As many of you know Toodou means potato in Chinese. However, in pinyin this is normally written as Tudou. We have always wanted the Tudou.com domain name. Quite a significant number of first-time visitors thought that our domain name was Tudou.com instead of Toodou.com. When we first launched the site we had to settle with Toodou.com because Tudou.com had long been taken by another website. However, that web site did not do as well as Toodou.com (they actually shut down their operations), and we had the possibility to buy the domain name.

We plan to switch over to Tudou.com in the very near future. Toodou.com will be automatically redirected to Tudou.com. The switch over will be completely invisible and will require little communication even for offline Chinese media, as most of our users know our brand simply as
?? or ???. For foreign media it might be easier as well, because it happens quite often that Toodou is misspelled as Toudoo (For example I just noticed an unlinkable -I had to pay to read it!- article in the Dutch Financieel Dagblad where this was the case). So from now I’ll refer to Toodou as Tudou!

During my last trip to Holland, I bought a Senseo coffee machine for the Spill Group Asia office in Shanghai. Senseo machines make one or two cups of coffee, with a small layer of creamy foam on top. It basically gives people the possibility to make a cup of coffee at home, like they would get in a restaurant. It’s easy and quick, but the product was not for sale in China, so I had to import one in my suitcase for the office.

Because Senseo machines are priced quite low, they penetrated the market quickly in Holland (they were introduced there five years ago). The machines, produced by Philips together with coffee brand DE, are now being sold in many European countries, and even in the US and Australia. And the next country on the list is China, according to the daily email bulletin that I get from Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. And even better, the first city they will start selling the products is Shanghai! This means that I do not have to rely on Senseo pad shipments from Spill Group in Holland, but we can buy our own supplies.

Will the product be successful in China? I think it could be (Fons Tuinstra seems to disagree I just read). The timing is right: many young people in cities drink coffee nowadays, that has quickly changed over the past couple of years. Starbucks has surely made coffee more popular, in the beginning because of the status it gives you to go there (it’s as expensive as the rest of the world, so if you can afford to go there it implies you must be ‘rich’), but now also because people like coffee. But most people only drink one or two cups at home or in the office, not more than that. For that purpose the Senseo is a good product.

I think Philips should focus on the Chinese corporate market first for this product. Let white collar workers try out the product in the office, then they might also buy one for use at home. But I hope the price of the pads will be adjusted to Chinese standards. Not sure if a Chinese is willing to pay so much money for a cup of coffee, without other people seeing that they spend this money (like at Starbucks).

The China Daily had a funny story today. A guy named Hu from Jiangxi province was riding a train when he dropped his mobile phone out of the window (it was not explained how this could happen by the way). Because the phone contained pictures of his girlfriend, he immediately asked a train attendant to make an emergency stop. Of course this was refused, and so the guy decided to jump out of the train to retrieve his phone. Although other passengers tried to stop him, he leaped out of the window anyway. The result: a broken hand and leg – and because of that still no phone! It makes me wonder what kind of pictures he had on his mobile 🙂

The earthquake in Beijing yesterday probably reminded many people of the earthquake in Tanghshan (close to Beijing), this month exactly 30 years ago. While I was living in Beijing I never encoutered an earthquake, but several of my former colleagues told me about that time (because I was curious about it once, and asked them about it). They are now all in their mid-thirties, and so they were little kids at that time. Some lived on the streets for weeks (at least in their memories) after the quake, that killed 240,000 people.

Jeroen Berghuis (who now lives in New York but is visting Beijing) had an interesting post about the quake yesterday. A quote from him in his typical cynical style, about the coverage in the China Daily:

“Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu, immediately after the earthquake, instructed the seismological departments to closely monitor and analyze seismological situation to ensure the safety of the people and property, particularly around Beijing.”

Yes, ‘Wen the man” and “Howling Hui” picked up the phone together (speaker phone I assume?) and called the dumbstruck receptionist at the seismological department… Too bad the quake took place at 11:58 local time, which means that the whole seismo department was out to lunch…

And the typical “people don’t worry, we have it all under control” message ends the article:

“Experts in Beijing said there won’t be any devastating earthquakes in Beijing in the near future and urged residents to keep calm. And Tianjin experts, after the quake, also said the city will not have any major quakes in the near future.”

How do they know these things! Wonderful clever people. Too bad that 30 years ago they didn’t see the Tangshan City (also in Hebei province) quake coming. That killed 240,000 people…

Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei.org noted that the new proposed Chinese law that forbids reporting of sudden news items could lead to lots of rumours through SMS and MSN:

The Big One would hit Beijing at 2pm, said one rumor, later revised to 5 pm, and then 7 pm, as the rumored Big One stubbornly refused to arrive.

He then continues:

Which made clear a point about the recent proposed law that threatens to fine news media for reporting ‘unauthorized’ stories about breaking events: The function of news media during a time of emergency is to gather as many facts as possible and present a version of the truth that is better researched than casual text messages. Any law that hinders the process of sorting the facts from the rumors is a bad law.

My wife told me that the Roland Berger office in Beijing was even evacuated after the quake. No bigger shocks happened luckily, but it shows that Chinese media still have a long way to go, especially during emergencies.

Toodou moved to a new office two weeks ago, because the old space had become too small already. The new building gives the company more than enough room to grow, with approximately 2500 m2 available to us. The building is located on the downtown side of the Suzhou Creek, about 300 meters upstream from the old office.

The new place features among others a roof terrace, and that comes in handy for….. The Toodou New Office Party! This party will take place on July 15 and is open to friends, family, bloggers and podcasters. Because the walls of the corridors in the new office are still very white graffiti will be allowed – just like during the first Toodou Party last year November. Looking forward to seeing all of you again!

We got a registered mail this week, and my wife had to go to the post office to pick it up. It turned out to be a speeding ticket, I got caught after picking up people from the airport about 2 weeks ago. I did not see the camera or the flash, but they had a good picture, I could even see one of them sitting in the back of the car. I drove 104 km/h on an 8-lane highway without any traffic, but apparently only 80 km/h was allowed. Bad luck.

The speeding ticket itself is not a big deal (fines are quite low), but the problem is that as a non-Shanghainese you have to go to a specific traffic police office to pay the fine (Shanghainese can pay online). Of course they are always located in out of the way locations, so it costs you a lot of time to go there, stand in line to show your drivers license (they gave me 3 points as well, after 12 you loose your license), stand in another line to pay the fine and stand in another lane for the receipt. And they even charged me to park the car outside the police office!

Over the years I have taken many visitors to Shanghai’s Xiangyang market. It is the biggest market with fake products (think Ralph Lauren polo’s, Mont Blanc pens and Rolex watches) in Shanghai. But it will close tomorrow. Not because of the fact that they sell fake products (nobody seems to care about IP rights), but because a developer bought the place and will put up a hotel there.

I had a meeting close to the Xiangyang market today, and decided to take one last look at the small shops. I was surprised by what I saw: it was more busy than I had ever seen it, even though it was quite hot (bright sunshine, no wind and at least 35 degrees Celcius). And people were frantically buying as if they would never have this opportunity again. To be honest, the shopkeepers were also doing everything they could to get rid of their stocks. For the first time several shops actually put up prices next to the goods. And they were lower than ever: Lacoste shirts for RMB 20 (EUR 2) and leather belts for just RMB 10 (EUR 1). And I am sure these prices were still negotiable.

If you are in Shanghai and looking for a real bargain (and don’t mind wearing fakes), tomorrow is your last chance. And if you read this too late? Just wait a few weeks, I am sure new, smaller markets will appear all over the city. I talked to some of the shopkeepers, and several of them told me that they plan to move to Pudong to an existing building. Other rumours were about a new market in Hongqiao and one close to the Longhua Temple. Many were handing out business cards with their mobile phone numbers: please call me in a few weeks and I will tell you where my new shop is.

When calling people on their mobile phones in China you often don’t hear the phone ringing on the other end of the line, but you get a personalized ‘ringtone’. You can choose your favorite song for this, and of course China Mobile earns good money for the songs that you install. I find it quite annoying that I have to listen to these songs when calling people, but I guess lots of people love it, otherwise the service would not exist.

Two weeks ago I called my wife, and was surprised that she had also installed this feature on her phone. I asked her about it when she picked up the phone, but she said that she was not aware of it. She immediately called China Mobile and asked them about it. It turned out that they were doing some sort of marketing campaign by installing the ring tone on people’s phone (without asking), hoping that they will change it to another one for a fee.

Last week Gary also suddenly had the ringtone installed, and he also did not know about it until people told him. Maybe it’s time to call my own number to check, who knows what my business relations have to listen to when they call me. Outside China this kind of push-marketing would likely lead to a lot of cancelled subscriptions, but when you are monopolist you can get away with it.