I had a conversation with Cindy. We talked about the Internet and entertainment business in Asia. A famous actress Choi-Jin-Sil, in South Korea, committed suicide last month. Many celebrities have depression and committed suicide during the past two years. This phenomenon may stimulate more suicides. Moreover, South Korean society is facing the highest suicide rate among the world. What caused Choi’s suicide? The Internet. Read more…

CNN health released a study, people who search more often on-line, their brains active more often than normal people. Google makes them smarter. 

The experiment goes like this: scientists invited 24 people (age 55-78) to join. A half of them are Internet heavy users and the others are not. In the first stage, they were asked to read some text on a screen, and the machine (MRI) monitored the activities in their brains. The “reading” and “language” parts of the brain became active when people are reading, which is already known by the scientists.

In the second stage, people were asked to google something on the Internet. Then parts of brain, which are in charge of “logic” and “policy making”, started acting. Furthermore, people who are heavy users, the activities in the brains happen more frequently than others.

Non-savvy reading                                        Non-savvy searching

Web user reading                                           Web user searching

What makes the differences? The research does not explain the reasons with a strong conviction. Any ideas do you have? Maybe try to google something.

view the reaserch

Business models of video websites may be still indistinct. YouTube tries to break the bottleneck. The site launched “click-to-buy” links on selected partners this Wednesday. After viewing EMI artist’s music video, you can download the song directly from Amazon or iTunes. Now these links are only being used by EMI, Universal music group and Spore. In the following month, more partners will join the cooperation with YouTube.  

I just read a review which gives an interesting metaphor. It says Amazon is an old department store and YouTube is the new TV wall on it. The TV wall displays several kinds of products. People who pass through the building see the videos, find out something they’re interested in and walk into the store. Well, the cooperation seems beneficial to Amazon.

Although the idea is also available from other sites, YouTube seems has more advertising plans to prove how can a video site make profit. Let’s wait and see.

See also : Yahoo!News

                Next Big Thing for YouTube:E-Commerce Links

                YouTube推出「點擊購買」玩長尾重新粉刷，看完影片還可以買東西 (In Chinese)

People in Taiwan use MSN very often. 40% Internet users use MSN, which means 5 million users in Taiwan. We use MSN to communicate with friends, colleagues and even bosses!! (sounds terrible, right?) Just Image that, Americans ask friends’ for Facebook accounts, but Taiwanese ask for MSN accounts. That’s what happens in Taiwan.

A web developing company “Wamsn” launched a service this March which attracted 140 thousand users in 3 month rapidly. Users can invite a goddess, “Matsu” to your MSN list. You can type in questions and get feedback for her.
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