[photopress:Beijing_Olympics.jpg,full,alignright]Bit of an upset about the coverage of the Olympics on the Internet in China. Chinese portals sina.com, Netease (163.com), and qq.com have announced a joint ‘Olympic Coverage Alliance’ to give Internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
The announcement said the three companies will create multi-dimensional coverage of the Games through high-tech offerings like news round-up, blogs, online community resources, e-mail, and information services.
The newly-established alliance, however, was strongly criticized by big rival Internet company sohu.com, which is an Olympic official sponsor and claims the Olympic Alliance doesn’t have any authorization to report on the field.
Early this month, BOCOG media service chief Sun Weijia said there will be new media, or online media companies reporting on the Beijing Games, but he also stressed that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has the final word, and may allocate small quotas to new media outlets based on their capacity and international status.
It is very difficult to work out how this could be done. News comes in. A blog processes it on the Internet. There is no copyright involved. If someone wins a race they win a race and that is it. There will be, probably, thousands of sites giving news and comment on the games. They will probably all be unofficial.
Nielsen/Netratings, a global company measuring online audiences, said when Olympic Games are in session, more than 90% of Chinese netizens will turn to the web as their primary resource for information.
This seems extremely likely. And controlling it effectively impossible.
Source: Jongo News