China is now the biggest internet market in the world (by number of users). As the China economy grows and their ability to spend online increases, we will find that many web sites will need to consider, or even cater to the Chinese demographic.

Here are some interesting insights into the internet usage in China that I read on the Thomas Crampton site:

William Bao Bean from SoftBank:

Growing up in a one-child household makes Chinese children lonely and keen to connect, hence the obsessive use of the Internet by China’s young generation.


http://www.youtube.com/v/B5JUpJ355-M&hl=en

China’s young Internet users interact more online
Nearly 70 percent of Chinese youth use social networking sites and they have a lot more Internet friends than in the US. Chinese have 37 friends whom they have never met before, whereas US youth have 18 online-only friends

And they download more music
Nearly 60 percent of youth in China download music, compared with 32 percent in the US.

Yet, online spending remains relatively low
While the total adspend of China will be $25.8 billion in 2007 only about 4.3% of total goes online (compared with 12% in the USA). That said, online spend is growing strongly, with 55% growth in 2007. Search ad spending in particular is expected to grow 64% in 2007 and 2008.

http://www.thomascrampton.com/uncategorized/adtech-william-bao-bean-on-chinas-internet-youth/
http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/william-bao-bean-china-internet-one-child-policy/

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Web Culture and Trends

Something has always bothered me about tag clouds. All my life I have listened to music from independent record labels, independent radio, sought out Avant Garde art, made it my mission to understand Baudrillard, Chomsky and McLuhan. Basically tried to think for myself. As a consequence, I have only ever taken on board recommendations when it is provided by those who have proven to me, their impeccable taste.


So tag clouds are a great idea but to me they only serve to highlight what is popular... to everyone. Their mechanism for highlighting content (enlarging the word which represents the topic) only creates more demand for attention and further propel the topic into further popularity. This, by natural logic pushes the more obscure topics (those which I might find more interesting) into further obscurity. It's the perfect democratic system; a process of design by community that fails miserably to provide an impartial coverage of content.


But the system has its place. And I like how the online world has accepted such a basic design device (typographic hierarchy) to mean a more elaborate navigational system. I like how it sucks people in to traversing a site laterally. I like how it allows users to create a navigatable Folksnomy. And I like how when tags are created by users of a site, it allows them to generate their own nomenclature which is meaningful to them.

Tim Kotsiakos, Creative Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Web Culture and Trends