I was surprised to read the Toiletgate story. It is this saga of a famous, now infamous Chinese telecaster, Meng Guang mei, who was sacked from her job as a result of blogs and pressure from the internet public.
The incident that has happened this past week in China, demonstrates the power of the blogs. Mind you, the blog readership of Sina in China counts in Millions. Thus the pressure exerted is extremely strong and concern the elite of the societe. You will realize that only the elite would be able to afford access to the internet.
As suggested by Joel de Rosnay in his recent book, which by the way is free and available on his web, blogging has the potential to rival mass media we know today. For sure mass media & mass communication are being transformed at a very fast speed by the technology and the widespread of the internet.
As a simple illustration, before you had a wait for a specific hour to have News on either your TV station or radio. With the proliferation of radio stations & TV stations, News is available more often with specific news casting stations. Today with my BlogBridge and the RSS feed, I am now able to be fed non stop with news on the specific topics selected and chosen.
The Advertising & Publicity industry is on the front line of the assault of the blog revolution. Billons of dollars are being diverted from the traditional mass media vehicles, such as Press, TV, billboards to more incisive forms to reach the targeted customer on a one to one which would be more effective. Marketers have to review and adjust their strategies fast.
I am looking forward to this exciting time where innovation, technology and perspirations will again take the trophy of success.
4 comments ↓
I think I missed something. What proof do you have to maintain that “only the elite would be able to afford access to the internet” in China?
The online reports found of China’s Internet users demography date as from 2004. And according to this research paper (http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?ProductID=1175647&g=1) “54.1% of all Internet users in China were under 24 years of age” with “students constitute 31.9% of the Chinese Internet population, according to findings from CNNIC”.
Thanks Aadil for your comments.Of the total population of China the percentage of Internet users I imagine will be small for having visited the Chinese country side and remote rural areas where even electricity was not available. Not to talk of internet cafes or PCs.Progress is fast I must admit but it will take years before internet will be available in the proportion of Europe or Mauritius is today enjoying. Mind you,Size is unbelievable in China. A few % of the population may mean Millions…..
It was mentioned in the said 2004 report on Chinese Internet demography that in a few years the number of Internet users in China would be around, if not more, 200 million! That’s quite an astounding number – and two years have passed since then.
Blue-collar workers constitute the major part of the online Chinese population, true, but the students are catching up, if you take into account the number of blogs springing up these days. (that’s one way of agreeing that the elite do have the monopoly of Internet access, I guess)
200M out of 1.3B is 15%
Its an over-estimate, since according to http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm
the internet penetration rate in China is 9.4% which is around 120M. Still a lot, but a far cry from the 1.3 billion inhabitants. The sad fact is that “small” cities are 0-6 million people big. Those a drops in the ocean of people there.
In the whole of asia, the internet penetration is only marginally better than China: 10.4% which is lower than the rest of the world: 23.4%.
The conclusion is that most people living in Asia live in rural areas with no internet access… Hell… south america is in a bad shape as well in that department.
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