why linkedin is down?

Amazingly, I found blogspot.com works in China now, and I could reply the comment on my blog finally. That's good.

But Google Cache is still down. And if someone could tell me why the linkedin.com, one the most famous social network, is also down? It worked pretty well before as I remember.

Investor Relations "Fundamentals"

When the market goes up and down but not based on the company fundamentals, there are usually some bubble in. Seems Hong Kong and mainland markets are doing so these days. The same company may have different valuation in two markets, while finance-related stock seems so hot among investors.

But one thing Amy always believes is the fundamentals, not only the fundamentals on the financla report, but the "fundamental" for a company to treat its investors, both big ones and small ones. I just wonder how many percent of HK investors, excited on the mainland's financial stock these days, have really called the investor relations offices for mainland financial companies, such as banks, insurers. etc. The response from the difference company will at least give them the credit being a good or bad listed firm.

The only way for individuals to beat the institutional investors is to believe in the fundamentals. And I always believes so.

run across the familiar face

Hong Kong is small. This is the conclusion I have come with after living here for almost three years. I always run across some familiar faces, either friends or strangers or someone I know but will never say hello. For the last circustmance, I always wonder if I could meet him again and then I always will, and still just pass by without saying anything.

Today in the crowds on Queen's Road Central, I run across a familiar face again. A girl with a big hat, but her face, especially her eyes, is just so familiar. I know she is a model, but couldn't remember she has done commercials for whom. We just passed by and I know she is looking at me too(or maybe staring is a better word).

Bearing the question in mind for the whole aftertoon, I went back home looking through all my fashion magazine. Bingo, here she is, the jewllery model for Chow Sang Sang, (the girl in the yellow skirt). CSS is a Hong Kong jewllery maker. But I still couldn't find her name.

When could we have the search engine matching keywords in pictures? That will at least help me solve a lot of my questions for the passers-by.

Do you want a iphone?

Just having dinner with friends. A friend who will go to U.S. this March said she wanted to go there in June to buy the latest iPhone. "It is just fashion; imagine how people envy you when you use the iphone on the street", she said.

Steve always brings miracles, from Mac book to the lovely iPod. Using Apply products is just a brand of fashion. But if iPhone will succeed this time remains a question.

When iPod was born, not really many electronic gadget makers were dedicated to making mp3 players. In a Hong Kong electronic store such as Fortress, you could really find a hard time to pick a right one as there are many brands but not any very very famous ones.

But for mobile, it will be hard. As the big producers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola have been dominating the market for a long time: they have reputation among customers and more importantly, have a good sales network and relations with mobile operators. iPhone will face stronger rivals compared with iPod's situation a few years ago.

Will Steve bring miracle this time? at least the stock market seems agree with a 7 percent increase on the stock when the annoucement was made. Let's wait and see.

big handbags, health hazard

I like big bags a lot, with everything I need inside. but seems it is really a serious health problem from this Reuter story.

wow, really scaring. i will carry a small bag today.

Finally merging between blogger.com and Google

Today, I switched my blogger.com account to Google account under the suggestion from the website when I logged in. so now I could use my Google account to write on my blog on the Blogger. com. Seems Google will not waste its money on blogger for a longer time. But would be more than happy to do it. but if someday who could merge my accounts in the paypal.com and Google Adsense, I would be shocked, but also excited. That's always the amazing thing of Internet. You couldn't imagine what will happen next.

Culture execution

Not sure if "culture execution" is the right word for the things Blogbus.com meet. Hengge, the founder of blogbus who dedicated to provide the best experience to Chinese bloggers, said in his blog that his company had to pay several tens of thousands of yuan several days earlier to a government agency named "the cultural execution agency" in Shanghai as Blogbus don't have a so-called "Internet multimedia license". Because several Blogbus users only uploaded some music as the background of their blogs, so Blogbus violated "the rule" and had to be fined for that, even if they could delete those music.

As Keso commented, it's the hardest thing to "don't be evil".

In most successful countries, the growth of economy is created by millions of small companies with enthusiasm to try anything and to sacrifice at last. See Sillicon Valley in U.S., where lots of companies have free cultures to do everything they want. In China, it is also true, with small companies making up of the country's 80 percent of the GDP, though they are suffering from a not-favortable policy. China, due to its traditional scheme, has some big "monopoly" giants such as banking, oil and telecom carriers. So when the country opens, people think investment in those companies will bring them great benefit. But in fact, the country has been boosted by many more smaller and unknown companies whose leaders are working hard to improve their business. Blogbus is one of the many examples which just want to do something, but unfortunately, they have to bear more pressure. According to Hengge, the government officer in Shanghai told them that the companies with more financing from venture capitals should be fined more. Is that fair? if more financing means more fines, then how about those monopoly which have a billions-of-U.S. dollars IPO? hoho, I guess the offcials willl not dare to fine them, as they are "big companies" with "big background".

If I were Hengge, I would try to check the "exact rule" for the fines, and possibly, go to court to sue them. I may not win, but I just want to show the due right of a small company in a legal country.

TVB's move in China

TVB, the bigger one of HK's citywide TV station, seems doing a good job in covering China. At least it sent a lot of reporters in China to cover spot news. Today, when I watched the news programme at 11:30 pm, it had one journalist reporting from Anhui province on the H5N1 case, and another in Sichuang province reporting the government's response on the kidnapped workers in Nigeria. If the first one has something related with HK, then the second piece is more on the nation. That's what I always love to see. If HK starts to care about the nation, it will definitely become an important zone in China.

Another interesting point in the second piece is a provincial propoganda official said they will upload the progress to save the kidnapped workers on their wbesite. Wow, my first response is "that advance?", then I realized that all their actions are resulted from the attention of the traditional media such as TV and newspaper. So in that sense, the traditional media is still playing an important role in pushing the new media development via pushing government officials. Putting everything on the website doesn't mean we will have the most accurate and fair informations. But the TV camera in front of the officials would urge them to work a little harder.
I always thought TVB is some local TV station that couldn't be compared with Phoenix TV. But now I find it is catching up via another way. I still remember one day when my friends and me watching Phoenix's report on the city people's protection on the removing of clock tower in the old Star Ferry, the "analyst" or "expert" (I couldn't remember clearly on his title) explained as of the reason related with politics.( couldn't remember how he connected it with politics). My friend, who is a local Hong Kong, said it is totally rubbish as the clock tower is just something accompanying Hong Kong people for a long time and people just have feelings of this old tower. When Phoenix is proud of its many watchers in China, it still has a long way to go to become the top TV station in the Chinese world, including Hong Kong.

In terms of that, TVB have done a better job in reporting the kidnapped workers.

financial jobs hunting in HK

Seems because of my reply on a job-hunting enquiry last time. Now I got another reader Levy asking for the investment banking job market in the city. Gosh, I am not an investment banking expert. But I will try my best to give some suggestion here.

Levy, as you graduated from a Finance major in a top 3 university, I guess your knowledge is already enough for u to work in an investment bank, though maybe hard to join the "investment banking" branch of the IB. I guess you could easily find a trader/sales position in an established IB with your undergraduate major as well as internship in a London investment bank. But you certainly needs a MBA degree to further develop your career in IB.

So my suggestion is: if you have enough money to go for a MBA, then go to a brand one and come back to HK in two years. That will save a lot of time for your career development. Or if you want to work in IB for a few years to see if you really like it, then start job-hunting in HK now.

But several tips:

(1) if you are still a student now, u will not have to pay application fee for the MBA, which will save a lot of money.

(2) HK market is bullish now, so the job market is really good now. Many IB have new openings, so great opportunity.

(3) Don't only ask financial journalist for suggestions. Try some real I-bankers, and you will benefit from an internal view.

Hope this will be helpful to you.

Wedding

One of my best friends got married today. It was such a touching ceremony, especialy when the bride burst into tears after making their wedding pledge. A nice girl now married to a nice guy, and they will have a nice life in the future. My sincere best wishes.

Joing the wedding ceremony always make me excited, especially when I am so lucky to get the bridal bouquet. Thanks, Jamine:)

I love dog

Dog is one of the loyalty annimals in the world, i always believe. Though I was biten by dog before(not my dog of course), I always think of raising dogs when I settle down some day. Today after seeing "the Eight Below", I firmed my mind.

I bought the DVD for a long time, but always wanted to watch it in a good time. Today is good, the first day of 2007, alone in home, with some fruit salad. This is the moment I enjoy.

The film is touching, and the dogs, the main actors and actresses, are so good at acting. In fact, you couldn't believe they are acting. All of those are really natural, making me laugh as well as cry. In a rugged world of cold and snow, the eight dogs help each other and try their best to survive even when people expected they couldn't make it.

Finally they made it after the death of two of the peers and fighting with stronger enemies. They learnt how to take care of each other. Though they couldn't speak human languages, I know exactly what they are thinking.

After all this, the start of the New Year seems more meaningful. I know the world is far bigger than I could imagine and there are far more things I need to cherish. I have a lot of things to do.

I earned money from Internet to pay Internet service I enjoy

Today, i got the email the "me" sent to me on December 31, 2005. The content is as below:

"Dear FutureMe, what are you doing now? I really want to know if you have got a fantastic career and a warm family. I am now preparing to set up the IBM system. Remember, the X41 system. This is the last day of 2005. I may fly to Milan next year. Do you know it would be good or bad? I still wanna to go further. At the same time, I miss the family.

P.S. do you know what you would do in 2007."

In fact, this website www.futureme.org really moved me. The email "me" last year made me remind a lot of thing I went through in the past time. Thanks to futureme.org to give me such an enjoyable feeling. So I donated US$1 to the website via my paypal account. (Accidentally, I have several bucks in the account because of a year's work for a VOIP weblog last year).

The website said it need donation to make everything free. Unfortunately, only 17 people including me have donated it. Wish there will be more. Internet is not always a free lunch.

Isn't Internet amazing?!!! you could listen to the "old you" and write to the "future you", too.

So this year, I will write another piece to the "future me" next year. I know, she will enjoy this.

Internet to the outside world down

such a terrible turn down on the cable which was damaged by yesterday's Taiwan earthquake. I couldn't access to my Gmail. Also couldn't access to MSN from the office(but could from home). But why blogger still works if gmal doesn't? and why everything was fine yesterday evening just after the earthquake happened but nothing worked today?

So strange.

Earthquake touches Hong Kong

I experienced my first earthquake in Hong Kong during 8:40 to 8:50 pm on December 26. It was really scaring when I was sitting in the office working on my features. The floor had been swinging for five or six times before someone in the office started screaming. Then a silent period for five minutes. Another round came but only for one swing this time. But in fact, I was already prepared to run out of the building with some water.

Checked quickly on the TV news which said Taiwan just had an earthquake, details are here(reuters). Seems Hong Kong and Southern China both felt it. TV news said that the Kowloon Bay area is the most serious attacked place. Seems nobody got hurt, which is lucky.

I never met earthquake in Hong Kong. Isn't that people saying the city is a lucky place without any earthquakes? Anyway, no place is safe.....

print turns to electronic, reluctant or hard?

My long-time online friend Fons seems didn't care on what's going on in the Hong Kong's largest newspaper. To him, "By maintaining a solid financial firewall, its articles fail to become part of the ongoing online discussions, making into the laughing stock of the 21st century." I could understand his feeling. As one of the active foreign bloggers in China, Fons has more than enough reason to believe the Internet power, and in turn, he thinks many things should be exposed out of the financial wall to Internet users.

When I was a young journalism student and active Internet surfer too, I couldn't agree more on his opinion. But after working in newspapers for several years, I understood more on the worries of newpaper, especiall the leading newspaper, from an inside view. SCMP is not the only one having the wall, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, two most accomplished business newspaper, also have the financial wall. As a new start-up media company, it is much easier to share the content freely in order to attract new readiers, and thus new advertisements; but for established and branded newspaper, their worries on turning around to use the new online profitable model, may kill their already-successful business model in one day. Destination to the electronic age already exists in everyone's mind, but "when" and "how" are the biggest problems. Several issues to consider:

(1) Subscribers.

When you could read the newspaper online freely, will you still buy newspapers? I believe that's the most important question in the desk of every newspaper executives. Possibly, many people will stop buying newspaper, so in the turning-around process, how to make sure the smooth connection between the time point when the subscribers could still buy the prints and the time point when the advertising could cover the loss of subscribing revenues.

(2) Content.

How many content could be publicized freely is also another question. It decides finally on how many print readers will leave and how many advertisement could attract. FT.com will make the first and second paragraph of every story as free, which is a common model among many media; getting advertisers' eyes as well as readers' stomach is a good trick.

(3) Employee.

Online expansion also needs more stuffs to work on more as getting rid of the space limitation on the print copies. It is hard to recruit good employees when online revenue is still zero(except for the period of Internet bubble). So if is it a good way to push the current employees to contribute more to the online copy or invest more in the expansion remains a question.

Having said those, one of my good suggestions for estabilished newspaper is trying to set up "free" model in the emerging market providing new content to new customers. The online Chinese version of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have done a good job in bringing many Chinese readers without affecting the current revenue from English version. They also brought a bunch of advertisers. At the current stage, the newspaper could subsidize "the new model of new content" based on the revenue from "old model of old content". When the new model is profitable enough, the old model could be subsidized in a reverse way to finish its turn around.

That's just like the egg-basket strategy. When you could afford the risk of losing all eggs, you could definitely put all eggs in one basket; but if you couldn't, then better put some eggs in another basket to test its stability, and then try to move more. Finally some day you will put all eggs in one basket when you trust that basket fully.

P.S. SCMP also started to provide its Chinese content freely on the website. A good beginning but still in the progress.

something interesting to read

Keso is one of the few bloggers in China having deep knowledge on the IT industry. In this post, he publicized a letter from an employee with Ebay Eachnet on the inside first hand info behind the deal between Ebay and Tom Online. The letter is in English, and quite interesting, though couldn't be confirmed it is true or not.

Could U.S. International model work in China?

Heard from someone on a very interesting observation: "There are two theory in China's internet world: (1) If U.S. could do it in this way, we could also do it", (2) Nothing in U.S. could be implemented in China.

In fact, I would like to see U.S. International model will work in China but only under the management of local professionals. Say, when Ebay finally reached the deal with Tom.com on selling(sorry, they called it the cooperation) of Eachnet.com, many big financial media called it is a failure for American Internet model to work in China. However, it seems no one could remember how Eachnet.com, a once popular star auction website based in Shanghai, wrote a new page in China's internet history when the two HBS-graduate founders successfully implanted Ebay's model into China. The failure today is not caused by a couldn't-work model, but by the local management Ebay hired to run Eachnet.

So I would only sigh to Eachnet which couldn't deserve some excellent local management. But in another word, it is more like U.S. corporate culture to control everything in its acquired companies. Different from European peers, American companies consider the controlling right as the most important item when they make international acquisition. For example, Citigroup, who just bought Guangdong Development Bank, already assigned a new CEO to the Chinese venture. Succeed or not, we will see, though I hold a negative view.

In the different business environment, businessmen should try to trust the local professionals as they are the only people knowing the market. That's the most important key in developing business in other countries and other cultures.

Good luck to Eachnet, and thousands of companies which may follow its fate.

Such a long week

Sorry for having not uploaded posts these days. It's such a long week to me since Monday when some sudden news came. I am always quick to adapt the latest news, but this time it took me a week to think through the whole thing.

I am not in a position to do a story on the whole thing(as I couldn't be fair enough) , but when this website reported on it in a unfair way in terms of biased view, I think I should say something to balance the article. Many outsiders, especially people doing business in the mainland China, have seen our changes in the business coverage during the past seven months. We have more breaking news, more in-depth features, and more efforts in trying to cover a true mainland China. The direction is different, but absolutely correct, while most of the readers I've talked to praised it as a good move. Behind all the politics, we should see the effort made by someone to pursue a long term development. It is hard for a regional newspaper, once only focusing in Hong Kong for 100 years, to make such move. But it has to for its own sake. When economists are talking about the peg between Hong Kong dollars and RMB, when stock market sees many mainland-concept IPOs, Hong Kong media has to extend its hands and legs to meet the demand of all readers.

Having said, politics, sometimes, makes the situation more complicated, and makes people including me angry.

Will Hong Kong be marginalized when other mainland China cities are developing fast? Even the taxi drivers in Hong Kong will tell you there is possibility, say, in ten years. What HK should do then? be more open and be more involved in the China's economy. The city does have an advantage based on the efforts from the older hard-working generations, and now, with the changing surroundings, Hong Kong people is also quick to adapt to new things, so will Hong Kong media do, I believe.

"Adaptability and flexibility are the most important two things in a new situation", a foreign expat working in BJ and having a successful career once told me. Now, I sent the words as Christmas gift to all Hong Kong media. And Merry Christmas.

3G, the second round for service providers to grow

Hong Kong has its honor to hold the ITU Telecom World 2006 from December 4 to December 8, the first ever city outside of Switzerland to hold such an event.

The event is so big to even affect the telecom stock in Hong Kong. When China Telecom president Leng Rongquan said China will launch the 3G service soon, the company's stock increased by 15 percent that day. Market is always driven by breaking news, while however, not many people think it in a long-term way.

From my telecom experience, the creative business model usually doesn't come from the telecom operator side. Say, the model of SP, or service providers, only followed after thousands of small private companies which support the China Mobile and China Unicom. Telecom operators, whose main character is monopoly, are hard in trying new and effective model because of its own big strucuture. So the smart way is to give a piece of pie to private companies, and thus, benefit themselves.

So to me, 3G is more like the opportunity for second round of growth for service providers. In the first round, companies such as Sina.com, Sohu.com and Netease.com benefited most, while in the second round, the most creative one may be from some new one.

Among them, media conglomarates such as CCTV and Shanghai Media Group are likely to benefit. The two already competed hardly on the launching of IPTV, a way for people to watch TV via handy or order programmes freely. With 3G, they will have a better platform which are faster.

However, to them, the problem is still their character. As state-owned companies for a long time, it is a question if they could response quickly as small private ones and if they have any advantages beyond their monopoly character.

Saying so, monopoly usually win at last, though not the full pie, 80 percent is pretty enough.

coming back from BJ to HK

I am back to HK today. The weather is so nice, cool and dry. Feel much more comfortable in my apartment than the hotel.

Need to find out what's happening in Hong Kong....

Also, could access to my blog now and have a 100M internet. so happy now.