Archive for the 'Statistics' Category

Baidu’s “zeitgeist” rankings

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on June 18, 2006
in Film, Games, Music, Search and Statistics
. 0 Comments

Baidu_zeitgeist

Google has its "zeitgeist" feature which allows you to take the pulse of most popular search terms for the week, month, or even year; Baidu has a similar feature called "list of hottest Chinese searches" 中文搜索风云榜.  Neither are particularly intuitive to me, frankly, since they both divide the search terms into strange categories–e.g., Google’s "spring break" list in April 2006.  On the bad side Baidu doesn’t do a weekly or monthly tally; on the good side they include the actual number of searches per day. 

Baidu’s rankings also offer the following:

  • a scrolling list of some of today’s actual searches, interesting to watch and see what rolls by, and clickable if you see something you like.
  • Top 50 Gaining Searches today.  I guess these could help you track searches that have just come up even if the number of people doing the search is relatively small.  For instance, today’s top gaining search is "answers to June 2006 level six" 2006年6月六级答案, or in other words, the answers to a recent test for sixth graders, with 14,212 searches. The second gaining search is "answers to English 2006 level four."  Lots of students using Baidu.
  • Top 50 "hot searches," which also indicates whether the search traffic is going up or down. Doesn’t say what this means, since these are not the terms with the most searches overall, necessarily.  At the top of the list today is "Audition," 劲舞团, a Korean online game, with 99,448 hits and declining. Second: "Popkart Crazy Racing," also a Korean game. Third: qq (the Chinese online messaging platform). Fourth: World Cup. Fifth: mp3. 
  • Top Ten Hot Women, Television Shows, Games, Songs, Novels, People, Publically Traded Companies, Hot Men, Cartoons, Universities, Cars, and Scenic Places. If you look through these you’ll find searches with more traffic than the #1 "Hot Search," such as singer Jay Chou with over 206,000 today; the song "Perfume Can Be Poison" at 268,281; and actress Liu Yifei at 148,922.

Update: Jason points out that Google Zeitgeist also shows monthly results for its Chinese language searches–it’s unclear whether this is limited to .cn searches or also includes off-mainland Chinese searches.  It looks like Google users really are a different group than Baidu users, older and more professional as has been suggested by the CNNIC China Online Search Market report: the political term "Eight Honors Eight Shames" 八荣八耻 is number one for April. #2: Li Yuchun, Supergirl singing contest winner; #3: Kartrider; #4:Jinshan software dictionary; #5: China Merchants Bank.  Link.

China’s podcasting: a bite of current stats

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 17, 2006
in Blogs, Podcasts, Statistics and Video Clips
. 1 Comment

Podlook_hanzi

Podlook

China Web2.0 Review points to recent statistics (originally translated by cwr, edited by me) from Jack Gu’s blog (Gu Shaofeng), founder of Chinese podcast aggregator Podlook. Gu notes that, despite the numbers below, he and other Chinese experts are seeing a plateau in terms of quality of content and number of listeners. "On the one hand," he writes, "there’s too little good, ongoing content.  And on the other, the mass audience doesn’t have enough of an attention span."

CWR adds context: Podlook is the largest podcasting directory in China.
Though a Podlook-based data analysis may not reflect the exact whole
picture of Chinese podosphere, and the development of Podlook’s
platform itself in [the last six] months also influences its findings and
conclusion, the report and data is still very useful and important for
us to understand Chinese podosphere.

1. In May 2006 there were over 33,000 podcasters [on Podlook], a 70%
growth compared with January 2006. The number of podcasts was nearly 145,000, nearly tripling during the same time period.

2.  Education and criticism genres are most popular, but most podcast content focuses on entertainment and personal life. 

2. 15.6% of podcasters produced at least 5 episodes, compared with less than 8% four months ago.

3. 22% of podcasts were video, up from 17% four months ago; 1% were Flash; 77% were audio.

4. About 23% of Podlook podcasts were aired at least 10 times, up 15% from four months ago; nearly 80% were aired less than 10 times.

5. Many new podcast hosting sites emerged in the period from January to May –
especially those which provide audio and/or video services.

6.  It’s unclear what the author means exactly, but it is said that "independent" podcasts are very popular, but very rare: less than 2% of the total. 

Get the stats (in Chinese) here.

Song Zude’s 宋祖德 nasty gossip blog: big on Sohu

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 16, 2006
in Blogs, Film, Portals, Statistics and Virtual China
. 1 Comment

Song_zude

While we are busy writing about Xu Jinglei’s blog knocking BoingBoing off the top spot at Technorati, bloghoo.Sohu.com puts Xu well below China’s really popular blogs–at least on Sohu, one of China’s top portals. Nydia Chen, who’s working with us at Virtual China this summer, will be doing a comparison of the top portals’ blogging ranks, so watch and wait!

Song Zude 宋祖德 is a wealthy mainland Chinese TV and film producer/director. He’s also the writer of Sohu’s No. 1 blog, which has received over 8 million hits since he started writing it in February of this year (as in, 4 months ago).  He describes himself as 18 years old "at heart," and loves nothing more than composing vicious critiques of popular Chinese stars (including Taiwan and Hong Kong). His posts are funny, mean, and full of juicy opinionated gossip.

For instance, in the last week alone he asks Zhang Ziyi if she isn’t ashamed for taking the mantle of "China’s first female star," when her English is probably worse than his own.  And he slams Taiwanese singer Zhang Huimei and singer/actress Yang Chenglin for being unpatriotic, stupid, and slutty. 

See a bit more about Song Zude’s "poison pen" here, at Danwei.

c2c

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 15, 2006
in Auctions, Commerce and Statistics
. 0 Comments

Cnnic_1

China Tech Stories alerts us to a new report from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心, and no, it doesn’t match the acronym): 2006 Chinese C2C Online Sales Survey. In other words, a snapshot of what’s going on with person-to-person direct sales over the Internet, through online auctions, in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.  Highlights from press release (partly borrowing from Mao Xianjia’s translation at China Tech Stories):

  • by the end of March 2006 there were 2 million C2C online customers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Shanghai had the highest penetration rate of 18.5%, followed by Beijing with 17.5%, and Guangzhou with 11.5%.
  • Market share for the different auction sites in 2005 in the three cities, as calculated by number of purchasers and shopping frequency: Taobao is way ahead at 67.3%, eBay at 29.1%, Paipai 2.2% and Yipai 1.4%.
  • In 2005 there were about 7.4 million reported online transactions across Taobao, eBay, Paipai and Yipai, with about 4.25 transactions/person on Taobao and just over 3 transactions/person on eBay.
  • most frequently purchased items are apparel, cosmetics and jewelry,
    computers, mobile phones, appliances, and electronic card/virtual money, with fashion and IT products the frontrunners. [We'll have to track this to see if we can get more specific data on virtual money transactions.] 
  • In contrast to B2C stats, women buyers and sellers outnumbered men in buying apparel, cosmetics and jewelry, food and health products, daily supplies,
    toys and baby supplies, pets and pet supplies.

link to CNNIC report (in Chinese)
link to press release (in Chinese)

Technorati’s Top 100: few Chinese blogs

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 2, 2006
in Blogs and Statistics
. 2 Comments

Technorati has a most recent list of Top 100 blogs, "as measured by unique links in the last 6 months." Ethan Zuckerman and Sam Flemming have both commented on why Chinese blogs are likely to be under-measured on Technorati (although it’s been said that Technorati is still better than the Chinese blog search engines). Flemming points out that some of the biggest Chinese blogs, such as that done by Chinese filmstar Xu Jinglei, get 100,000 page views per post and several thousand comments–but apparently, not as many unique links. It’s amazing how much we still don’t know about what’s going on on the Internet globally. Here’s some of what we do find on the Top 100:

First Chinese blog on the list comes up as #24, and is Fang Wenshan’s.  Fang Wenshan, otherwise known as Vincent Fang, is a young Taiwanese R&B lyricist famous for his work with Jay Chou, one of Asia’s most popular young singers.

At #68, Easy Start to the Day gives tips in Chinese on how to use MSN Spaces to start your own blog.

Then there’s Xiaxue at #69, one of Asia’s power bloggers, a young, flippant Singaporean woman who blogs in English, and loves her own image.

link to Sam Flemming post, "Where’s Xu Jinglei?"
link to Ethan Zuckerman, "English Blogposts No Longer the Largest Plurality?"

Update: Technorati has added Xu Jinglei’s blog to what they monitor; on May 4 her blog overtook BoingBoing as the #1 blog as measured by unique links.  Sam Flemming has a great summary of key issues here, including how influence is measured on the web and who is measuring.  The bigger question for me is: what does "influence" do for a blog and for whom does it matter?  I don’t think that Xu Jinglei probably cares all that much about what her PageRank is since her audience is reading and living within a Chinese language world, in which Google PageRank is not a big deal. 
 

global “e-readiness” report

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 28, 2006
in Commerce, News, Statistics and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

Eiu_1

The Economic Intelligence Unit and IBM have released their 2005 E-readiness Rankings, a report which assesses various nations’ and regions’ abilities to "promote and support digital business and information and communications technology (ICT) services."  The ranking system in and of itself, as well as the notion that e-practices will evolve along some known continuum (at one point referred to as an "e-readiness evolution ladder"), is problematic as far as I’m concerned.  But there’s undeniable value in trying to create a global picture of the rapid changes around us.

Selected findings:

  • In e-readiness, the distance separating the best from the rest has declined. In other words, the digital divide is narrowing.
  • North Asian leaders stole a jump on other OECD countries with a rapid acceleration of broadband adoption BUT other criteria beyond broadband–such as innovation, information security and
    governments’ commitment to digital development — have emerged as more
    telling differentiators.     As developing nations "catch up" to developed in terms of mobile penetration and data speed, analysts are trying to find other ways to define leadership in ICT.  However, the emerging differentiators–"innovation, information security, and government’s commitment to digital development"–are pretty hazy.  Who decides what counts as innovation, and won’t it look different in China than it would in, say, Denmark (the top-ranked country)?
  • China’s e-readiness ranking is very low.  Out of 65 countries surveyed, it is 54th, although Hong Kong is tied for 6th, Singapore is 11th, and Taiwan is 22nd.  The mainland has slipped a few slots (as has India) because ICT investment and revenue are only a tiny fraction of the overall economy. 

Download the report here
Press release here
(via t-salon)

Stats on IPTV, digital music, online gaming

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on March 28, 2006
in Games, Music and Statistics
. 3 Comments

In January I attended an event in San Jose put on by market research firm In-Stat, looking at a range of small but growing markets in Asia and specifically in mainland China.

They have some great downloadable ppt reports that include basic background and informed forecasts of online gaming, IPTV (which they define as "video service displayed on a TV through a telecom carrier’s IP broadband network"), and digital music markets.

link [requires registration for downloads]

animated demographic stats

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on March 23, 2006
in Statistics
. 0 Comments

China_profile_1

The Asian Studies WWW Monitor recently profiled a go-to site for understanding basic demographic data and coming changes in China.  Gerard K. Heilig has an impressive body of work that presents data on Chinese demographics, fertility, land use, and food production, through animations, CD-Roms, and maps.  Heilig’s homepage links to some of his publications, such as Can China Feed Itself: a System for Evaluation of Policy Options, which contains data on three different models for projecting China’s urban population in the next several decade.

His latest effort, China-Profile, contains a range of data (such as figure above, Population by Age and Sex in 1990) on human development, natural resources, policy, economy, science & technology, infrastructure, and culture.

release of Internet stats in English

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on March 19, 2006
in Statistics
. 0 Comments

Cnnic
China’s official internet research group, CNNIC, has translated its 17th Survey Report with stats that are up to date as of 12/31/05.  There’s a nice analysis section that shows trended data over the last 9 years since CNNIC has been doing these surveys.

Of note:

  • majority of users are (still) male, unmarried, under 30, with educational levels below Bachelor’s degree and monthly income less than 2,000 Yuan (~US $250)(including no income).
  • 97.2% of Chinese Internet users use desktop computers to log on, 18.2% use lap tops.
  • broad band (xDSL, Cable Modem, etc.) users reached 64.3 million, a 50% increase since the same period last year, comprising 57.9% of all Chinese internet users.
  • Chinese internet users spend 2.5 hours more per week online as compared with one year ago.
  • urban internet penetration about 17%; rural about 3%.
  • almost 30% of those aged 18-24 are online.
  • growth rate of Internet use has slowed significantly in past two years.

link

Latest “official” Chinese Internet stats

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on February 23, 2006
in Statistics
. 0 Comments

CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) recently released (in pdf and ppt) its 17th Survey on the current development of the Chinese Internet. These twice-yearly surveys are Chinese governmental basic data on the Chinese ‘net. It’s not translated into English yet. In the meantime, some of the topline results:

  • 111 million internet users

  • ~ 65 million are broadband users

  • Large gap between urban and rural Internet use, with ~91 million urban users and 17% penetration, vs. ~19 million rural users and less than 3% penetration

  • large gap between internet use in eastern China vs. western China

  • 18% of users accessing the web via laptop computers

  • Internet users average 16 hours/week online, a 20% increase [since the last survey in mid-05? unclear]