Chinese Online Market Research

360quan; Social network for teenagers proves China’s youth are insane.

2010-06-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Chinese youth are insane. Well ok, maybe not insane, but certainly not sane either. Lets call them “unsane”. Why, pray tell, do I make such nasty accusations? Well the short answer is I’m judgmental and have a selective ignorance (that I choose to ignore). The long answer?

The long answer is that it there may be sanity after all; I just can’t see it. Let’s get into more detail, and then I’ll let you decide for yourself.

360quan homepage; pretty women in their underwear? Nothing wrong so far.

So 360quan means “360 degrees circle”, essentially a concept that allows users of 360quan to post information that gets categorized in “circles” throughout the site; these “circles” are then accessible by others of same interests, and in general it facilitates the grouping of people with similar tastes and preferences.

Nothing new right? Well there are some key differences when dealing with the 90′s generation (ie: people born in the 1990′s; aka teenagers). These people don’t seem to group in terms of shared interests in books, music, or film. Rather they group based on the level of “non-mainsteam” thought exhibited, levels of incomprehension, and chaotic personal expression. 360quan is a messy messy site; but that belies the undercurrent of intelligent order (invisible to the adult eye).

So where does 360quan stand in relation to its competitors? In terms of traffic it lags far behind power house kaixin001, and middle-weight contender xiaonei:

Making friends.
An interesting element to note is 360quan’s focus on creating new friendships through common interests, rather than xiaonei/facebook’s focus of connecting people who already know each other. Alexa’s ranking of this “friend creation focus” puts 360quan at number 3 for all sites in China, an impressive feat.

This is done by the “quan” or “circles” content is catagorized into areas, and visitors can easily find the content they are most interested in; and connect with others in that “circle”.

However the problems with these circles are that they quickly become filled with unrelated content from users; since these are essentially kids, the ability to self regulate and “clean up their mess” isn’t strong. The result then is a mess of unrelated content, user spam (the hot article for the day was 2 pages of dummy text a bored user copy/pasted/posted dozens of times) and general incomprehensibility.

This popular “circle” has 71763 members; it discuss, love and dating; once you get to page 3, it becomes a random mess with no comments or responses.

Connections happen on many levels; such as searching by constellation, geographic area, hobbies, or simply “wears glasses”, user choose what they want to find and what category interests them.

The SNS offering.
360quan’s closest approximation is actually not facebook, kaixin001 or xiaonei; it shares more similarities with myspace.com; ie: targeting younger crowds. The target focus can be seen simply:

1. Kaixin001: Young office workers
2. Xiaonei: University Students
3. 360quan: Elementary – High school Students

Service-wise it’s par for the course: create profiles, make friends, have a personal space, online games, etc.

One of the rare “easy to read” profiles on 360quan.

As for channels, a distinct focus on youth is emphasized throughout its content; fashion, gossip, sports, entertainment, culture, love, etc. Yes that does seem a bit broad; the element that ties it all together is the focus on these topics from a teenage point of view. Content wise, information is de-emphasized in favor of pure visuals, in the form of pictures and videos.

Youth and rebellion.
Popular themes of 360quan center around teenage rebellion themes. Individuality, fashion, “non-mainstream”; it’s basically the “teenager vs. parents” battle self-documented through a social network.

How would you influence this group, whose attention is fickle, and focus is ever changing? Apparently you show them pictures of other teenagers who are pretty much the same, and share their same values. To that effect 360quan emphasizes visual and sensory stimulation to capture the fleeting “butterfly on acid” attention of their target group. Attaining traffic of 30 million for the year is remarkable, but a very long way from catching the “mainstream non-mainstream”.

Advertising.
Main advertisers on 360quan are products that fit a youth audience.; this includes bottled green tea drinks, weight loss products, J&J contact lenses, and other fashionable, disposable goods.

Personal experience:
From BA360′s intern Veronica:

I’ve never felt so tired in working on a SNS, and it’s probably because I am not a non-mainstream.

At first sight of 360quan.com, my conservative mindset rolled me back: “Eww! Is this just another dangerous, creepy and chaotic dating website?!” Squinting through all the too colorful contents, I gradually accepted : “Okay, so maybe this is what non-mainstream is all about…”

Simple and direct picture display on channels and active user interaction are my first impression of its content. But I also found a lot of repeated posts in circles which wanted to race for the hottest circle. I found the dizzy personal space decorations and interfaces made it impossible to read profiles.

When I searched for netizens’ comments outside of the site, I actually found nearly nothing except some PR advertorials. What I did find were small web-earning ads saying “Invite one ID sign in 360quan.com earns you 2.2 RMB…” Common SNS marketing.

So, from my experience, 360quan must be suitable for a specific group of people, as mentioned, post-90s. Because I, an utter mainstream born in 1986, just don’t get it.

Thoughts:
Other user experience from BA’s staff found immediate spam sent to us when creating groups, as well as general clashing confusion. It’s not a fun place to be for those of us who’ve experienced the relative organization of other major sites.

But that’s us. The focus is China’s teenagers. And in their world of history clashing with modernity and existence above this rift in Chinese culture and history, perhaps we can expect this cognitive dissonance laced throughout their expression.

Whatever 360quan is, it is different from the rest. It’s users are unique and have their own sub-culture language and method of connection. To me half of it is spam, the numbers are inflated or tweaked by 360quan itself, and the profiles are a clash of neon colors making comprehension impossible. But perhaps to the younger generation this chaos has its own meaning? Perhaps chaos is the communication?

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Douban.com; China’s Amazon/Digg Hybrid Social Media Network

2010-06-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Social media stories tend to reflect a rags to riches theme – ie: one man sitting in the wee hours of the night typing away on his computer creates a network platform that services millions upon millions of users. This is how Douban started; created by a man named Yangbo in a restaurant called Douban (which is a Chinese seasoning); why call your Amazon-ish website after a Chinese seasoning? Well, why call an online bookstore “amazon”? It’s sweet actually – Yang named his creation Douban to mark in his memory the moments of its birth.

Douban’s homepage

Douban (豆瓣), established in 2005 as an online database for movies, books, and music, currently boasts 3.2 million registered users, and is the 55th most popular website in China, according to Alexa rankings. It’s similar to Amazon in that it provides users a great way to search for and see review on books/movies – the point of difference is there is no selling on Douban; it’s focus is connecting people of similar interests via its social network.

Perhaps one great point of difference between China and the West is the availability of transparent information. The great firewall of China as well as the government’s tendency to censor inflammatory content creates a need in the Chinese psyche for “pure” information.

This is what gives Douban (and to a larger extent all of China’s social networks) its visceral power; the ability to get important information neither tampered by the government nor propaganda from companies. Pure truth (though subjective) is a powerful pull; and when you’re the biggest aggregator of pure truth on entertainment products… well you get the picture.

Nuts & Bolts
Douban provides information on books, movies, music, and exhibitions; each of these are subject to user introductions, comments, price comparisons from multiple vendors, ratings and reviews. All content on Douban is generated by users, there is no traditional editorial content; much like Digg.com, users vote to push most interesting content to the top. Due to Douban’s popularity, top rated user books are often featured in leading Chinese print news media.

Douban’s book review page.

Beyond this, Douban supports its community with a social network, this features matches users to users through finding similar trends in their online activity; ie: users who recommend or rate things in a similar way are matched together, groups with similar interest are introduced; by bringing people together with similar interests, Douban increases value-add interaction among its users.

Douban’s SNS user interface, a familiar layout.

This is a great alternative to high-cost marketing; a supreme focus on valuable, meaningful interactions among users is what catapulted Douban to the top.

Who advertises on Douban?
Online book sellers tend to compete for advertising space on Douban – this makes sense since the website is focused on book reviews and price comparisons. Due to Douban’s ability to create bestsellers, many books will directly promote themselves on site, and marketers are known to artificially inflate their respective book reviews to increase sales.

Notice I didn’t mention movies… this is because the widespread availability of DVD copies for around RMB 10 (USD 1.2); therefore, you’ll not see a movie or DVD ad to be found on Douban.

Who competes with Douban?
It’s pretty much a cliché at this point, but once a site become successful you can expect copies to spring up like mushrooms in a rain forest.

Heavyweight web portal Sina.com (China’s equivalent to Yahoo or MSN) launched a copy of Douban that focuses only on books; however Sina has its own ecommerce system for direct sales of books – in this manner its better compared to Amazon than Douban.

As stated in a previous article, it’s very difficult to beat the first mover, and comparison of Sina’s traffic to Douban’s is pretty embarrassing for Sina.

ITV.mop.com is similar to Douban, but focuses on movies, TV series and cartoons, so can be seen more as a compliment that a competitor. As stated in aprevious article on Mop, content here is more fun and free, and serious and introspective.

Personal experience from BA360′s intern, Yinise:

Douban.com is designed in a simple style. There are not a lot of colors and pictures so that I could concentrate on the information it provides. I often go there to search for comments on a book or a movie I heard about. If the comments say it is worth reading or watching, I would refer the price information to decide whether I should take action. When I want to take part in some social activities or watch some exhibitions on weekends, I would also turn to Douban.com to check information. For me, Douban.com is a huge database which provides variety of information. And I will always get something useful.

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China’s “Plan B” Social Media Strategy; Interaction After Connection.

2010-06-23T13:01:00.001-07:00

If you’ve been following LRB recently, then you’ve noticed many posts on social media sites in China. When beginning this quest to catalog China’s SNS landscape, I was under the impression I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. However, like anyone who thinks they know something, further digging always reveals they didn’t know enough.

I find as I continue to write these profiles one major theme recurring. The days of the Facebook model are fast disappearing; ie: creation of a vanilla social media network. I imagine this is similar to the invention of the telephone: suddenly everyone could call each other and that was great, but at some point they just ran out of things to say. Calling then, wasn’t so important as what you’d talk about once you called. And with today’s incredibly explosive SNS growth, connection is a given; now people want something to connect about.

The strategy then is not to focus on social networking, but to focus on content that drives user interaction; once this content is found, and created on some sustainable basis (ideally by users), your basic social media features can then be inserted to support the content spearhead. One great example of this isKaixin001.com vs. Xiaonei.com; these two are basically Facebook clones, but Kaixin001.com took a decisive lead due to its heavy emphasis on online games; ie: interaction beyond simple connection.

This seems “slap you across the face” obvious in retrospect, and I guess the idea was always lurking in the back of my mind; but as you’ll see in these SNS profile posts, along with future posts regarding QQ/MSN, Taotao.com + China’s twitter clones, and LRB’s next post on Douban.com, that people are already connected, and you’ll never beat the first mover (QQ has a ridiculous 90% market share, and Taotao.com, the best twitter clone, has about 10 times the traffic of its nearest competitor).

I’ll put my money on taotao.com

When considering the average user, this makes sense. We can compare this to cell phones; lets say each new social media site you sign up on is similar to carrying around another cell phone. So you sign up with Facebook, then you sign up with Linkedin, then you sign up with Twitter, etc; this is almost akin to carrying around 3 cell phones is it not? To communicate with each group, you’ll need to login, update etc; kinda like you need to use a specific cell phone to call a specific portion of your contact list – at some point it’s just too much trouble.

In my personal experience I’m on the 3 sites above, plus a few others, and I run this blog. So what’s my personal social media strategy? Simple, I just focus on this blog, and have it RSS feed to my Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook accounts. After, I respond to direct message on each of those sites, but as for updating, I can keep it simple; ie: I’ve drilled down to one cell phone.

“And your point is…?“
The point of my ramblings is that users cannot take another vanilla “just connect” social media site; if you’re going to force them to carry around another cell phone, then you’ll need to add some serious bling; with SNS, if you want them to sign up to a brand new site, then you’ll need to give them something more interesting than what’s currently offered.

I’ll attempt to prove this point sometime this year with one of BA360‘s inhouse projects, a China social media experiment (completely separate from LRB). If it proves successful over the next few months, I’ll begin detailing our process in getting it off the ground, with the challenges and successes we found along the way.

…and now back to China SNS.
So if new China social media sites cannot beat the 1st movers on even terrain, the popular strategy is to go niche; ie: instead of generally focusing on connecting everyone, to instead focusing on driving specific interactions between connected members. This is evidenced by the continued popularity of Tianya.comand Mop.com; users don’t simply connect here; they also express a wide range of opinions on social, political, and entertainment topics that spark threads of consisting of thousands of comments.

The takeaway is while technology sparked revolution, it will never sustain a lead on fundamentals: value and benefit to the user. In this fast commoditizing SNS landscape, value is defined not as connection, but interaction after connection. When multiplied by millions of users, this small point sheds bright light on the most recent stage of China’s SNS evolution.

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Mop.com: China’s “MySpace”; The SNS for Self-Proclaimed Crazy Chinese People.

2010-06-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Mop.com is a combination of an informative web portal, a China “Myspace” (hi.mop.com), along with a powerful forum (dzh.mop.com). Originally founded way back in 1997, Mop has evolved into a rich interactive entertainment platform with a specific focus on keeping crazy Chinese people entertained.

Mop.com: A typical Chinese web portal… with a focus on crazy.

Now when I say crazy, I don’t mean clinically mentally disturbed, I mean people with interests and opinions that border on the fringe of Chinese society; in Chinese: Bian4 Tai4. Compared to Western society? I think these people would be considered on the “inside” fringe; they have yet to surpass their Western counterparts (one trip to certain sections of Craig’s List will convince you of this point).

Mop’s average visits are about 150 million/month, with 22 million registered users. The active group is aged 18-32; these members are passionate with strong personalities and opinions. The key benefit to visitors then is in part the entertaining content, but mostly the crazy commentary. For the Chinese, Mop is where you go to have a few laughs and read some shocking content.

It’s interesting to note that while technology is important, content is king. Mop’s USP over major competitor Tianya (covered in this article) is the distinct content focus of entertainment first, culture and social matters second; while for Tianya, the reverse is true. Between these two powerful sites they command over 1/2 their total target traffic in China (50/89 million/month). Since both are simply huge user generated forums, this gives a bit more credence to the “content beats technology” theory, a point China’s social marketers should keep in mind.

A sample of what you’ll see on Mop.com.
Now while you will see interesting cultural issues on Tianya covering marriage problems, government scandals, and the pulse of China’s masses, what you’ll find on mop.com generally light and cheerful, with an emphasis on entertainment and visuals. Take for example this recent post, where users take turns photoshopping a man jumping on the beach.

It now becomes clear why Mop has a reputation for craziness; but hey, it’s a hard soul that wouldn’t find at least one of the pics above funny.

User Forum; The Heart of a great China SNS.
The heartof Mop.com isn’t it’s “Myspace” clone; the forum is the main draw. This was at first a bit confusing as you’d think it would be the SNS aspects, rather than a decidedly web1.0 forum (all you other technology snobs will agree). However, upon contemplation, it seems that the additional level of social interaction from forums is a huge requirement to a successful SNS in China; this is in part proven by Kaixin001.com – a SNS to be sure, but one that rocketed in popularity due to its online games which encourage involved “right now” social interaction, rather then periodic updates which are a main feature of Western SNS.

Mop’s forum.

The theory? Chinese don’t really want to talk about each other, more they seem interested in getting away from the daily grind. Crazy stories and online games help to achieve this goal; evidenced by their hosting sites massive popularity.

Myspace Clone; keeping everything connected.
Mop’s Myspace clone is a functional SNS; including a personal Space, community pages, blogs, BBS, chatting, etc. While offering the same suite of web 2.0 services, Mop’s offering ranks as the top product in China.

Who advertises on Mop.com?
As a mid-sized China portal, Mop doesn’t have a lot of traditional banner ads interspersed in its content. Rather, Brands have taken advantage of Mop’s social communities to launch viral campaigns.

For example, McDonald’s launched a campaign, with the slogan: “Are you niu (means both ‘ox’ and ‘cool’ in Chinese ) enough?” To complement the campaign, McDonalds sponsored a video competition held on Mop. Consumers uploaded their original videos showcasing their definition of “niu”. This helped brand McDonalds through intensely involved consumer participation.

Another example; during Chinese New Year, Pepsi cooperated with Mop to develop a “Pepsi New Year Greeting Card” online promotion. By getting users to email their Mop “Friends circle”, Pepsi virally spread its message via an interactive “Pepsi Card” accompanied by their “Joy of Sharing” branding. The campaign was successful in spreading the word, and getting communities to participate in Pepsi’s promotion.

Mop’s competition.
Mop’s got some serious competition in China, but has managed to avoid direct confrontation by focusing on light and funny topics. It’s major competitor is Tianya; but these two forums seem to complement each other, rather then directly compete.

According to information gathered by iUserTracker, in April 2007, Mop and Tianya cover half of China’s online forum users. Online forum traffic totaled 87,539,000 Chinese netizens, and among them, Mop, with 28,685,000 netizens, ranked 2nd while Tianya, with 24,021,000 netizens, ranked 3rd. Both the two forums were built in the early days of China’s internet, and have held strong positions for years.

Personal Experience with Mop.com
From BA360′s intern, Veronica:

Mop has a great niche: It’s classified as a portal site, but is mostly famous for its forum and Space. All services stick to having fun. So among competitive portal sites in China, such as, sina.com, sohu.com etc, Mop has more to offer—forum and SNS service; you can’t simply compare it with other forums, because Mop also has “space” and official organized information; neither can we compare it with SNS sites for the same reason. Mop succeeds in finding a right position for itself so as to avoid face-to-face confrontation with its competitors. It is very “functional” both because one can use it for 3 different online usages, and it labels itself as a fun providing site.

I have seen quite a few netizens saying they skip from Mop to Tianya.cn. The two work similarly with a slight opposite content weight order. As we can see from their forum layouts, Mop is more random and Tianya is more plain and serious. Mop forum is too confusingly organized but it suits its entertainment spirit. Under a serious interface like Tianya’s, users wouldn’t be easily inspired by funny and crazy thoughts.

I don’t see any friends around using Mop, I believe its feature is not mostly favored by tier1 college students and white collars. Relatively, Tianya’s clean look and cultural-social focus will serve better among these people. Although many Tianya users say they come to Tianya for fun, I don’t doubt Moppers go to Mop for more complete and simple Fun—almost a stream of consciousness, with no mind to filter their thoughts.

Random comments from Chinese users.

A discussion from tianya.com: What do you think is the difference between tianya and mop? Do you like Mop?

zhangnanyuan
I don’t feel like it. The first time I went there saw a post about Premier Jiabao Wen. I was shocked by so many intense speeches; I think Tianya has a better atmosphere.

叶果鲁西卡大王
I first knew Mop then Tianya, but I didn’t go to Mop after. Mop makes me feel sick, Tianya is of richer content.

scummy
One word: Mop is like a woman, Tianya is like a man, although Tianya is more and more like a eunuch now.

zbrz2002
I liked Mop a lot when I was studying in college. Those superb replies could always make me laugh… After, I started to feel it was full of morons. Then when I came to Tianya, I first thought the information it provided was too overwhelming. Now I haven’t used Mop for at least two years.

binout
Mop was very good in its early days, no worse than Tianya. Now…because of people, there is too much trash, but the same trend is also happening in tianya.

烤羊腰
Before 6, 7 years ago, Mop was quite cool. Now ~~~My ID hasn’t been used for years.

歪歪虎是谁
There are too many low-lifes in Mop, you can’t reason with them.

xiaomoli1976
Mop is too colorful and random with very small texts, feels stuffy.

塞上珍珠米
I was about 18, 19. I was wandering and reading posts in Mop, then shocked by a sexual intercourse of a female and a male sex organs picture. OMG, it was the first time I saw such a clear “inserted” picture. I feel it’s too obscene there; even their thoughts and words have no logic, but sex implications…

不想当主持的和尚
Strong in entertaining.

kuibobo
Older people like tianya, younger ones like Mop.

内小咩
Mop is still a kid!

初生小猫不怕鼠
Mop is more entertaining; tianya is higher end, just like QQ and MSN.

内小
Mop is somewhere you can disobey rules and relax. But a relaxing place is gradually polluted by some people’s politic speeches. Tianya is where you will lose your confidence to your country, I’d rather not go.

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China Social Media; Kaixin001.com: Making people slightly less bored.

2010-06-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve covered Kaixin001.com before in a previous entry: Kaixin001.com; Spamming to the top; How Kaixin became China’s most popular Facebook-esque Social Media Site. This time around, let’s look a little closer at Kaixin001 in the context of it’s main competition, Xiaonei and Kaixin (Kaixin, and Kaixin001 are competitors; yes its confusing, which was the goal of Kaixin; more on this later).

“Kaixin” means happy in Chinese, or literally “open heart”; why kaixin”001″? I guess it’s the same reason why you’ll find it hard to purchase happy.com, but likely easily get happy001.com.

When comparing Xiaonei and Kaixin001, we’re really dealing with 2 versions of Facebook for China. However, looking deeper, we find a good marketing lesson in user interest targeting; ’cause really, there’s only so much utility to be derived from filling out your profile and then looking at pictures of your friend’s cat doing cute tricks. What’s an upstart social media network to do? Well beyond a hardcore spam campaign (covered in the first article), a focus in making people a little less bored with their lives is a genius stratagem.

How bored would you have to be to play a game where you steal your friend’s vegetables? …there’s your silver dollar insight into the mind of the average Chinese white collar worker.

Kicking your competitor’s digital butt won’t go unpunished however. Kaixin001 started in 2007, and in two short years has decidedly trumped Xiaonei, which was started in 2005. Xiaonei, backed by its Japanese parent company Soft Bank, launched a counter attack: Kaixin.com.

For those of you in the back row: Xiaonei is a direct copy of Facebook. Kaixin001 is a copy of Xiaonei. Kaixin is a copy of Kaixin001. Now in one sentence: Xiaonei, the copier of Facebook, created Kaixin which is a copy of Kaixin001, who had previously copied Xiaonei.

This begs the question, if Kaixin001 was so successful, why didn’t it go ahead and purchase the apparently extremely expensive kaixin.com domain? Kaixin001′s CEO will likely ask himself this question every single morning for the rest of his natural life.

Kainxin001: killing time.
The main interaction on Kaixin001 is similar to Facebook, but with a focus on games; while all the “Facebook-ish” tools are there, they get used very little in comparison to the games section.

This layout is getting pretty familiar.

The vast majority of users on Kaixin001 are white collar workers. Why is this? Well here’s my theory: When playing these games the overwhelming commentary is that the players are bored; the implication is that they were likely more bored before playing the game, and now though they are still bored, they are a little less bored then before. Now imagine Facebook or Xiaonei, which is really a way of staying in touch with others. So lets assume everyone is bored; two options: go to xiaonei, and see your friend’s boring lives, or go to kaixin001 and play a game with your friends to somewhat lift this crushing boredom.

In the end social media really isn’t rocket science; it’s just understanding these finer psychological details; which gets back to the age old concept of “value”. It reminds me of an important business concept: in horseraces, the winning horse many times wins by only a fraction of a second. The winner becomes a stud, the loser becomes glue, all for that fraction of a second. So Kaixin001 doesn’t need to be a lot better than Xiaonei, it only needs to excel in one area to achieve success. This is how Xiaonei beat Facebook China; all design elements the same with interface localization being the primary variable (another “fraction of a second phenomenon).

Advertising on Kaixin001
Product placements seem to be the primary advertising done on Kaixin001, with banner ads coming in at a very distant second. We see the typical FMCG products featured in “gifts” sections.

Send a lollipop, a diamond, an angel, a teddy bear, or Biotherm’s new make-up base product with 50% less oil residue, perfect for maintaining fair skin and that teenage youthful glow (no animals were harmed in the making of this product).

Happy001 vs. Happy.
Xiaonei’s strategy of confusing people into believing Kaixin.com was Kaixin001.com worked well, but not well enough. When you view the graph above, you’ll see that while Kaixin is grabbing a good portion of the SNS market, it certainly doesn’t seem to be slowing Kaixin001 down.

Kaixin.com’s homepage: This cute fake dog cannot compare to stealing your friend’s fake vegetables. Sorry doggie.

Personal experience with Kaixinoo1:
From BA360′s intern, Veronica:

Just in yesterday, when my classmates and I were taking photos, they suggested, “Let’s share photos on kaixin001.com tonight.” Since I have been working on SNS websites for a couple of days, I asked: “Why are you all using kaixin001.com?” One of them answered, “For vegetable planting!” (A popular virtual games on kaixin001.com) The other said, “I don’t know why…” (And this is actually a common phenomenon for many SNS users) Then I added, “kaixin001.com, not kaixin.com, right?!” “Ya, of course! “

I was somehow pushed to register kaixin001.com and kaixin.com. For the former site, I surrendered to friends’ endless invitations; for the latter, pure curiosity. Here’s a few messages I received on Kaixin001:

“Your friend “S” bought you at ￥5000 and made you his slave.”

“Your master “S” took you for a free trip to Singapore, and you are so happy.”

“Your friend “Z” bought you from “S” at ￥ 8102 and made you a nanny working for 3 hours earning money for her.”

“Your master “S” treats you to 30 new courses of Pizza hut, and you are so happy.”

My current “value” is ￥10190, and I am “so happy”, so…What’s the point?! I got nothing from “friends for sale” –a popular application copied from facebook–except an indirect “Pizza hut” ad.

All of my friends have Xiaonei IDs and half of them use kaixin001. But according to my experience in work, I have seen more colleagues with kaixin001 pages open during work. This might explain why kaixin001 can surpass Xiaonei in traffic; its white collar strategy does work. However the games seem too simple to capture my interest for long.

Besides, I don’t think Rand would feel happy seeing me stealing a cabbage from other’s garden during work (another popular “vegetable stealing” application).

[from Rand: I have a strict "no stealing vegetables" policy.]

Some random comments from Tianya:

断翅的风筝
I just started play games on kaixin001 on last Wednesday, and have forgotten to check in tianya everyday till now. Dangerous.

断翅的风筝
Yep. Added “Parking War” on Friday, and worked on it during weekend. I have earned 9 cars.

英国小木匠我来了
Haha~ my colleagues all play together~ it’s been months~

灵魂囚禁在本田
Many people invited me, but I felt it boring and didn’t register.

脑残教教主
Played for a few days and started to feel bored.

徐端
Virtual community games, why would it be interesting…

狐沙沙
I changed my car to a cheaper one and upgraded a seashore scene. Then everybody told me to sell my cars because they wanted to park there… Actually it’s really boring, or you can play that friend for sale or poking, but in a word: still boring.

monica_bxn
Yes, boring but will still be there. It shows there are so many bored people~~

o0ovip
It is boring, but as you play you find that actually moron is also a pretty good living status, wish us all happy. (kaixin means happy in Chinese) I personally think it’s similar to xiaonei, but more fun.

借我一块钱
Not at all. I totally lost in the situation and was then bought as a slave, and also kept in a little cold dark room.

fyfan1223
kaixin001 is very boring, time wasting, and how can such easy games be called happy?

狼假寐
That shitty kaixin001, very, very boring. Just polling, friends sales, poking, these 3 tricks. So dull and boring. You can fall into it and forget tianya? Why not say you fall into Tetris to forget World Of Warcraft!! You are killing me!!!

纳兰珈珈
I also registered yesterday~~I am logged in right now, but I don’t think it’s very interesting~~I admit I am old-fashioned~~~~~

linyad
No matter how you play, it’s just buying people, parking cars and voting…but increase more communication with old friends lost in touch.

夜静更深
Bored during work and started to continuously vote for others…

o0ovip
I play it just because I’m bored, no one that isn’t bored will play it. The site is targeted at this feature of consumers, or how can it gather millions of people in such a short period of time?

o0ovip
I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and parked my car to a different location…faint..

细细个米娜
Logged in twice, but really can’t see any fun from it. Why so many people saying it’s fun? It’s not innovative and is boring. And I don’t know why my classmate wanted me to register, and she was so happy making me her slave. Can’t figure out any fun from this. Totally naïve + boring.

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China Social Media; Xiaonei: China’s Facebook Replica.

2010-06-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

As copycatting goes, China is King. Now while we normally associate copies with inferior quality or some odd defect from the original, Xiaonei, on the other hand, is a great example of digital copycatting done right. It’s funny how I’ve turned copying someone else’s work into a positive. This is just one of many signs that I’ve been in China too long.

Xiaonei.com is the biggest and most influential SNS website in China. It’s an unabashed straight up copy of Facebook; and provides users with groups, instant messaging, albums, marketplaces and other online service experiences to meet their needs for association, information, entertainment and trade.

As of today, Xiaonei has over 40,000,000 registered users, 400,000,000 PV, 22,000,000 daily visits. These stats are from Xiaonei, and are a little on the extreme side, but hey – when you reach success by completely copying another well established website and received no IP repercussions, then what’s a little fudging of the numbers right? That’s small time stuff.

A familiar friend: Facebook.

Xiaonei.com: Digital Déjà Vu.

Xiaonei was created in 2005, and similar to Facebook, was favored primarily among college students. At the end of 2008, Xiaonei decided to broaden its target market to include a wider user base… like Facebook (hmm I’m sensing a trend). It currently has groups of 1000 oversea colleges, 3000 domestic colleges, 8000 high schools, and 85,000 companies.

According to chinarank.org.cn, Xiaonei ranks 52 among all websites in China. It’s daily traffic is around 7200 out of every one million netizens.

Why Xiaonei beat Facebook in China.
This one is just embarrassing. While Facebook has a Chinese version, many users complained that the translations lacked accuracy. If you’ve ever tried to learn Chinese, then you know it’s a very complex language. I mean c’mon, all the words are pictures for godsakes; and that’s just the beginning. With its 5000 years of history, the Chinese know how to turn a phrase in their own language. So when coming across Facebook’s obvious obliviousness to the Chinese language, many users got turned off.

Facebook’s localization lacked the finer points of the Chinese language.

How important is the correct localization? We’ll clearly important enough to launch Xiaonei into the internet stratosphere, while Facebook China took a backseat. Design-wise, Xiaonei’s inner and outer pages are pretty much copies of Facebook, localizations seem to be the biggest variable factor.

Primary User Interactions.
Unlike other BBS or forums like Tianya.cn, Xiaonei is a pure social networking site; it’s simply an online version of your life. You can meet friends, chat, gossip, share, etc.

Primary Target Group.
校内（xiaonei，means at campus in Chinese), thus Xiaonei’s main targets are college students, age 18 – 25; especially students in 1-tier or 2-tier cities.

Xiaonei dominates the Chinese college online market. For example, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) group on Xiaonei has 23,089 members now, while the number of native students studying in SISU is currently about 7,000… alumnus outnumber students. This provides a positive social impact on many student’s lives, both during and after college.

Who Advertises on Xiaonei?
Pretty much any company trying to reach college students. This includes the usual suspects of FMCG; from Coke, to Maybelline, to P&G.

Xiaonei Tests the SNS Profit Waters.
I’ve always thought that the new trend in social media is akin a modern day goldrush; seems easy to do, the people who do it first will reap huge rewards, and its hard as hell if you’re the 2nd+ mover. Most social media networks in China do not make a profit; but Xiaonei on the other hand has tested out several ways to bring home the bacon beyond the simple banner ad.

Buying virtual gifts for friends? Perhaps you have too much money.

Expanding its user base was an obvious move; however, what is it about Chinese that can accelerate the user base registration process? Taking a cue from QQ, China’s top instant messenger service, Xiaonei began selling virtual goods, virtual pets, virtual gifts; it has even created its own virtual currency to purchase additional services; partnering with online banks like Alipay.

Who Competes with Xiaonei?
Kaixin001.com competes directly with Xiaonei; the current trend is an online exodus from Xiaonei to Kaixin001 after graduating from college.

Kaixin001 is another social media network with a big focus on online games. I guess Chinese have more time to play games after school than during school? Time to take a closer look at your Chinese employees!

Another reason Kaixin001 is taking over could be related to Xiaonei’s recent sale to a Japanese company, Soft Bank. When mixing China’s general negative sentiment toward Japan for atrocities committed during WWII, many Xiaonei users feel their information isn’t safe anymore. Is it a valid fear? Irrelevant; perception will dominate logic; and as the graph shows above, Xiaonei may get left behind.

Personal Experience with Xiaonei
From BA360′s intern, Veronica:

It took me a long to decide to use Xiaonei. To me, it was just another windows live space, blog… etc. But since all my friends and classmates were using it, I finally went ahead and signed up after a year.

Xiaonei is actually something different. Let’s leave the fact that it’s a copy of Facebook aside. Xiaonei is a combination of blog and social interaction. It inherited the alumni website phenomenon going on around 7 years ago by narrowing down Facebook’s usual targets to students. The interface is quite well designed. Clean and clear color with user-friendly format. I like it. Considering the original Facebook’s evolving look is getting worse, Xiaonei is doing a good job as a copycat SNS.

As a young netizen, I never use BBS, but I do use Facebook and Xiaonei every day! At first, I couldn’t believe I found so many primary school classmates who I thought I lost forever! I like to see what’s going on among my friends. As it’s obvious that we are apart in different countries, areas, have different matters to deal with; we communicate online, write down notes, moods, upload pictures, publish information.

Now my college teacher is using Xiaonei as a college information publishing platform. She put university job info, admin info in her Xiaonei page. She usually SMS us “I have put job info in my Xiaonei.” So I have no reason not to use it, do I?

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Why do I blog?

2010-05-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Over time, this blog has built up traffic, but revenues are still almost zero.

So why blog? (Hint: The final reason and note from Candy Chan is what prompted this posting.)

1- Revenue: I do make some money. I would characterize it as “liquor money”. A few dollars a month from Amazon when people buy a book I recommend and a few dollars a month from Lexis/Nexis. I once tried putting up Google advertising, but pulled it down after seeing the type of ads it felt appropriate for my blog. (I did make US$20 in a few days time, but it is not the way I want to earn money!)

2- Community: Through this blog I have met and interacted with a wide range of people both online and many eventually in the real world. These have included some of the smartest people about the topics that interest me. (Social Media and Asia)

3- Knowledge: The knowledge held by the community following my blog is incredible. That is why I sometimes seem to post incomplete postings. They are incomplete because I am hoping to get further insight and information from the people who read this blog.

4- Helping people: I often get asked if I know anyone appropriate for a range of jobs, particularly in journalism and Social Media. Rather than search for the right individual, I have started posting the job ads online. The result is that quite a few people have got jobs thanks to my blog, including the person below.

When I graduated from journalism school in the States in early 2009, I was desperately searching for a journalism-related job in China.

For days and nights I browsed hundreds of foreign media websites and checked their “career” pages. Sadly, most sites do not post their vacancies and even when some media do, most of the listed jobs are non-journalism related like “auditor” or “webmaster”. At that time, I think the best way to look for my dream job is to find an “agent” that is well connected with the media.
By chance, I found the Foreign Correspondents Club of Facebook and the creator, Thomas Crampton. I am was so excited to see the list of jobs posted by freelancers and foreign media there. One day, Mr Crampton posted a note on FCC FB about a researcher job in Shanghai for a German media. I applied for it and a few months later got the job!!!
I really love my job now and I would say, this site is of paramount importance for those graduates like me, who are not well connected, to get to know more about the news of different media in the Asia pacific region.
Now, whenever someone asks me how do I got this job, (it is not common for Hong Kong journalists to work for foreign media in China) I say via Facebook!

People are stunned, but I tell them it is a group set up by Mr Crampton. I tell them: Please, do not look down the power of social media. You can dig out something incredible if you make good use of it.

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Sustainable Models for News Media

2010-05-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

Check the video out below. It's striking to learn that how much people spend time on newspaper websites vs. on facebook!

Attending Hong Kong University’s International Media Conference today. Below are some snippets from a panel I took part in on the sustainable models for journalism. (We did not find the answer). Impressive team from HKU has been throwing up multimedia as it happens. Behind the team has been Diane Stormont using Cover it Live as the way to aggregate and quickly publish.

More on the conference via Twitter hashtag: #IMCHK

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Evolution of Asia’s Luxury Obsession

2010-05-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

The role of luxury goods in Asian societies is a fascinating topic. Among those from whom I have learned most about the subject are Asian luxury specialist Radha Chadha and co-author of the book The Cult of the Luxury Brand.

Ipsos, the research firm, recently presented their take on the progression towards luxury by various markets.

The description of Japan highlights the unique way that Japanese relate to luxury, relative to the rest of Asia (and perhaps the world).

Ipsos describes Japanese as “Locked into Luxe habits”. Others speak about Japan as an example of “Mass Luxury”. Both concepts are apparent contradictions in terms - luxury is supposed to be something special, not everyday - but how else can you explain the obsession by Japanese consumers for luxury goods?

According to Ipsos, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore are headed the direction of Japan.

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Demographics of China’s Wealthy

2010-05-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Interesting research report from McKinsey & Company about the wealthy consumers of China.

In addition to concluding that 80 percent of China’s wealthy are below the age of 45 - think about that for a second! - they also demarcated seven kinds of wealthy Chinese consumers.

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Google adds Twitter feed in China, again defying that country's rules

2010-04-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

March 25, 2010 | 7:33 am

In a move sure to anger Beijing's censors, Google has introduced a real-time Twitter feed on its search results pages -- in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China.

The feed appears alongside search results on Google's Hong Kong-based website, google.com.hk. Users in China have been redirected there since Tuesday when Google shuttered its China-based search engine.

The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China's Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China.

In another defiant move, Google has also added links on its Hong Kong site to the company's original statement explaining why it was leaving China, but translated into Chinese. The link appears on the home page under the search engine and also as a banner advertisement on some search result pages.

[Updated at 6:05 p.m.: Google said it started rolling out real time search on google.com.hk earlier this month and that it had been fully available for more than a week. "We are constantly releasing new features to international domains as the functionality becomes available and this feature is completely unrelated to the redirection of traffic from google.cn to google.com.hk," Google said in an e-mail statement.]

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Chinese Twitter Clients. An interview with the developer of Fanfou.im

2010-04-19T11:41:00.001-07:00

A few days ago we read about fanfou.im on littleredbook.cn.

It appears to be an exact replica of Twitter in Chinese, with lots of useful added features such as the ability to add photos, shorten urls and use "Sogou cloud" a popular Chinese character IME. Crucially though, this is not a clone, it's a client. You can login using your Twitter account and follow your Twitter stream as though you were on Twitter.com (which is of course blocked in China)

We were intrigued, so we contacted the developer of the client Kevin Deng and asked him a few questions.

Ren Media: Hi Kevin. You built Fanfou.im right? Tell us more:

Kevin: Yes, fanfou.im is an interface for Twitter, based on a open-source Twitter web client project named "Twitese" (Twitter + Chinese). I'm just an ex-fanfou user, and in remembrance of fanfou.com I build fanfou.im. So there's no confusion, fanfou.im is just a Twitter client.

There are more sites based on Twitese: http://fanfou.de/ http://rabr.in/ http://tuite.im/ We developers are friends, too. The main contributor of this project is @bang590 on Twitter.

Ren Media: Do you have a business relationship with fanfou.com, or Wang Xing(founder of Fanfou)?

Kevin: Firstly, fanfou.im has no business relationship with fanfou team. It's just a tiny program I built myself. But now I'm working for the "fanfou team" lead by Wang Xing. I'm a college student in Beijing. I used to be one of the active users of fanfou.com. After the closure of fanfou.com, fanfou team started a new site called Meituan (meituan.com) on March 4th 2010, and it's a Groupon clone in mainland China. I became a marketing intern of meituan.com since March, 2010.

Ren Media: Are you working with Twitter? Have they contacted you about opening a China site?

Kevin: I don't work for Twitter (the company). By the way, I don't know if Twitter plans to open a China site. You know, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and so many sites are blocked in China. Google has left China mainland too. Therefore I don't think it's a good decision to open Twitter China, unless there is a new , comprehensive and innovative method.

Ren Media: When did you first open fanfou.im?

Kevin: fanfou.com was closed on July 7th 2009, and fanfou.im opened in November.

Ren Media: What are your plans for the future?

Kevin: I haven't thought that much, building fanfou.im was just to facilitate Chinese Twitter users, esp. ex-fanfou users. It's public welfare. I don't plan to use this site to get profits. And I'm still making efforts to improve it.

I'm a student major in media (communication), I'm not a computer programming professional. It's a hobby for me to build a PHP dynamic website. So I hope "Twitese" developers be united and work together. Twitese is a good project and easy to install on a server, making people in Twitter-blocking-country easier to login to Twitter. I have used microblogging service for many years. It's a significant invention and an intimate tool for the grassroots.

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Social Media Emergence In China

2010-04-19T04:06:00.001-07:00

Social Media Emergence In China

View more presentations from Jia Liu.

Social Networking Habits Across Asia-Pacific

2010-04-19T04:03:00.000-07:00

ComScore today announced some interesting new statistics about Social Networking Habits across Asia-Pacific.

ComScore’s methodology does not include visits from public access computers such as Internet cafes, mobile phones or PDAs. In many markets, including India, Japan, China, Indonesia and others, many people access the Internet in ways other than a home computer that they own. Nonetheless, ComScore’s statistics are very interesting, particularly when looked at in terms of change over time. A major change being the migration towards Facebook.

Half of Asia’s Internet population visited Social Networking sites in February…
According to ComScore, 50.8 percent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, reaching a total of 240.3 million visitors.

…Facebook dominates…
Not surprisingly, Facebook.com ranked as the top social network across eight markets - Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Local players led in Japan (Mixi.jp) and South Korea (CyWorld), while Google-owned Orkut ranked as the top social networking site in India and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc led in Taiwan.

…the Philippines are top users of Social Networks…
In February 2010, Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region averaged 2.5 hours on social networking sites during the month and visited the category an average of 15 times. Across markets, the Philippines showed the highest penetration of social networking usage with more than 90 percent of its entire Web population visiting a social networking site during the month, followed by Australia (89.6 percent penetration) and Indonesia (88.6 percent penetration).

…and the Philippines show the highest level of engagement on Social Networks…
Social networkers in the Philippines also showed the highest level of engagement on social networking sites averaging 5.5 hours per visitor in February, with visitors frequenting the social networking category an average of 26 times during the month. Strong engagement was also exhibited by Internet users in Indonesia (5.4 hours per visitor and 22 visits per visitor), Australia (3.8 hours per visitor and 20 visits per visitor) and Malaysia (nearly 3.8 hours per visitor and 22 visits per visitor).

ComScore’s report can be seen here.

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Social Media in Asia - where are the emerging opportunities

2010-04-19T03:51:00.000-07:00

Webinar slides:

Social Media Today recently invited me to present on the state of Social Media in Asia. Below are the slides that I presented along with those from fellow presenter Peter Auditore of SAP. Their blog links to an audio recordingof the discussion, which had some great questions.

Smt 032410 Slides
View more presentations from Social Media Today.

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Social Media in China: The Future

2010-04-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

1) Social media will predominate the digital landscape in China.

2) Digital becomes a gateway into and across the Chinese social media networks.

3) Digital will be measured by its effectiveness to influence, contribute, and add value to social media.

4) All leading brands will adopt a Chinese social media strategy or they will lose relevance.

5) All agencies will build dedicated Chinese social media teams.

6) Social media will become the nexus for most digital strategies.

7) Social media will not be seen as a tactical or executional issue but a primary strategic issue.

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8 Essential China Market-Facts

2010-04-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

Total consumption of luxury goods in the Chinese market has reached $9.4 billion annually.

China now makes up an eye-popping 27.5 percent of the world's total luxury goods market. It has become the second largest market for luxury groups in the world, after Japan.

Currently China has 825,000 individuals worth more than 10 million yuan, almost $1.5 million in U.S. dollars. China Daily reports that there are 51,000 people with more than 100 million yuan or almost $15 million.

A Yuan billionaire in Beijing consumes $1 million worth of goods a year. One billion yuan equals $146 million.

By 2015 China will rank fourth in the world by number of wealthy households, with a total of 4.4 million. Right now about 80% of wealthy Chinese are aged 18 to 45, compared to 30% in that age group in the U.S.

China's digital music market will be worth $315 million in annual revenue by 2011. This year, sales will grow by 8.2% to $262 million. More than 90% of China's music fans download music from the internet.

China overtook the US as the world’s biggest property investment market last year.

China already consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined.

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Social networks are key to cracking China

2010-04-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Business social media can unlock the door to the world’s second-largest economy

Written by Wayne Gibbons

A surge in Chinese exports for January has kicked the world’s fastest-growing economy back into life, at least in the eyes of Westerners. But China is still a difficult place to do business. Is there an opportunity for business social networks to break down trade barriers?

China is celebrating its 4,708th year. It is the year of the tiger and the country is safe in the knowledge that its economy is back on track. The trade figures make promising reading. Chinese exports for January are up, manufacturing is at its highest output since August and the service sector is recovering on the back of its traditional industries. Although much of this growth in trade is with non-Western countries, such as Brazil and India, interest in the West has not diminished. The feeling is mutual.

With the growth of domestic consumption, however, Chinese firms have switched emphasis from trading with overseas companies to internal trade. The domestic market has matured and this is attractive for any business outside the region. It also has a huge skilled market of IT programmers who are now starting to compete with India for outsourced software development.

However, trading with China is tricky. Cultural issues, regionalised business practices and ethics and the sheer number of willing business partners are huge barriers to entry.

Derek Ling, head of Tianji.com, China’s largest business social network with more than four million users, claims that service-sector SMEs in China are crying out for links with Western businesses, offering legal advice on business issues, partnerships for the travel industry and local accountancy. Using a social network, he says, is a window on local businesses that previously have been very difficult to reach. Tianji has just launched an English-speaking version of the site to help fuel links with Chinese service-sector businesses. It can unlock doors, but it is up to Western businesses to push them open.

It brings into question the role of social networks in business. For China, social media has been a sticky issue recently. Facebook and Twitter have been banned and a row erupted with Google over privacy, but business social media is different. It is geared towards creating links, developing leads and recommendations for businesses. It is the recommendations that really drive these sites. It is important for CIOs to make a distinction as it is becoming a trend to ban social networking in the workplace.

Social networking has an opportunity to facilitate trade not just in China but in any country. Business social networks can thrive by offering users the ability to establish community trade groups, marrying local expertise with international opportunity. It is a unique position that traditionally would take months, even years to establish, during which time alien firms leave themselves open to abuse from unknown quantities. Business social networking goes some way to limiting the risk by offering a platform for recommendation, but those networks have to have local knowledge, to have been established with local connections in mind. Any international connection is therefore a window of opportunity on an already established community of businesses.

This is where true trade links can be established. For a region such as China it makes more sense than ever to investigate social networks as a first port of call for researching and making new business contacts. Small to medium-sized businesses in particular are recognising the benefits of opening their doors to new opportunities and nowhere is this more evident than in the IT sector.

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10 Chinese websites you must know

2010-04-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Baidu.com:

Baidu (百度) is the Chinese Google. It dominates Chinese language search with about an 80% market share and is one of the biggest sites worldwide. As a local Chinese site it censors it's search results. Like Google, Baidu offers a number of services apart from search, including Maps, documents, MP3 search, Baidu Space (a social network with over 100 million users) Baidu Encyclopedia, (China's largest encyclopedia by users) and is launching a new video site called QiYi.com in March.

QQ.com

QQ is a portal that runs a number of services, most notably its IM service with over 1 billion registered users and it's social networking service Qzone, which some claim is bigger than Facebook.

Kaixin001.com:

Kaixin001 (开心网) is one China's fastest growing Social networking sites (SNS) with 75 million users. It claims to be growing at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 new user registrations per day Essentially a Facebook clone with applications, gaming, groups and pages.

Renren.com

Renren.com (人人网)is another social networking site similar to Facebook. and is a fierce rival of Kaixin001. Renren.com claims to have 200 million registered users. It mainly caters for college students, though it is actively looking to expand its reach.

Youku.com

Youku (优酷) was ranked #1 in Chinese Internet video sector in January 2010. Users can upload videos of any length and it's library includes many full length, popular films and TV episodes from the West as well as Chinese content. It's main rival is Tudou.com

Tudou.com:

Tudou (土豆网) is a video-sharing site and competes directly with Youku.com. Like Youku, users can upload videos of any length. Tudou serves over 100 million videos each day with more than 40,000 new videos published daily.

Tianya.cn:

Tianya (天涯) portrays itself as the "King of the Chinese Internet community". Certainly it's BBS message boards are the most active in China. Every issue under the sun is debated, argued and posted here. Many Chinese internet memes start here and replies to posts can run into the thousands. More than 33 million people across China regularly visit the Tianya forum.

Taobao.com

Taobao (淘宝网) is the Chinese Ebay. It is China's largest Internet retail platform , taking up about three-fourths of the market share. Nearly 50% of all Chinese Internet users are registered on Taobao. Alibaba's Jack Ma has said: “eBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win.”

Douban.com

Douban (豆瓣) is a popular Chinese social media site ( ranked 24th in China) with over 30 million unique users a month. It started about five years ago and has all the now common features of social media sites such as groups, the ability to "friend" others, etc.Douban users tend to be between 20-35 years old and single. Mostly into arts, films, music and culture. The CEO of the site Ah Bei claims that: "Douban has never been an SNS site; it has a community or social networking community. Perhaps it's a social network based on books, or on movies, but Douban is broader than that."

Douban has recently had a redesign, which adopts a Facebook style feed on the frontpage.

Sina.com.cn

Sina (新浪) is reportedly China's largest "infotainment" portal and is third in terms of Traffic Rank within China, behind Baidu and QQ. Sina is popular for news, but also for it's blogs, which are some of the most read in the world. It recently launched a microblogging service (like Twitter) t.sina.com.cn. which has proved extremely popular (now the largest micro-blogging site in China) and is growing at a tremendous rate.

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Beating Google in China. A Baidu Story

2010-04-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's been lot written over the last few days about Google's decision to close it's Google.cn website and redirect users to Google.hk. There's been a lot of applause for Google's "Stand" against China's censorship laws. However the fact remains that despite Google being "In China" for four years (also censoring don't forget), the American company never managed to catch, let alone overtake it's Chinese rival Baidu. When Google.cn shut down on Monday, it had less than a third of the market share.

So who are Baidu?

Baidu (百度; pinyin: Bǎidù) is one of China's largest companies and offers a range of Chinese language services, aside from search. It actively censors it's content in line with Chinese government regulations. It's 37-year-old founder and chief executive is Robin Li. Prior to founding Baidu, Robin studied and worked in the USA and Dow Jones and Infoseek are among his previous employers. He established Baidu in 2000 with co-founder Eric Xu and led the company public in 2005, a year before Google's entrance into the Chinese market.

According to Robin Li, the name Baidu has the following meaning:

"Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. 'Baidu' was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. '...hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.' Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal."

Baidu has it's share of controversy and turmoil over the last ten years, with many attacking both it's lax approach to piracy and it's strong censorship policies. Recently, January saw the departure of two top executives, COO Peng Ye and CTO Yinan Li, both for "personal reasons"

However you have to say the future looks bright for the search giant. It's share price closed over $600 for the first time yesterday and the departure of it's foreign rival gives it plenty of room to breathe. It also has no qualms about complying with government regulations and no Moral Crusade to worry about.

The Baidu Story is certainly not over yet.

from http://www.renmedia.co.uk/news/beating-google-in-china-a-baidu-story

Baidu and Google Buzz

2010-04-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

from http://www.renmedia.co.uk/news/baidu-and-google-buzz

"China's largest search engine Baidu seems to rank Google Buzz and Google profiles very highly.

If you have a Google profile try it. Go to Baidu.com and type in your name.

Quite why this is a question for the SEO experts. But certainly ironic given current events."

Building Buzz In China - Social Media Case Study

2010-04-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

The case (http://www.renmedia.co.uk/news/building-buzz-in-china-social-media-case-study) I'm going to study here is that they successfully promote a client The Royal Parks to China through Chinese social media. This is how they did it:

"hooked up to a number of Chinese social media/Web2.0/Microblogging/social networking sites like Douban, Sina WeiBo and QQ (Qzone). All of the content on londonlvyou.com is replicated across these sites. ",
also "actively look to engage users and create Fans/Followers who will engage back. In our opinion it's not just about how many Fans you have, it's about who those Fans are and what they will do for you. Quality is still key in Web 2.0.".
And then, a leading Chinese magazine found them and asked for an article. Once the article online, "it was shared around a number of news portals, blogs and social media sites. Not just by us but by netizens who found the content of the article useful and interesting enough to tell people about it.",
and then "CCTV 2 (Chinese National TV) picked it up and did a feature on it"! That's how it became a very successful campaign in China!

Thus conclusion made: "Proof again, if it were needed, that Social Media is a great way to get a message out and proof that Social Media is a great way to Engage and Connect."

Infographic of the Day: China's Social Media Map

2010-04-05T10:01:00.001-07:00

BY NOAH ROBISCHONMon Oct 12, 2009

from http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/noah-robischon/editors-desk/infographic-day-chinas-social-media-map

The major players in the U.S. social media world can be counted on one hand: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. Not so in China, where the country's 300 million online users have a panoply of popular social networks to choose from--and Facebook doesn't even crack the top 10. This map of the Chinese social media landscape was created by the Shanghai-based social network marketing company Zero Degrees (click to enlarge).

Twittering Grows in China (but not on Twitter)

2010-04-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

By thomascrampton ⋅ March 19, 2010

from http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/twitter-usage-china/

Twitter remains blocked in China, but that has not stopped Twitter-like activity.

Similar to other foreign Web 2.0 services that the government keeps out, China’s vibrant web sector has created domestic alternatives.

This graph from CIC Data shows that almost 40% of the online buzz they found around the Toyota recall on the day that Toyota president Akio Toyoda spoke in China about the issue came from Sina’s micro-blog.

Note that this is a measure of volume, not impact. A well considered posting on a particular blog or forum may well have had more impact. But it does show that micro-blogs are growing in importance in China for breaking news events.

As I blogged earlier, the Chinese-language is in some ways better suited to Twitter than English: Twitter in Chinese actually means “Blog”. If you INSIST on looking at Twitter usage in China, here’s a posting I did about the demographics of Twitter users in China.

(Disclosure: I run Ogilvy’s Social Media practice for APAC and in that role have often partnered with CIC on projects.)

Web2Asia - Online Social Networks In China

2010-03-29T13:26:00.001-07:00

Another good presentation on Chinese Online Community

Web2Asia - Online Social Networks In China

View more presentations from web2asia.

Chinese Social Networks 'Virtually' Out-Earn Facebook And MySpace: A Market Analysis

2010-03-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

full article from http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/chinese-social-networks-virtually-out-earn-facebook-and-myspace-a-market-analysis/

by Guest Author

Editor’s Note: Social networks are taking off in China. The following guest post by George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu explores how Chinese social networks are pursuing different business models than their American counterparts, relying more on micropayments and the sale of virtual goods. George Godula is the co-founder of Web2Asia, an East Asian incubator and also a consultancy for Western startups trying to enter markets in China, Japan and Korea. David Li is a developer of social networking applications such as Growing Gifts, and he also was the developer of OnChat, an early in-browser graphical avatar chat system. Richard Yu is a Seattle native living in China, where he consults for Shanghai-based web startups while writing his blog.

Despite China’s massively growing internet market, international giants like Google and Facebook are having trouble making gains with the 300 million Chinese online users. China’s netizens are on average very young – 66.7 % of them are younger than 29 years old and 35.2 % of them are teenagers—with social networking and entertainment applications being the most popular.

While companies like Facebook struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere, their Chinese clones have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods may not help American social networks due both to cultural differences in Chinese user behavior and industry practices. Below is our analysis of the Chinese social networking scene.

Chinese Social Networking is Dominated by Local Players

Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) have long played the dominating role in Chinese Internet life and still continue to be one of the most popular online platforms for social interaction. Registered user accounts, which are mostly anonymous, surpass 3 billion (users have multiple accounts) and 80% of Chinese sites run their own BBS. However in the last year social networking services, most of which require real name registrations, have shown explosive growth in China with 19.3% of netizens using them regularly.

Despite the popularity of social networking in China, the social networking market is dominated by local Chinese players, and Western networks have trouble adapting to Chinese culture and user expectations. Facebook does not rank among the top 15 asocial networks in China while MySpace has only 6 million users (vs. the goal of 50 million users after 2 years initially proclaimed by Rupert Murdoch).

Meanwhile, China’s leading social network Qzone, which is targeted at teenagers, may even be the largest in the world. Tencent, Inc., the company that runs Qzone, recentlyannounced group revenues of over $1 billion in 2008.

As ad sales slump in the recession, only approximately 12% of Qzone’s revenue stems from online advertising with the rest coming from virtual item sales such as applications and avatars. Internet ad spending in China is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2009, which is about 4% of total ad spend. In comparison, the US is estimated to spend $25.7 billion reaching consumers online through advertising. These comparably low online budgets in China are largely spent at four large news portals, which earn the majority of online ad revenue. This forces most “smaller” portals to find more innovative ways to monetize their traffic.

51.com, which targets working class adults from rural parts of China, is the second most popular social network in China with 130 million registered users. Concurrently, Chinese students flock to Xiaonei with approx. 40 million users. It is backed up with $430 million in funding from its parent company Oak Pacific Interactive and investors like Softbank.Kaixin001, which skyrocketed out of nowhere to 30 million registered users from the middle of last year, targets white collar workers in China’s largest cities by employing controversial invitation techniques and copying apps directly from Facebook.

Yet the astronomical growth of China’s social networks can be attributed as much to its massive market size as to its cultural norms and values. Social networking apps can hit hyper-viral levels in China due to a higher tolerance of intrusive app invitations. It is not uncommon for apps to essentially force new users to invite people and perform tasks before being able to join their friends online. Once friends have joined they are required to interact much more with the apps and advertisements than on Western applications. While this model is not replicable for the US market, certain aspects of this strategy/cultural mindset are necessary if companies like Facebook or Myspace want to compete in China.

Open Social Networks are Not So Open in China

In the middle of 2008, Myspace was the only social network to support OpenSocial in China. Despite Google’s effort, the adoption of OpenSocial was slow among the major social networks. Eventually, other platforms caved into the partnership with Google and gave half-hearted support to OpenSocial. Apart from some of the large social networks mentioned previously this included City!N, Yiqi.com as well as the business network Tianji and BBS Tianya. Other social networks such as Douban, Hainei or news portal Sohu had originally announced to join OpenSocial but then never implemented it, choosing an F8 style API instead. Today, only one of the top 50 apps in China’s social networks runs on OpenSocial despite the hard work put in by the Google team in China.

When Xiaonei and 51.com at first opened their own platforms, their terms of services outraged the developer community with clauses that practically blocked all monetization opportunities and a shared user base with their own websites. The developers launched several public protests against the social networks including the website www.anti-opensocial.com to rebel against hypocritical support for these “fake open” platforms. The executives from these social networks did respond quickly to the developers demands and changed the terms of service to more reasonable terms, allowing limited monetization opportunities for the developers.

Unfortunately, most social networks continue to ignore “Open Social” practices, opting for the more familiar “Guanxi paradigm” in business practices with third parties. The term ”Guānxi” describes the basic dynamic of gaining influence and receiving favors within social relationships, and is a central concept in Chinese society. For social networks, this means that rather than developing an open ecosystem, they focus on dealing with third parties individually and face to face. New Open Social Networking platforms (or better put, “selectively opened”) such as Yahoo’s Guanxi, Tencent’s Xiaoyou and Tianya court established third party app developers like Five Minutes while largely ignoring the wider developer community.

Additionally, ad sales are also strictly controlled by the social networks themselves even though 51.com set a threshold of a $35k fee to be paid for app developers to operate their own ad revenue -based applications (which until now no developer was willing to pay).

Keso, China’s most widely read tech blogger, who we asked to contribute to this article through China’s online expert panel BloggerInsight, summed up the situation by saying “Despite an open platform strategy, Chinese SNS are still competing with each other on the application level”.

Imitation of Facebook was only a Launching Point

Chinese sites are notorious for their C2C strategy, or “Copy to China”. This applies to the app market in the same way as it did to the social networks and all other Web 2.0 and eCommerce services. A year after Facebook introduced the F8 open platform, Xiaonei.com followed suit and announced its open platform in July 2008. The developer group xCube on Xiaonei attracted individuals and companies interested in third-party apps. Yet Chinese outsourcing developers such as Apptz and Ismole armed with experience working on Facebook applications made significant inroads by launching several apps and attracting millions of users in just a few short months.

At about the same time, the apps space also felt the power of C2C with copies of popular apps on Facebook such as “Friends for Sale” and “Parking War” popping up on just about every social network in China. Other leading social networks such as 51.com and Comsenz!’s Ucenter Home (similar to Ning.com) launched their own open platform soon after Xiaonei’s effort.

Chinas 51.com first social network in the world to open up payment API

While Chinese social networks started out as mere clones of existing sites, they’ve managed to innovate the business models to create a very lucrative market by cementing the relationship between application developers and the site’s user base. Happy Farm, the most popular app in China reportedly collects well over $75k a month through installations on various platforms, and according to Chinese application tracker, Appleap, the value of the total social network’s apps install base is approx. $4.5 million.

Opening up the payment system was one of the most anticipated announcements from Facebook’s developer conference F8 2008 but the company failed to create an integrated ecosystem for users to buy and sell apps. China’s socail networks took the great leap forward in this area when 51.com became the first social network in the world opening up its payment system to third party developers in 2008. Users pay money to 51.com and receive virtual coins which they can then again spend on third party applications. The revenue is split 50/50 between the social network and the developer.

Facebook on the other hand currently does not offer developers access to its payment system. If a third party application redirects Facebook users to their own website and payment processor, they usually lose the advantage of Facebook’s trusted brand name and the majority of potential revenues.

At the same time, companies like Becomedia are cooperating with 51.com to bring OfferPal-style cost-per-click/cost-per-action (CPS/CPA) for virtual currency models to China. CPS/CPA is one of the fastest growing sectors of Internet ads in China. This means revenues for the developers by trading their virtual currency for hard cash.

Season Xu from Five Minutes, the maker of China’s most popular app, confirmed the three basic revenue models for apps in China: shared ad revenues, income through virtual currencies, and customized development for branded applications. However he and Herock, a leading figure in the Chinese tech blogosphere whom we also spoke to, expect a consolidation in the app development market soon with larger companies taking over and benefiting from effects of scale, rather than individual developers still being able to produce top apps.

What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything?

If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn’t Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue.

Facebook has just recently announced a “credits” system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don’t want to be labeled as a “gaming platform” either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets.

Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.

A leading Internet consulting firm in China: CIC

2010-03-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not surprised by the existence of such company, considering the huge potential of Chinese Marketing. Here is a brief introduction of this company:

Handbook of Online China

2010-03-29T12:48:00.001-07:00

I find this presentation is really good, so who'd like to know more about Chinese Social Media, check it out.

Handbook of Online China

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Great research on Chinese Social Media Status Quo

2010-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

Great research on chinese social media status quo, article from http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-media-and-china-its-not-what-you-think-notes-from-sxsw/, by Jim Tobin

Social Media Penetration
While the Internet population in China exceeds that of the United States, the initial question was about socia media usage, and whether or not it's popular. And it is. There are 221 million blogs, 117 million BBS and 176 million social network users. While Facebook is blocked, most people use a local Chinese social network, QZone, which was built by Tencent.
Note the Bulletin Board System reference there. While they are called that in China, they are not a throwback to the 1990 BBS systems in the US. You can upload pictures, video and more, in an anonymous forum, and it's among the most popular ways to spend time. And chatter about brands is more likely to take place on BBS than anywhere else. The most popular platforms are listed below, showing clearly that people have multiple accounts as there are only about 400m online users in China:
Tencent (1B+, 485m active)
Qzone (310m)
RenRen 200m (50m mobile)
Kaixin001 (75M)
51.com (160m)
What Do People Do Online?
272 million on instant message, 222 million on online video, 108 million on online shopping (The market leader beat eBay and chased them from the market), 265 million on online gaming and 321 million using online music.
Looking at the social technographics ladder, America has 21% of people who create original content, while China has 40% of people who create content. That's a very significant difference. While the inactives are equal (25% of each population), and people in the US are more likely to join social networks than Chinese (25% to 23%), the large percentage of creators is potentially interesting from a marketing standpoint.
Zhou noted the difference between the stereotype that Asians are less likely than Americans to speak directly and wondered if anonymous BBS systems are popular as a result. Flemming agreed, but noted that it's also a reaction to a media system that isn't fully objective. So the people spread the word themselves through many of these social systems. Virtual currency (at QQ, pictured above) is so popular that it's now taxed by the government. That's a shocking sign of its ubiquity.
What Are they Talking About?
By industry, the chatter varies dramatically. In order of declining popularity, conversations center around
Automobiles (~13m)
Mobile phone (~7m)
Sports (~3m conversations)
Computer
Baby products
Cosmetics
Healthcare
Flemming is finding that these conversations are changing the way people buy cars. His friend went online and asked if anyone wanted to buy the same car as her so they could get a discount. Two weeks later, 55 people went into the same dealership and bought 55 cars together. Needless to say, they got a very good deal by using this "group purchase" concept. Not surprisingly, mentions of "group purchase" in China have grown dramatically over the last two years.
Chatter around the Ford Focus found that more than half of people discussing the car didn't use the official brand name. They instead used a popular nickname for the car. Absent that local knowledge, the conversation tracking system could be set up incorrectly. In fact, a whole new language called Mars language has been created online and many people use them to speak both online and off. (I'd hate to have to build a monitoring system to track a made up language.) These slangs and languages are so pervasive that the university system had to ban the use of net slang in entrance exams.
China Learned from Korea and Japan
Joffe noted that China learned a lot from Korea and Japan. Korea's popuar Cyworld and Japan's Mixi, MobileGameTown and Gree (all of which are listed on the stock exchange and selling virtual goods). The online advertising market is not as valuable in China, so monetization occurs largely through sales of virtual goods. In fact $5 Billion worth of virtual goods were sold online, which is 5 times bigger than the US (down from 25x in 2008).
Tencent made over $1.5B USD (which is roughly 3x what Facebook made). Tencent is third largest internet company in the world, after only Google and Amazon. Most Americans know nothing of it, but their net margin is 40%, which is astounding.
Online Gaming in China
Love Farmville? The first farm game was made in China by a company called 5 minutes. That was inspired by a Japanese game, and then Zynga copied it and brought it to the U.S., but they weren't the first by any means. The original explanation for popularity was "because there are lots of farmers in China." The popularity of Farmville in the US, however, largely debunks that.
Doob.cc has a very popular game in China. It has a virtual goods component, and it looks like a standard rhythym game (think Dance Dance Revolution), but you dance with someone else via the network. The boys buy the girls they meet online virtual gifts, just as you would buy a drink in the bar. Suddenly the game is extending social life and even dating online.
The 5 Cs of Chinese Innovation
Copy: We always start with something.
Combination: By combining two things (i.e., instant messaging and virtual goods), you can get a great idea.
Competition: As soon as there are two strong video sites, for example, they need to compete and differentiate, which leads to innovation.
Constraints: Because you can't do everything, the constraints foster innovation, even knew business models (because online advertising isn't workable, for example).
China: It has to work for China, and the unique settings of the country, which might be different than for example a Japanese consumer.
Fewer Credit Cards
With much less popularity of credit cards, how do you get the payments for virtual currency? QQ began by selling scratch cards in stores. You'd buy it in store, scratch off the code, enter it and have the money deposited into your account. Very clever.
Other Examples
Zhenai is the most popular dating site in China (and the world, with 22 m profiles it's bigger than Match.com). Since they couldn't use teh same model, they have 350 people on staff who call people up to arrange a date. Then they call you back to see how the date was. They then get feedback from the person dating, and give you feedback on how you did on your date. That should, in theory, make you a better dater. They charge ~$450 USD for a six month subscription, which is very expensive given then income levels there. But they are adding a lot of value. Would that work in the United States? Interesting question.
Lihua allows you to order food delivery by IM.
BabyTree is a social network for young parents where you can also buy goods for the child. It's beginning to become profitable. The limitation on number of children you can have also impacts this site, both positively and negatively.
Dianping is a Yelp-like site that has many more reviews than Yelp. It also ranks the many dishes at each restaurant in terms of popularity.
While China is known in the U.S. in part for their rampant piracy (software, fashion, films, etc.), it's clear from the level of participation, and the monetization of that participation, that China's innovation also offers lessons for marketers in the United States and elsewhere.

A very good campaign example in Chinese wine market

2010-03-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

I came across a very good article on Discovery Social Media in China. What makes it especially good is it give a concrete example on how a campaign was conducted in China, which can be referred by many online marketers who want to expand to the Chinese OM. The full article is copied down below with the original link, but first I'll make a digest of it for fast information readers. "The Internet is not only serving China’s growing set of Netizens though. It is quickly replacing traditional media as brands and companies seek to connect with their consumers in new and different ways.", "The Internet in China is dominated by long-running, multi-service portals like Sina,QQ and Sohu", "However, for the most part Netizens are simply seeking entertainment and escape. ",e.g.Kaixin, "Netizens love the collective and escapist nature of the Internet where avatars have become a nationwide obsession and are carefully designed as a form of self expression and extension of personality", e.g. QQ. Thus "a true digital brand experience requires creativity, authenticity and originality". "it was obvious that online education and social media engagement should serve as the cornerstone of a campaign to build awareness, trial and preference for Chilean wine.", "The main channel to begin discussion of Chilean wine was to leverage the blogosphere and make this viral. ", "the e-book, the videos and the blogger competition", "For brands looking to get on China’s digital highway, seatbelts, a GPS and a little sense of adventure are a necessity. ".

Full Article, from http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/11/discovering-social-media-in-china/

There is a popular saying in politics that all politics are local; and in China the same can be said about the Internet. Local players, in tune to the specific needs of the country’s “Netizens”, rule the digital space, and the numbers are staggering. Currently, the Internet in China is home to over 340 million users who are online for an average of 16 hours per week, the same amount of time they spend watching television. There are 111 million people managing a social network profile, and these numbers are growing daily. The power of the Internet in China has never been stronger and has not even begun to be realised.

It is no secret that the Internet in China has been an agent for reform, and it is serving as a valuable tool for people to explore a world often beyond their reach. The Internet is not only serving China’s growing set of Netizens though. It is quickly replacing traditional media as brands and companies seek to connect with their consumers in new and different ways. With the exception of Google, international platforms that offer a cut and paste version of their American or European sites simply fail and often get banned. Popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter have fallen victim to the Great Firewall of China. While young innovative Chinese Netizens can find a way to get to these sites, why would they want to? Chinese social media is simply way cooler.

The Internet in China is dominated by long-running, multi-service portals like Sina,QQ and Sohu that have been offering social networking, discussion forums, blogs, instant messaging and other “socialised media” long before Twitter and Facebook. As the nationally preferred form of social media, bulletin board systems (BBS) are available in every imaginable topic, and in these forums, Netizens can be extremely vocal, resourceful, risk-takers, subversive and sometimes a little worrisome.

However, for the most part Netizens are simply seeking entertainment and escape. The bulk of internet users in China, young white collar urban Chinese, are informed, intelligent and generally optimistic about the future. This state of mind is exemplified by one of the hottest games at Kaixin called Parking Wars. Players earn virtual mullah for parking in their friends’ spaces and issuing parking infringements if they catch their friends parking on their home turf, with more money earning you shinier wheels. It is simply addictive and unrivalled by anything on Facebook.

Netizens love the collective and escapist nature of the Internet where avatars have become a nationwide obsession and are carefully designed as a form of self expression and extension of personality. QQ offers avatar clothing and hairstyles for 1-5 RMB apiece. Many friends are made only in avatar form online, with Netizens never actually meeting face to face.

With no hesitation about inundating friends with requests to play this game, read that blog, join in this conversation or watch that video, the Internet and social media are no less than a national addiction. This addiction, and fast growing channel, has become the opportunity and challenge for companies and brands. The question everyone is asking is how to get started?

The first movers among companies and brands in leveraging the Internet to reach their customers know that a true digital brand experience requires creativity, authenticity and originality.

Chile

The government of Chile in promoting Chilean wine in China understood this. With limited funding and an ambitious agenda, ProChile, the Chilean government body responsible for the promotion of Chile and Chilean Wine, found gold with their online campaign.

China’s rapidly growing wine industry is full of both opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity rests among China’s rapidly growing wine connoisseurs, who seek new and different types of wine. The challenge was that Chinese consumers often default to French wine and high prices, focusing on the status achieved by the association of consuming French wine.

What Chinese consumers didn’t know was that Chile has affordable and high quality wines. The Chilean government wanted to reach out to Chinese wine consumers and help them understand that there was more to choosing wine than just comparing price tags.

The primary objective of the campaign was to increase Chilean wine sales in China. Beyond that, ProChile wanted to promote Chile to create a stronger brand presence for Chilean wine. The result, after only three months conducting a multi-phased digital campaign, was that Chilean wine moved up in the rankings of wine exporters into China.

Background

Wine is one of the fastest growing alcoholic drinks in China among a defined target audience of young (25-35 years old) urban professionals. However, after conducting research, young urban professions were often embarrassed to order or purchase wine because of a lack of understanding about the product. At the same time this group of people fell in the demographic of heavy Internet users. They were the foundation of China’s flourishing social media scene. These consumers were found to often look to bloggers for advice and viewed the internet as an instrument for self study and a place to share knowledge and recommendations.

Hence, it was obvious that online education and social media engagement should serve as the cornerstone of a campaign to build awareness, trial and preference for Chilean wine.

Strategy

Seeking to empower consumers with knowledge and confidence, the campaigned focused on arming netizens with the tools to buy or order wine. To create a bigger brand presence, images were used and information disseminated about Chile as a constant backdrop to everything undertaken.

A three-phase campaign roll-out was launched:

Phase 1: “I love wine.” During this phase every Netizen was invited to learn about wine appreciation, appealing to all current and would be wine drinkers.

Phase 2: “I love Chilean wine.” Focusing on the specific advantages of wine from Chile, the second-phase of the campaign encouraged people to convert to Chilean wine. Here, the campaign highlighted the affordability, taste quality and sustainability practices that set Chilean wine apart from the wines of other countries. In the process, we introduced netizens to the different regions of Chile, furthering education.

Phase 3: “I love Chile.” With a solid understanding of Chile, through Chilean wine, the door was open to introduce Chinese consumers to other products produced by Chile – fruit, salmon, urban transportation and tourism.

The main channel to begin discussion of Chilean wine was to leverage the blogosphere and make this viral. To begin with, the campaign involved collaboration with four influential bloggers asking them to stage a competition. Each week over four weeks the bloggers were sent a bottle of Chilean wine, together with information and facts about Chile.

The thrust of the blogger involvement centered on getting them interested in writing about the wine in their blogs in their own personal style. The blogger’s posts were aggregated at a site developed for the campaign, zhiliwine.com. This allowed us to create a lasting and permanent record of the event. Throughout the campaign over 70,000 netizens voted for their favorite articles, with many bottles of Chilean wine offered as give-aways for the competition. Blog posts were featured on the front pages of some of the biggest portals.

A broad social media footprint is important for every brand, and marketers need to take their message to the places where netizens are already investing their time and trust online. To extend the campaign message, popular social media was leveraged with content continually added to encourage debate and to help establish a community where netizens were able to discuss wine. Specifically:

• Kaixin – Chinese social network site where wine fans could come together and share wine drinking tips.
• Youku – Chinese video sharing site (like Youtube) where content was produced specifically about Chilean wine and this was uploaded for all to view.
• Flickr - Furnished numerous photos of Chilean wine, landscapes and other activities by ProChile in China.
• BBS forums – Seeded information in more than 50 relevant BBS forums to encourage interest.

The campaign empowered Chinese consumers to drink wine with ease, and impress their friends and business associates with “Webisodes” (short videos), created specifically for online video sharing networks as a tool for self-study. Through the webisodes the campaign delivered simple tips such as how to open a wine bottle, how to taste wine with confidence, and how to pair wine with Chinese food.

In addition to the online outreach, a comprehensive Interactive e-book in cooperation with Chilean wine companies in China was created, and the Chilean wine companies provided content and incorporated the e-book into their own marketing strategies.

Beyond social media, the campaign involved working with editors and producers of major portals to promote the campaign vehicles: the e-book, the videos and the blogger competition. It was important to reach out to editors of the more traditional online media so that the campaign reached people who do not use social media heavily, but who regularly read major Chinese websites such as Sina and Sohu.

After only three months, the greatest achievement was seeing Chilean wine climb from the fifth to the fourth largest exporter of wine to China, according to the Commissioner General of ProChile in China.

Like the country itself, social media in China is fast paced, constantly changing and growing faster than anywhere else in the world. For brands looking to get on China’s digital highway, seatbelts, a GPS and a little sense of adventure are a necessity. There is no more rewarding or amazing place to do social media.

Michael Darragh is Digital Strategic Planner at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide / Shanghai and producer of World Expo Blog.

Here marks the start of my Chinese Online Market Research

2010-03-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

Chinese market is huge, and the online market potential is fathomless. Any business who wants to trade with China will need a professional marketer who knows the language, the culture, the way of doing business, the people connection, and of course, how to generate traffic!

I'm gonna be one of the few first to research on this topic, and especially to promote the ebiz (as well as culture) communication and cooperation between overseas and China. So comparing with the internet marketing experts in China, I have the advantages of knowing both, and able to channel the English and Chinese ways of trading.

I'm very enthusiastic about this study, and hope my efforts will pay off, and benefit all my followers and audiences!