Monday marks China’s new year. The dragon, whose year it is this year, is the only mythical creature in the calendar but, as Europe’s digital commissioner Neelie Kroes writes, also “is the innovative entrepreneur, intensely powerful yet flexible, and the bringer of great fortune”.
That bodes well for digital media business in a country where internet adoption has reached 513 million, within which microblog use has hit 250 million, smartphone use is booming and web video consumption is growing fast.
To me, these teens, who used an iMac to film themselves dancing in Hong Kong’s Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Store this weekend, represent the confident, creative, westernised class that will turn China’s digital media sector in to one of the world’s most dynamic in the year ahead…
http://www.youtube.com/v/k4D3xrKqoTA?version=3&hl=en_US
The Apple Store geniuses are wearing red to mark the year of the dragon. Here, on the other hand, is how the latest version of Finland’s Angry Birds Seasons imagines the Chinese occasion…
http://www.youtube.com/v/wUNuuneCtqU?version=3&hl=en_US
It’s all about old traditions. China’s burgeoning weibo (microblog) craze, which is letting Chinese communicate and represent their lives for themselves, reached a new high point as the new year began.
Sina’s Weibo service saw 481,207 messages in the year’s first minute (an average 32,312 per second), beating western counterpart Twitter’s high point of 25,088 per second, which was set when Japanese Twitter users discussed an episode of the Castle In The Sky anime back in December, according to Donews.
“China and the EU have agreed to work together to measure the ICT sector’s environmental impact,” writes the European Commission’s Information Society and Media director-general Zoran StanÄiÄ meanwhile.
“At the same time, we have agreed to pursue our existing collaboration in particular technological areas, notably the Internet of Things.”