Chinalyst.net Interview - A China Blog Community

This week’s msn interview is with Fili. He’s the man behind Chinalyst. Chinalyst is a community for independent English China related blogging. He studies Chinese language and culture with a few other courses in multi-culture research and East Asia business in the East-Asia department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also works as an IT consultant in the field of security. The Chinalyst website was build by himself.

Let’s start the interview. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and also about your China fascination?

My China curiosity started when I left to Asia on 2005. After traveling for a while in SE-Asia, I came across some Chinese influences in Vietnam.

Hearing about Chinese culture from fellow travelers and visiting a few places with Chinatown it became obvious that there’s something about Chinese culture that attracts me.

I ended up studying Chinese in Taiwan for over a semester, and then it became a significant part of my life. I adore Asia.

Can you pinpoint what it is in Chinese culture that attracts you?

The most obvious observation is that Chinese culture is very different than anything I’ve ever experienced before. Growing up in a very western country, I found many of the interactions I had with Chinese culture puzzling, intriguing and fascinating.

I enjoy differences. While for others it might be frustrating and annoying, for me it was discovering a new world of possibilities. Meeting new people, understanding and sharing their world was a tremendous experience.

I honestly believe that the people I’ve met are the real reason. I was fortunate to spend time with wonderful people who really tried to share their life with me. It touched me deep.

Let’s talk about Chinalyst, that’s how we got to know each other.

Chinalyst reminds me of Livinginchina.com. The project that started off great but died because of egos, at least that’s how I experienced it. Did you have Livinginchina.com in mind when you started Chinalyst? And what moved you to start a China blog community website?

I’ve heard quite a lot about Living in China while thinking the concept over with a few fellow bloggers.

The main important thing behind Chinalyst is acknowledging that China related blogging is a vital indispensable source of information about life in China.

Problem was, and still is, how to make that information available to users.

For a few months, I’ve been building my own personal RSS feed list of the main China blogs that I’ve found, usually coming across new blogs through blogrolls and side-bar links.

Finding a new good blog was an occasion that didn’t happen often, as the blogs aren’t connected to each other, and using simple web-searches only brings in the very popular websites.

A community of China bloggers, where blog information is promoted and exceptional content is highlighted, could bring a significant change. That’s when the idea of Chinalyst came up.

Yes, it’s hard to find new blogs, the China Blog List has a lot but without the posts.

There are some very interesting projects out there, and the China Blog List is one of them. Another one which I adore is the China-related Digg, called The Hao Hao Report.

One might say that Chinalyst is a combination of both with a few added community aggregator features.

Chinalyst is very much community centered. What is the value of a community like this and what can visitors get out of it? What is the feedback you get from the currently listed blogs/visitors?

The website is still very new, so the most powerful community features are still not being used much. The website provides links to China related blog posts and allows users to discuss and rank all the content. Finding popular and high-ranked blogs and posts is becoming easier.

The whole concept of social web with user involvement is a step in the right direction, since users are the most powerful source of information. Positive feedback usually comes from blog owners that have blogs that were hard to find and are now getting quite a few hits and blog subscribers coming from Chinalyst.

If I can help blog owners get more readers and help readers find more content that’s interesting for them - then Chinalyst works. That’s all I want. It’s the community focus that makes this possible.

Can you tell me about the number of listed blogs and the number of visitors?

Sure. I think
Chinalyst
currently has
over 50 blogs registeredI think Chinalyst currently has over 50 blogs registered with a few signing up every week. Chinalyst has about 80 RSS subscribers, and gets about 200+ visits a day. Chinalyst is growing at a very fast rate, much faster than I ever anticipated. I might have to make a few adjustments soon.

It still isn’t a lot, but Chinalyst is just starting out, so, we’ll see how that develops over time.

It’s not bad either. How is the user participation, do people already comment and vote?

Since those voting features were just introduced this month, as part of some feedback and improvements made, participation in voting is still low. I’m hoping that it will pick up soon. It takes time to allow users to feel part of a community so that they will want to take part in it.

True and when the number of visitors grows the number of votes will too. It’s only a certain percentage that actually votes in my experience, the same goes with comments.

Right, my main challenge is trying to make all those features as easy and comfortable for users as I possibly can.

Where do you see the website go, is there any long-term goal you have? And how long will the Beta tag be there?

Ah, the beta tag is there as long as this is a hobby of mine done between 02:00am and 04:00am, and not something more stable. I can’t promise my users that it would be a full-scale 100% service, but I’m doing my best, and I think that’s what the “beta” stands for.

Maybe, someday, others will join to help build this further and it will become more than just a side-hobby.

Great to hear so much about Chinalyst and the other projects, to round it up, what are your favorite websites/blogs about China?

I follow most of the famous blogs daily, like ESWN, the Shanghaiist and Danwei (I love their videos). There are some smaller blogs that I enjoy a lot, like Adventures of the Humanaught with his wonderful HaoHao Report website.

About the same ones I read, there are too many so in that sense having a place like Chinalyst can make sense. As a first filter.

Yeah, Chinalyst has become my starting homepage for China related reading. It wouldn’t be interesting for me otherwise.

I’m keeping you already busy for almost an hour so I’ll wrap it up here. Thanks for the interview Fili.

Fili has more websites than just the Chinalyst. He keeps the blog fiLi’s world and just released a handy customized China blog search tool.

Another of his projects is Chinese Garden. Chinese Garden is aimed at Israeli students studying about Chinese culture and language. He calls it a “very intimate community, as sadly, there aren’t many Israelis interested in China and Chinese culture yet”.