Lenovo’s (HKEx: 992) talkative CEO Yang Yuanqing was headline news in the microblogging realm over the past week, as the chatty executive formally launched his own account on Sina Weibo and proceeded to bombard the airwaves with a steady series of thoughts on a wide range of topics. Yang is already quite talkative in general, granting numerous media interviews and giving his thoughts on just about anything to anyone who will listen. So this kind of move isn’t really that surprising, and I expect we’ll hear lots from him in the months and years ahead.
Meantime, executives from the equally talkative Xiaomi were also full of microblogging chatter, touting their latest steal of a high-profile executive from another tech firm. In this case they were congratulating themselves for hiring Chen Tong, one of the earliest top employees at web stalwart Sina (Nasdaq: SINA). A final footnote in this week’s microblogging roundup also saw a teasing tweet from the missing CEO of online video site LeTV (Shenzhen: 300104), amid recent speculation that he may have left China to avoid criminal prosecution. Read Full Post…
The names of top executives from some of the world’s leading tech firms have filled the headlines these last 2 days, as Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and IBM (NYSE: IBM) CEO Virginia Rometty visit China to promote their companies. But today I wanted to focus on a far less known Chinese Internet pioneer, Chen Tong, who is making headlines in his native China as he steps down at Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), the country’s leading web portal and one of its earliest Internet companies.
Perhaps one reason I’m attracted to Chen’s story is because he comes from a background similar to my own, starting out as a journalist when he joined a company in 1997 that would later lead to his employer of nearly 2 decades. Anyone who knows the Chinese Internet realizes that 2 decades is really the entire history of the medium in China, and Chen’s early arrival and wide popularity among industry veterans is drawing widespread praise and some sadness as he steps down. Read Full Post…
