(1888PressRelease)
March 23, 2009 - Blogs are big business in China, as there are a 30 million Chinese blogs, according to CNNIC. However, discussion forum boards along with email and instant messaging are even bigger.
Site's like Best Blogs Asia, run by China based Entrepreneur Giles Dawe has developed a Asian only based Directory which showcases Blogs from around Asia.
Best Blogs Asia has 1000+ active blogs on the site from many countries. Users can view the sites and vote for their favourites. The actual site concept came about in 2004, where a Hong Kong based site called Flying Chair (now defunct) came up with the idea of promoting Hong Kong blogs, as at the time the focus was on American and mainly European bloggers. Best Blogs Asia then took over the site and has been succesfully promoting Asian blogs since 2005.
The problem with the China blog scene is that the Chinese Government censors the Internet, based on the certain content themes. It's not uncommon for sites like Google and blog type hosted sites to be automatically shut-down. The Chinese cyber-police are always hovering so self-censorship comes naturally to bloggers in China.
Another issue to look at, is how Chinese bloggers promote themselves. They mainly use the IM and word-of mouth to promote their work, although their sites may be popular with upto 1000 comments per post, they are just circulated to a close group of friends/people you know.
China based blogs will only get bigger as incomes improve and once seemed "luxury items" such as an internet connection will now be standard. I think non-Asian based bloggers should take into account their Chinese counterparts by perhaps writing relevant posts, joining relevant Facebook groups, adding friends to Twitter and perhaps translating blog posts to Chinese.
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