Shanghaied Weblog

Why and how I use Twitter

After using Twitter for almost two years on a daily basis I literally could not live without it anymore. It has changed the way I do things and it has enabled me to get to know (and meet in real life) many interesting people. It had a positive impact on my life and on my work. People who don't use it don't know what they are missing, and the problem is that it's hard to explain. I have tried it many times, but you have to start using it intensively for a while to really understand it, and...

San Francisco has the Shanghai vibe

I'm sitting in the lounge at SFO airport waiting to board a flight to Tokyo, after a busy couple of days in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I was here mainly for the Game Developers Conference (GDC), but I actually did not get to see much of it because of an overloaded schedule with meetings. In total I spent about 30 minutes on the expo floor and I did not see any of the presentations that I had planned to watch. I guess that's normal if you attend a conference like this, because you finally...

View from the TriplePoint office in SF

I am in San Francisco at the moment for the annual Game Developers Conference. Having a great time here, but with an overloaded schedule. It's so bad that I have not seen one speech or presentation yet over the past days and I didn't even visit the expo yet. It looks like I may not even manage to get there, because also today I am tied up in meetings. Nothing to complain about though, because the main reason for being here is not the show, but meetings with media, research analysts and many of...

Lazy journalists

In my RSS reader I just found an AFP piece written by journalist Glenn Chapman about the fact that YouTube is blocked in China. I quickly scanned it and noticed that they are quoting me in the article. A bit strange as I am in San Francisco at the moment and nobody interviewed me about this. I did not really know about the YouTube block actually, I just saw a couple of messages on Twitter about it.The article from the Sydney Morning Herald quotes a piece from my blog from October 18, 2007 (when...

Innovative advertising or annoying advertising?

Last week I stayed one night in the Jinglun Hotel in Beijing and was surprised to see their phones. The hotel had in-room phones with large touch screens, I had never came accross these before. But the most interesting aspect was that they showed advertising on the screen. At first only on the right side of the touch pad, but after a while the whole screen was taken over by 30 second (or even longer) TV commercials! It was like having a second TV screen in your room, but one you cannot turn off...

There is a first for everything

Over the years I have been featured in many magazines, newspapers and other media, but I don't think I ever made it to the front page of any publication. Well, there is a first for everything because someone just sent me a picture of the cover of the (Dutch) MarketingTribune. I am afraid a good looking lady would have been better for sales - especially considering the fact that the picture was taken right after I got off a plane from Shanghai to...

Digital:Works China

The share of online advertising in China still lags far behind the US or European market, an important issue for everybody involved in the Internet in China. I had hoped that the financial crisis would speed up the transition from traditional to digital marketing (because it's much easier to measure), but I am actually seeing the opposite effect. Last year's IAB China initiative has taken more time than expected to get off the ground, but I think eventually IAB will also play an important role...

Shanghai Zoo

Entrance of the Shanghai ZooAlthough I've been living for quite some years now in Shanghai, I had never been to the zoo. It's only about 2 km from our house (almost walking distance for me), but I never thought about visiting it. Now that Scott is more than 14 months old we decided to take him there. This weekend the weather was great, about 20 degrees with blue skies, so an excellent time for a walk outside.We went by car, but that was not a very smart idea. The Shanghai Zoo was built decades...

Scott starts to talk!

My little boy Scott develops quickly. After I came back from a short trip to The Netherlands on Monday I realized that once again. Before I left he could scream loudly but he was not really able to say any real words, except for "huh?" if he did not understand something or if he lost one of his toys. But that suddenly changed last week, and now he is able to say mama, baba and something that is probably zhua (Chinese for 'catch', our nanny uses that often when she is playing with him,...

Spil Games now the world's largest casual game portal network!

Yesterday I was in Beijing and did not find the time to blog about this when it was announced to the press, but Spil Games is now the world's largest casual game portal worldwide. From the number 5 position one year ago, Spil Games now passed among others Yahoo Games and MSN Games to finish number 1 at the end of 2008. I am very proud to be part of the Spil Games team and of the dedication and hard work of all Spil's employees to reach this major milestone!The official press release:SPIL GAMES,...

Spring in Holland

The past 3 days I spent in Amsterdam and Hilversum, mainly for business meetings at Spil Games. It was a good trip, glad I took the time to fly back and forth from China. Spil Games is doing very well despite the recession, and with the addition of some new key people in the management this will only get better. Expect to hear a lot more about Spil's successes soon, this is just the beginning!The weather was not that great, quite cold with occasionally some rain, but today the weather was...

Huangpu river tunnels

It's not easy to explain to people outside China how quickly Chinese can do things. In Shanghai I have seen roads being built in a few days and buildings going up in a matter of months instead of years. Many people don't believe it until they visit Shanghai and feel the vibe of this city and the work ethos of the people. Here things happen instead of that people just talk about them.Today's paper version of the Shanghai Daily had a great example of this. It published an article about a new...