:: Chinese netizens have a plenty of options when it comes to spending money online, but their choices are more limited when it comes to managing their finances. Similarly, there’s tons of information about investment and the stock market, but not as much about other aspects of financial planning.

Here are a few different types of websites and services that Chinese netizens are using for wealth and personal finance management:

household budget websites ::
A large number of websites have sprung up in the past few years to help Chinese netizens manage their household finances. Zhangke (账客网) is a typical example. Its name is formed from the word zhang, “account,” and ke, a common suffix used in Chinese Web2.0-related terms. Together, the term means something like “accounster.” The URL means “I’ve tallied it!” The clean-and-simple site offers monthly plans for entering data via mobile phone, and it provides functionality for discussing consumer-related topics, posting expenditure diaries, and finding other consumers in your city. Caakee (财客在线) was founded in early 2006 and targets white-collar workers between the ages of 25 and 35. It has a large feature set, including the ability to handle stocks, funds, and credit cards, and to export all data in an Excel file for offline applications. Caakee founder Tian Keshan is a young entrepreneur who recently appeared on an Apprentice-like Shanghai TV show called No Free Lunch. My Money (网上理财记帐) features an extensive list of capabilities that includes rolling stock quote updates and foreign exchange accounting for 26 different currencies. It lists frequent system updates: in May it launched version 3, in September version 4, and in November version 4.5. There are far more of these sites than can easily be summed up here, but you can find twenty of them listed here on Parandroid, a blog devoted to lists of software and web technologies.

financial blog sites ::
Many investment and financial planning experts blog on hosts designed to bring together bloggers on financial topics. CNStock’s blog platform hosts wildly popular stock bloggers who have mirrors across all of the major blog providers as well as other writers who address less exciting financial issues. This is to be expected, according to a recent post by Tang Xuefeng, a financial consultant who blogs on CNStock and writes columns about personal finance for the financial channels of other portals. Tang notes, “China’s financial sector is mainly Investment right now, and Personal Finance is lacking. People chase headlong after profit and are unconcerned with rational, practical planning and management of risk, benefits, resources, and goals.” Caixun (财讯) is a financial portal associated with the Beijing-based Shihua International Financial Information (世华财讯). It’s a large, cleanly-designed site that provides news and analysis, as well as exclusive commentary from experts (mostly on investment and market-relate issues). A large personal finance section offers extensive archives of relevant background information, reports, and reviews of financial products on offer from China’s major banks. Associated BBS discussion forums and blogs fill out the community aspects of the site. As on other financial platforms, specific wealth-management topics are in the minority, but people are blogging about housing purchases, white collar savings, and strategies for managing taxes.

e-Commerce-related communities ::
Websites that facilitate online spending are also home to money-management and personal finance communities. Alipay, an online payment service run by e-Commerce giant Alibaba, has a community subsection that offers general-interest forums. It has two major sub-boards devoted to financial issues: an investment and personal finance board, which hosts discussions about financial planning, stocks, and family finances, and an economization board, devoted to exchanging techniques for saving money. Alipay itself has set up partnerships with other financial websites, including a number of the personal budget services found in #1 above.

online bank communities ::
Most of China’s major banks have websites that are one-way: they provide netizens with information but do not allow for much interaction beyond basic online banking services. Some have minimal forums set up to allow netizens to ask questions online, while a few go all out and host extensive BBS discussion forums that cover a broad range of financial topics. China Merchants Bank offers forums with content ranging from online banking issues, to currency markets and investment, to financial planning and insurance. ICBC has only a limited selection of forums, but it schedules live video chats on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Financial experts are online to discuss currency trends, financial planning, fund dynamics, and other related topics with interested netizens. The China Construction Bank website has a section featuring the products of online merchants, which allows netizens to reserve plane tickets, buy jewelry, and purchase online gaming vouchers through the bank.

widgets / tools ::
Online financial calculators are provided by a number of banks and financial websites. ICBC offers a set of tools for calculating loans, returns on stocks and bonds, and foreign exchange rates, among other data. Financial portal Hexun offers an impressive battery of tools for performing calculations related to credit estimates, period investment returns, insurance, major household purchases, and retirement income, as does Eastmoney. Widget platforms offer a variety of stock widgets that can be embedded into blogs and other web pages. Sohu’s Open Widget platform hosts an Eastmoney-branded stock widget that reports general market information for Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as allowing blog visitors to look up the activity of specific stocks. Another relatively popular (though unbranded) widget charts detailed stock info on a large graph. Bloggers who embed the widget can select a stock to track, and the widget will automatically update with near-live market activity and rolling averages.

// 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.]

:: the term “widget” refers to two related but distinct concepts.

On one hand, there are downloadable / installed widgets: small programs that run on a user’s computer and accomplish simple, discrete tasks. Examples might be an alarm clock, a notepad, or a window that scrolls the latest stock quotes. See here for a more detailed description of this type of widget.

On the other hand, there are Web widgets: similar in function to downloadable / installed widgets, but instead of running on a user’s computer, they are programs that are embedded into blogs and other Web pages (basically anywhere online that allows users to paste HTML code). See here for a more detailed description of this type of widget.

In January, 2008, the Chinese Web portal Sohu announced that it had partnered with Netvibes, whose Ecosystem service is a major widget platform. Sohu will extend Netvibes’ Universal Widget API (application programming interface) throughout Asia. For this reason, a lot of the most interesting widgets on the Chinese Internet are hosted on Sohu’s widget development platform.

Branded widgets present an excellent opportunity for companies to bring value to their online audiences in a fun, interactive, and most importantly, useful way. Below are a few examples of how branded widgets have been successfully used on the Chinese Internet.

contest widgets ::
For the LG KP500 “Cookie” mobile phone, LG released a branded widget on Sohu’s platform. It’s a simple memory game contained within a rendered version of the phone. The game uses icons from the phone and highlights some of the unit’s features: dragging icons reflects the KP500’s “Free Touch” technology, and shaking the phone to scatter the icons imitates its motion sensing abilities. Launched on January 6, the widget is already quite popular, ranking among the top recent widgets on Sohu’s platform. LG’s Free Touch campaign for the KP500 includes prizes for the top three “transmitters” of the widget: bloggers who use the widget score points when visitors copy the widget to their own blogs. In a similar contest, Heartext brand feminine hygiene products released a branded widget in August that was part of a two-month-long promotion. Users who installed the widget on their blog had their blog posts entered into a general popularity contest, the winner of which would receive a beach vacation for two. The widget itself allowed blog readers to “vote up” certain blog posts.

daily Taobao widget ::
This widget, hosted by Mynon, a customizable homepage server that lets users incorporate data / aggregate content from a whole range of other Web sites into one convenient page, features hot items from the Taobao online commerce / auction house served up through the Alimama advertising platform. Users can select the type and number of items they want featured in the widget, which is also available on Sohu platform. Mynon also hosts a branded Taobao-related game widget called “Changing Room,” that lets users dress up models in clothing that’s for sale on the site. Users can store and compare outfits, and when they find something they like, they can click through to Taobao and make a purchase.

specialty search tool widgets ::
Beijing’s Disanji Bookstore offers a branded widget that allows users to search for books in its inventory. The bookstore is located in Zhongguancun (Beijing), a major tech center near several universities, so it has a significant proportion of “wired” customers. The city directory Web site 58.com has a branded widget that allows users to consult bus route maps for cities across the country. Kingsoft offers a widgetized edition of its iCiba translation dictionary. There’s also a branded widget that lets users search the inventory of online retailer Joyo.com.

microblog widgets ::
One popular way bloggers use widgets is to include their Twitter feed (or other microblog posts) directly on their blog (Twitter’s is ). These widgets, known as “badges” (just another name for widgets), can be found at most of China’s major microblog providers, although like Twitter, they restrict access to registered users. Tencent is an exception, and it provides instructions for including a Taotao Flash widget on many popular blogging platforms. A good description of Fanfou’s Flash widget, along with a stylish alternative that plugs into Fanfou’s API is at the Flymoon Blog. Douban’s open API has led to the creation of a number of competing widgets that interface with its broadcast service, nicely summarized at Asiapan Talks.

music widgets ::
Another common use of widgets is as online music players. Most blogging platforms provide their own Flash MP3 players, and there are countless others in all kinds of styles available on widget indices. Neocha.com, a social networking Web site aimed at musicians and a range of other artists and designers, offers a widget called the NEXT Player, which delivers a continuous stream of Chinese independent music. It’s a model of single-task simplicity, drawing songs automatically from a database of user-created and user-uploaded music and giving users only one option: to go to the next song. It also has a sponsorship panel that runs advertisements / 3rd party links from Neocha partners, and provides direct links back to the Neocha Web site to view musicians profiles and other related information. More on Neocha’s NEXT player here. Another interesting branded music widget is from Yobo.com. This music box allows users to set up their own playlists, but also offers its own recommendations based on a “Music DNA” algorithm that attempts to gauge whether a listener will enjoy a song based on previous listening choices. Yobo also offers a large selection of branded widgets that use Sohu’s platform.

// AjS

[FULL DISCLOSURE, 56minus1 is a part-time partner at Neocha.com]

[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.]