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In a country with no tradition of classified advertising, eBay sees a bright future for an online version of it

This story originally appeared in the October 24, 2005 edition of Business China, published by The Economist. Download a PDF version of this story here.

by DAN WASHBURN

Already a multi-billion-dollar industry in the US, Internet classified advertising has arrived in China, courtesy of online-auction giant eBay. But China has no history of classifieds, online or offline. So it begs the question: can online classifieds in China make money? According to the people behind Kijiji.com, eBay’s entry into the international online-classifieds market, the answer is yes—easily. How do they plan to pull it off? By taking their online operation offline.

In August 2004 eBay purchased a 25% stake in San Francisco-based online classifieds pioneer Craigslist.com for a reported US$10m-12m. Six months later, eBay launched Kijiji (it means “village” in Swahili), a mostly non-English network of Craigslist-inspired community websites where people advertise jobs, apartments, goods, activities and services for free. After a series of acquisitions, Kijiji now has websites covering more than 150 cities in 20 countries. And Kijiji China, launched in February with the other Kijiji sites around the world, is leading the pack with more than 80,000 postings at any given time.

China’s huge population obviously provides Kijiji with a solid base from which to grow. Even with very low Internet penetration, the number of Chinese going online is estimated to be more than 100m, second only to the US. But China’s low labour costs allow Kijiji to try things there that it would think twice about in other parts of the world, especially when the operation has little or no revenue.

06.20.2006, 9:37 AM · Business, Internet, Stories

Michael Bolton fans do not have a sense of humor

Well, at least two of them don’t. I’ve always dreamed about being linked to by michaelboltonclub.com, but for some reason I always thought they would like me. No, love me.

They don’t. Well, at least two of them don’t.

A little back story: Back in December I wrote a post on Shanghaiist about Paul McCartney. Sir Paul, rightfully, was outraged by some barbaric treatment of dogs and cats in China. And, because of that, he said he’d never visit China — and that he was planning to boycott all goods made in China. He implied that anyone who deals with China is complicit in the animal abuse that occurs here. While I shared Paul’s outrage, I thought his response was a little … much. (The post, not necessarily because of what I wrote, was followed by a rather entertaining string of comments.)

I finished my write-up with this:

To sum up. Torturing animals = bad. Beatles = good. McCartney’s stance = misguided.

And then, because Michael Bolton was about to appear in Shanghai at the time, I used McCartney’s false logic and added this intentionally, and I think obviously, outrageous statement:

And one important lesson learned: Michael Bolton is obviously in favor of butchering puppies and kittens.

That didn’t go over well in Bolton land. A superfan named angelsnearu fired off a response titled “Terrible Conclusion on Animal Abuse Support,” calling fellow Boltonites to action: “Anyone outraged at the conclusion of this article … should immediately go to this website and post their opinion.” (No one did, by the way.)

angelsnearu wanted to make it clear:

We all know this is B.S. I saw the footage they are referring to in this article and its some of the most horrific footage of animal abuse I’ve ever witnessed on the news and there is NO WAY Michael Bolton supports this country or animal abuse.

Another concerned Bolton fan, Linduhrella, guessed that Michael had no idea there was animal abuse in China. And then added:

One would think some inspirational artists might help, not hinder, the efforts to create a better and more civilized society in any part of the globe.

How true. angelsnearu then returned to suggest I find another line of work:

You know we’ve seen this kind of stuff for years from people who call themselves writers. You know the type…its called, “Climb aboard the stars gravy train” for the writer who seeks attention. I call those writers, “no names.”
Gosh, it just seems so outdated for this kind of material to still be published. They just need to get a new line or a new job…

Woo-hoo! All aboard the Michael Bolton gravy train! Hold on while I count my money!

And then Linduhrella returned with what could only be the final word:

It’s sensationalism and they’re still using, and abusing, it. Any writer worth his/her salt doesn’t have to resort to it to keep their name in print but they do. Some have become quite rich from such tripe. However, they don’t have any staying power like Michael Bolton’s music does. There’s always that element of jealousy from such air-heads that leads one to the conclusion that were it not for the green-eyed monster, they’d have no motivation whatever to write anything. Lacking talent, AND motivation, they wouldn’t be getting paid for polluting the market with garbage. Maybe there would be more room left for quality literature if we weren’t bombarded with such a large quantity of trash.

Amen.

01.26.2006, 1:50 PM · Internet · Comments (11)

7,000 photos moved from Gallery to Flickr … easily

In preparation for the major redesign Frank has in store for Shanghai Diaries, we had to figure out a way to transfer all of the photos from our existing photo gallery to my space over at Flickr. Gallery is a fine app, but I just find Flickr much easier to use. And Flickr seems to be more adaptable, too — Frank’s already done some cool stuff with it over at Shanghaiist. We both like the community aspect of Flickr, as well.

Anyway, I figured the Gallery-to-Flickr switch would be a time-consuming nightmare. Actually, I expected I would have upload all my pre-Flickr photos — some 7,000 of them — from scratch using iPhoto. And I was dreading this, because many of the photos from early in my digital days are not very well, um, organized. Thankfully, Frank stumbled upon this page, where a guy offered up $200 to the first person who could solve the very same problem we were dealing with. Someone delivered, Frank installed the script, I started the transfer process before I went to bed one night … and next morning I had 7,598 photos in 69 photo sets (albums, tags and captions survive the transfer, as well) over at Flickr. For free. Pretty slick.

The one downside is that since these photos were tranferred from Gallery and not uploaded directly from iPhoto, they are small. For some reason, I only uploaded pics to Gallery at a 400 or 500 pixels max for height and width. Sorry.

If you’d like to check out my photos from the past three years, head to my Flickr page. Here are some direct links to some of my recent photo sets:

There are about sixty other photo sets that I don’t feel like typing in links for. They include all the photos from my 18-province trip through China and plenty of photos from outside of China: Cambodia, Georgia, Hawaii, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. and Wyoming. Check it all out here.

10.16.2005, 9:39 AM · Internet, Photos, Site News · Comments (1)

Almost Famous: Google News adds Shanghaiist to sources

Google News tells users they can “search and browse 4,500 news sources updated continuously.” Make that 4,501. Upon the recommendation of DCist editor Rob Goodspeed, I submitted my side project Shanghaiist to Google News for their consideration (you can do the same — go here). And less than 24 hours later, I received a response saying that we had been approved:

Hi Dan,
Thank you again for your submission. We have reviewed www.shanghaiist.com and will be including it in Google News in the near future. You should be able to find your articles in Google News within a few weeks.

Thank you for providing your articles to Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

Pretty easy. It will be interesting to see what kind of a bump in traffic Shanghaiist will see because of its inclusion. Right now we’re fast approaching around 2,000 visits a day, which is not bad for a relatively new, mostly English language website in China. We’d like to be up to around 5,000 daily visits within the next six months. We’ll see.

If you’re curious, here is what I said to Google News when I made my request for Shanghaiist’s inclusion:

We are Shanghai’s only group news blog, part of the Gothamist.com family of sites, and I think readers of Google News would benefit from our inclusion in your service.

Pretty simple. And I think mostly factually accurate. I was thinking about mentioning that I am “famous” and that I “clearly love” Shanghai, but That’s Shanghai magazine did that for me in their review of Shanghaiist in their current issue. It was a very nice review, and I wish certain parts of it were true. Like where they say I have “six staff and twenty contributors” at Shanghaiist. And, yes, the whole famous thing. It must be the Michael Stipe/Athens, Georgia kind of fame where people go out of their way to “pretend” that they don’t have any idea who I am. I get that a lot.

10.15.2005, 1:55 PM · Internet · Comments (1)

I am the Johnny Drama of blogging

And so are 289 other people

Yep, I’m a B-list blogger, which means I might get invited to the major Bloggywood parties — but only because my younger more attractive brother happens to be an A-lister, a rising star in the cutthroat world of blogging celebrity. And if a hot blogger groupie flirts with me, it’s because she wants to get into my brother’s pants, not mine. Every now and again I’ll score a part in a Movie of the Week (read: Boing Boing link) but I’m always one f*ck-up away from the online equivalent of reality television (which I guess would be this.) Maybe I’ll get “spotted” when I go out, mostly by guys — no, always by guys … most of them drunk — some of whom might buy me a shot of Sambuca. (Thanks, Pat!) But, mostly, hardly anybody knows who the hell I am. I’m a B-list blogger for chrissakes. And if people think they do know me, they often get it wrong. Way wrong (or, at least, that is the story I’m sticking to). Take this Shanghai forum poster, for example:

After a quick look I concluded I somehow do not fit in this site’s target audience. By the way who is this Dan Washburn guy? I heard this name before. Is he the CEO of a major automaker in China who got fired for massive fraud (I know the story was release to the media in a different way)?

If you haven’t seen the excellent HBO series Entourage, much of this post likely made little sense to you. But really, why haven’t you seen Entourage? And no, living in China is not a good excuse.

Related:
B-List Zen

08.25.2005, 11:44 PM · Internet, Observations · Comments (4)

‘Consummate’ your relationship with the internet

‘0 people would do ShanghaiDan.’ Awwwww.

“ShanghaiDan is a 31-year old boy located in Shanghai, who is taken and looking for boys and girls for friends, online buddies, and consumating fun!”

So begins my profile on the social/dating website Consumating, which according to its tagline is targeting the “Hot nerdy girls and indie rock boys! With glasses!” crowd. You might be wondering why someone who labels himself “taken” would sign up for an online dating site (or maybe you’re not … some chicks dig “unavailable” guys). I signed up for Consumating because it’s the site Shanghaiist is going to partner with for personals — and right now there are a total of two Consumating users living in Shanghai. It’s me and Micah, and he only signed up because I asked him to. I’m trying to build up a base of Shanghai users before Shanghaiist officially goes live in a couple weeks. So, head on over to Consumating and sign up!

You don’t have to be single. You don’t have to be looking for a date. It’s a social site, not just a dating site. And it’s 2005 — I think the stigma associated with meeting people online has gone the way of the Yunnan Box Turtle. Especially in a sometimes intimidating city of 20 million, it’s often easier to meet people with similar interests online than inside a shabbily appointed, smoky bar playing a Celine Dion/Kenny G/Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey mix CD. Of course, if you’re from Shanghai and your interests aren’t similar to mine or Micah’s, you are pretty much screwed right now. That’s why you need to get all your friends to sign up for Consumating! Or else you’ll spend all your time at the site flirting with hipsters in Seattle. And, I guess there are worse things in the world to do than that.

Consumating uses the oh-so-hip tagging technology, which is like crack for computer geeks. Oh, the site is free, too. That’s also pretty cool. (And, one of Consumating’s creators is the editor of Austinist.)

Finally, Shanghaiist will also be running a feed from 43 Things, a goal-sharing social site. This is what 43 Things’ Shanghai users want to do with their lives.

So, check these sites out. (And would someone please give me a thumbs-up at Consumating? This is getting embarrassing.)

06.15.2005, 4:43 PM · Internet, Site News · Comments (3)