From Overseas Press

For Chinese, Web is a form of entertainment

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-04-20 14:55

Analysts blamed Google's years of struggle in the Chinese market share on its failure to fulfill the needs of Chinese netizens who consider the Web their "prime entertainment service," said an article in the New York Times on April 18.

Although Chinese netizens have shown their power on a series of issues, their primary interests on the Internet are entertainment and socializing. They get online to play games, watch movies, listen to music, microblog and send instant messages. "They are far more connected" than US Web users, according to Boston Consulting Group, whose study result was cited in the article.

The article further explained the point by quoting Gary Wang, founder and chief executive of Tudou, one of China's biggest video-sharing sites. He said, "The Web is really a reflection of real life. What people do in real life is they go to karaoke rooms, they go to bars, they get together with friends and they shop. And that's what they do online."

Unlike Google, who didn't "build a big enough online community around its search engine" to provide enough "social and entertainment options" to Chinese Web users, every Chinese Internet company seems to be building its own online conglomerate to offer games, shopping, blogs and bulletin boards," said the article. "They're constantly rolling out new things to appeal to young Web users."

According to the article, these homegrown websites, such as China's biggest search engine Baidu, provides "an online bulletin board of hot topics, Baidu Knows, Baidu Space (for blogs) and Baidu Baike, a Chinese version of Wikipedia." And it's working on an online video site that would work like US website Hulu.com, which allows several broadcast TV networks to present their shows.

Compared with Chinese Web companies' understanding of their users, analysts don't think Microsoft's Bing, like its US counterpart Google, has much chance to succeed either, despite its years of effort in China. "I don't think Bing will come even close to Baidu," said Lu Bowang, president of China IntelliConsulting in Beijing.