The biggest problem for non-fluent travelers in China is the lack of high quality maps that are both up to date, and in English. This is true in print and online. It seems that this is changing! Here is a cool metro map on SmartShanghai via Micah Sittig.
I'll keep updating this page with more maps as I find them.
I went to Shanghai Ad-tech 2006 expo in Pudong Shangli-La Hotel this morning. Compared to the number of talks, the number of exhibitors is kind of small, only 20. I talked to 65% of them. There are several foreign companies, coming from Japan, USA and even Slovakia, to look for Chinese partners . There must be much more in the audiences.
85% exhibitors are Internet companies, a few are mobile marketers.
They are in three categories:
1. Search engine: Accoona, a business directory and information search engine providing advanced search to modify result by region, scale of company, and person’s name.
2. Marketing/ad technologies: Lyris (ListManager) and Radica (Email Marketing Management, EMM), iCast (Rich media technologies)
3. Advertising network: Creative, campaign management, data management, analytics, and affiliate
Interesting conversations:
Grigo: I heard that your company is No. 1 in China, but while I was visiting your Web site, I couldn’t find much.
Answer: Well, we are a big but low profiled company. (To be honest), we don’t want people (competitors?) to copy us through our site. You can find out more with this brochure.
Grigo: (with a Hong Kong company) How do you like doing business in mainland China?
Answer: Well, we beat Espolon and got a big client in China, but we want to deal with international/global clients rather than Chinese.
Grigo: puzzled… Isn’t it that China has a huge market and plenty of opportunities?
Answer: (continued)… We found that whenever you deal with Chinese, you need to think about the worst cases of how they would cheat you....
Grigo: I read a piece of news that you got a very important Chinese client recently; do you have an office here?
Answer: Not yet, but we are looking for a partner/partners here today. Actually, it was the client first found us in California.
Via John Battelle I saw a Searchenginelowdown post highlight research that shows higher user satisfaction with Become.com vs. Google for shopping tasks. As you know, I think there are specialized search opportunities that can help people get the information they are looking for much more easily. The challenge for Become.com is discoverability and people's desire to do better than what they are currently using--something like a 80% satisfaction rate for Google (and a 68% for Yahoo!...sorry I need to look for the source.)
Here's an excerpt using the broadcast TV vs. cable TV analogy:
"when we talk about Google killers I don't think we're talking about a single source - we're talking about an aggregate of sites that do specific tabs of Google better....This will not be an overnight thing, but rather a year-by-year thing in which we will watch Google's search share erode to more targeted specialty engines....Cable didn't kill broadcast, but it certainly hit it hard, so perhaps "killer" isn't really a precise term."
There are 2 problems. First, is consumers may already be satisfied with Google, or to be more precise, the halo effect from success with general searches overcomes the specific failings of Google in a specialized area. Second, specialized search engines still face the issue of getting advertisers, and ultimately they are dependent on Adsense or Yahoo! publisher network.
I still think that Become.com and other specialized search plays have a chance. I don't think the answer is predestined either -- if numerous specialized search engines do a great job in their vertical, then people will be trained to look for better search tools, and everyone (in specialized search will win). So lets see if Become.com, Kayak, etc. can prevent us from falling into the Google singularity...
