Chinese Internet Habits

Insights into the typing habits of Chinese web users and how they differ from those in Europe and America.

The FT has a really interesting piece on how Chinese web users are different than European/American ones. It's full of nice nuggets, like this one about typing:

Foreign companies have taken a long time to figure out - then adapt to - one of the key features of Chinese consumers: they do not like to type. "Typing is a pain in Chinese," explains Zhang Honglin, demonstrating how he has to enter a search word in Latin transcription, then pick the right character scrolling through sometimes dozens of different choices in a pop-up window. This is because Mandarin has many thousands of characters. So when 35-year-old Mr Zhang sneaks away from his family's tobacco and liquor shop in Beijing to an upstairs internet café for hours on end, he navigates almost entirely using the mouse.

I've always wondered that.