Originally published August 20 2005
As blogging popularity erupts in China, small companies vie for a piece of the action
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Web site Technorati claims a blog is started every second in China, and C-Net reports that small Chinese blog companies are attempting to take advantage of this growing market before it is consumed by larger foreign companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
Blogging is blooming in China as the country's vast pool of Web users clamor to make their mark online and as ambitious local start-ups battle foreign heavyweights for a piece of the market.
The growing stable of e-scribes, still small by global standards, has attracted homegrown companies and foreign giants like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo offering blogging Web pages to outspoken Chinese Internet users.
"Users don't care too much if the blog company is foreign or local, but I think local companies have more understanding of the community," said Kevin Wen, a spokesman for Beijing-based start-up Bokee.com, whose name is Chinese for blog.
Bokee, formerly called BlogChina, has attracted $616,523 (5 million yuan) in seed funding as well as $10 million in venture capital funding from six U.S. and Chinese companies.
The company expects its revenue to grow to five times its August level by the end of this year and predicts that its user base will reach the 10 million mark, he added.
Microsoft says more than 1 million users in China have joined its MSN Spaces service so far, which is operated out of China and was launched in the country just three months ago.
Bokee's site carries ads from the likes of Dell, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, although the company declined to say how much revenue it generates.
Risky business But speaking one's mind can be risky business in a country where the media is tightly controlled and chat forums and online bulletin boards are routinely monitored for controversial political comments.
Microsoft's blog venture in China recently came under fire for censoring words such as "freedom," "democracy," "human rights" and "Taiwan independence" from the subject lines of its free online journals.
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