Archive for March 4th, 2010
China’s Twitter Clones
The popularity of Twitter has produced a number of clones in China, just as there are Facebook clones . Some of China’s Twitter clones have been closed down by the Chinese government, but some have survived. We take a look at both cases in this post. We also assess Twitter’s chances of success in China, should it ever be freed from the ‘Great Firewall of China.’ Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu were some of the first Twitter clones to become successful in China. However all three – plus Twitter itself – were blocked by the Chinese government in July 2009, due to their usage during the uprisings in Ürümqi . Sponsor According to an AFP article , Chinese authorities blamed online agitators for helping to stoke violence in that region. Prior to being shut down, Fanfou had been dubbed “China’s Twitter” and had almost reached 1 million registered users by the end of June 2009. An October 2009 report by China Daily noted that Fanfou was founded in July 2007 by Wang Xing, a young entrepreneur who also founded China’s current most popular social network Renren (formally known as Xiaonei). Both Renren and Fanfou were almost carbon copies of their U.S. equivalent services – Facebook and Twitter respectively. Weibo Rises to Take Fanfou’s Place Since the closure of Twitter, Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu, other services have risen to take their place. Taotao (owned by the company that produces popular IM service QQ) and Zuosa.com are two examples. However it is Weibo that has emerged to become the biggest micro-blogging service in China. It’s owned by Sina.com, a big portal company in China. Weibo is very much like Twitter, in that it allows users to post short messages 140 Chinese characters or less via the Web, SMS or MMS. Although according to Chinese Internet expert and Beijing resident Kaiser Kuo , in Chinese 140 characters can actually produce quite a long message. The major difference between Weibo and Twitter, according to Kuo, is that Weibo is censored . Or in the parlance of Chinese Internet users, it is “harmonized.” Sina’s Weibo probably has a much greater chance of surviving than its counterparts like Twitter and Fanfou, because it knows how to self-censor. Meng Bo, deputy editor-in-chief of Sina.com and project manager of Sina Weibo, told China Daily in October that “Sina is playing by the rules as they are laid down, with strict word filtering in operation.” According to Meng, there are two teams of staff “keeping close watch to ensure there is no vulgar content or anything that violates the rules.” Would Twitter Succeed in China Anyway? China’s surviving micro-blogging services are tightly controlled by the censorship climate in China. However even if Twitter became available again in China, would it take off with mainstream Chinese Internet users? Kaiser Kuo thinks that it wouldn’t, because of the popularity of currently operational services like Weibo and Taotao. He remarked that although there would be an uptake in the number of users on Twitter, if it was ever to be made available again, Weibo and others will have gained too much momentum by then. Discuss
Privacy in an Age of Public Living: Google and Tor
In times of Internet censorship and governmental interference with citizen Web use, the need for private browsing has never been more apparent or more crucial to political processes. Perhaps in response to its woes in China, Google has reaffirmed its support of online anonymity for political purposes in a recent blog post on Tor, a project it’s been supporting extensively lately. Tor allows for safe, anonymous Internet use – it’s a project that protects privacy and circumvents censorship in countries around the world. And as companies gather user data – data that can at any time and for any reason be surrendered to law enforcement or government agencies – safeguarding online anonymity becomes an ever more vital concern. Sponsor Last fall, we covered Tor’s successful porting to the Android platform . At that time and to this day, continuing to protect users’ privacy occupies a lot of time for Tor’s volunteers and developers. From the Google blog post : “Why is anonymity online so important? Companies like Google have privacy and opt-out policies, but not everyone has this stance. Corporations, nations, criminal organizations and individuals want your information. Companies collect information on your web browsing habits and sell it or are sloppy when it comes to protecting it from identity thieves. Others can threaten lives, from repressive nations tracking down outspoken journalists, to abusive spouses or stalkers who want to find out where their victims are hiding; from enemy military forces trying to find a communications link, to criminals who know when law enforcement is watching online Even people living in countries where free speech is protected by law need anonymity for political activities. People blogging about political views that differ from the prevailing attitudes in a small community may lose a job or face boycotts if they run a business. In a company town, writing about the misdeeds of the company that employs your neighbors may be dangerous. Telling people about corruption could lead to harassment from guilty officials.” This graph shows how, in 2009, use of Tor grew as users scrambled to circumvent firewalls during the elections and subsequent protests and violence in Iran, and in China, as well: Is this blog post a clear and direct “Screw you” to Chinese authorities who would censor Internet access and search results? Or is it a continuation of Google’s commitment to protecting the users they profit from? Or a bit of both? Let us know what you think in the comments – and stay tuned for our upcoming chat with Chinese political activist Ai Weiwei and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey . Discuss
Open Thread: Pitch Your Panel for SXSW!
In just a couple more days, a healthy section of the RWW team – and a good number of our friends and fans – will be convening in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. A couple of us have been asked to speak on panels; we wanted to share that information with you and ask you to share your panels and talks with us (and the rest of our readers, too). Leave a comment telling us – and the rest of the world – about your SXSW Interactive panel. Let us know who’s going to be talking and what you’re talking about, plus where and when to show up. We’re sure you’ll find a few kindred spirits who’d love to attend and ask questions – and maybe offer some pre-show feedback for tweaking your notes! Sponsor Our own Marshall Kirkpatrick will be moderating a panel with Scott Raymond of Gowalla, Brett Slatkin of Google, Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft and Jack Moffitt of Collecta – talk about an all-star cast! – on real-time technology. Marshall’s especially suited to this task since he’s the man behind RWW’s mammoth state-of-the-industry report, The Real-Time Web and Its Future . Here are the gory details: Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? “The emergence of the real-time web enables an unprecedented level of user engagement and dynamic content online. However, the rapidly growing audience puts new, complex demands on the architecture of the web as we know it. This panel will discuss what is needed to make the real-time web achievable.” When : Saturday, March 13, 11:00 am Where : Hilton H And I, Jolie O’Dell, will be moderating a panel of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and startup incubator-types on whether or not startups need traditional, Sand Hill Road VC in the first place. Sure to be contentious, this panel is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while, and I hope you’ll make it out! I’ll be talking with Mike Trotzke of SproutBox, Mitch Lasky of Benchmark Capital and Dave McClure of the Founders’ Fund. Who Needs Venture Capital? “Only a fraction of business financing comes from Sand Hill Road. Yet entrepreneurs still obsess over traditional big meeting/big money Silicon Valley venture capital. This heated panel debates what types of companies actually benefit from VC and reviews concrete examples of alternatives to traditional venture capital.” When : Monday, March 15, 12:30 pm Where : Hilton D Also, for those of you who read along last year during my cross-country travels through the tech scenes in Nashville , Omaha , Chicago , New York and beyond, there’s the RoadTwip core conversation with our brothers-in-tech Dave Delaney and Kurt Daradics (also a co-founder of CitySourced ). RoadTwip “Last Spring, three kids set out in one car for two weeks. Their mission was to discover the emerging future for a new America, one town at a time. While they captured and produced plenty of content along their roadtwip.’ The most valuable thing was the relationships they established. This panel is about getting out of dodge, it’s about going offline – where true friendships are solidified. In the flesh.” When : Friday, March 12, 5:00 pm Where : Austin Convention Center 8A Those are our panels! What do you think so far? And please do share the details about your – or your friends’ – panels in the comments. Discuss
Reinventing the Handshake: Polite Servers and Smart Networks Lead to Active Security
If there was a real-time tag cloud for the RSA conference this year, three words would be in big bold letters: Security (of course), Cloud, and Virtualization. Paul Congdon, from HP’s ProCurve Networking group gave us a view into the not-so-distant future where servers, like good house guests, knock before entering. In this case, it’s the link they request, and to get it they will properly announce themselves and their intentions to allow the host to prepare to accommodate them. This capability is a linchpin in removing the process bottleneck in provisioning new services in the data center. For most organizations, the network is manually configured. To keep up with the movement of the provisioning of virtual machines, the network needs to enable “plug and play”. Sponsor Complexity Means Controls The network is in a unique postion as a “pipe” as well as a “control” where it needs to know what communications go where and plays the role of traffic cop. This means opening ports between servers, controlling traffic and setting monitors to make sure traffic is optimized. When things change, configuration does as well, especially when a new service is requested. Today, this is controlled by human processes and controls to keep the network up to date with the applications and servers that host them. In the future, there is the opportunity to move forward in auto-configuration or even smarter handshakes. In essence, to oversee this process a directory or resources or inventory would exist that allows the network to “know” what is in place within it. This is a new control point for the data center, and is a resource to the network. Solutions in Protocols 802.1.x is technology that has been used in WiFi connections. One reason it was useful in that context is that it’s expected that the link drops and reconnects frequently and so is seen as an opportunity for the physical link as well. The potential upgrades to 802.1 would enable a richer dialog between the server as it starts up its networking process. This would allow the server to announce itself and its requirements (e.g. encryption) and allow the network to respond to these appropriately (e.g. set encryption key). This process can become a big win for configuration management where now, the server can come up in the network and be provisioned according to the policy. All of this reminds us of the benefits of a company like Apple. Having the unique opportunity to control the model from end to end means have the ability to make better tools. We wonder if natural evolution will get multi-vendor shops a solution for all of their IT assets. What will it take to get to a model-driven data center? Photo credit: orinrobertjohn Discuss
Follow the Hippie: Leadership Lessons Through Dance
When Sigma Partners’ Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I’d seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs. Sponsor Having first presented the video at this year’s TED Conference , Sivers make the case that instead of the first mover / leader being the catalyst of a movement, it is in fact the first follower that rallies others. Says Sivers, “Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire. ” For entrepreneurs, it means that the key to virality isn’t just building a great product. It’s about having the right early adopters to teach others how to use the product and become comfortable with the novelty of something new. Sivers explains that it’s the early adopters that others follow and not the trailblazing / seemingly crazy leader. In other words, it’s important to respect your earliest users and give them the mechanisms to make their support public. Says Sivers, “We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective. The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow. When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.” We’ve seen our fair share of angel investors, early executives and engineers follow a lone nut and build successful businesses. As an entrepreneur, who do you credit as your first follower and what efforts have you made to ensure that the act of following is made public? Discuss