First of all, social media has been prominent in China since the 1990’s. Although Facebook and Twitter receive a lot of negative press in China, social activity is still alive with local social platforms.

While social networks and blogs are dominant social players in China, online message boards called BBS, are also very popular. Flemming says many conversations about brands take place on these BBS sites. He points out that there are approximately 172 million bloggers in China and over 100 million users on local social networking platforms.

As Flemming explains to WebProNews, the Chinese watch the West and adopt and develop ideas. The West, however, does not do this. Flemming calls this a “missed opportunity” on behalf of the West, since many unique ideas could be applied if they would listen. In addition, companies could have a competitive advantage if they watch and learn from China, Japan, and Korea.

“The fact is social media is more developed in the East… now social media marketing or applications of social media, [it] may be there are more advanced or more developed ideas in the states, but there’s a lot that can be learned both ways.”

How do you value social media activities in Eastern cultures such as China?

Warner Music Group Corp and other music giants sue Yahoo China for an alleged copyright breach. Trade organization the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s, also known as IFPI, said Yahoo China has given links to unlicensed music. Beijing’s number two Intermediate Court filed the case in early January.

Eleven music companies seek damages of 5.5 million yaun (YEN), or more than 710 thousand American dollars. Music publishers lost a similar case last November against search leader Baidu.com for “sites offering illegal music downloads.” The Beijing court ruling said that officials should hold third party web sites liable for content posted, not search engines. The IFPI approximates listeners pirate around 85 percent of all consumed music in China.

The Bavarian State Library has decided to partake in Google’s project to scan books from the world’s great collections. As one of the largest libraries in the German-speaking world, the library has around nine million volumes and will make around one million books available to Google search. A library spokesman said Google would scan many books in German, but some may include Italian, French, Spanish, Latin and English. Other library participants consist of the Complutense University of Madrid, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, The National Library of Catalonia, several U-S universities and the New York Public Library.

Microsoft has critiqued the Google Book Search and various authors and publishers sued Google in 2005 to block scanning copyrighted books for fear of consumers no longer purchasing the printed version.

A recent ComScore study established that the global Internet audience has grown by ten percent. The study showed that 747 million people over the age of 15 used the Internet in January 2007.

The US leads the global Internet with over 153 million users, but only grew two percent. China has the second-largest Internet audience with over 86 million users, and increased by 20 percent. India ranked in the top 15 countries and grew the most by 33 percent.

ComScore also ranked the top ten countries for the average time spent online in January 2007. Canada dominated with the average user consuming 39.6 hours online during one month. The average Israel user spent around 37.4 hours online, followed by South Korea with 34 hours online. The US came in fourth with 31.6 and the UK finished fifth with 31.2 hours online.