Chinese Internet portal NetEase.com (NTES) has released its 2008 China Internet Communication Report which summarizes the hot topics being searched and discussed on the Internet and Chinese blogosphere.
On the report's list of its top keywords, "Sichuan earthquake", "Olympic Games" and "naked picture scandal" rank at the top, along with the Chinese word "shanzhai", which refers to fake products, television shows, or celebrity imitators. The naked pictures refer to a scandal unveiled early in 2008 involving Hong Kong celebrities Edison Chen, Gillian Chung, and Cecilia Cheung, and the earthquake keyword searches came from people looking for more information about the devestating earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province in May 2008.
Sports stars Kobe Bryant, David Beckham, and Michael Phelps are the only three foreigners on the ten lists issued by NetEase.com.
Fang Sanwen, deputy executive editor-in-chief of NetEase stated, "Behavior of the 290 million Chinese netizens is representative and of the highest analytical value if we want to study what happens in China. The powerful data analysis system and the data basis represented by more than half of the Chinese netizens visiting 163.com have made the authoritativeness of the report possible."
The China Internet Communication Report is based on the behavior of netizens on the channels, BBS, blogs, searching engines, and other cyber products of NetEase.com, and it includes click traffic, channel comments, forum mentioning rate, searching volume.
