The South China Morning Post reported today that China has finally surpassed the US as the world's biggest Web market by users. Last year, China added 73 million new users, taking their total to 210 million. What is really interesting is what lies behind the numbers.

The article references data by Pearl Research that found that Baidu's lead over Google had a lot to do with its strength in entertainment and youth functions rather than simply relevant and precise search. It's a fact little appreciated outside of the East. In China, the Internet is mainly used for entertainment and on Baidu, copyright concerns aside, it is very easy to search and download MP3 tracks. A different Web indeed.

I was stopping in Hong Kong for a few days en route to the US, and decided to check out Zaha Hadid's futuristic art installation for Chanel. It was superlative. I've been interested in watching the trend of luxury brand collaborating with contemporary artists for a while. TheMobile Art Container concept takes it a step further.

You are ushered into the flowing contours of the container and given a Creative Zen MP3 player to wear around your neck. A svelte voice guides you through the exhibition with a continuous ambient pulse of music. As I walked around, it occurred to me that this is a foretaste of the kinds of layered content experiences that will be possible mobile broadband becomes ubiquitous. Its also an example of the kind of immersive interventions that luxury brands will increasingly undertake, as they move from just projecting an image of an ideal reality, to reshaping reality for their devotees.

There's been a lot of fuss lately about Facebook's lack of data portability and its poor handling of consumer privacy on its Beacon program. Two total red herrings in my opinion. Facebook's real problem is that they have to get the act together on commercialising the core social media activity that takes place on their own platform.

Case in point is the poor execution of Facebook pages - the so called profiles designed for brands. For some unknown reason, the product designers at the world's most valuable social network have decided to cripple the functionality of pages relative to Facebook groups. So while you can invite your entire network to join a group, tag photos and videos, and virally drive membership on the latter - the former will leave you out in the cold. Facebook pages does have great statistics tools its true. Pity they only measure how the service is relative to the other more social parts of the platform. Myspace for all of its flaws at least figured out early on that the best way for brands to engage with consumers is for them to be able to act like one.