Cultural gardens - Anglosphere discusses IM unaware of China

Yesterday's announcement Yahoo! and Microsoft Bridge Global Instant Messaging Communities has been widely covered in the press (& here) and the blogosphere (e.g. here, here, here). 

Some postings do little more than point to a press release but others add bits and pieces of discussion, like "unifying 2 of the large 4 instant messaging services ... (MSN, AIM, Yahoo and Jabber)."  Others mention ICQ, but no one mentions QQ - the largest instant messaging service in China currently peaking daily at 20 million simultaneously on-line users from a base of 493 million registered users at least 221 million of which are "active subscribers".  I don't have access to 3rd party subscriber estimates, certainly not apples-to-apples comparisons but, based on the Wikipedia entry, I'd say QQ is a major IM service provider we ought to be watching.

I've commented before on how little real knowledge there is about Asia among those of us in the US & EU.  That's unfortunate as the number of Internet users in China is second only to those in the US and the use of the mobile Internet is more widespread in Asia than anywhere else in the world.  Many new mobile phone applications already originate in Asia (e.g. ringback tones which started in 2002 in Korea). 

Going forward we should expect many new mobile Internet and Internet applications to start in Asia.  It's time to pay attention folks!

Comments

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

Right on - thanks for the info.

[Jabber]

Besides QQ, there are lots of companies have their own IM software.
I'm creating an IM system based on Jabber now.

[Gang Lu]

QQ's invisibility to the western world is a quite interesting topic. QQ came out as a copycat of ICQ long time ago. Now almost every young internet user is using it, and QQ has stood out as the biggest Social Network in China (in the world probably?). It is so popular in China but you can seldom find its coverage on western press, surprisingly.

I agree with you, Brough. It is the Culture. I really think if the Chinese internet wants to go to global market, they should not use the 'Culture Difference' as an excuse any more.