What happened to former killer features portals and email in China?
Story byErnst-Jan Pfauth
Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He a(show all)Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He also served as The Next Web’s blog’s first blogger and Editor in Chief, back in 2008. AtDe Correspondent, Ernst-Jan serves as publisher, fostering the expansion of the platform.
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Influential portals
The largest sites in China are still portals. Lih mentioned that most Chinese Internet users hardly use the address bar while surfing. Instead, they click their way through the web. Not surprisingly, the main portals are huge.Sinafor example, is so influential that even government officials put @sina email addresses on their business cards. Other big names areSohu,163, and51.
As you’ll see, a lot of Chinese web services have a number as their name. When you speak out these numbers in Chinese, they sound like certain phrases. 51 sounds like “I want”. Put a word like jobs behind it and the numbers suddenly make sense.
Forget email, Chinese use IM
So what about email? Why isn’t that popular? A survey by theChinese Academy of Social Sciencesshowed that only 30 percent of the Chinese Internet users check their email on a daily basis. They would rather use IM. Particularly because their private conversations aren’t saved – or at least they have that impression.
China’s most popular IM serviceQQcounts a stunning amount of 341900000 active users. That’s actually more than the total number of Chinese Internet users (253 million), which means a lot of people have multiple identities.
