:: you’re an active consumer, but you don’t trust advertising or mainstream media. You’re new in the city, and you want to find some great places to eat, but you don’t know anyone who can give you any tips. You want to go south for the holidays but you don’t want to end up getting fleeced in some Disney-fied tourist trap. Or you’ve just bought an amazing / terrible new digital camera and you want to convince the rest of the world to buy one too / not buy one. Where is the best place to accomplish this, share your point of view, and get answers to your questions? The web of course! The Chinese Internet has a wealth of resources for rating products, from restaurants and travel destinations, to cosmetics and technology. Heck, you can even find out which universities and professors to avoid.

Of course, you’re not going to simply believe anyone who claims to be an “ordinary netizen,” so you’ll have to rely on other Web2.0 community tools to get a feel for which reviewers are trustworthy. And if the review website appears to have integrity, you’ll probably be inclined to view its brand partners favorably as well. Brand presence on review sites is mostly limited to straightforward advertising at the moment, but there are a few interesting partnerships going on, and lots of opportunity for further development and full-on brand engagement in ways that add value / unique information to review site communities.

restaurants ::
Dianping (大众点评 http://www.dianping.com/ ), which managed to grab a URL that all other review sites now wish they had, started out in 2003 as a website on which Shanghai residents could review local restaurants. It gradually expanded to Beijing and Hangzhou, and then to other parts of the country, and attracted investment from Sequoia Capital. Eateries are still the main focus of the site: members rate establishments on taste, environment, service, and average price per person, and their ratings are analyzed into various rankings: best restaurants (http://bit.ly/3NIhKi ), tastiest (http://bit.ly/qmfWG ), hot this week (http://bit.ly/vUImd ), top OL (”office lady”) choices (http://bit.ly/PBZhZ ), and top student picks (http://bit.ly/10Ixjy ). The website also provides an online reservation service, and has photos and menus contributed by community members. Other categories in addition to food include shopping (http://bit.ly/13sAfA ), entertainment (http://bit.ly/lqKo ), and services (http://bit.ly/oCtqv ) — it turns out that no one really thinks all that highly of Beijing Railway Station, for example (http://bit.ly/EteS3 ). For the past few years, Dianping has been publishing annual print guides to restaurants in major Chinese cities (http://bit.ly/2XMVUS ) that are produced using ratings and comments from netizens. The website has also been at the forefront of copyright disputes (who owns netizen comments?) and libel disputes (can restaurants sue over bad netizen reviews?); a summary is available here (http://bit.ly/YeYOG ). In terms of business partnerships, Dianping offers a membership card that is good for discounts at many of the restaurants it indexes and that accumulates points redeemable for mobile phone cards and gadgets. Promotional offers available to card-holders (http://bit.ly/jdoyG ) often take the form of a week or two of Dianping-related incentives to visit local businesses. Currently, Dianping members can get a free cup of coffee at any Sculpting in Time cafe (http://bit.ly/12bMOm ).

travel ::
Visiting someplace new with an untested tour agency can be an unsettling prospect, so many Chinese netizens turn to specific websites that offer peer recommendations and ratings. General review sites for travel include the popular portal for booking plane tickets and hotels, Ctrip (http://www.ctrip.com/ ). CTrip features a destination guide (http://destguides.ctrip.com ) whose landing page lists top-rated destinations, which at the moment are Hunan’s Zhangjiajie (http://bit.ly/oPHbt ), with over 11,626 reviews, and Yunnan’s Lijiang (http://bit.ly/yoij8 ), with around 1,600 reviews. Each review page has a combination of photographs, routes to nearby tourist and scenic spots (such as the Tiger Leaping Gorge outside of Lijiang), and a temperature graph for the area. In addition to rating the sites, netizens can ask and answer specific questions. The review section of travel portal Let’s Travel Together (http://www.17u.com/comment/ ) is more comprehensive, with destinations in every major city including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, and smaller ones such as Wuhan and Suzhou. The website has community features in addition to straightforward reviewing: 17u hosts a blog section (http://www.17u.com/blog/ ) whose posts can be promoted through a “digg”-type system. On a smaller scale is the Yododo travel website (http://www.yododo.com/ ), which lets netizens search for reviews and upload videos from their favorite destinations (http://bit.ly/LYxf1 ). Yododo’s reviews are short and quick (http://www.yododo.com/review/ ), more like a message board than the in-depth analysis encouraged on other sites, and feature only one or two lines for each city. The range of travel review websites is quite broad: many individual destinations have websites devoted to them alone, where netizens can appraise food, lodging, and attractions. Zhangjiajie, for example, has a travel site with a review section (http://www.zjjok.com/dianping/ ), and the city of Wuhan hosts a travel website (http://www.gotowuhan.com.cn ) with a review subsite (http://dp.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ), as well as blogs (http://blog.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ) and a BBS discussion forum (http://bbs.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ).

cosmetics ::
Cosmetics and personal care products are quite possibly the most popular items for netizens to review online. I Am 2ya (http://www.i2ya.com/ ) is a multimedia cosmetics review site. Members can rate products and upload photos of their own stash (http://www.i2ya.com/ddx.aspx ). Highly-recommended products are listed among the site’s top rankings (http://bit.ly/VDscT ). Apart from web ads, brand presence comes in the form of “test groups,” promotion activities in which qualified members are offered the chance to review new products. The current campaign is from Yves Rocher, a French natural beauty label (http://bit.ly/4hhHl1 ). Ten sets of Yves Rocher body-slimming products will be handed out to registered reviewers who will have to write up a review if they’re chosen. The page features existing reviews of the product by girls in their twenties, some of whom have lost weight using the product. I Am 2Ya is affiliated with Niu’er Beauty Net (http://www.niuer.com.cn/ ), a cosmetics portal run by Niu’er, who’s apparently a well-known beautician. He’s got a special section on I Am 2Ya, too (http://bit.ly/176apD ), and clips of his presentations, as well as excerpts of a Taiwan beauty show (http://bit.ly/ixYy1 ), form the multimedia section of the site. Beauty Make-Up (http://www.5i5p.net/ ), whose URL decodes to mean “I Love Being Beautiful” (我爱我漂亮), bills itself as a “professional cosmetics review website.” Top reviewers, some of whom have assessed more than one hundred products, are listed on the front page alongside a category breakdown that lists products by type and region of origin (domestic, Korean / Japanese, Euro/American, and other). The website also hosts a forum (http://www.5i5p.net/bbs/ ) where members share shopping strategies and swap beauty tips. More radically, some review sites focus on plastic surgery procedures and specialists. Plastic Surgery Review Net (http://dp100.net/ ) reviews plastic surgeons and hospitals, and displays pertinent information such as professional CV, specialty, and age. The front page currently features nose-jobs (http://dp100.net/xiangmu/65 ), with five doctors and three hospitals recommended for the procedure. Recognizing the possibility for astro-turfing, the website allows netizens to evaluate the usefulness of other netizen’s reviews by voting them “useful” (有用) or “fake” (太假).

IT ::
After cosmetics, IT seems to be the most popular product category for netizens to review. Major tech sites like Donews (http://donews.com ) and ZOL (http://zol.com.cn ) provide ratings functionality alongside more professional reviews and product promotions, and IT is featured prominently on more general-interest review sites. For example, Holaba (http://www.holaba.com.cn/ ), a Shanghai-based review website with a brand-based concept, features IT as the top category on the front page, and at the moment most of the featured products are IT-related. Members can rate brands and their products on a 1-10 scale, and leave more detailed ratings in comments, which themselves can be rated by other members. What’s most interesting about the Holaba site is its “Brand War” feature (http://www.holaba.com.cn/brandwar ), which right now is pitting Motorola, Nokia, and Apple-branded mobile phones against each other (as of this writing, more than 3,000 ratings have been entered for each brand and Apple is in the lead with 9.7, versus Nokia’s 9.4 and Motorola’s 9.2. Members who vote get a chance to win a prizes: in the first stage, 600 10-yuan phone cards, in the second stage (currently in progress), 150 100-yuan phone cards, and in the third stage, an actual mobile phone (the model depends on which brand wins the Brand War). Members can choose to recommended (and not-recommended) products, which are then featured on their member page (here’s one from leading commenter “apang” http://bit.ly/1qHbyS ). The site’s contact page (http://bit.ly/WbBzC ) has a “business cooperation” category, but it’s not clear on the rest of the site if any brands featured are a result of a partnership. 92DP (http://www.92dp.com/ ), whose digit-name translates as “I just love reviewing” (就爱点评), has a mix of cosmetics and IT on the front page. Its unique offering is video-based reviews: members upload clips of their impressions of products they own. In this clip (http://bit.ly/18oscq ), user “shuyuting843″ reviews the Sony T700 digital camera using a typical post-90s overhead camera angle. To foster community participation, the website encourages new users to post their “mug shot” in an introductory thread (http://bit.ly/10nqMw ), and other special activities are frequently updated on the features page (http://www.92dp.com/zhuanti/ ). Brand participation is mostly limited to web ads (tech has a presence in the form of ads for the iPod Nano), but there are also a number of brand landing pages, such as Canon (http://www.92dp.com/brand/canon ) and Shiseido (资生堂 http://www.92dp.com/brand/ ), which is linked directly off the front page. There’s virtually no limit to how specialized review sites can be, so long as there’s a ready audience. The Wow8 (http://wow8.org/ ) website is a source of maps for Warcraft and other RPGs. It has a fairly standard BBS discussion forum, but it also has one subsite devoted to map ratings (http://dp.wow8.org/ ), where netizens can rate and leave comments on the maps featured on the site.

education ::
Rate Teachers (评师 http://www.pinglaoshi.com/ ) claims to cover a million instructors at over 3,000 institutes of higher learning. Smack on the front page are links to pages rating teachers at China’s most prestigious universities, such as Peking and Tsinghua, and rankings of professors by quantitative merit (http://bit.ly/vVSem ), charm (http://bit.ly/H6TJJ ), and a more qualitative aggregation of user comments (http://bit.ly/zfkDS ). Site members grade professors according to course difficulty (易), helpfulness (助), clarity (晰), and course interest (趣), as well as personal charm (魅力). Here’s a page for a professor at the Central Academy of Drama (http://bit.ly/GABsS ) who is generally liked by students (one even has a crush on him), although a few think he’s a little abnormal. Teachers can respond to reviews left on their page once they have verified their identity, but that function doesn’t seem to be used much. As befits an education-related site, sponsorship is from book-related sites such as Amazon.cn. The Rate Teachers caused a bit of controversy back in 2007 (http://bit.ly/r7vOd ) when the mainland media reported that some teachers were upset about negative reviews they received, and other observers suggested that the site could be subject to libel claims. However, those concerns seem to have been in the minority, and the website takes pains to focus on the best teachers rather than the worst. RVedu (http://www.rvedu.com/ ), a website run by e-learning provider Ambow (http://www.ambow.com.cn/ ), is a general education portal with a focus on ratings (the subtitle of the site is “Education Ratings Net” 教育点评网). At RVedu, schools rather than teachers are the focus of ratings (http://www.rvedu.com/daxue ), and the website covers state-run, private (http://www.rvedu.com/minban ), art school (http://www.rvedu.com/art ), exchange programs (http://www.rvedu.com/liuxue ), and individual majors (http://www.rvedu.com/zhuanye ). Would you believe that city planning (城市规划) is currently the hottest major on the site?

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: Neocha.com, a social networking site for Chinese creatives, has released a new and improved version of its popular music player, NEXT.

NEXT streams songs from Neocha.com’s library of user-uploaded music, one of the largest online collections of 100% original works from Chinese independent musicians. The player is fully bilingual and simple to use: just press the NEXT button to, uh…hear the next song. That’s it.

What’s new in NEXT 2.0:

• Genres – Only want to listen to Chinese indie folk, or only electronic, or only rock, or only hip-hop today? Take your pick. Now you can choose the genre of music you want to stream from NEXT.
• Random – Can’t decide which genre to listen to? Then don’t – just click on NEXT’s “random” button for a continuous mix of tracks across all genres.
• Ratings – Absolutely love or hate a song? Let us know with one click via NEXT’s 5-star rating system.
• Comments – Want to tell us and the world what you think, enter comments and feedback about any song directly via the NEXT player. Your comments will appear for everyone to see on the track’s Neocha.com page.
• Top Ten – Based on listener feedback via the 5 star rating system, NEXT maintains a continuously updated, dynamic Top Ten list. Just click on the “top ten” button.
• Track Sharing – Want to link someone to the song your listening to? Just click NEXT’s “share” button to copy a direct permalink to your clipboard, then paste it anywhere you want: Facebook, Twitter, IM, email, etc.
• Player Sharing – Want to put the NEXT player somewhere else online? Just click NEXT’s “share” button for HTML code to be copied to your clipboard, then embed it anywhere you want online (blogs, spaces, forums, etc.)
• Adobe Air – Want the NEXT player to live on your computer and not only in your browser? Download NEXT as an Abobe Air program (Mac / PC compatible).
• Donate – Want to support the development of Chinese creative communities and the local independent music scene in China? Click on NEXT’s “donate” button to “chip in” to improving NEXT and the concert / recording / equipment / merchandising, etc. fund for bands on Neocha.com.

NEXT 2.0 is available as:

• an Adobe Air application. Link here to download.
• a Web pop out. Link here to start the Web pop version of NEXT.
• a widget embeddable anywhere online via copy-and-paste HTML code (i.e. the version embedded in this post). Link here for the HTML code.

What’s in the works for NEXT 3.0:

• Personalized playlists
• More ways to share (directly via Twitter, Fanfou, Facebook, Kaixin, etc.)
• Paid downloads / ringtones
• Mobile phones application versions (Apple iPhone / Google Android, etc.)
• Got ideas for the next release, let us know at:

For any questions, suggestions, feedback, etc. related to Neocha.com or NEXT, please leave a comment here and Sean Leow or I will reply promptly. Or, send us an email at: .

// AjS

[full disclosure: 56minus1 is a partner at Neocha.com]

:: music, which according to CNNIC has been the most widespread use of the Internet in China for several years running, immediately calls to mind the piracy issue, and indeed a fair proportion of local netizens’ interest in music is applied toward searching for free downloadable copies of copyrighted songs and albums. Netizens frequently use tools like Baidu MP3 search or , but they can also visit specialized music BBSs which, while ostensibly hosting conversations on a wide range of topics, get most of their traffic in the file-sharing sub-boards (i.e. users freely sharing and downloading copyrighted music). See ZASV (杂碎后院) for a BBS that gets nearly 20,000 comments a day, most of them in sub-boards devoted to various types of audio files.

But there’s a legitimate side to China’s online music as well. Sites are increasingly striking deals to stream major-label music and small-time musicians have an ever-widening array of opportunities to gain publicity for their own original compositions. There are opportunities for brands too: sponsoring widgets or having their name attached to a song competition gets them exposure in front of and helps them connect to creative types. Below is a snapshot of how this is playing out on the Chinese Internet.

music listening communities ::
Last.fm, the popular radio-style online music streaming service, offers an interface aimed at users in mainland China. Users can search for music in traditional and simplified characters to pull up bands or artists they want to listen to. A search for the Beijing punk band “Joyside” returns a page listing six tracks along with a radio stream that includes music automatically-selected to be similar to Joyside’s sound. Last.fm members can join discussion groups, such as Chinese Indie, and can consult schedules of live performances in venues across the country, although the Web site initially limits the list to the city where your IP address is located. My 911Pop (青檬网络电台) is a Facebook-like SNS community attached to the Beijing Radio’s 911Pop music streaming widget. The widget itself is embeddable in a wide variety of popular SNSs, but 911Pop’s own community puts music at the forefront: featured celebrities are music critics and radio hosts, featured articles involve music, and the front page features Top Music Lovers and Top Music Topics. Neocha.com, a social networking site for Chinese creative groups, has the largest online collection of original (原创) independent Chinese music. All of the music is uploaded by its users and in the genres of rock, folk, electronic, and hip-hop. Within the site, users can customize the music players on their personal page to play any mix of music selected from the site’s collection. Customizable players also act as widgets that can be embedded externally via basic copy-and-paste HTML code. Additionally, Neocha has developed NEXT, a downloadable / web pop-out player for anyone to use. The NEXT player plays music directly and only from the Neocha.com music database.

portal offerings ::
China’s major online portals provide streaming functionality as part of their community offerings as well. Sina’s Music Box (新浪乐库) aggregates music-related news and information about the latest albums, and in addition to streaming, the service can burn personalized mix CDs. Sina’s music widget can be seamlessly incorporated into its blog service, and it has an extended array of widgets and software on its Musina Labs. On QQ’s music channel, streaming of copyrighted music is available for all, but downloading is only allowed for paying VIP members.  In addition to being able to embed music in their QQ blogs, VIP users get a crown icon / badge displayed on their QQ instant messaging user profile. Sohu’s music channel updates with new music every day and follows domestic and international charts. Sohu hosts a competition for original music which is branded by Red Bull (红牛能量音乐新发现), and features a TV show-like video series called Sohu Concert (搜狐歌会) in which singers interact with fans. Sohu forum users can sign up for a chance at an invitation. The channel also has a sub-board hosting music reviews.

band homes ::
Bands congregate on a number of places in Chinese cyberspace. The music subsite of MySpace.cn (聚友音乐) hosts Chinese-language pages for world acts, local signed musicians, and amateur netizen musicians. Categories are relatively fluid; the current top “MySpace original music” is the girl duo BY2, signed to Singapore’s Ocean Butterflies Records (海蝶唱片). “World rankings” champ is the US hip-hop outfit The Black Eyed Peas, who have 600,898 friends. MySpace lists live performances for the city that you are in; many venues have their own MySpace pages. Under the MySpace Music umbrella is My Choice (听,你安排), a weekly competition to chose a song list to be broadcast on BTTV, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps’ satellite channel that recently retooled its focus for the youth market. According to the rules, a list of 50 songs is released along with a theme. Users pick ten songs and campaign for votes from their MySpace friends. Users whose choices match the list ultimately chosen by the station and who have garnered the most online support win a prize. The set is broadcast on Friday evenings from 6 – 7pm. Douban.com, a popular SNS known for its arts and culture focus, has a section devoted to music which allows users, and especially bands, to create pages for themselves, similar to MySpace. Albums, singles, and performance dates are linked to the band pages pages how well the performances go. Functionality is being constantly updated; the relatively-new Artists front page lists groups by name and features a tag cloud that illustrates the story of musician that inhabits Douban: Indie, Pop, Rock and Punk are currently the top tags. Fans who are Douban members can interact on these pages or “watch” them, which makes updates show up on their own home pages. Acts hosted include established groups like the popular Beijing rock band Sound Fragments (声音碎片) as well relative newcomers like the unsigned folk band Whistling Chambers (花哨密室), who have uploaded song lyrics as part of their Douban blog. Neocha.com is also home to nearly 2000 local, independent and signed Chinese bands and musicians who have profiles on the site.

original music communities ::
A number of communities are devoted to netizens sharing their own original compositions, usually categorized into “original songs” (原创), “covers” (翻唱), and “accompaniment” (伴奏). 5sing is a community of music creators who can upload their sound files to share with other users. The site features a music player that streams the latest or hottest tracks, blogs, and a variety of special interest community groups. Each month the site features a Covers Competition in which members try out their skills on a chosen song in the hopes of winning virtual cash. A8 (原创中国) is a similar community with original, cover, band, and corporate music sections. Ordinary members, expert judges, and DJs rate uploaded music and create their own ranking charts. The site recently announced that users could sign an electronic agreement to opt into a site-wide promotion deal to monetize original compositions (into ringtones and such). A8 is also part of a Pepsi-sponsored million-yuan grand prize music competition whose initial round is going on right now. And even governments are getting into the original composition SNS act: Sinomic (原创音乐地带), an online music-oriented community co-sponsored by the Communist Youth League of Jilin, aims to foster young musical talent in the province. Neocha.com’s music section is also an “original music only” community.

iKala ::
This unique Beijing-based social network system is aimed at Karaoke lovers (the Chinese name of the site, 爱卡拉, directly translates as “Love Karaoke”). The main draw of the site is the ability to upload videos of your own karaoke performances (which you record using your computer’s microphone and webcam), which the site’s video player then overlays with song lyrics. Members share their karaoke videos on “klogs” (as in karaoke blogs) which is what the site calls its blog function, and can pit their own performance against other members in a head-to-head “PK Show” that gets voted on by the site’s users. The site offers typical SNS functionality like friending and gifts as well as the ability to become someone’s “fan” (粉丝). iKala is still in its infancy, with plans to charge for future value-added services (such as accelerated access and specialty virtual items) using K-points, but it is already an intriguing illustration of the sort of niche / vertical SNS that can cater to Chinese netizens’ desire to express themselves.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]