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Spil Games Asia outing 2010 in Moganshan and Nanxun

Last weekend Spil Games Asia went on its annual outing. This year we went to Moganshan (a mountain in Zhejiang) and Nanxun (a water town) for our two day trip.

We had a bit of bad luck with the weather, because despite the forecast of sunshine it rained on Friday when we left Shanghai. The rain followed us to Moganshan where clouds and fog joined us as well. The result: none of our staff could enjoy the beautiful views of the bamboo forest covered mountains and some of the old European style villas on it.

But the trip was fun anyway. During the bus trip we all sang our company song, that our sound guy and some other staff had composed over the past days. We sang it so often that it’s still in my head now.

Upon arrival on the mountain we had a big lunch with some beers and then went for a hike. Because of the weather we cut the hike short and spent

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The past days in pictures

Lots of fun and interesting things happened over the past days, but I didn’t find the time yet to write blog posts about it. Because I likely won’t have much time over the next days either I decided to just put some pictures with short descriptions online. A picture says more than a thousand words, right?

Elaine had her 1st birthday last Friday and we had a nice dinner (Beijing Duck) at home for her birthday. Because my wife and I both had to work we decided to postpone the real celebrations to Saturday. This is Elaine with Grace on Friday night.

Saturday morning I had to get up very early because we were invited for a tour around the US pavilion with Hillary Clinton. To make a long story short, we could hardly see Clinton and we certainly had no meet and greet with her. The next day, however, Hillary made it up to us by allowing some of our Geeks on a Plane group to meet with her in her hotel.

Even though the Hillary Clinton visit was a bit different than expected, I still had a good time talking to among others VCs Mark Suster and Alexander Lloyd and recruiter Jeff Hu. Here we are in the VIP area of the US pavilion to take some pictures with the flags of the US & China.

After the US pavilion visit I rushed home for Elaine’s one year birthday brunch at the Marriott in Hongqiao. She especially loved the ice cream!

At home Elaine got to wear her beautiful birthday dress. She is quickly turning from a baby into a pretty toddler girl!

Elaine’s 1-year birthday cake, an ice cream cake.

Elaine doing her 1-year pick (zhua zhou), to find out what kind of things she will do in later life.

On Sunday night I had dinner with the Geeks on a Plane at The Waterhouse. A nice boutique hotel and excellent restaurant right on the Huangpu River, next to the Cool Docks. In the picture organizers Dave McClure and Christine Lu.

Monday night was the Startup2Startup dinner at Shanghai Tang cafe with (again) the Geeks on a Plane. Met tons of people and had a great evening – and an excellent dinner. I was supposed to be on the FastPitch panel where start-ups would pitch to investors, but too bad this part of the event got canceled because of time constraints. In the picture Mark Suster giving a keynote to the audience during dinner.

And today, Tuesday, I gave a speech at the Dutch Expo Pavilion for the Dutch Gaming Days. The title of the talk was Parallel Universes, differences between the game industry in China and Holland. I talked about this based on my experiences of setting up Spil Games Asia over the past years. The audience was a mix of Chinese game developers and game companies and some Western companies looking to do business in China, and I got some interesting leads for Spil Games. My colleagues Leo Liu and Richard Yu (see picture below at the Dutch Expo Pavilion) also joined the presentations.

And in between all these pictures? Mainly work I am afraid, so not interesting enough to take or post photos.

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Tudou moving to original web content – some insights

Last week Tudou announced the launch of its made-for-Internet original content production plan (“Orange Box“) and an independent filmmakers’ incubation program (“Warehouse no. 6”). The announcement may appear to be yet another entertainment initiative, but Tudou’s move is actually a calculated and strategic attempt to expand its content offerings, learning from the television model.

Many companies are jumping to capitalize on the growth of the online video industry in China, as they see the trends of consumer media behavior changing and advertising dollars shifting toward Internet video. Online video sites, portals, search engines and TV players are re-organizing themselves around the video entertainment market paradigm change.

According to China iResearch, total advertising revenue in the online video industry in China has grown almost 70% from RMB800 million in 2008 to RMB1.3 billion (or US$200 million) in 2009. And this growth will continue: The online video ad market growth is projected to be between 60% to 80% annually in the next three years.

Like YouTube and major video vertical players, Tudou boasts huge traffic: it currently has a massive 200 million monthly unique visitors per month. While monetizing the traffic by advertising has quickly become a proven business model, it may not be enough.

Therefore Tudou is kicking off its made-for-Internet original web productions, broadening its content offering and deepening long-term competitive strength. We are paving the way to create a made-for-Internet content ecosystem that signals our site’s ambition to create a new alternative model outside of network television companies’ business and operational systems, with a new audience watching new media online.

Starting in 2010, a number of online video websites in China announced different kinds of content initiatives via relatively simple approaches such as partnerships or funding. Tudou is choosing a more sophisticated and resource-consuming route, building its own production pipelines and managing the four key pillars: production, distribution, broadcasting and monetization.

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Am I really a geek?

Ahead of the Geeks On A Plane tour to Asia CNNgo.com interviewed – as they call it – 5 of China’s biggest geeks. I was one of them, so I guess now I am officially a geek. The other people interviewed for the article are gaming guru Frank Yu, Youku consultant & rock star Kaiser Kuo, Tudou CEO Gary Wang and Qifang CEO Calvin Chin. It’s a small world in China, because we all know each other.

In the interview I mention the geek project that gets me most excited: an investment in a still-below-the-radar and not-yet-launched start-up called United Styles. Probably more about that in a few months when they plan to launch, but I can now already say that they have the potential to disrupt the fashion industry.

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Miffy site takeover on Spil Games’ Chinese portals

Over the past week we had a site takeover ad campaign for Miffy on game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.cn. I wanted to share the screen shots before the campaign goes offline tonight. The whole homepage was Miffy branded during the takeover, meaning that look and feel was changed into Miffy style.

After opening the homepage you would see Miffy floating in a basket with balloons in our A1 location (left corner) with several kites on the left and right sides of the screen. Then suddenly the basket floats out of the A1 location onto the screen and also kites now start to fly over the games. Reactions from our audience were very positive, they liked the design and a lot of them clicked through to a special Miffy page on game.com.cn to play a Miffy game (the game will stay online after the campaign is over).

This was Spil Games’ first site takeover campaign in China, but because of the positive reactions we plan to do more innovative campaigns in the future. Thanks to the team at the Energize Shanghai agency and especially Rogier Bikker for working together with the Spil Games Asia team on this campaign.

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Visit of EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes to Tudou

Last week I received a call whether it would be possible for me to give a presentation at Tudou to Mrs. Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission and in charge of the EU Digital Agenda. Of course I was honored and I immediately invited her to visit the Tudou office.

Mrs. Kroes came to visit us this morning with a small EU delegation and several journalists. We started the visit with a tour around Tudou’s headquarters in Shanghai (Tudou has 2 offices in Shanghai and other offices in Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu), during which it turned out that she knew a lot about my background already. I assume she was briefed well before the visit, and I am sure my blog and Twitter made that briefing a lot easier!

After the office tour I gave a presentation about what Tudou is and how we are different from video aggregators like YouTube or local competitors. We also talked about the Internet in China and how that is often more innovative than the Internet outside China. We talked (of course) also about online games and from there we got to the topic of micro payments. In my opinion China is ahead of the EU in this respect, and a good micro payment system (for very small transactions, say 1 or 2 Euro cents) will be beneficial for for example the transition from traditional media (like papers) to new media.

I also mentioned that I think that traditional TV stations have no future if they do not quickly change to stream to online channels as well. In China TV audiences get older, poorer and less educated compared to online video audiences. What’s happening in China will also happen in the EU, just a few years later.

When the presentation was over there was a photo opportunity for the journalists outside the Tudou office, before Mrs. Kroes had to go to the airport for a flight to Europe. We at Tudou enjoyed hosting Mrs. Kroes and discussing about the Internet with her. Too bad there was not enough time to go into details, but maybe there will be an opportunity for that in the future.

A set of all pictures of Neelie Kroes’ visit to Tudou can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157623952471285/

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Geeks on a Plane Asia 2010

Next week Geeks on a Plane will once again visit Shanghai, and there is a great line up of entrepreneurs, VCs, journalists and bloggers. During the last visit in June 2009 I gave a talk to the group at Spil Games Asia and Gary did a Lunch 2.0 talk at Tudou for them.

This year I am not sure what my exact obligations are, I think I promised Christine Lu to do a presentation (but I can’t locate the email anymore, we probably communicated by Twitter – help me out Christine…) and I will be on an angel investor panel listening to pitches with a.o. William Bao Bean (FastPitch on Monday night). Due to a very busy business schedule I won’t be able to join any other events (well, maybe drinks one night) or fly to other cities with the group, which is a pity.

The Geeks on a Plane tour is sold out, but you can still get tickets for individual events. Check the website for more details: http://geeksonaplane.com/

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Sunday morning interviews at home

It’s a busy period for journalists in Shanghai, because of the Expo they all want to file stories about business in China. On Tuesday the Dutch Crown Prince will be here, so Dutch media all need to finish their Expo stories by then.

Normally I do the interviews at Spil Games Asia, but because it’s Sunday I decided to take some at home. Scott was luckily relatively quiet, and Elaine slept through the whole episode.

The pictures were taken during a TV interview in my study with Dutch journalist Marije Vlaskamp for RTL Z. I also did a radio interview (BNR, Dutch business radio network) and one for newspaper Trouw.

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Adobe loves Apple – or not?

Adobe spent some major money today on ads to tell the world about its dispute with Apple. Not only appeared an ad below almost every tech related post in my Google Reader, but on every TechCrunch post that I clicked on in my RSS feed a pop-up ad from Adobe appeared. I did not even know that pop-up ads still existed outside China, and I certainly had not expected TechCrunch to sell them. I guess they felt they would get away with one like this, and they were right – I even blog about it now…

In case you don’t follow the tech news as much as I do, in short the background of the story is that Steve Jobs does not allow Flash to run on its iPhone/iPad platform. It does not even allow original Flash applications to be changed to iPhone/iPad apps. Adobe, the owner of Flash, is not amused of course because a significant part of their business is at risk: Not only will it hurt their CS5 sales (that can among others be used to port Flash to an iPad app), but worse is that because of Apple’s stance more and more platforms are now announcing support for HTML5.