“Music is the universal language of mankind” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Music might have transcended cultural and geographic barriers, but, at least in my opinion, Internet is what’s really gotten the world looking like one giant village with common etiquette and lingo. Thus far, nothing’s been more able to unite people across nations and cultures than the way Internet has.
And now, we’re witnessing the dawn of a new era. The advent of cloud computing, online business exchanges, and social and business networking sites make sourcing from the crowd and doing businesses as easy as clicking the mouse. The benefits and ease of use have driven a significant number of people to find a home online.
Take China for example. It was only in 1995 when the Chinese authorities began permitting commercial Internet accounts and, that too, with a plethora of rules and regulations for controlling content being exchanged. And then China got addicted to games and socializing on the net. According to a recent report by CINNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), the total number of netizens in China rose by a sharp 53.3% per annum to 210 million by December 2007.
Targeting the Chinese community’s insatiable appetite for spending hours on the net, numerous Internet companies sprung up in a short period of time. Soon, this blossoming industry was swarmed with companies willing to invest millions.
Baidu.com, the leading Chinese language Internet search engine, attracted investments from industry pioneers like Google, before it went public a little more than 3 years back. And let’s not forget e-commerce company Alibaba.com. This B2B firm made raising millions of dollars from companies like Softbank and Goldman Sachs look like a piece of cake. Only last year, Alibaba.com’s IPO in Hong Kong attracted something like HK$450 billion from retail investors.
The latest I heard was that Google is investing $1 million in Comsenz Inc, a startup company in China that provides software and services for online community networks. Comsenz has also received some funding (amount undisclosed) from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
With China adding around 200 new Internet users every minute towards the end of 2007, the country is on track to housing the world’s largest base of Internet users this year, according to CNNIC. As more regions across the world get connected, innovative entrepreneurs will venture into the untouched boundaries. I still believe that the real potential of the Internet is yet to explore.
* For series, references are published in the last installment of the series.
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