to open all of the others’ posts and pages to know if they have the same answers/results. Facebook surveys and quizzes allow you to click and get results in seconds. You can easily see the headshots of friends with the same results as mine.

Status update history - Facebook allows you to constantly update status and keep track of previous status updates. In Friendster, where shall we put it? In shout outs? Shout out, once erased, is gone forever.

Share images and video easily - You can easily share and make our friends know that we have posted a new picture, video, comment, or even link through real-time updates seen at the lower right portion of Facebook.

Live chat - Facebook lets you see your friends who are online and chat with them. Friendster does not.

Less Spam - Friendster inboxes are flooded by spam messages and invites to try applications. Facebook inboxes receive messages that are really meant personally for us.

There are even more in the comments of Dominique Anne’s post.

One of the earliest social networking site, Friendster lost market share around the world, but maintained a strong position in Southeast Asia. That position is now challenged by Facebook.

The statistcs here are provided by Friendster and date to Q2 2009. Facebook’s number conflict with Friendster’s claim of being number 1 in all these markets, as shown in this cool map of social networks in Asia.

Anyone have better statistics? UPDATE: Just found Jim Ayson’s comparison of Facebook vs Friendster in the Philippines.

Friendster’s move towards micropayments is interesting since because - as reported earlier on this blog - many Asian social networks make more money from transactions that they do from advertisements.

How will the micropayments work (from Marketing)?

Consumers will be able to buy prepaid payment cards for the wallet throughout SE Asia at convenience stores such as 7-Eleven in Malaysia and Philippines, mobile phone shops such as Oke Shop in Indonesia, and at kiosks such as AXS in Singapore as well as cybercafe networks in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The wallet will also support mobile payments from Singtel GX Credits and Indosat iPay and will accept online banking payments from Maybank, CIMB Bank, RHB Bank, Citibank Singapore, UOB and DBS.

It also accepts American Express, Visa and Mastercard.

Technorati Tags: Friendster, Richard Kimber

As my one ancestor (he is my great-great-grandfather) with China links, I will write about him from time to time and post documents of interest from the family archive and other sources.

Some of this will be debunking and supporting family legends. One such family legend is that he participated in the sacking of the Summer Palace. I don’t actually think that is true.

Some links:

- Some letters I uploaded to Flickr
- Downloadable PDF of his 1853 book Recollections of A Three Years’ Residence in China including peregrinations in Spain, Morocco, Egypt, India and Australia.
- British and American Steam Navigation Company, a pre-Cunard steamship line whose second vessel, the President, sank in 1841 with William Power’s father on board. Family legend is that he had the title deeds in his possession for the land on which Madison Square Gardens now sits.

If you have further information, thoughts or interest in this project looking at life in Asia during the 19th Century, please join the fun!

Technorati Tags: Sir William Tyrone Power KCB, William Tyrone Power

William is of particular interest to me due to his wide travels in the 19th century, including China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Crimea and Canada. My focus will be his take on China, Hong Kong, Guangzhou.

I have uploaded some of the letters that were preserved in our family’s archives onto Flickr and will post about them from time-to-time.

By doing this project in public, I am hoping others may join in!

As a foretaste, here’s some choice quotes from his book published in 1853: Recollections of A Three Years’ Residence in China.

This is his colorful description of arriving in Hong Kong harbor. Palpable excitement and great prose:

This is one of my favorites. My prescient ancestor explains why Hong Kong will never succeed. (He visited shortly after the rocky outcrop in the South China Seas was declared a crown colony.)

Technorati Tags: William Tyrone Power

(No, Time magazine is not dead. That is Time Style and Design)

How many BFFs do you have?

Dunbar’s number is the famed 150 friends with whom humans are supposed to be able to keep close relations. For Asian youths, however, the average number of friends is 107.

Ian Stewart of MTV recently gave these statistics from an MTV and TNS study in a presentation about youth and social networking in Asia.

Thai youth are the friendliest, with young people having an average of 170 offline, online and close friends. More than twice as many as the 80 friends for youth in neighboring Vietnam have.

As for online friends, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and India all tend to have about 30 or fewer online friends, while Thai, Malaysian and Chinese youth all have more than 50 online friends.

The online friends number is not entirely related to broadband penetration or level of economic development. Young people in Australia, Korea and Taiwan have fairly low numbers of online friends.

One of the most striking cases, however, is China: The only country in Asia where people have more online friends than offline friends. This is yet another example of China tremendous engagement in Social Media and the Internet.

Technorati Tags: China, social media

Steve Nagata, a former New York city guide and confirmed geek, gave a great tour of his new neighborhood: Tokyo’s tech-crazy Akihabara.

Steve took Kohei Nishiyama and me on a whirlwind tour of computer megastores and back alleys of one of the world’s greatest epicenters of geekdom.

I had to leave for my flight before the afternoon’s festivities: Girls dressed in French Maid’s outfits cleaning the street.

(Apologies, Steve, for the typo on your surname in the video!)

Technorati Tags: Kohei Nishiyama

The deck was put together by my colleague Brian Giesen for our training session done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia and GoToWebinar on Facebook for Business. It was a fun training with a very lively Q&A session that took questions off the Webinar and Twitter. Thanks for all who joined!

Below and from this link is a video of the full event (including the Q&A)

Oct 7th Facebook for Business from 360 Digital Influence on Vimeo.

First in a series of free online Webinars on Social Media presented in partnership by The Wall Street Journal Asia, GoToWebinar and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Join our next event! Next session announced on our blog: www.asiadigitalmap.com or email thomas.crampton@ogilvy.com

Technorati Tags: Brian Giesen

For those unfamiliar, digital items sold can be anything from a gift for a friend to a pimped-up avatar. Benjamin Joffe has done some interesting studies of the topic.

Will Asia export this business model to Facebook?

Technorati Tags: Benjamin Joffe, Gree