We are now accepting applications for FACES Class of 2010 delegates! Apply now at faces.stanford.edu/applications. For more information, check out our flyers or email us at faces.recruiting.2010@gmail.com.

Download our flyers:

Flyer 1

Flyer 2

US Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, delivered the keynote address to FACES at Peking University. His insightful talk and FACES attracted a healthy dose of news coverage!

US Envoy Criticizes Coverage of Obama China Visit
AP/New York Times
As an aside, James Fallows has a great series of posts on The Atlantic Monthly called Manufactured Failure, covering how: “Barack Obama’s recent swing through Asia was a relative success, and certainly nothing like the disaster that most U.S. coverage implied.”

Ambassador: US-China relations more focused on global issues
China Daily (features FACES!)

US Ambassador says Obama trip a success
Global Times (features FACES!)

图：美驻华大使洪博培北大演讲
Sohu (features FACES!)

FACES in Africa?
In addition, FACES delegate Codrin Arsene is blogging about the conference and China at his blog on African Politics

Kai's Happy HappyFarm

Social games have exploded in China, starting with Parking Wars on Kaixin001–a game adapted from Facebook where you have to find a parking space for your car or pay a parking ticket. The game behooves you to login often: if you find a friend in your space, you can slap them with a fine. Save that money and you’ll soon be able to afford that virtual Benz or Rolls-Royce you’ve always dreamed of. The addictiveness (rewards for constant login) and social interactivity have made social games a smash hit in China. A number of our Chinese delegates (Yunli, Xian…) can even attest to this from personal experience!

CEO Joe Chen of Renren presents to FACES tomorrow!

Cut-throat SNS Competition
Social games are hosted on social networking sites (SNS) that either serve as a platform for game developers or produce/copy games in-house. There is fierce competition amongst the that seek (and claim) to be “China’s Facebook.” The leaders by estimated active user count are:

• 228m Qzone (focused on teens, chat)
• 70m Renren (focused on students, networking)
• 50m Kaixin001 (focused on white collars, gaming)

Wednesday’s FACES Alumni Banquet speaker is Joe Chen, Chairman of Oak Pacific Interactive (whose companies include Renren, Mop hi, and the fake kaixin.com). By the

Happy Farm: The World’s #1 Social Game
Happy Farm (开心农场) has an estimated 80m active users across all of China’s SNS. You can grow and steal  from friends (see screenshot of me happily farming away). If you’re sick of having your crops stolen, you can rent a virtual guard dog for ~15RMB a month; yes, social games are a cash crop. Moreover, the leading game on Facebook is now Zynga’s FarmVille, with 63+ monthly active users! (maybe a few of our American delegates can attest to this?) If you’re interested, I wrote a longer piece on Happy Farm here: http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/29/china-qq-farm-happy-farm-games

A Bridge to China’s Internet Island?
In many ways, China’s internet is an island—ideas cross-pollinate, but firms find it extremely difficult to enter in or expand out. Internet giants Facebook (blocked in China), YouTube (blocked), Twitter (blocked), eBay, and Yahoo have all faltered in China. Chinese firms are starting to go global, but have had little success to-date.

Social gaming (or farming) could be one of the first sectors to bridge the internet divide. The very first farming game was Happy Farm on Renren–the creators, Five Minutes, added the app to Facebook and has gained 2.5m users. A number of Chinese game developers are eyeing Facebook and vice versa. Chinese-American exchange at it’s finest.

The FACES Blog was inspired by the blog hosting services Posterous and Tumblr, which allow instant post-by-email. We figured that could be a ludicrously easy, appealing way for the FACES family to share. Unfortunately, the services are blocked in China–so no-starters for the Beijing conference. As you can see (or cannot see), even sites that have a custom domain (example) are blocked blocked if Posterous or Tumblr shows up as the underlying IP address. A few people have asked me how I was still able to set up the blog. Unfortunately, I have no magic or hacker skills and no guanxi. Fortunately, there are still some idiot-proof, even idiot-friendly solutions out there:

First, I purchased a hosting service, which is not the easiest decision in China. None that I’m aware of will guarantee that your site will stay accessible, because if it’s on the same shared server as sites with objectionable content, a range of IP addresses for that server may be blocked. In the end, I settled upon Bluehost because of their low prices (4.95/month with the web coupons you can find online), good customer service, and the fact that they don’t tolerate porn, which is often the reason why a whole server becomes blocked in China.

Second, WordPress, following in the footsteps of Posterous and Tumblr, has recently added full blog-by-email capability. Installing WordPress via Bluehost’s cPanel is a breeze. For blog-by-email the plugin Postie is functional, though sometimes still rough around the edges. And voilà! since the Postie plugin has been installed here, the FACES family have been flooding the website with innovative content and comments BECAUSE BLOGGING BY EMAIL IS SO LUDICROUSLY EASY. (ok, so this is still on the way… email it in to post(*at*)thefacesblog.com)

Further Reading
The Atlantic Monthly’s James Fallows writes an informative piece about the Great Firewall and a followup piece.

there's no notification in China if a site is blocked (...or whether it's really just experiencing server troubles)