Malware Momentum

Kaspersky Cyberstats

If you ever doubted the veracity about the sheer volume of cyber attacks that take place globally in any given hour, take a look at the Kaspersky Cyberstat portal.

70% of malware is AdWare and 15% are trojans.

The  volume of emails sent in the day and numbers of births & deaths also make for quiet reflection.

When it comes to countries that spam generation, China remains way out it front.  They generate almost twice as much as the second placegetter, the USA.

At time of writing there have been more than 37 million new internet users in 2014; a ripe crop for potential spammers and malware malcontents.

Vast, Vibrant & Growing - China's Internet

This video from The China Digital Conference neatly explains the depth and breadth of China's vibrant Internet.  More controlled it may be than its Western counterpart, but the sheer volume of online activity is very impressive.

Related articles

• How Baidu Was on Time With the Internet, Late to Mobile - Bloomberg
• China Will Soon Have More Internet Users Than The USA
• The Map That Puts China's Incredible Internet Demographics in Context

Waffling On

The power of social media knows no bounds!

News today that more than 27,000 Facebook fans are supporting Hong Kong's most popular seller of gai daan tsai (egg waffles) after he was arrested once again.

This is his 6th brush with the law since January but 74 year old "Ah Bak" has been selling these Hong Kong creations for the past 30 years and seems unlikely to change the habits of a lifetime.

He one one of the last of the traditional street hawkers to ply their trade and as such has drawn huge support from Netizens.

There are 3,615,820 facebook users in Hong Kong (51% of the population) so 27,000 remains a small proportion of potential supporters for the egg waffle cause.

Interestingly the Facebook site in question seems to have been quickly removed just a day after this publicity -  by whom I wonder?  Authorities worrying about an 'Egg Waffle Revolution' -  I very much doubt it.

Facebook usage in Hong Kong has actually declined by 100,000 since a peak in February of this year.

The biggest loss is in the youth demographic 18-24 with 35-44 year olds being the fastest growing segment.

Meanwhile Hong Kong's most defiant egg waffle vendor is 'cracking on' and remains unrepentant.

"If you want to arrest me, then go ahead and arrest me," says the defiant Ng. "I will keep on working for 10 more years."

Related articles

• The quest for Hong Kong's best egg waffle

More Just Like To Watch

Social networks continue to grow at an exponential rate but quantity does not necessarily equate to quality.

Social technographics data from Forrester Research shows a growing disparity in numbers between those that join and those who actually contribute or critique content.

Forrester uses these categories in their analysis: Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.

Their report summary highlights that while social technology behaviors are at the centre of many strategy discussions around the globe, the focus should be on the changes in consumers' adoption of these behaviors. Consumers continue to sign up for and interact on social networking sites, but other social behaviours that require creating content have seen no substantial growth in adoption since 2009. In fact, some behaviors have experienced attrition. In metropolitan China, for example, Joiners saw an increase of 18%, while Creators decreased by 3%.

For example, while a third of US online users watch video on YouTube only 10% of those surveyed actually upload their own videos to the site.

Reviewing the findings, Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb points out that "Creators" - those who record videos, post blog entries, write reviews and post comments to articles online - are less active this year than they were in 2009, with shrinking percentages of users in the majority of markets studied.

As can be seen from the chart above, Japan showed any growth in content creation, up two percentage points from the previous year while the others did not.

This is a concern as it would appear only existing Creators are contributing and there is little if any new perspectives being added.  As Forrester's Jackie Rousseau-Anderson puts it, "A lack of growth in this area translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content and perspectives."

Critics who provide ratings and reviews are also a declining group, recording flat or diminishing growth globally.

Spectators (the audience for the creators and Critics) are in the ascendant with Australia recording a 3% increase, Europe 4% and Japan 6%.

New users of social networks ("Joiners") records the biggest growth of any segment, with 8% growth in the U.S., 11% in the E.U., 3% in Japan, 11% in Australia and a whopping 18% in metropolitan China. 

Joiners are unlikely to immediately become Creators if they follow previous patterns of use.

So what are we to make of this diminishing 'gene pool' of creative talent in the blogosphere?  It represents an strategic option  for businesses with an online presence to become top of mind.

Given the dearth of content creation, the opportunity is to become the definitive source of knowledge and opinion, driving traffic back to a product or service online.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Forrester: Social Networking Adoption Charges Ahead, Growth Of Other Social Behaviors Slowing (eon.businesswire.com)
• Content Creation Slows On Social Networks (webpronews.com)
• Changes in Social Technographics? (i-programmer.info)
• On Social Networks, Most Still Just Like to Watch (nytimes.com)

Upwardly and Outwardly mobile in China

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

According to Shan Phillips, Vice President, Greater China, Telecom Practice, The Nielsen Company, widespread ownership of mobiles is only a fairly recent development in China, but consumers there have fully embraced the technology.

Further more they are putting it to use in a far more robust manner than their US and European counterparts.

Landlines are either a thing of the past for consumers or they have leapfrogged this requirement and gone directly to their mobile for the web and voice communications.  Parts of the Indian subcontinent have experienced a similar trend.

As Shan Phillips states, they don’t require hardwired Internet access for their fix of the Web. With mobile phones, everything they need is in the palm of their hand.

Competition amongst providers is getting increasingly tough with even the world's biggest phone company, China Mobile,experiencing  a slump of 10 percent from a 12-month high set on Aug. 10, 2009.  The costs of promoting third-generation wireless services has also contributed to its slowed earnings growth.

Analysys International reports that the second quarter of 2010 saw the domestic mobile phone sales volume in China reach 59.16 million units.

Meanwhile 3G mobile phone sales reached nearly 150 million units in the first half of 2010.  It is the lure of being able to use abundant mobile phone functions which has ensured that "intelligent" phones have the highest uptake.

Mary Meeker April 2010 Internet Trends

Related articles by Zemanta

• China Passes U.S. in Mobile Web (jkontherun.com)
• iPhone 3GS 8GB to reach China next week with Wi-Fi? (electronista.com)
• Youth Mobile Trends in China 2010 (servantofchaos.com)
• Wi-Fi iPhones coming to China Monday (tech.fortune.cnn.com)

Social Australians And Positive Koreans

Image via Wikipedia

I have written before about the need to change the mindset that many CEO's have about the effectiveness of their corporate web site.

The belief that "we build it and they will come" simply does not hold water any more. The term "web site" in itself is very 1990's.

It is the "network" that should be referred to, as the principle of engagement and personal interaction is paramount in building the brand and online buzz.

Being online where your market is should be the primary goal. The principal focus now should be on social media and any corporate web site should also have social media capability.

Nielsen reports that social media now dominates Asia Pacific internet usage:

"Social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now one of the most critical trends in the online sector."

The survey found that three of the seven biggest global online brands are social media sites – Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Close to three quarters of the world’s Internet population (74%) have now visited a social networking/blogging site, and Internet users are spending an average of almost six hours per month on social media sites. "

Some Key Findings:

• Koreans are most likely to relay positive comments in any review while the Chinese are most likely to to focus on the negative
• The Koreans are one of the most social engaged in the world
• The Japanese are the world's most avid bloggers and the percentage of twitter users in Japan now surpasses the States
• The Chinese admire grass root celebrities and track them.  The bulletin board is still a dominant platform
• Social media games are big in China and drive new users to to sign on.
• In India Facebook is rapidly making up ground on Orkut as the platform of choice for social networking

But it is the Australians who are the worlds most socially engaged .  Their focus is communities of interest, which explains why 62% of Aussies visited a forum or message board in 2009.  The professional network platform LinkedIn experienced 99% growth in a single year

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook a threat to Orkut''s market share in India (ciol.com)
• Social networks and blogs influence buyers (newstatesman.com)
• Facebook, Twitter powerful business tools - research group (technology.inquirer.net)
• China group says U.S. uses Facebook to sow unrest (theglobeandmail.com)
• Wildcat: Social Networks/Blogs Now Account for One in Every Four and a Half Minutes Online | Nielsen Wire (nielsen.com)

Why Asia Leads The Digital World

There is a constant drilling and tapping through our condo walls as I write this.  It is the sound of the Singapore government's high speed broadband initiative as they lay and connect free fibre optic cable.  This will be completed by 2012 and I, as a resident, will have not had to pay a penny to access this service.

These higher fixed connection speeds will mean an even higher adoption of broadband, provide a greater range of services capabilities and according to a new survey by Pyramid Research, boost service revenue to $5.1 billion by 2014.

In China the broadband commitment is as impressive.  According to a government white paper published on June 8th, China has invested heavily in Internet infrastructure construction.

"From 1997 to 2009 a total of 4.3 trillion yuan was invested in this regard, building a nationwide optical communication network with a total length of 8.267 million km."

" By the end of 2009 Chinese basic telecommunications companies had 136 million broadband Internet access ports Internet access to 99.3% of Chinese towns and 91.5% of villages, and broadband to 96.0% of the towns."

By the end of last year:

• the number of Chinese netizens had reached 384 million
• this is 618 times that of 1997 and an annual increase of 31.95 million users
• The Internet had reached 28.9% of the total population, higher than the world average
• There were 3.23 million websites running in China, which was 2,152 times that of 1997
• Of all the netizens, 346 million used broadband and 233 million used mobile phones to access the Internet
• They had moved on from dialing the access numbers to broadband and mobile phones

In New Zealand the government  is attempting to get a national ultra-fast broadband (UFB) network up and running but have thus far been frustrated by the actions of its major Telco.  They intend spending $US1 billion on the UFB.

Meanwhile the UK is still trumpeting a plan to roll out of 2mps to every household.  One of their new ministers, the Right Honourable Jeremy Hunt MP has described this target as "pitifully unambitious." and he is correct.

To put the British strategy into context, Korea aims to have broadband that is 500 times faster.

And then of course there are the costs that Internet Service Providers load on to consumers.

In Singapore all plans provide for 'unlimited' use and are based on speed.  A basic 6mps service costs a mere $Sing 34.95 per month and comes bundled with other goodies such as free TV viewing of the English premier league.

In New Zealand pricing is based on limited data use.  For $NZ39.95 a miserly 3Gb can be used, at speeds that are nowhere near as fast as Singapore's.  The cost of this limited service is obscene!  When you add phone line costs the real cost in NZ for the 3Gb is around $NZ90 per month.

Related articles by Zemanta

• China sidesteps Great Firewall with web roadmap (go.theregister.com)
• Britain to have "best superfast broadband network in Europe" by 2015 (telegraph.co.uk)