A better domain name does not guarantee you anything...

We have a chinese 'Facebook' called Kaixin001.com, meaning happy001. The name is weird and not catchy at all. Why 001? Well, it is not a good choice for the company but a have-to ones. As my research goes, I found there is actually a little story behind the domain name.

Before the launch of the Kaixin001.com, the Tencent (china's biggest Internet Operator ) already designed out the whole idea and the website, and set a date for the website's official launch. Then there is a graduate student who also had the similar idea got to know about this from whatever sources of info then decided to launch his website in advance. So he did it with other 8 students of his friends. And soon it draw a big attention among office workers and became popular within several months! During that period, because of cash limitation, the student actually has no income since his Kaixin001 is not famous enough to attract any advertisers yet. The Tencent kept delaying its website launching and sent people talk to that student to either close his website or buy it with a small amount of money. Surprisingly the student said NO to Tencent and borrowed money from his parents and friends to continue run that website.

And even that day Tencent is still positive about his product, simply because of two reasons: 1) Tencent is abviously better choices for customers, it is powerful and trustable 2) The product has a better domain name which they registered first: kaixin.com (happy.com). Then as we can all expected, Tencent launched its kaixin website finally. The day it launched, the day Tencent found there is not that big chance for them to over win that little company as they originally thought. Not many people registered to become their members no matter how many more games and how fancy interface Tencent can provide. For me, as one of the daily customers of Kaixin001, my reason for not choosing Tencent's product is simple, I am already a member of kaixin001 which gives me exactly what any social community website provides, such as networking, games (I have a restaurant there to cook and manage everyday and perhaps nights too...), sharing photos, leave comments, write dairies, upload profiles, etc. There are not that many people on this planet have that much time to run those kind of things on two almost identical websites on a regular basis.

So business somestimes is as simple as it is. The way graduate students think and do might been underestimated or even forgotten by those business winners. It is always risky to be the first to eat cramb, and the returns are usually propotionally same to the risks you have to handle.
 

Do not ignore low-cost business!

I currently heard about the story of a small chinese auto manufacturer bought the big VOLVO. The small chinese auto manufacturer named Ji Li in Pin Yin who is only 14 years old (not an adult when talks abt human) while VOLVO is already over 80 now. I could not help but wonder how well will the cross-national and cross-age marriage end up?

Similar things hit my ears again this morning that a chinese low-cost competitor Huawei now ranks no.1 in fixed-loine networks in US by knocking down several years operating giant IT and telecommunication american companies. Surprisingly coincidence, I told myself.

Later I feel both news are telling me something deeper. As what I wrote the other day on this google blog that Im currently running a ebus together with a friend here and we both suck at it and I sometimes disappointed and wondering if we are hitting the wrong angle. The above two cases remind me of a very simple principle called holding on.

I guess what Im trying to say is although eBUS is becoming more and more powerful, it takes time to gain momentum, especially for low-cost chanllengers in developed segments of markets.

Wish me luck!

Internet Domain

I saw this news a few weeks ago and I just want to share it with you all and also want to tell prof that he was right about it when I asked a similar question about website establishing.




The most (and least) popular domains on the internet

Jun 7th 2010

THE .net domain is the most popular on the internet, with more than 260m hosts counted by the most recent Internet Domain Survey. Hosts are separate computer “addresses” that are contacted when a website or domain name is called up. Japan's top-level domain .jp has the most hosts, counting over twice as many as Italy's. The biggest generic top-level domains are .edu, used by education institutions across the world, and .mil, which is used only by the American military. At the other end of the scale, only 47 hosts with the Afghanistan suffix .af were recorded, fewer than the Holy See's 67. Iraq and North Korea are even less popular, ranking joint 251st and 261st out of a possible 268 domains. And two went unused: .sj and .pm.

Meanwhile, I am currently running a e-commerce website with an American friend here, and we feel very hard to improve our internet business with a min expences and to be honest, all things that we are learning so far is not easy to do as it says in the text book...

Whos' got the new iPhone?

Hello all, sorry I wanna makes it BIG BIG, since the prof does say we cannot advertise here, so here I go.... please do respond if you have any info related!!!

WHO HAS THE NEW IPHONE OR IPAD, LET ME KNOW!!! NO MATTER LOCK OR UNLOCK!

Im wonderng if I can just call it a blog for tonight... anyway... I will probbally write more when sth come up.

So thanks for leaving your footprint!

Kitty

Most great ideas take 20 more years to become an overnight success!

Recently, I heard many news or comments about the newly released iPhone 4.0. Although Im not a fan of iPhone and Im using the iPhone 3GS, and I shall say Im actually a huge fan of Apple, not only for its amazing products but its business and marketing strategies.

People admire Apple's products and Apple's fans always talk about how innovating their ideas are and how amazing their products are. But if you carelly think about it, almost none of those technologies are originally created or invented by them. NOKIA has couple of great cells too, one of them has functions that iPhone does not currently owns, such as NFC (near-field communication) which allows individuals pay bills just by walking through a supermarket scan door. But why we did not see many NOKIA manie here? Why we did not see people waiting in line to purchase phones from NOKIA yet? It is Apple's marketing rocks.

Apple is so good at combining basic but good technologies together that they are not even shamed of it, they sell it out, shout it hell loud to tell the world that that's what they are really good at and they are very proud of being the expert in this area! Apple understands what make a company stay in business and what drives cash in. Instead of meeting customers desires, what about create their desires? Leading is not as tiring as following.

Maybe that's why people would like to talk good or bad about iPhone, since the brand deserves it. And that's finnaly comes to marketing strategies not really accountable to technology itself. Im also thinking, similar principle to national countries in today's competitive world.

What do you guys think? Welcome to leave comments to discuss!

You are seeing China everyday now...

As I started my 3rd term at CLU, for almost every class, my professors talked about China or told stories about China, which kept my hands busy with writing down those opinions or comments. Most of the stories are somehow different than what I've heard when I was in Shanghai and I guess that's just because of standing at different positions or holding varied perspectives.



So it happened like, my Business Law professor has adopt a daughter years ago in Beijing and guess what, that daughter is one of the most famous actress in China who has been in prison for one year and now came out to the public vision again. This daughter told her father she was in prison actually because she told bad things about the president of China on the live TV instead of being sentenced for avoiding paying taxes on purpose. Well... another inside source of information to me... My project management professor told us one of the most famous disaster in project management history is HSBC case (HongKang-Shanghai Bank of China) and those project managers made huge obvious mistakes because of that time Chinese government policies and office policies as well. I've known about HSBC very little but since it runs so well now in Shanghai that I can not wait to know more detail about the case! My economic professor told she and her husband have lived in Taiwan for 10 years and they'd love to go back again. She even discussed a little bit about the current sensitive relationship between Taiwan and the mainland with the whole class which brought me in not that bright mood... I happened to argue with a student from Korea who was telling the whole class that most of Chinese products are in low quality.



I figured, the longer I stay here, the more I am wondering since when China draws that much attention in a western country?! When I m worrying about the current Chinese economy and its doubt real estate market, I'm also thinking if this kind of attention would bring good or bad to China and if it would further affect Chinese people who live in US?


I met lots of Americans in Shanghai when I was working, and I am meeting lots of Americans here. I shall say people say things differently when given different environments or situations. I think it worthwhile to find out the true feeling even it is not that amusing or comforting.