I’ve always felt that the Chinese culture aspect of guanxi and building massive networks full of hundreds of people – many of whom you don’t even really know, dovetails perfectly with the concept of the internet.

Really? I’m surprised (about Canada). I thought people in North America and Europe are into the internet.

That’s what’s really great about China. It’s like people are just starting to open up to the WWW, and everyone wants to try it out.

Canada doesn’t seem to have much of an internet sphere or a good general portal site – there are one or two that cater to specific cities (Toronto, Vancouver etc) and there are a number of partisan political forums, but nothing really like sina or xici or other giant portals that ‘everyone’ goes to. There are heavy comments on the big national newspaper site (The Globe and Mail) but it is set up in comment fashion, rather than in forum/thread/post form.

Generally speaking, I don’t find Canadians to be a very wired or digital population. A lot of time is spent on Facebook (but usually within your existing circle), but not too many people blog and Twittering (I never really got into that) is almost non-existent outside IT and Tech circles. Mobile phone costs are astronomical and severely limit that mediums full potential.

People have definetly tried to make an attempt to fill these gaps, however plethora of cobwebs floating around the Canadian internet world are testament to their level of success – I think we just dont’ have the population and are too diverse/divided to really come together on a big portal.

I could just be old too – forums and portals are kind of 90’s and I haven’t dived into and used Facebook to it’s full potential.

I’ve been thinking about doing something like China SMACK but then many forums in my country don’t need much translating. Or not really that interesting content. (Or rather bizarre like China SMACK’s) :P

Talk Talk China still reigns as the funniest blog regarding that country though – shame it is down.