Virtual China:As Russia declares cyber war on Estonia, China joins the Internet revolution. Housing the second largest broadband community in the world (150m users) and set to overtake the US into the number 1 slot by the end of the year, 2007 has seen a flurry of companies launch into this potentially lucrative marketplace.
Google launched a censored version at the start of 2006, to the dismay of proponents of free speech. Myspace launched a Chinese service, licencing it’s technology to a Chinese company to manage the service locally, with Rupert Murdoch’s Chinese born wife, 1 of the 3 news corp board members.
Social networking is still yet to take off fully in China, hosting 200-300 existing sites. Despite that companies are rushing to launch second life equivalents. Shanda Interactive Entertainment and HiPiHi are developing and testing Chinese versions of the Virtual world. Both companies, however, have been given until mid-jul to install software limiting the amount of time young players can spend online.
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