During these years, new social communication flat, such as Flick, Facebook and Twitter, are created increasingly. At the same time, some juristic tool, Creative Commons, have been widely diffused. The new personal 2.0 network appears in the society. All of these creation and develops make an aggregation of human intelligence. They even rebuild the social trust and the relationship among people. Meanwhile, they reform the diffuse way of traditional media. They are not only influenced the pattern of global politics, but also set up a fresh business mode. As one of the most active human intelligence, cultures and arts need to respond towards this worldwide trend. As the new brand of Chinese exhibitions, 2010Get It Louder will show a comprehensive understanding of this new SHARISM.

BEIJING – Xinhua News Agency said on Thursday that it will launch its own search venture with China Mobile, pitching it in direct competition with private search engines like Baidu Inc and Google Inc.

The two companies signed a framework agreement on Thursday and their cooperation in the search industry has entered “a substantial phase”, said Xinhua in a report, without providing any additional details.

Xinhua’s plan comes close on the heels of the People’s Daily and its website launching a beta search service Goso.cn in June and after US search engine Google closed its mainland search engine in March and started redirecting traffic to Hong Kong.

The current use of Xinhua’s search engine was limited to the agency’s websites and other websites it supports. It has most of the basic search function such as Web search, news search and video search but uses a search technology different from Baidu and Google.

Ren Yanghui, an analyst from domestic research firm Analysys International, said that the new search engine will have little impact on the mobile search market in the short term.

“It may take at least two years for the two companies to come up with a decent product as search technology needs more time to develop.”

But he said it was the right time to enter the search market, as Google’s exit has created more opportunities for other players.

Google’s market share in China fell to 12.3 percent in the first half from 23.6 percent six months earlier in the mobile search market. Baidu’s market share rose to 34.3 percent from 26.6 percent, according to Analysys International.

China Daily

Writing at his blog, Yang Hengjun tackles the CCP’s latest media policy, “Opposing the Three Vulgarities” (反三俗). [Definition from CMP here: http://bit.ly/azHPAR]. Yang discusses his own personal experiences in attempting, without success, to publish collections of his blog writings, and his well-received online spy novels, and writes: “I support the CCP in ‘opposing the Three Vulgarities, and I applaud the Ministry of Culture for recognizing its importance. But I believe the most effective way to “oppose the Three Vulgarities” is not to tighten controls and to strike out and even remove the “Three Vulgarities.” Quite the opposite, the answer is to loosen controls, allowing excellent cultural products that are full of thought and humanistic concern, and which promote the historical development of humankind can find a foothold in this land.”

Read Yang Hengjun’s blog entry (in Chinese) here (Yang’s website) or here.

by Tony Dokoupil and Angela WuAugust 09, 2010

In the history of the web, last spring may figure as a tipping point. That’s when Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”—a site that grew from 100,000 articles in 2003 to more than 15 million today—began to falter as a social movement. Thousands of volunteer editors, the loyal Wikipedians who actually write, fact-check, and update all those articles, logged off—many for good. For the first time, more contributors appeared to be dropping out than joining up. Activity on the site has remained stagnant, according to a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the site, and it’s become “a really serious issue.” So serious, in fact, that this fall Wikipedia will turn to something it has never needed before: recruiters.

There’s no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature: most people simply don’t want to work for free. They like the idea of the Web as a place where no one goes unheard and the contributions of millions of amateurs can change the world. But when they come home from a hard day at work and turn on their computer, it turns out many of them would rather watch funny videos of kittens or shop for cheap airfares than contribute to the greater good. Even the Internet is no match for sloth.

That’s why Wikipedia’s new recruiting push will not rely merely on highfalutin promises about pooled greatness and “the sum of all human knowledge.” Instead, the organization is hoping to get students to write and edit entries as part of their coursework. The Wikimedia Foundation teamed up with eight professors at schools including George Washington and Princeton to integrate the once frowned-upon research tool into public-policy curricula. As part of the program, Wikipedia’s “campus ambassadors” will lead in-class training sessions on how to edit the site and help start Wikipedia student groups.

Tech writers continue to tout social media as a transformative phenomenon in its infancy. That’s certainly true for such sites as Facebook, which boasts more than 500 million active users, or Flickr, which hosts some 4 billion photos. YouTube also shows no sign of slowing down. But those sites offer clear benefits to users, including the ability to easily stay in touch with friends, indulge in a game of Mob Wars, share baby pictures, or watch videos of fashion models falling down, in exchange for their time and efforts.

Many other elements of the user-generated revolution, meanwhile, are beginning to look sluggish. The practice of crowd sourcing, in particular, worked because the early Web inspired a kind of collective fever, one that made the slog of writing encyclopedia entries feel new, cool, fun. But with three out of four American households online, contributions to the hive mind can seem a bit passé, and Web participation, well, boring—kind of like writing encyclopedia entries for free.

Evidence of this ennui is everywhere. Amateur blogs, the original embodiment of Web democracy, are showing signs of decline. While professional bloggers are “a rising class,” according to Technorati, hobbyists are in retreat, and about 95 percent of blogs are launched and quickly abandoned. A recent Pew study found that blogging has withered as a pastime, with the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who identify themselves as bloggers declining by half between 2006 and 2009. A shift to Twitter—or microblogging, as it’s called—partly accounts for these numbers. But while Twitter carries more than 50 million tweets per day, its army of keystrokers may not be as large as it seems. As many as 90 percent of tweets come from 10 percent of users, according to a 2009 Harvard study. The others are primarily “lurkers”—people who don’t contribute but track the postings of others. Between 60 and 70 percent of people who sign up for the 140-character platform quit within a month, according to a recent Nielsen report.

Citizen journalism also has stabilized. Fewer than one in 10 Web users say they have created their own original news or opinion piece, according to Pew, and comment sections on blogs or mainstream media sites, which were supposed to turn the old one-way media model into a two-way street, are often too profane, hateful, or off-point to attract people. Only one in four Web users has left a comment—probably no more than wrote letters to the editor in decades past, says Brian Thornton, a University of North Florida professor who has studied the history of the letters page.

Naturally, as some energy goes out of the Web, sites that depend on enthusiastic free labor are scrambling to retain it. The task is made more difficult by the fact that the competition is steeper than ever. Michigan State University professor Cliff Lampe, who studies online communities, says that where there were once three or four sites that invited participation, there are now thousands or even millions. “You’re taking a limited resource—people—and spreading it over a much wider set of opportunities,” he says. “It changes the playing field.”

The smart players are changing, too. Digg began as “the new New York Times,” a digital front-page curated by users who “vote up” their favorite stories. The site quickly became one of the most popular destinations on the Web. But while Digg won readers, it struggled to sign up voters, according to a 2008 speech by its founder Kevin Rose. Now the site is changing format, relaunching (later this year) with a personalized home page that lets users connect with friends rather than just vote on the news. Consumer-review sites like Yelp, Amazon, and Epinions, which use an army of amateur critics to cover products and services, offer elaborate appreciation programs that reward their unpaid people and keep users engaged. Yelp has more than 40 “community managers” scattered around the world, who throw parties for prolific reviewers. (At one recent event for the “Elite Squad,” for instance, the snacks included squid-ink risotto.) And comment-driven news and aggregation sites like Gawker and The Huffington Post, where part of the fun is reading what the peanut gallery has to say, have decided to show the peanut gallery more love: mostly in the form of badges, stars, and special privileges. Even YouTube has added inducements, giving users the chance to play at Carnegie Hall—with a music contest—and partnering with the Guggenheim Museum to help them show off their art.

So far it seems to be working. After Gawker introduced its Star system, which gave preference to the work of “Starred” commentators, participation on the comment boards rose to a new high. The Huffington Post, which offers its best users digital merit badges and special rights (like the ability to delete other people’s posts), boasts the most active commenters of any news site. And Yelp says it has maintained a pace of a million new reviews every three months.

Such reward programs are only likely to grow more important, especially as the Web reaches into corners of the world where it never benefited from the frisson of a social movement. Last year, in parts of eastern Africa, Google launched the Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge, an effort to grow the number of Swahili-language Wikipedia entries by tying them to the chance to win modems, cell phones, and a laptop. It worked. This wouldn’t surprise Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Back in 2006, he predicted that the winners in the social-media world would be “those that figure out a formula for making their users feel amply compensated.” Prizes are a start. Can cash be far behind? Oh, right, then it would just be a job.

In its domestic news section today, Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily echoed a report from Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily that said mainland China is lately entering a new period of “moral crusade,” signaled first by recent actions against dating programs on Chinese television. The Ming Pao article also cited criticism of the new TV series Dream of the Red Chambers in the official People’s Daily newspaper as further evidence of a new movement against the so-called “vulgarization” (低俗化) of Chinese cultural offerings, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, discusses local governments’ use of the Internet in China. Ms. Lu is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute and an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

Talking of the Internet in China, the first thing that comes to many people’s minds is government control and censorship. The “Great Firewall of China,” the blocking of Twitter and Facebook, Beijing’s recent row with Google over censorship, the harassment of bloggers: These are all familiar stories to audiences around the world, thanks to extensive international media coverage.

Less well known are various experiments to use the Internet to improve governance and state-society communications. While the government is wary of the political threat posed by new information technologies, it has also started to view the Internet as an opportunity. It can be used to spread official messages, monitor public sentiments, soothe feelings of resentment toward the government, and provide references for decision-making. It is also a convenient tool for officials who are keen to cultivate a good public image.

Stories of the proactive use of the Internet by government agencies and officials abound. They range from the comic to the deeply controversial. The website of Xinzhou city government in Shanxi province attracted quite a lot of attention with its “beauty forum.” Xinzhou claims to be the birthplace of several famous beauties in Chinese history. The government has therefore opened a beauty forum on its website to encourage discussion on how to use beauties to stimulate the local economy.

A police station in Xiamen has tried to draw more visitors to its microblog by making a connection between its duty of safeguarding the security of the local community and the World Cup. The station blogged: “On the football pitch, the most beautiful flowers are always these three: attack, attack, and attack. It is the same with maintaining community security. Proactive measures are always more meaningful than reactive measures.”

Officials in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, appear to be very adept at managing online criticism of their performance. A local resident used Internet forums to attack the environmental protection bureau for failing to deal with a water pollution case and demanded that the director of the bureau take responsibility and resign. The bureau not only took action to stop the pollution, but also launched a “human flesh search” to track down the critic, in order to offer him a “cyber-supervision” award of 2,000 yuan. While the netizen felt embarrassed at some of his caustic remarks and said sorry when receiving his award, the director of the bureau told him there was no need to apologize. Instead, the bureau should thank him for helping to solve a pollution problem.

The environment bureau’s clever response to online criticism is probably attributable to the Changzhou mayor’s promotion of “cyber-political participation.” The mayor has gained a reputation for engaging in equal exchanges with citizens online. After a local writer posted an article that criticised a multimillion infrastructure project and questioned the mayor’s motives for pushing through the project, the mayor wrote a 4,000-word reply to address the questions raised one by one. When the writer posted a second article declaring that he still had doubts, the mayor replied again to welcome different voices and assure his critic that he only wanted what was best for Changzhou.

Changzhou officials’ handling of online criticism is not without controversy. Sceptics say that it is just spin. Some charge that officials respond to minor issues but remain silent on more serious problems. A local resident says the mayor uses a soft approach to smooth over public complaints while continuing to run the city with an iron fist. The environment bureau in particular has been accused of trying to buy off critics with its cash award. An online commentary points out that the environmental bureau should use taxpayers’ money to clean up pollution, not to pay netizens.

Despite controversies and legitimate questions about how many concrete results the various government experiments with the Internet have delivered, such experiments shouldn’t be dismissed as mere spin. They have no doubt gone some distance in increasing government transparency and accountability. More importantly, they have set precedents and raised expectations, which have encouraged more people to use the Internet as a vehicle for political participation and activism.

Increased participation and activism in turn have piled up pressure on government agencies and officials to clean up their act. Since 2009, the Public Opinion Monitoring Unit of the People’s Daily has published quarterly rankings of local government response to incidents that have gained high profile in cyberspace. Local governments are scored on indicators such as information transparency, government credibility, and the punishment of responsible officials. Local governments who are open and responsive to online public opinion are praised while those who try to suppress criticisms are named and shamed. The rankings may not fundamentally change the behavior of local governments overnight, but it is a start. The government must learn how to turn the Internet into its friend rather than an enemy. Although it still has a long way to go, at least it is trying.