PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Ok. So most of us are well aware of the Chinese Chat software, QQ. Chances are, if you know a Chinese person, you know a registered QQ user.

Founded by Pony Ma in Shenzhen, China, in November 1998, Tencent is now recognized as the leading provider of Internet, mobile & telecommunications value-added services in China. QQ, Tencent’s instant messaging service platform, officially launched in Feb 1999 and announced in its 2006 Q3 report that it has 221.4 million active users. What’s more, the total registered user accounts has climbed to 572.3 million! (Source readwriteweb.com)

So lets put that in perspective. If active QQ users formed their own nation, here’s what the world’s top 5 highest populated countries would look like:

1. China — 1,321,851,888*
2. India — 1,129,866,154
3. United States — 301,139,947
4. Indonesia — 234,693,997
5. Republic of QQ — 221,400,000
6. Pakistan — 169,270,617
7. Bangladesh — 150,448,339
8. Russia — 141,377,752
9. Nigeria — 135,031,164
10. Japan — 127,467,972

*Note: Ok, I know I didn’t take away the QQ users from China’s population, but I’m not encouraging a revolution here…

In any case, if you want in on a piece of all that action but you don’t speak Chinese, never fear, there is an English version:

Download Tencent QQ2005 English Standard Version

Keep in mind that you will need a QQ number, and those aren’t free. But like anything in China, ask your Chinese friends what they can do for you, and you’ll likely have one soon after.

Update: Thijs points out in the comments that there is now an English Sign-up page.

The english download above was first brought to my attention by Dezza of Mask of China. After I taught a year of university in China, I found that this was an excellent way to keep in touch with each and every one of my students, as about 99% of them were on QQ. Unfortunately I quit using the program after a while, since it was a little resource heavy. Update: I’m now using Adium on a Mac to run both QQ and MSN side-by-side. On a PC, you could try Pidgin IM Client.

If you’re a bit more ambitious, and want to give the Chinese version a go, you can get that here. Chinese Windows might be a requirement for this, though I don’t know how it displays in Vista yet.
Download Tencent QQ Chinese Version 2007 Beta1

Having good content on your website these days is just not enough. Making sure your readers come back again for more is key.

And while content is the best way to achieve that, there are a few other little tips and tricks that you can implement to encourage them to return a second time.

I’m implementing all these tools on this blog, and on my Chinese Blog as well. So for each tool, I’ll quickly outline how to do it in not only English, but in Chinese as well:

Javascript Add to Favorites or Bookmark tool

While most people are well aware of how to add a site to their favorites using their browser, it doesn’t hurt to remind them to add your site anyway. You can do so almost anywhere on your page using the following bits of code:

Put this code right before the closing /head tag,

Be sure to replace the url for my site with that of your own. haha…

And then you can place this piece of code in your page, which serves as the text link your readers can use to activate the BOOKMARK javascript:

Bookmark

For Chinese webpages use:

?????

Send to a friend using Microsoft Outlook Express

Everyone has at least one or two friends who forward them jokes or chain letters via email. Despite all the news aggregators, social bookmarking, and all that web 2.0 jazz, it’s good to remember that simple emails have the potential to spread like wildfire if the content is worth spreading. So here’s a piece of code that you can add to your site, so that people can conveniently send your website address to others with the click of a button:


Send to a Friend

Of course, again replace my site’s details with those of your site. And if you wish to use this function on a Chinese language page, replace “Send to a Friend” with “????”.

Note that I’ve combined both of the tools above, in combo with the COMMENT button, to create the following triple-threat link option at the bottom of my posts.

Cool, wha?

Social Bookmarking

Many of you are familiar with Digg.com and Delicious. If your article gets submitted to one of these sites, it could be a wicked jump in traffic for your site. It’s a good way for starter blogs to kickstart their hit count, and of course it’s no different in on the chinese internet. On this blog I’m currently using Thomas Mcmahon’s Social Bookmark Creator Wordpress Plugin which is a really cool way to allows my readers to submit my articles to some famous sites, which instantly provides me with more exposure. It includes all the sites you need like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit – and even a Japanese social bookmark site if you wished to add it.

Now the one thing it doesn’t have – and this is a must have for any China-related blog – is a button to Ryan’s Haohao Report. The Haohao Report is a sort of China-focused Digg site, and if your blog is about China, I encourage you to add Ryan’s kickass little buttons.

Again, I’ve combined these two social bookmarking tool, so that the Haohao Report button is added on to the end of my articles along with the other social bookmarking sites:

As for Chinese social bookmarks, that was a bit trickier. I had no idea how to start looking for cutting edge Chinese web 2.0 sites out there. But I did find a neat site called coolcode.cn, which has a good wordpress plugin that allows for your articles to be submitted to some major Chinese Social bookmark sites. The tool is called Blog It, and I highly recommend it for any Chinese language wordpress blogs.

To be honest, I wasn’t aware that wordpress was being developed very much in China, since most of the blogs here seem to be made from free hosting services like Sina.com or Soho.com. But it’s good to see that there are developers here making new and interesting progress in the world of wordpress. This is something I want to focus on in the future on this site, and I’ll definitely try to spotlight guys like Andot and Xenium who do good work like this.

RSS feeds

Having people subscribe to your website is a kick-ass way to make sure they find their way back. I use Bloglines to read all my favorite sites, and it keep me from wasting time since I only read those sites which have updated content.

Now for this site, I have my feed set up using feedburner, which allows for RSS subscription, and just recently has also rolled out an email service. You can see both on the top of my sidebar.

Now you could use feedburner for a chinese blog, but I’ve opted to go local on my chinese blog. I’ve chosen feedsky, which seems every bit as neato as feedburner. I definitely recommend it.

Share your site’s Blidget

Ok. I know what your sayin’… What the be-jeesis is a blidget? Well, apparently it means blog widget, and it’s a little something that widgetbox.com is producing. You can see my Chinese Blog’s Blidget on the left.

I have to say, this is a really cool idea. I mean, people can always link to your site, but this allows people to put a big-ass widget/blidget thing in their sidebar. This widget is connected to a site’s RSS feed, and it contains all the latest post, which are automatically updated as a list on the widget.

The thing that I like about this (and why I’m listing it) is that it can be use on Myspace blogs. So you have the potential to reach a whole new audience, given the popularity of the whole Myspace network. Never used it myself, but hey… It sounds like it’s catching on with the young kids.

If you have a myspace blog, and you’d like to try it out, feel free to try it.

To summarize

Anyway, that’s my quick overview of a few blog tools that I’m using. If I add any more, I will add update this article as I go along. So be sure to save it to your favorites!