Half white-collars keep blogs, privacy top theme
(INTERFAX-CHINA)
Updated: 2006-02-21 08:37

Blogging has increasingly become more popular in China, with 52% of white-collar workers now keeping weblogs (blogs) according to CBP Career Consultants Co., Ltd., a leading career consulting firm in China.

Pictures from the Web log of a woman from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu.

Unlike western bloggers who often focus on news and politics, the Chinese white collar bloggers see complaining alongside office and personal gossip as their priorities, according to the survey.

According to the findings of a blogging survey conducted by CBP among white-collar workers in China's four largest cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen - 52% responded they already had a blog, while another 28% said they plan to begin a blog in the near future.

"Weblogs have become the fourth online channel for Chinese people to communicate with each other, following email, bulletin board systems (BBS) and instant messaging tools such as QQ and MSN Messenger," Bian Bingbin, President and Chief Career Consultant with CBP Career Consultants, told Interfax Monday. "Blogging is now a lifestyle habit for more and more Chinese white-collar workers, with a majority updating their blogs once every three days on average," he said.

Writing complaints and criticism has become a major content theme for white-collar bloggers - survey statistics show that 28% "always make aggressive and critical comments on their weblogs." A brave 60% of white-collars bloggers criticize their boss on their blogs.

"Chinese white-collars workers, under the stress of life and work, have made blogging another platform to relieve their emotions and also express their personal opinions in public," Bian said.

Although 67% of white-collars bloggers write about their private lives, only 27% make their blogs completely public. 41% of the survey respondents said they chose MSN Spaces to host their weblogs, citing the option to limit access to users on the bloggers MSN contact list as a main reason for choosing Microsoft's free blogging site.