Does Chinese Internet Culture Exist?

This week I attended the inaugural “Chengdu Internet Culture Convention”.

Throughout my time there, meeting people and listening to speeches about the development of Chengdu’s IT infrastructure, I was plagued with a single thought: can Chinese internet culture exist?

In the TED clip above, a Chinese blogger goes into great detail about what the “Chinese internet” entails. Is the formula below accurate?

Chinese internet culture = block each and every international Web 2.0 service, and then clone it for a Chinese audience.

This is something that you will never hear inside China. It takes Chinese people traveling to far-away places like Edinburgh Scotland to make a case such as this, which undermines everything that the Chinese internet claims to be.

July 31, 2012|

One Night in Beijing

On Friday afternoon I flew to Beijing to give a presentation at a mobile developers conference at the Shangrila hotel about iOS (iPhone and iPad) app monetization. Why’d I speak there? Our company, Tap4Fun, is officially the highest grossing iOS developer in all of China so far this year. Because of this, a lot of attention is on our development process and business model. We’re conducting interviews on a nearly daily basis (today CCTV was in our office filming). Exciting times.

Here are some photos from my day in Beijing:

Feet in Taxi

Waited in line for 30+ minutes to get a taxi at Beijing International, the biggest airport in the world

Shangrila Hotel Beijing

Beijing Shangrila

The first thing I noticed inside the lobby of the Beijing Shangrila

Jing.fm

Meeting with the designer of Jing.fm, a streaming music service that takes Pandora to the next level

Lecture Hall Namecard

Sitting at the front of the lecture hall

Lecture Hall in Beijing

The conference featured three lecture halls roughly of equal size, hosting thousands of attendees

Speaking in Beijing

Speaking on stage at the conference, Saturday July 7th

Beijing Airport

Walking through Beijing International Airport and the line to catch a taxi

July 9, 2012|
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