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The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

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Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#31

Post by est »

liuliu wrote: post #4
coconutrandom wrote: post #2

That was a really good article Put another way: Sure the Chinese can learn a thing or two about original Web ideas from the Valley, but the Web 2.0 generation can learn a lot about monetization from China. and it goes to explain with an example with a Chinese version of match.com

That's true. The virtual good actually made Tencent, the largest IM provider became the most profitable company in China. And few months ago, one of my friends still argued that online-casual game has no market in U.S. because "the market was dominated by game console". The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China). Those randomn…

> The first widely-adapted webgame invented in China (www.mop.com), the company behind renren.com(largest facebook.com copycat in China).

mop.com was the most popular personal website in 2003-2005 then it was aquired by Oak Pacific Interactive. Then mop goes down fail ever since. Oak Pacific Interactive also aquired XiaoNei from WangXing. WangXing operates FanFou, a twitter copycat.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#32

Post by bnomis »

est wrote: post #29
bnomis wrote: post #27

The main reasons local versions are more popular are a combination of: - it's in Chinese - it's not blocked by the GFW - it's faster (the GFW slows access to everything outside of it down) - it's still accessible when China Telecom has been tweaking the routers and DNS servers (which they seem to do every week) That is, practical reasons which lead to adoption and growth. There are, of course, cultural specifics that…

> the GFW slows access to everything outside of it down Just FYI: the GFW works in parallel, all backbone cross nation data are copied to GFW equipments, and GFW actively injects RST packets into backbone transmissions. I don't see how this slows the Internet down. It's just the total bandwidth is too small. There has to be more cross-pacific fiber optics.

Yes the GFW is regional - i.e. there's more than one filter across the country. But the GFW actively monitors and blocks on content. This filtering and inspection takes finite time and hence slows everything down.

There is plenty of bandwidth. Accessing the same sites from Hong Kong is orders of magnitude faster. And BTW less prone to random errors introduced by clueless monopoly operators.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#33

Post by est »

bnomis wrote: post #32
est wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the GFW slows access to everything outside of it down Just FYI: the GFW works in parallel, all backbone cross nation data are copied to GFW equipments, and GFW actively injects RST packets into backbone transmissions. I don't see how this slows the Internet down. It's just the total bandwidth is too small. There has to be more cross-pacific fiber optics.

Yes the GFW is regional - i.e. there's more than one filter across the country. But the GFW actively monitors and blocks on content . This filtering and inspection takes finite time and hence slows everything down. There is plenty of bandwidth. Accessing the same sites from Hong Kong is orders of magnitude faster. And BTW less prone to random errors introduced by clueless monopoly operators.

> blocks on content

Perhaps you didn't understand how GFW works. The content is delivered to you after the RST signal, it's just the standard TCP stack ignored it. You browser may loading a page in half then suddenly Page-Not-Found, but if you have sniffer like tcpdump you can see the rest of the packets were still sent to you correctly.

Another phenomenon to help you understand the mechanism is that GFW fails from time to time. Why? Because the RST packets arrives too late.

HK has its own Internet infrastructure, it has nothing to do with mainland Internet. In fact lots of inner-China Internet connections are routed to HK then to the rest of the world.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#34

Post by bnomis »

est wrote: post #33
bnomis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the GFW is regional - i.e. there's more than one filter across the country. But the GFW actively monitors and blocks on content . This filtering and inspection takes finite time and hence slows everything down. There is plenty of bandwidth. Accessing the same sites from Hong Kong is orders of magnitude faster. And BTW less prone to random errors introduced by clueless monopoly operators.

> blocks on content Perhaps you didn't understand how GFW works. The content is delivered to you after the RST signal, it's just the standard TCP stack ignored it. You browser may loading a page in half then suddenly Page-Not-Found, but if you have sniffer like tcpdump you can see the rest of the packets were still sent to you correctly. Another phenomenon to help you understand the mechanism is that GFW fails from t…

The fact that RST is sent mid stream in no way lessens the point that the content monitoring leads to a narrowing of bandwidth which slows things down.

HK's Internet Infrastructure maybe its own but it is still this side of the Pacific and it is a lot faster to access US sites from HK than it is from China. And if, as you said, China traffic is routed through HK then the only difference is the GFW which is slowing things down.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#35

Post by doug_m »

coconutrandom wrote: post #2

That was a really good article Put another way: Sure the Chinese can learn a thing or two about original Web ideas from the Valley, but the Web 2.0 generation can learn a lot about monetization from China. and it goes to explain with an example with a Chinese version of match.com

It was a really interesting article but it draws a very general conclusion, that we can learn from the copy-cats "look how much they changed the business model" and listed a few examples, from a very specific example.

I mean, it what way were the job board and twitter clone different if we're drawing this out past a single example of successful dating website building in China

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#36

Post by maxklein »

amix wrote: post #8

I think author misses that the Chinese market isn't free and most of the western sites are blocked by the great Firewall. I think their market would look at lot differently if their market was free and anyone could compete on it.

You're ridiculously uninformed. The chinese market is very free, and very very few sites are blocked compared to the size of the internet. Don't comment when you have no idea.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#37

Post by cglee »

chrischen wrote: post #5
coconutrandom wrote: post #2

That was a really good article Put another way: Sure the Chinese can learn a thing or two about original Web ideas from the Valley, but the Web 2.0 generation can learn a lot about monetization from China. and it goes to explain with an example with a Chinese version of match.com

I think Chinese people will just relate better to homegrown stuff. Good thing I'm Chinese. Hopefully I will have a cultural advantage if I decide to operate there one day.

I think McDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, Coke, Pepsi, etc etc may disagree with you. Software has a thing or two to learn from those guys wrt China.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#38

Post by est »

bnomis wrote: post #34
est wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blocks on content Perhaps you didn't understand how GFW works. The content is delivered to you after the RST signal, it's just the standard TCP stack ignored it. You browser may loading a page in half then suddenly Page-Not-Found, but if you have sniffer like tcpdump you can see the rest of the packets were still sent to you correctly. Another phenomenon to help you understand the mechanism is that GFW fails from t…

The fact that RST is sent mid stream in no way lessens the point that the content monitoring leads to a narrowing of bandwidth which slows things down. HK's Internet Infrastructure maybe its own but it is still this side of the Pacific and it is a lot faster to access US sites from HK than it is from China. And if, as you said, China traffic is routed through HK then the only difference is the GFW which is slowing th…

So what's your point? I don't see how GFW slows the Internet down in any way. Except RST packets bandwidth which is too tiny.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#39

Post by roundsquare »

dstorrs wrote: post #10

The thing that impressed me the most was the discussion of the quantitative work they have done. Song Li has generated an enormous database of pragmatic, mathematically proven advice about how to be successful with the opposite gender...somehow, using it for nothing more than a matchmaking service restricted to China seems small potatoes. Granted, it was gathered from a Chinese-only audience, so some of it is probabl…

Yeah. It'd be awesome if they published it the way okcupid was.

Re: The Chinese Internet: Why the “Copy Cats” Win

#40

Post by bnomis »

est wrote: post #38
bnomis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that RST is sent mid stream in no way lessens the point that the content monitoring leads to a narrowing of bandwidth which slows things down. HK's Internet Infrastructure maybe its own but it is still this side of the Pacific and it is a lot faster to access US sites from HK than it is from China. And if, as you said, China traffic is routed through HK then the only difference is the GFW which is slowing th…

So what's your point? I don't see how GFW slows the Internet down in any way. Except RST packets bandwidth which is too tiny.

Just because you don't see how it slows things down does not mean that it does not slow things down. The web in China is slower than the web in HK. Why? I don't know precisely because I don't have access to the GFW of course. Think of it as a funnel, the communication has to pass through the funnel so that the RST (or whatever) can be inserted. There's only so much BW in to and out of the funnel - so the traffic slows. The very fact the filtering happens must insert some delay.

Have you tried the web in China?

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