Isaac’s murmurs: digital tracks in virtual China

If you really cared about emerging Internet practices and their social impact in China, AND if you were trying to keep up with social media, AND if you didn’t have all the time in the world to read blogs, AND if you read Chinese…you might just check out or even subscribe to Chinese venture capitalist and social entrepreneur Isaac Mao’s Twitter stream.

Here’s Joi Ito’s Twitter stream in English, which helps give an idea of how the streams can create a kind of ambient intimacy among users.  But Isaac is stepping it up a level, to something that is closer to IM + blog + IRC/BBS.  Not only do you find Isaac’s ongoing thoughts throughout the day (such as the recent: What’s up with Air China’s service? The flight attendant on an international flight didn’t know whether the meat in the main meal was pork or chicken, and in the end everyone voted and decided it was chicken LOL), but Isaac is using some very cool little applications like Twitterfeed, which lets you read the RSS feeds he subscribes to (blogs such as mindmeters, Techmeme, and 我blog故我在), and Twitterfox, which lets you view his buddies’ Twitter updates (also known as “Tweets”).  You can follow conversations across Twitter, kind of like comments back and forth on a blog or a BBS, but all on one page, and often referencing blog posts, news, and random experiences nearly as they happen.

It starts to feel extraordinarily exponential…people like Isaac are moving fast with this stuff and are creating new virtual experiences and spaces as they go.