This is really really embarrassing.  Today at the NextStep offices we had six US university interns brainstorming over different feature sets for the NextStep Directory.  One of the key value added attributes of the NSD are the company profiles and surveys.  NONE OF THE INTERNS KNEW THE COMPANY SURVEYS EXISTED!  There reasoning is that after clicking on a category, the information displayed looked like most other directories so they didn’t realize they could click on each company to find out all the additional information.  I was left speechless when Joe told me and asked the interns myself to make sure.  This is a clear case of the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and why its so important to get outside opinions.  Hopefully, someone will read this and avoid making the same mistake.

Check out this article from forbes.  I’ve selected a few quotes that I thought were great.

“Whether China’s second-richest individual suffers a fall is in the country’s leaders’ hands. Detained by authorities on suspicion of stock manipulation, Huang Guangyu is powerful enough that a decision on his fate requires approval from the top.” 

“It will be more serious only if Beijing authorities want him to go down,” said one Hong Kong-based analyst who asked to remain unidentified because of company policy.” 

“The Mingpao report said that any charges brought against Huang will need to be personally cleared by Premier Wen Jiabao.”

I’m still in New York and let me tell you, times are tough.  We’ve gotten to the point where the government is starting to talk about bailing out Citigroup!  Wow.  Of course everyone around the world is feeling the effects of this economy, even in Shanghai.  Luckily, I have access to this site you may have heard of called the NextStep Directory.  I can also see what people in Shanghai are searching for with regards to business services, and for the first time, headhunters is the most popular category.  (Since launching, graphic/web design has consistently been held its place at the top.)  Here is a record of the last few months for this category:

November: 1st (most popular category)

October: 2nd

September: 2nd

August: 4th

July: 7th   

The numbers don’t lie.  Expats in Shanghai are feeling their share of this economic crisis.   

Check out this site (http://www.nytimes-se.com/).  There were over a million paper editions that were also handed out. 

I’ve been in New York for the past few months so I have the fortune of being here for this election.  I was watching the election results from an apartment that overlooks Union Square.  I have to say, it is absolutely incredible here.   

As soon as it was announced that Obama had won, people started coming out of buildings from every direction and running into the square. There is an NYU dormitory a block from Union Square and students were literally pouring out cheering and banging on pots and pans. Within 15 minutes, thousands of people had gathered on the south side of the park. Its been a few hours and even now the noise is deafening.  Each time the traffic lights change, hundreds of more people charge into the square. In the center of the crowd is an American flag so massive it is being held over hundreds of people.   

People are screaming, smiling, laughing, hugging and even crying. People are cheering ‘Yes we can!’, ‘Yes we did!’ and other things that I won’t post. All the cars that pass by are honking their horns and people are screaming out of their windows as they drive by. Once Obama’s speech ended, another massive wave of people poured out of buildings. There must be tens of thousands of people now.   

Fireworks are going off.  I’m going back out.  It is absolutely incredible here.       

I just read an article about a new search engine called www.cuil.com (pronounced cool) in the New York Times. I think its a far better search engine ‘experience’ than anything else I’ve used including google. Cuil offers relevant information/links through two separate tool bars for certain results that I found quite useful. However, google seems to have better quality search results. Check it out and judge for yourself. I also copied a few key points about how Cuil differentiates itself from others below.

Summary of Cuil’s features:
Biggest Internet search engine—Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine

Organized results—Cuil’s magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category

Different results—Unlike other search engines, Cuil ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity

Complete privacy protection—Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories

So apparently from now until August 25th, no one will be allowed access to server facilities in China.  This is obviously a huge concern for anyone who runs their own web company or uses a dedicated server.  Also, many if not all ‘.cn’ domain names with the word Olympics and some just related to the Olympics will be shutdown without any arbitration or court ruling.  There are a lot of people who spent a lot of money and time preparing their business around this event and they will simply be turned off.

I just signed onto a very popular Shanghai blog and here are the first three ads through google adsense, “Tantric massage Shanghai”, “Ecstasy Massage” and “Massage Shanghai”. All three offer outcall service and of course all three list mobile phone numbers. Now it seems like this is quite a very common occurrence these days. These massage girls are obviously bidding very high for google adwords because I see it on almost very Shanghai centered site, including the NextStep Directory (Although its pretty nominal on our website). On the flip side, it also means that not only are people clicking on the links, but they are utilizing the services. Why else would the massage services continue to pay so much money per click. Anyway, what it comes down to is the fact that all these websites are acting as pimps.

On another note, I’ve read a couple articles recently that talk about how there are several cities/towns in the US called Shanghai, such as Shanghai, Virginia. Since the keyword Shanghai is bid at such a high rate, these massage ads are appearing in these towns throughout the US.

Lastly, just to give this post an ounce of respectability, the consistency of these massage ads on Shanghai related websites says something about google’s adsense/adwords business model. After all, it was just announced they had missed their projected earnings and that click through rates for adsense were going down on a global scale. This seems fairly obvious when you think about it. If you see the same ads on every site you go to, how many times are you really going to click on them? So it seems all these sites have started to cannibalize each other. My recommendation, and what we will probably do for the NextStep Directory, is using a different service for delivering ads to your site. This way, you are distinguished from the rest of the sites and might actually offer something unique.

I’m going to start by saying that this is completely a stretch but has anyone noticed how most fake DVD’s start with the the Fox logo?  The last 5 DVD’s I watched all started with the Fox intro and none of the movies/tv shows were actually made by Fox.  This would have caught my attention regardless of which company was constantly being featured, but I’m only writing about it because the head of Fox happens to be Rupert Murdoch whose wife is Wendi Deng, who was born and raised in China.  We also know that Wendi is very involved with News Corporation’s (parent of Fox) dealings here and was a big force behind MySpace China.

So this is a conspiracy theory for the most part.  Just a couple neat coincidences, but if it were intentional, I would have to say its a brilliant PR/Marketing strategy.  And yes, Chinese people do notice.

Thanks everyone for making the One Year Anniversary an incredible event. We had over 300 people turn out, far more than I was expecting. Last night was made even better for us because we were able to introduce the BlackCard and of course the NextStepDirectory. For those of you who missed it, here is a transcript of the presentation from last night.

“Good evening.

Most of the projects I have worked on have tried to identify a real need and figure out a way to solve it. NextStep, this event, is the perfect example. Joe and I were entrepreneurs in this great city and felt there should be a community for all of us to support each other. So while working here in Shanghai, we recently discovered another need. We realized that there was a lack of information.

Each day, we’re trying to operate our businesses as efficiently as possible. So when you need to find a company to help you with what you need, where do you go? One option is to go online and google what you’re looking for. Or, you can go look through the back of a few magazines. There are even a few websites with some scattered information. But there isn’t really any one place you can go to find everything. And that’s when we realized what we could build. A comprehensive directory for business services.

And here are the categories that we decided should be included in the directory. For now, there are 30 in total. Categories such as business license consultants. Visa services. Even ayis! At that point we thought we had a great product. But when we sat back and thought about it some more we realized, you know what, its still not enough.

Most of the directories out there today do a good job of telling us which companies do what, but not much more than that. For instance, if I wanted to find a company to renew my visa, I could look at the back of a magazine and find a list, but that’s about all. So we thought, why not create a directory that had specific information about each category. So that when I go to look for a visa, not only do I know which companies offer it, but I also know what type of visas they offer and for how much. We took this idea and created industry specific surveys for each category and had them filled out by the companies. So now all the information is in one place. And then, we thought we definitely had a great product. But when we sat back and took another look we said, its Still…still not enough.

When most of us go to buy airplane tickets, we usually don’t go to the website of a specific airline. No, the internet has enabled us to aggregate information in some incredible ways. So instead of going to a lot of different airline websites, now we only need to go to one such as Ctrip or Elong. These websites don’t just list prices, but they enable you to compare the prices of all these different airlines based on price, date, class and even time. Well what about business services? Could we do the same? Well we have the companies divided into categories. And we have surveys for each category. Why not enable our users to compare these services however they want? So that’s what we did.

Everything I have just described for you is small part of what the NSD will be in the coming months. I didn’t want to give away all our secrets on one night. But for tonight, we are launching the beta version of the NextStep Directory which includes a handful of categories and surveys. By May, everything I described for you tonight will be fully up and running. I hope all of you will give it a try and find it as useful as we have set out to make it. Thanks.”

Thanks again to everyone who came out last night.  Here is the NextStepDirectory