Mediaboss Marketing

February 28, 2012, 2:43 PM EST

By Belinda Cao

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese Internet stocks climbed, led by Sina Corp., after the company said its Twitter-like Weibo service may start contributing to sales in the second half.

Sina, owner of China’s third-most visited website, jumped the most in four months and was the biggest gainer on the Bloomberg China-US 55 index of the most-traded Chinese stocks in the U.S. which added 1.7 percent to 108.57 by 1:08 p.m. in New York. Youku Inc., owner of China’s largest video sharing website, surged to a six-month high while Baidu Inc., operator of China’s biggest search engine, climbed to the highest level since Feb. 16 based on closing prices.

Shanghai-based Sina has jumped 37 percent this year as Weibo users rose by about 50 million to more than 300 million in the past three months, according to Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao. Prospects the government will take further steps to preserve Chinese growth, the fastest of major economies, has helped drive a 13.4 percent gain in the Bloomberg China-US 55 measure in 2012. Policy makers cut the reserve ratio for banks for the second time in three months on Feb. 24.

“China’s Internet stocks, especially the bigger names like Sina and Baidu, still have lots of room for growth going forward,” Agnes Deng, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager whose $405 million Greater China Fund invests in Chinese equities, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York yesterday. “China’s economy will be able to maintain growth of more than 8 percent” this year, she said.

Shanghai-based Sina leaped 13 percent to $71.25, poised for the biggest daily gain since Oct. 13.

‘Meaningful Monetization’

The company plans to start “meaningful monetization” from Weibo in the second half of 2012, CEO Chao said in a conference call yesterday.

“We do not expect that total monetization on Weibo will be significant this year,” he said. The company will start a Weibo-based display advertising system in the second quarter and several fee-based services beginning in the second half, Chao said.

Weibo may contribute $20 million to $30 million to Sina revenue in 2012, Andy Yeung, a New York-based analyst at Oppenheimer & Co Inc. wrote in a research note issued yesterday.

Net income of Sina totaled $9.3 million in the fourth quarter, from a net loss of $100 million a year earlier and a loss of $336.3 million in the previous three months, it said in a Feb. 27 statement.

Deng at the Greater China Fund said she is looking for better “valuation levels” to buy Internet stocks including Sina, after selling holdings of the company when its stock price reached $140 in April. The fund she manages has increased 18 percent this year after posting a 23 percent loss in 2011.

China ETF Climbs

The iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund, the biggest Chinese exchange-traded fund in the U.S., climbed 1.5 percent to $40.31 yesterday, extending a 3.8 percent advance this month. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.3 percent to 1,371.57, set for the highest close since June 2008.

Beijing-based Youku advanced 8.3 percent to $24.93 in New York and was poised for the highest close since Aug. 31.

The company is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results on March 14. Sales for the quarter probably rose 97 percent from a year earlier to 300.07 million yuan ($47.6 million), according to the average estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg survey. That would exceed the company’s previous forecast of 297.3 million yuan.

Youku competitor Tudou Holdings Ltd., China’s second- largest video sharing website, advanced 4.5 percent to $15.89. Renren Inc., a Beijing-based social networking website, jumped 8.6 percent to $5.58, set for the highest closing level this month.

Beijing-based E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc., the biggest Internet-based online book retailer in China, advanced 8.1 percent to $6.79 in New York, the biggest gain in a month. Baidu jumped 2.7 percent to $138.12.

Sohu.com Inc., which owns the third-biggest search engine, rose 5 percent to $51.44 while online games operator NetEase.com Inc. climbed 4.9 percent to $53.60.

--Editors: Marie-France Han, Emma O’Brien

To contact the reporter on this story: Belinda Cao in New York at lcao4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

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Sina’s Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains: China Overnight

By Belinda Cao - Tue Feb 28 18:40:11 GMT 2012

Chinese Internet stocks climbed, led by Sina Corp. (SINA) (SINA), after the company said its Twitter-like Weibo service may start contributing to sales in the second half.

Sina, owner of China’s third-most visited website, jumped the most in four months and was the biggest gainer on the Bloomberg China-US 55 index of the most-traded Chinese stocks in the U.S. which added 1.7 percent to 108.57 by 1:08 p.m. in New York. Youku Inc., owner of China’s largest video sharing website, surged to a six-month high while Baidu Inc. (BIDU), operator of China’s biggest search engine, climbed to the highest level since Feb. 16 based on closing prices.

Shanghai-based Sina has jumped 37 percent this year as Weibo users rose by about 50 million to more than 300 million in the past three months, according to Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao. Prospects the government will take further steps to preserve Chinese growth, the fastest of major economies, has helped drive a 13.4 percent gain in the Bloomberg China-US 55 measure in 2012. Policy makers cut the reserve ratio for banks for the second time in three months on Feb. 24.

“China’s Internet stocks, especially the bigger names like Sina and Baidu, still have lots of room for growth going forward,” Agnes Deng, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager whose $405 million Greater China Fund invests in Chinese equities, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York yesterday. “China’s economy will be able to maintain growth of more than 8 percent” this year, she said.

Shanghai-based Sina leaped 13 percent to $71.25, poised for the biggest daily gain since Oct. 13.

‘Meaningful Monetization’

The company plans to start “meaningful monetization” from Weibo in the second half of 2012, CEO Chao said in a conference call yesterday.

“We do not expect that total monetization on Weibo will be significant this year,” he said. The company will start a Weibo-based display advertising system in the second quarter and several fee-based services beginning in the second half, Chao said.

Weibo may contribute $20 million to $30 million to Sina revenue in 2012, Andy Yeung, a New York-based analyst at Oppenheimer & Co Inc. wrote in a research note issued yesterday.

Net income of Sina totaled $9.3 million in the fourth quarter, from a net loss of $100 million a year earlier and a loss of $336.3 million in the previous three months, it said in a Feb. 27 statement.

Deng at the Greater China Fund said she is looking for better “valuation levels” to buy Internet stocks including Sina, after selling holdings of the company when its stock price reached $140 in April. The fund she manages has increased 18 percent this year after posting a 23 percent loss in 2011.

China ETF Climbs

The iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund, the biggest Chinese exchange-traded fund in the U.S., climbed 1.5 percent to $40.31 yesterday, extending a 3.8 percent advance this month. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) added 0.3 percent to 1,371.57, set for the highest close since June 2008.

Beijing-based Youku advanced 8.3 percent to $24.93 in New York and was poised for the highest close since Aug. 31.

The company is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results on March 14. Sales for the quarter probably rose 97 percent from a year earlier to 300.07 million yuan ($47.6 million), according to the average estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg survey. That would exceed the company’s previous forecast of 297.3 million yuan.

Youku competitor Tudou Holdings Ltd. (TUDO), China’s second- largest video sharing website, advanced 4.5 percent to $15.89. Renren Inc. (RENN), a Beijing-based social networking website, jumped 8.6 percent to $5.58, set for the highest closing level this month.

Beijing-based E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. (DANG), the biggest Internet-based online book retailer in China, advanced 8.1 percent to $6.79 in New York, the biggest gain in a month. Baidu jumped 2.7 percent to $138.12.

Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU), which owns the third-biggest search engine, rose 5 percent to $51.44 while online games operator NetEase.com Inc. (NTES) climbed 4.9 percent to $53.60.

To contact the reporter on this story: Belinda Cao in New York at lcao4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

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Sina’s Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains in N.Y.: China Overnight

Russia's new Internet-savvy opposition is going online to protest and monitor the presidential elections on March 4, bringing its iPhones and Twitter into the fray against Vladimir Putin.

As jokes and spoof videos about Putin, expected to win back the presidency in Sunday's polls, spread like wildfire on social networking sites and YouTube, opposition activists are using the Internet to promote their cause.

After a slow start, Internet use has sky-rocketed in Russia in recent years and last year the country overtook Germany as having Europe's largest number of Internet users, a development the opposition have not hesitated to exploit.

This week a Moscow-based programme developer, Alexei Chistyakov, 29, presented a new iPhone app to allow election monitors at polling stations to instantly report violations.

It will link up to a call centre organised jointly by Yabloko liberal party and the League of Voters, an umbrella group of celebrities and bloggers who are using their clout to rally election observers.

"It's an easy way to report violations," Chistyakov said of the free app, which he designed and developed with a French company, fearing repercussions for the Russian company where he works.

The elections "are already unfair, let's start with that," he said. "We are doing all this so that people on the outside also acknowledge they are unfair."

Activist Ilya Yashin, 28, of the Solidarity movement said he feels equally at home with the audience of his blogs as when yelling out speeches at the mass rallies for fair elections.

"I feel comfortable with the Internet audience and with people who have never used the Internet. I feel that's my advantage, I was never just an offline politician or just online," he said.

Putin, who has slammed the Internet as "50% pornography", has barely entered the Internet battle. But worryingly for the Russian strongman, that's hardly representative of Russians today.

Forty-four percent use the Internet as one of their main news sources, a December poll by the independent Levada centre found, although state-dominated television news remains stronger, with 78 percent watching.

"Obviously there is a trend for the growing influence of the Internet, but of course the Internet cannot compete with television. The status quo remains that public opinion is shaped by television," said Yashin.

Aiming to change that are Internet sites such as Ridus.ru, a "citizens' news" service founded last autumn where anyone can submit a story and which covers the opposition rallies in detail.

"I think the Internet will become the main source of information for people who are interested in news. At the moment, it's television, but that's changing," said Timofei Vasilyev, a staff journalist at Ridus.

"Fewer and fewer people believe in the television. More and more people believe in the Internet."

The founder of Russia's largest social networking site, Vkontakte, Pavel Durov, ran an online poll ahead of December's parliamentary elections. Out of more than 4 million votes, only 21 percent were for ruling party United Russia.

Putin's campaign manager, film director Stanislav Govorukhin, recently called the Internet a "rubbish dump."

In a possible own goal, the campaign recently posted online television ads with celebrity endorsements of Putin.

The result -- bloggers and journalists pored over them and concluded a popular actress looked as if she could have been coerced into appearing to protect her children's charity.

And popular television and radio host Ksenia Sobchak went on to score far better online with a spoof video in which she demurely backed Putin, only for the camera to cut away to reveal guns pointed to her head.

Yashin was scornful of Putin's team's attempts to win hearts and minds on the Internet.

"I think it looks pretty ridiculous. They make quite a mess of it. We're not afraid of competition on the Internet," he said.

View original post here:
Internet: Russia's new anti-Putin weapon

Did you know the Google Developer section has an education section for Webmaster Tools at developers.google.com/webmasters?

Fili Wiese, who works at Google on ad quality, but formerly part of search quality, posted this on his Google+ page.

Here is the video followed by the transcript:

0:01 The internet is amazing.
0:03 It's easy to share anything you create with the entire world.
0:07 Like Alice.
0:08 She just opened an online store for her handmade jewelry.
0:11 But now she's wondering, can people find her site on Google?
0:15 With Google Webmaster Tools, Alice can make sure that Google
0:19 finds her store and shows it for the correct search query.
0:23 Webmaster Tools displays the errors that Google finds when
0:26 reading her site so Alice can check those errors and fix
0:29 them to make all her pages appear in search results.
0:33 Every time Alice creates a new product page, she can use
0:36 Webmaster Tool to see if other people link to it and how often
0:39 it appears in Google's search results.
0:42 She can use that data to discover the most successful
0:44 pages and products in her store, so she can focus
0:47 on that and increase traffic to her site.
0:51 Webmaster Tools also regularly checks her site for malware,
0:54 and another problems, and will even send an email if it
0:57 finds important issues.
0:59 Now Alice can be sure that everything is OK with her site
1:02 with Google Webmaster Tools.

Forum discusion at Google+.

Read the original:
Video Overview Of Google Webmaster Tools