EricEwe.com

As reported on CNN, Internet boot camp operators are under investigation after a youth boot camp attendee died and another was admitted in critical condition.

Well folks, this is happening in China where the parents are sending their kids to these Internet boot camps that have sprouted up like mushrooms after storm. Internet use has skyrocketed in China, especially among teens and young adults. Knowing about this alarming addiction, Chinese parents have turned to hundreds of training camps that offer to wean their children from excessive Internet use. It is estimated that there are over 400 private rehabilitation clinics which charges about 5,000 Yuan (about US$750).

The teenager who is in critical condition is 14-year-old boy allegedly beaten at a boot camp is suffering from kidney failure and has water in the lungs. The boy was enrolled in the camp on August 4th, 2009. He was allegedly beaten three times between August 4 and August 11, which boot camp counselors denies that citing that “he fought with attendees” as he did not get along with them. Police discovered the boy in solitary confinement last week and he was taken to a hospital, according to media reports. He was discovered by accident after other attendees complaint about their own mistreatment.

In another camp, a 15-year-old died after his parents sent him to a summer training camp for his Internet addiction, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. That camp was in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Authorities detained several counselors and were investigating the incident. Injuries found on the body indicated the teen had been beaten severly, Xinhua reported.

Wu Yongjing, the man who established the military-style camp, admitted to the BBC that youngsters were sometimes subjected to “physical punishment.” Last month the Chinese government banned electro-shock therapy as treatment for Internet addiction after abuses were reported. Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to shocks for 30 minutes at a time.

“Physical punishment is an effective way to educate children — as long as it can be controlled,” he said in an online story Wednesday.

So if you are in China and you hear mom saying “Get off the PC”, I think she means it.

MySpace, the once big dog on the block when it csomes to social networking announced today that it is acquiring iLike for $20 million to try to stay ahead of the curve. MySpace is trying to reinvent itself to stay ahead of the competition, i.e. Facebook.

In May 2008, MySpace was flying high with 74 million visits that month coming from U.S. alone. MySpace’s closest competitor, Facebook had only 36 million visits for the month. In May 2009, Facebook caught up with MySpace and they surged to 70.28 visits compared to MySpace which concluded the month with 70.24 million. If you are doing the math, Facebook grew by 97 percent, which MySpace shrunk by 5%.

iLike is a music-sharing service is considered the most-used music application across all social networks and, most notably, has a strong presence on MySpace rival Facebook.

Just five days ago (8/14/09), iLike launched a music download service this afternoon, offering users MP3 downloads for $0.89 to $1.29 per song. Previously the service only offered users the ability to sample 30 second clips of songs, or restricted full streaming via a partnership with Rhapsody (now phased out).

In April 2009, MySpace selected Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook chief revenue officer and vice president of operations to run the company as the CEO of MySpace. Natta hope that this acquisition will help slow down Facebook’s growth and in turn help spur its growth.

Back when in the good old days, there was only one decent way to get on the internet – NETSCAPE (I wouldn’t consider telnet a way to reach the WWW). But with Microsoft’s push for Internet Explorer and the initiation of the “browser wars” in the 1990s, that led to Netscape’s demise. Following that, Microsoft via Internet Explorer controlled 90% of the browser market.

Marc Andreessen, the founder is back and he is back with a vengeance. Andreessen who is now a VC is backing up the company that he co-founded, RockMelt. He co-founded this company, then sold it to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for about $1.6 billion, but he is now back in the “browser war” when he poured money into the RockMelt as a VC.

At present, the browser market landscape consist of:

I know it can be a lucrative business to control searches and know more about your web users by controlling the browsers. Clearly, Google knows about the importance of browser and paid Mozilla, a nonprofit organization $75 million in 2007 to be their exclusive search partner, not to mention, Google also launched their browser -Google Chrome.

There were speculations that RockMelt is working with Facebook, but this was quashed by a Facebook spokesperson today.

That bring me to the questions,
1) Do we have more than enough browsers?
2) What can RockMelt provide that can’t be easily duplicated by Mozilla, Microsoft or Google with a month or so?
3) Do you think HP will recover their 1.6 billion investment?

*Note: Google Chrome was released on Sept 2, 2008. So they are still a new player in the market.

If you think you know internet/online markting, then you should know these twenty (20) terms or jargons that are widely used by online marketers. If you are need to the industry, it’s good to pick up some of these acronyms as it is often thrown around.