Duncan Riley reports that Alibaba has had the typical — or perhaps, more than typical — run up of a hotly expected internet IPO, with its stock price shooting up around 160% of its initial offering.

The big obvious winner is Yahoo, who controls a controlling 40% stake in the parent group of this Chinese enterprise-level e-commerce/trade website, and has made, on paper, over a $1B in the first day alone.

While its a day of financial windfalls for Yahoo in China, its also a day, ironically, that will find its CEO, Jerry Yang, in the Congressional hotseat to answer questions *about* how Yahoo deals with China — specifically, how it gave confidential information to Chinese government officials about a local dissident, leading to that individual to serving 10 or more years in jail.

The financial windfall will score, undoubtedly, the incredible opportunity in China for any net companies; and yet, I think its all the more important that any new media watcher to follow what is said in these Congressional hearings.  BusinessWeek has the details, but the fallout from Yahoo’s shennanigans (if the release of information leading someone to end up in jail can be glibly called a “shennanigan”) may be some interesting US legislation which follows that may make it illegal *in* the US to divulge such private information, which may include phone numbers and social security numbers, to any third party (governments included).

I don’t know how the lobbyists will deal with that kind of impending fight, but should it pass — as BusinessWeek rightly points out — it may make it all but impossible for US based companies to do work in China; even Yahoo, who has a controlling interest in Alibaba (according to the BusinessWeek article), has these issues to contend with as the local CEO has publicly proclaimed that he’ll work with the Chinese government with whatever it needs to do.

It looks like MySpace has finally made a move into China four days ago, with almost of all of its control in local hands  (i.e. with no direct connection to its overseas office). Furthermore, in a move that surprised no one, MySpace China has made moves to limit prohibit certain controversial topics of conversation.  What’s interesting is how its done so. [Since I don’t read Chinese, much of this information was gleaned from texyt who has done a great job covering the issue.]

1. On publicly available message boards and forums, certain topics just don’t exist — religion and politics, for example
2. There is a keyword filter to any searches, postings and comments, where trying to query a specific term, or post using a suspicious keyword will flag your post and tell you to “try again”.
3. (the most troubling) There is now a means for users to flag *other* content, whether it be messages, profiles, or what not, so as to alert their overseers administrators for “misconduct” by other users. What does this mean? The usual things like “endangering national security, leaking state secrets” and so on — but it also, apparently, includes the vaguely worded phrase “disturbing the social order”.

While I take the translation with a grain of salt until I can confirm it myself, it does seem like MySpace is using “social tools” so that it can keep a greater eye on its citizens. And it does make sense in an Orwellian fashion. After all, what better way to monitor users activities than to get users to monitor themselves?

Its an issue of scale, really. When some social systems get large, things that were in place previously to monitor “deviant” activity may not be as effective; getting people to monitor things themselves is no different, really, than say, adding +/- to comments in a forum like Slashdot, so that people can censor the trolls themselves.

Or, like Digg, where they rely on their users to report “spam” or questionable content.

Well, I guess its no different except for the consequences that is. After all, getting your post pulled on Digg or marked as (minus) on Slashdot doesn’t get you hauled away in the middle of the night and thrown in jail (or worse).

Oh, that and contributing to self-imposed censorship, I guess.

MySpace China shows a different side of user-generated activities, and I guess it really shouldn’t be all that shocking. In a time when China is making a move to clamp down on suspicious Internet activity, I wasn’t really surprised to hear that MySpace China was toeing the line, and actively encouraging people to snitch on each other.

What’s kind of interesting though, is to think about the motivation behind doing so. In other social networking systems on the net now, sometimes there’s an altruistic reason behind contributing, but more often than not, its motivated by self-interest.

*Is* MySpace China “rewarding” its users for reporting suspicious content and the misconduct of others? Would it go the Netscape route, and ever encourage user activity, moderation, and checking up on suspicious activity with real-world dollars? Would the government, in turn be rewarding MySpace China for encouraging such reporting?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but if you do, you can leave a comment or three below.

tip: Steve O’Hear

In yet another tiresome effort to “control” the “internet”, China’s president Hu JinTao is calling for even more stringent controls on how the kind of media that Chinese citizens are exposed to.  The purpose?  To foster a”healthy online culture that … sticks to the direction of socialist advanced culture”  China has a legitimate reason to be concerned.  With over 100 million individuals using the Internet, which is more than the number of internet users in the US, and that number continuing to grow at greater than 20% per year, the need to monitor and control what they see has never been greater.

If, that is, you were seriously convinced that “cracking down” on the internet, or even TV, will have any material effect on what your citizens see.  Although the “Great Firewall of China” does a moderate job of censoring URLs and IP’s (even though China officially denies that it “censors” “anything”), there’s no question that information and rumours still flow freely through instant messaging systems, forums, and other kinds of web1.0 “social networking” systems.

Quite frankly, it will be interesting if there ever was a more concerted effort at enforcing its socialist “values” while restricting morally “suspicious” content throughout the Internet — if only for the focus it would put on China, and the deliciously strong backlash that would result.