CNCMAX, a popular movie download service provider in China has team up with Google China on the search engine sector. I previously has posted a post that entitled, “CNCMAX + VODONE = China’s YouTube?” in which I described a joint-venture of CNCMAX and VODONE would likely to become the YouTube clone in China. According to an article of CNET China (in Mandarin), CNCMAX and Google China have both announced the strategic alliance of these two companies and they will launch a search engine that namely CNCMAX Search. Additionally, an user can search the web through a toolbar provided by Google China that found in the CNCMAX’s user interface.

Search engine competitions are still very intense and I believed Google China recognized that by team up with CNCMAX, would have significant implications for their search engine market in the future. On the other hand, the movie download war has escalated over the past few months, the threats from Xunlei, PPStream (see my another post), Tudou, and etc. players have culminating the proposed aforesaid strategic alliance. I noticed that there are two different approaches of the giant players such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! on the web. In their home country where they set up their headquarters, they always want to buy the smaller players whereas in the overseas market, they doing and walk in the opposite direction.

I came across a new Internet portal that going to be launch on tomorrow in Down Under, the Yahoo!Xtra. It is a partnership between Australia’s Yahoo! 7 and Xtra, owned by Telecom New Zealand Group and according to this article, Yahoo! 7 will own 51% of this new joint-venture, i.e. Yahoo!Xtra and Xtra will have 49% of it. “We do think Yahoo!Xtra will become an extension of New Zealanders living rooms,” Mr Kenrick, chief operating officer for consumer products of Xtra told an Auckland media briefing.

It is interesting to see what will happen on the XtraMSN site, the Xtra’s current site after the planned launched of the above mentioned Yahoo!Xtra.

Apple has launched the “Hello” movie on its iPhone website. It become a usual practice for most of the companies to advertise the new products through a well-designed movie. For iPhone to be commercially successful in the market, the product must get close to the potential customers. The potential segment market for iPhone seems to be the young generation. These groups of people like to watch videos or movies, a movie should well cater to these groups but the apparent problem is how iPhone’s features is well understood after we watch this particular movie. On the business side, it is amazingly sophisticated to measure what influence the purchasing decisions of their target segment through a movie advertisement.

A new service offered by Xunlei, i.e. Zhao Xunlei has attracted a huge group of users in China and the points accumulated nearly 10 million since it first inception in the beginning of the month. Xunlei, a popular peer-to-peer startup in China and Google has stake in it, see my another post that entitled, “Google China Invested in Xunlei“. What is the meaning for Zhao Xunlei, Zhao is the Chinese word for “find” and “迅雷找到” mean “Xunlei Found”. It is a platform that aimed for the users to find the download links for a particular video, book, music, game, software, TV series, and movie.

The launch of this service/directory was deemed as a strategy to complement the download services offered by Xunlei. The same concept is found as you compare this service to the Google Answers which is now no longer available on Google. An user could post a question on where to find this download link and specify how much he/she willing to pay for that particular link. On the front page of Zhao Xunlei, you notice that the points Xunlei has accumulated at this moment is 9016964 and users normally willingly to pay 20 point to as much as 50000 point. Xunlei offered a scheme that awarded the points in different areas, such as register a new account award 50 point (one-time), visit per day, 2 point gain by an user, and etc. You also can read the full list of how the point awarded to an user by clicking here. On the other hand, the users can pay for the download link by top-up their credit accounts and complete the successful web top-up transaction through Xunlei Pay. The conversion rate for Xunlei money to the point currently is at the proportion of 1:10000, according to this page.

I think Zhao Xunlei has reached and influenced their potential customers by offering the point system. A point-based marketing that targeting the customers’ online egos really work for them right now. An user is perceived as more than happy to help others to find the download links in order to fulfill their inner ego. And it is not surprise that most people are seeking for the successful experience in helping others on the web nowadays.

Source Code for the operating system especially Windows, was extraordinarily valuable. It should be on par, if not better, with the world’s most valuable proprietary recipes, such as the secret formula for making the Coca Cola.

But, source code has not always been kept secret? The answer should be yes way back before Microsoft withhold their source code in order to protect the proprietary operating system, i.e. Windows. I recently came across a website that called Show Us The Code, on the front page, you will read an open letter written to the Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer.

And today is the opening day of the “Show Us The Code Campaign” launched.

Brickfish, launched in August 2006, has been successfully raised $11.2 million in a Series A financing from DCM, Draper Richards L.P., Draper Associates, Mangrove Capital, and OCA Ventures, according to this press release (PDF). Brickfish is a digital engagement platform that allowed users to search people, photos, albums, videos, and blogs. Moreover, Brickfish’s campaign engagement that sponsored by companies allowed users to upload pictures, videos, blogs that regarding to the purpose of a particular campaign, as a consequence, the winner of the campaign got rewarded from the companies that involved. Most often, the campaign involved are the music, lifestyle, and fashion industries that required the users’ creativity, talent, and willingness. The concept is good in the way that Brickfish really developed a platform that dedicated to improving the society, web community. Meanwhile, they also a sponsor for a scholarship campaign that entitled, “Where I want to work”, where the winner will be awarded $1,000 scholarship.

In my view, Brickfish is a company that designed a platform, also called a campaign that let users creating content, reviewing, voting, viewing and propagating contents to the web. It is also a platform that provide the interaction between the consumers and companies. Currently they have more than 4,000 user-generated contents created by their users and according to the them, the number is continues to grow. Brickfish aimed to be an innovative leader in the online marketing era. Besides, they have built tools that enabled their users’ contents propagate to multiple websites and an analytic reporting tool to keep track of the user-generating contents too.

For the past few months since 2006 inception, the companies that sponsored campaigns including Reebok, Charlotte Russe, Varsity Books, and many large record labels.

A top social bookmarking site in Germany, Mister Wong has launched its Chinese version in China. Currently Mister Wong China is still in pre-beta status, they’ve been inviting the people in China to register through the German or the U.S. site.

As I observed Mister Wong’s U.S. and China sites, both are undergoing the pre-beta testing right now, and the front page are similarly to each other, other than the languages. In fact, Mister Wong is a feature-rich social bookmarking site that comprised of Buddymatch, Private Messages, Search, Accept bookmarks, and etc. It seems that they are looking for further opportunities in U.S. and China, maybe Japan in the future. But the threats that posed to the leading player, del.icio.us is yet to confirmed at this moment.

Lot of talks about the user-generated content found on the web in the past few years. And I just finished reading an interesting article from Knowledge@Wharton that entitled, “Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business,” this article discussed the web 2.0 and some collaborative websites will eventually open up the economy and revolutionize the way that business is conducted in the 21st century.

Not surprisingly, we’ll see a lot companies launch the web 2.0 initiatives to share their best ideas. It had became a source of competitive advantage on the web now. Some blogs and web leaders even goes further by citing web 3.0, they have been at the forefront thinking about the emerging trend on the web that build around user-generated content. But now I more concern of what really work on the web, what is the right strategies that will work for the small and unknown players?

Update: I deleted the last paragraph that I believed was out of the topic being discussed here. I made a mistake. Sorry for any inconvenient caused.