No doubt about that, it is a great piece of work produced by Information Architects. TechCrunch says,
…It is a subway map of the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. In theory it demonstrates the relationship between various sites and ideas, with a strong focus on Web 2.0…
I do not want to be picky at this, but I have to drop some thoughts here because there is a special Chinese Line which looks really interesting. (click the image for larger version)
Chinese Internet is so special
This is the happy site of it. Almost every site is organized into certain category, such as Sharing, Tools, Social News, Movies etc, which give you the idea what these sites focus on. However, if you find a site located on the brown line, bingo! It is Chinese. Since this map is called the Web Trend Map, we should be pleased to know that people think Chinese web will play an important role in 2007.
Chinese Internet is not Web2.0
Sadly, most of the sites located on the Chinese Line are not marked Web2.0, Sina and QQ are not, Sohu, Baidu and Yahoo China are just Web1.5. None of these Chinese Internet giant has truly embrace the new concept of the web, it is a bit frustrating. Well, the map shows the sites like Sohu, Baidu are changing and even the global giant Microsoft and MSN are still in Web1.0 with troubles, we should be positive on the future of Chinese web.
The world still does not understand the Chinese web
I respect this work, appreciate the construction of Chinese Line, but if it needs my suggestion, I would say this line has to be re-built. Bala Music!? I am not sure which site it refers to OK, it is a service partnered with the portal Tom Online, but there are some music sites doing better than it, such as 9sky.com, and I also like Yobo.com and 8box.com. Wretch.cc is doing great in Taiwan, but definitely not in Mainland China; PChome, Vnet, I know they are popular and have the traffic, but should we use them as the examples of Chinese web2.0; EastMoney, I am quite surprised the author found this Chinese stock portal site (Thanks to Tangos, my bad here. EastMoney is reported to be the biggest financial website in China and expects to be listed on NASDQA this year) I think the better route for it is the Money Line. The Chinese Line can not be the reflection of Chinese web, at least it has to be improved. I am not complaining on the producer of the map here, the problem is that we did not tell them what is happening in the Chinese web!
Take a look at this complex map, it is fun!
