Internet Plus: Chinese Premier Li's New Tech Tool - NiceNIC.NET

Posted at english.gov.cn on Mar 13, 2015:
"Internet Plus" - a fresh notion mentioned by Premier Li Keqiang on March 5 in the government work report - has become a hot topic among people working in China's Internet industry. This is especially true for the industry's big names for the opportunities it might bring.
"We will develop the 'Internet Plus' action plan to integrate the mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing, to encourage the healthy development of e-commerce, industrial networks, and Internet banking, and to guide Internet-based companies to increase their presence in the international market," Premier Li said in the report.

  

As the Premier has said, encouraging popular entrepreneurship is one measure the government has adopted to address the downward pressure faced by the Chinese economy amid the sluggish recovery of the global economy.
Statistics have shown that the Internet industry has greatly contributed to the 13.22 million new urban jobs China created over the last year.
The role it played in promoting the development of small- and micro-sized businesses is obvious. Early in 2013, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, told the Premier that Alibaba, with more than 20,000 employees, has indirectly facilitated the employment of a 10 million population.
Yu Yang, CEO of industry consultancy Analysys International, told Southern Weekly that in the future,40 percent of China's GDP will be contributed by traditional enterprises that have realized theutilization of Internet platforms and technologies.
In fact, China's decision-makers in recent years have started to invite leaders of Internet companies to attend economic symposiums.
Besides Jack Ma, Xiaomi's co-founder and CEO Lei Jun, Tencent founder and Chairman Pony Ma, founder of e-commerce company JD.com Inc Liu Qiangdong and Sohu CEO Zhang Chaoyang have been invited by Li.
It was during an economic symposium last July that Lei Jun suggested lifting up the Internet to a national strategic level, a proposal also previously made by other bosses.
Unexpectedly, the "Internet Plus" appeared in this year's two sessions.
China held the first World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, an ancient town in Zhejiang province, in November. It was an effort to strive for a bigger say in the Internet world.
More than 1,000 cyberspace officials, specialists and business tycoons from more than 100 countries and regions gathered in Wuzhen to discuss Internet issues.
And China is not the only economy that attaches great importance to the Internet.
In a speech at Stanford University, US President Barack Obama calls cyberspace the new "Wild West", with everyone looking to the government to be the sheriff.
"China's 'Internet Plus' action plan is a little bit like the upgraded version of Washington's information superhighway strategy," Yu Yang told Southern Weekly.
But he suggested the regulators to take an open-minded attitude toward the development of the Internet.
Pony Ma believes that the "Internet Plus" should be based on good infrastructure construction, which includes the infrastructure of network and data.
Marketing Team
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Escrow.com acquired for $7.5 million - NiceNIC.NET

Company known for securing domain name transactions is acquired by Australian company.

Freelancer.com, an online marketplace for freelance services, has acquired escrow service Escrow.com for $7.5 million.
Escrow.com is a popular service among domain name investors and has handled over $2.2 billion worth of transactions to date.
Margins for escrow services are slim, and today’s acquisition announcement puts it in perspective: Escrow.com handled $220 million transactions last year, generating $5 million in revenue and just $1.2 million EBITDA.
Escrow.com will remain a California based company and will operate as usual going forward.
Freelancer.com recently raised AUD$10 million, in part to fund the acquisition.
I’ve reached out to Escrow.com president Brandon Abbey to find out if he will be continuing with the company.

Some Comments:
jZ:
wow. very concerning. i am not sure how escrow.com will continue to work as they do being owned by an Australian company. i certainly hope they keep the operations stateside as if wires are coming out of Australia i am going to look for other options..it also seems extremely cheap. i don’t get why they would sell.
Ryan:
Like escrowhill in NZ
Funny agreed got bought out, now everything is owned upside down, I do not get this deal, I am sure escrow could have raised a higher offer stateside
Sam A:
It: in the press release “The Escrow.com group staff will be continuing with the California-based business.” The service is great and hopefully this means that the escrow.com UI gets an overhaul, it’s been pretty stagnant for 10-years!
Aron:
Escrow.com has always been one of the best peace of mind services for the domain industry. I hope the level of service stays the same. Congrats to both parties.
thelegendaryjp:
I agree, the best option out there past and present and hope it remains as such. As far as their UI goes, who cares, simple, works and easy to navigate. I would be ok with a fee raise, don’t say that often.
As far as the price, yikes I too feel they could have squeezed more out if public but maybe there are other factors.
Paolo:
It’s time for European professionals to wake up and take this great chance to create a valid alternative in Europe, for europeans, independent, subject to European law, with low payment fees (since as you know wire transfers have the same cost within Euro area, as it was a domestic wire transfer), with funds received in 1 day, etc. and with the peace of mind that for any problem you can always take legal actions paying “low” fees, etc.
Wake up Europeans… Create a copy of Escrow.com with all the features they have clearly available on their web site with few click (for instance the “buy it now button”), but for Europe, add maybe also translations in some most important languages to raise the level of trust perceived by prospect buyers…
This is something that has been lacking for 10 years in Europe….
Brandon:
In a nutshell – We are a licensed and government audited escrow company that has been supporting the domain community for 16 years.
Escrow.com will be operating exactly the same way we always have. Instead of being owned by an individual investor we will be owned by a public company with a market cap of around $500M. What this means to the domain community is continued product innovation at a much faster pace. I have been meeting with executives from Freelancer for the past two weeks and their resources are incredible compared to what we have. This is good for our employees, Freelancer and most importantly our customers. As always, thank you for your business and your trust.
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A Domain Name Auction in China - NiceNIC.NET

These are some of the Chinese domain name investors buying your domains.
The domain name market in China is hot and is driving major price appreciation, especially in short domain names.
What’s the Chinese domain name community like?
A lot like that in other parts of the world.
It has its own “big personalities” and players.
It also has its own gatherings and domain name auctions.
In April 2015, Domainer’s Circle organized a live domain name auction in Beijing that attracted 200-300 people.

Chinese domain name investor DENG Yusing chronicled the event, and you can see results and pictures here and here.
The top sale from the event was 32.cn for 1,470,000 CNY ($237,000 USD).

Photos from the auction look a lot like that of a live domain name auction in the United States, even down to the attractive models hired to liven up the show.

Sponsors included Verisign, CNNIC and the .Top registry.
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Almost 20,000 .XYZ Collision Domains To Be Released On Dec 2nd - NiceNIC.NET

On December 2, 2014 at 2pm (London Time), .XYZ will be releasing thousands of domain names to the public to register which were held back due to ICANN’s name collision list.

The new domain name extension .XYZ, is the new gTLD’s with the most domain name registrations with over 725,000 according to ntldstats.com.

Almost 20,000 names were held back due to ICANN’s name collision list, and a large majority are being released.

.XYZ just published a complete list of these domain names at gen.xyz/collisionlist.

These names will be up for grabs on a first come, first served basis, for normal registration fee at any registrar where you can register .XYZ domain names.

DONT MISS OUT NiceNIC.NET's Thanksgiving PROMO of .XYZ $1.49

Here are some highlights from the list:

There are over 1,000 short 3 and 4 character .XYZ domain names  that will be released:
3L: 75 names
3N: 100 names
3C: 95 names
4L: nearly 400 names
4N: 18 names
4C: nearly 550 names

Keyword rich domains like OnlineCasino.xyz will also become available, which I’m sure will get snatched up pretty quickly.

Some other examples of good .XYZ domain names that will become available for registration include:
220.xyz
1984.xyz
blacklist.xyz
brit.xyz
carexpert.xyz
eiffel.xyz
root.xyz
seolinks.xyz
venus.xyz
webdesigners.xyz

Hundreds of popular first names and last names will also be released including:
clare.xyz
cohen.xyz
norton.xyz
martha.xyz
juliet.xyz
berger.xyz
andrews.xyz
peterson.xyz
harrison.xyz
michelle.xyz
fernandez.xyz
garcia.xyz
ernesto.xyz

Good luck to all!

 

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90% OFF Timed to 2014 Thanksgiving Day - NiceNIC.NET

Dear Valued Customer,

As we count our blessings on this Thanksgiving Day,

we count ourselves extremely lucky to have customers like you:

Thank you for making this year a sustainable success;
Thank you for making our NiceNIC people have a steady job;
Thank you for your positive comments that encouraged us much;
Thank you for recommending NiceNIC.NET to your friends and partners;
Thank you for your confidence and believing that we will surely become the BEST!

We wish you and your family a very happy Thanksgiving and joyful holiday season.

Whether you are a multi million dollar business or something small and local,

everybody will win on 2014 Thanksgiving Day.

Starting from November 27 up till November 30, 2014,

the following domain names will be offered with fantastic discounts, even up to 90% OFF:

Domain Name	Promo Price
.XYZ	$1.49
.Asia	$1.69
.PW	$3.29
.CN	$5
.COM	$8.5
.HK	$11.5

Sincerely,
Your Private Registrar
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Funny Digits .CN: New Republic on Chinese Domain Names - NiceNIC.NET

The Secret Messages Inside Chinese URLs
Decoding 4008-517-517.com
BY CHRISTOPHER BEAM @jcbeam

An American friend living in Beijing once said she refused to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted of a string of numbers, such as 62718298454 @ 163.com. This made sense to me at the time—why make email addresses as difficult to remember as phone numbers? But I soon realized that issuing a blanket ban on number-based communications would mean cutting off just about every single Chinese person I knew.

In the U.S., you really only have to remember two long numbers, ever: Your phone number and your Social Security number. In China, you're constantly barraged by digits: QQ numbers (QQ is China's most popular chat service), email addresses, and even URLs. For example, the massive online retailer Jingdong Mall is at jd.com or, if that takes too long to type, 3.cn. Check out 4399.com to see one of China's first and largest online gaming websites. Buy and sell used cars at 92.com. Want to purchase train tickets? It's as easy as 12306.cn.

Why the preference for digits over letters? It mostly has to do with ease of memorization. To a native English-speaker, remembering a long string of digits might seem harder than memorizing a word. But that's if you understand the word. For many Chinese, numbers are easier to remember than Latin characters. Sure, Chinese children learn the pinyin system that uses the Roman alphabet to spell out Mandarin words (for example, the word for "Internet" 网络, is spelled wangluo in pinyin). And yes, Arabic numerals (1-2-3) are technically just as much a foreign import as the Roman alphabet (A-B-C). But most Chinese are more familiar with numbers than letters, especially those who didn't go to college. To many, "Hotmail.com" might as well be Cyrillic.

The digits in a domain name usually aren't random. The Internet company NetEase uses the web address 163.com—a throwback to the days of dial-up when Chinese Internet users had to enter 163 to get online. The phone companies China Telecom and China Unicom simply reappropriated their well-known customer service numbers as domain names, 10086.cn and 10010.cn, respectively.

Digits are even more convenient when you consider that the words for numbers are homophones for other words. The URL for the massive e-commerce site Alibaba, for example, is 1688.com, pronounced "yow-leeyoh-ba-ba"—close enough! Those digits can just as often have individual meanings. The video sharing site 6.cn works because the word for "six" is a near-homophone for the word "stream". The number five is pronounced wu, which sounds like wo, which means "I". The number one is pronounced yao, which with a different tone means "want". So the job-hunting site 51job.com sounds a lot like "I want a job." Likewise, to order McDonalds' delivery online, just go to 4008-517-517.com, the "517" of which sounds a bit like "I want to eat." (An English equivalent might be the old radio jingle, "How many cookies did Andrew eat? Andrew 8-8000.")

This kind of number-language has become an infinitely malleable shorthand among Chinese web users: 1 means "want", 2 means "love", 4 means "dead" or "world" or "is", 5 means "I", 7 means "wife" or "eat", 8 means "get rich" or "not" and 9 means "long time" or "alcohol". The numbers 5201314, for example, mean 我爱你一生一世, or "I will love you forever"; 0748 means "go die"; and 687 means "I'm sorry." Chinese has plenty of other number-based slang, such as erbaiwu, or "250" which means "idiot" or "38" pronounced sanba, which means "bitch" And of course there's the association of certain numbers with good or bad luck, and the subsequent demand for addresses and phone numbers with lots of 8s ("get rich") and minimal 4s ("die"). Back in 2003, a Chinese airline paid $280,000 for the phone number 88888888.

 

Why don't Chinese web addresses just use Mandarin characters? Because that's a pain, too. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which sets the rules for web addresses globally, has periodically hyped the expansion of domain names to include non-Latinate scripts, but Chinese web sites have yet to take full advantage. Some devices require a special plug-in to type in Chinese URLs, and even then it takes longer to type or write out characters than to input a few digits. Plus, for web sites that want to expand internationally but don't want to alienate foreign audiences with unfamiliar characters, numbers are a decent compromise.

Still, the numbers/letters divide is emblematic of the Internet's built-in bias: Even more than two decades after its birth, it's still a fundamentally American system. ICANN is an American non-profit corporation, though the U.S. recently agreed to hand it over to a "global multi-stakeholder community" in 2015. ASCII, the character-encoding scheme that was long used on most web pages, is short for the "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." In 2012, the United States refused to sign an international telecommunications treaty, supported by both Russia and China, that would shift the Internet away from its current U.S.-centric form of governance. In other words, the structure of the Internet is a constant reminder of American digital hegemony, from WiFi standards to GPS. Even the ".cn" at the end of Chinese URLs comes from the English word for China, not the Chinese word for China. You can't blame other countries for wanting to tell the American 250s to 0748.

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Chinese gTLDs Pushes New gTLD Registrations Beyond 600,000 - NiceNIC.NET

The commencement of General Availability for two Chinese language new gTLDs saw total registrations across all new gTLDs to jump to 634,450 on 28 April.

The two Chinese language gTLDs, .xn--3ds443g (在线) and .xn--fiq228c5hs (中文网), had registration figures of 29,722 and 14,216 respectively at the end of the day, pushing them to fourth and tenth on the nTLDstats list of top new gTLDs. Interestingly, it was the Chinese government's Service Development Center of the State Commission for Public Sector Reform that had by far the most registrations for each gTLD with 98.6 and 71.2 percent of all domains registered respectively.

According to DomainNameWire, about 20,000 of these registrations came from a deal TLD Registry struck with the above Chinese government department.

Overall .guru is still, for now, the leading new gTLD with 52,927 registrations and now a 8.34 percent market share, followed by .berlin (46,914) and .photography (33,771). - See more at: http://nicenic.net/news/messview.php?ID=13630