Hey all!

After being in the web hosting business and blogging for WebHostingSearch.com for some time now stumbeling upon tricky terms and words you’ve never heard of, seems like everyday life. But you live and you learn and by now I feel like a human dictionary when it comes to web hosting. Countless hours have I spent trying to find proper explanations to new words and to my disappointment I had a hard time finding good resources. Digital and online technology being so fluid new words and names arise every week. Even if you are a web hosting guru, it is virtually impossible to keep track of all the new lingo.

So to contribute to this miserable situation, if any of you are in need of explanation concerning web hosting lingo simply comment on this post with your Q’s.

Yes, I was in Chicago for the annual Hostingcon conference and one of the big talks for this event was a lottery with a Harley Davidson valued at over $12,000 as the first prize. The point of it all was to show that all of us hosting geeks also could be cool (sigh…).

Anyways, the companies responsible for this competition was Gawkwire, DesignVAR, Host4Yourself, BobCares, The Cloud Talk, CRE Loaded and SeeksAdmin. And I can tell you that there were many wishing to win that bike, including yours truly, and the expectations were running high. What should have been a fun and joyful competition ended up as somewhat of a … In lack of better words – it ended up as somewhat of a scam! You see, once they had a winner it turned out that he only had 1 chance in 250 to win the bike.

I can promise all of you that weren’t there – the mood quickly changed among all involved and in particular among all of us who entered the “competition”, or scam if you so will. It simply felt as cheap trick to get attention and what could, and should, have been good attention for the responsible companies turned out to be nothing else than a fiasco. All wasn’t good in the hood at HostingCon 2008. Rough times in the web hosting industry, …

The internet hype shows no sign of cooling down and another IT-crash is not to speak of. Online forecasts predict nothing but clear skies and warm temperatures for the world’s greatest computer network. A growing majority of Earth’s population is spending hours online on secure connections every day, causing more and more businesses to migrate online. Online marketing is already a billion dollar industry and the ecommerce market is forcing shopping malls into bankruptcy all over the country every month. What’s next to come? What’s the e-hype of 2008?

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The latest statistical figures released by the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center reveals that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most Internet users, some time this year.

The figure reported by the Chinese government institution was a 53 percent jump from 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at this time last year. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: China says number of Internet users rises to 210 million, could overtake US this year

“Currently China’s online population is about 50 million less than that of the United States and is the world’s second-largest,” the agency, also known as CNNIC, said on its Web site. “CNNIC forecasts that (China) will become the largest online country in 2008,” it said.

The U.S. Census Bureau said last year that about 218 million of the country’s 310 million people used the Internet.

China promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block the public from seeing material deemed pornographic or that opposes communist rule.

This latest figure only consolidates the fact that China is a very ripe market for web hosting.  With a population of  1,323,128,240 [over 1.3 billion], China currently ranks as the most populous country in the world with the USA coming 3rd after India. China’s current population is 19.83% of the world’s total population whilst that of the USA is 4.55%. Economists are predicting that China and India would be the world’s next super-powers in as soon as ten years time, going by the strong annual economic growth the two countries have been marking over the years.

Having realised all the above-stated points, many of the leading dot-com companies have opened shop in China to reap from the economic windfall: Google, Paypal, ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo etc

Now, China is not exactly a virgin market if the figures by WebHosting.info are anything to go by. Chinese web hosts share 2,735,314 domains amongst themselves whilst Chinese ICANN-accredited registrars have registered 3,275,345 generic domain names.

My point is simple: web hosting firms in other parts of the world that can target a section of their marketing website at the Chinese population stand to reap economic benefits from China’s fast-growing Internet population. A website with a Chinese language version would be a first step though its important to point that many educated Chinese individuals can handle the English language fairly well. Read my previous post for some more ideas about how to go about this: SEO Web Hosting and how its good for you