Social Media Is Great!

My Blog Has Moved To A New Home!

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:01:00 +0000

Hello! Thanks for always coming back to check out this place! As you may have noticed, this blog has been dormant since April, and you might wonder where Ruby has gone in the past couple of days and why couldn't she attend to her blog? Actually, during the time I have been absent here, I was not relaxing at all, but was busy as a bee on building a new home for Social Media Is Great, which I believe all of you will just love it as much as I do! Now it is finally finished, and I am delighted to invite all of you to visit my new blog Social Media Is Great at rubyczhang.com rubyczhang.com!

In the future I will be only updating there, for some of my dear readers who have put my blog feed in your Google Reader, please remember to replace the new address with the old one and continue to support my blog and also share your insights with me there! Thanks again for all of your past support and kind comments! I really appreciate it and enjoyed blogging with you!

Here is a list of posts I've written in April so far, you can find them at my new blog: rubyczhang.com. I look forward to seeing you there!

Twitter’s Future Growth Opportunities

Chinese Grassroots Remix

Foursquare Fights Fake Check-In

Facebook to Enter China By the End of This Year?

Changes In My Media Consumption

I Saw Some Angels Tonight!

Google.cn To Google.com.hk

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:31:00 +0000

News came out the other day that Google has finally rolled out a solution to their censorship dispute with the Chinese government. Instead of "pulling out" their business from China, they are moving their servers in Mainland China to Hong Kong. They will also adopt a new Hong Kong domain name, and direct everybody who accesses Google.cn in Mainland China to the Google.com.hk. Ideally they can provide uncensored Chinese search results on this Hong Kong site to Chinese people this way, but is this Utopian situation likely to happen? According to Google's official blog, they do not seem to be that sure about it themselves:

“We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services.”

Many analysts in the U.S. have backed Google's act simply by stating how dominant Google's market share is in everywhere in the world and how Google China has only brought in a tiny bit of revenue to the overall Google colossus in the past couple of years, so Google China’s demise does not need to be a major concern to Google. But I still feel very sorry that Google is going to miss out on the big internet market in China, and the exploding mobile market across the Pacific Ocean. I read the other day on eMarketer that the number of mobile web users in China will soon exceed the U.S. population by the end of this year. Even though Google says it is still going to try to push out the Android mobile platform in China, Google's ambitions for Android in this giant Chinese mobile market are surely going to be largely compromised. Also, if Google’s search engine and all other Google services that serve as the backbone to its lucrative ad business may be potentially blocked, then what is the point of Google pushing the free Android platform in China anyway? Their OS may not even bring in the ad revenue Google needs.

Google has been on the blacklist of the Chinese government that is for sure. Xinhua News Agency, the government-backed "official" news agency has just run a fulminating article criticizing Google's recent discord with the government titled "China declines political Google and Google's politics" .

In response, Google in its typical simple manner, launched a plain site that tracks Google services’ accessibility in Mainland China. My first response seeing this list was: "What?! Blogger is also banned in Mainland China?!" I wonder if WordPress is accessible there. I will for sure go back to the site often to check the "status quo" in China.

TimesPeople: The New York Times' Response To The Social Era

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:25:00 +0000

Right after I finished reading the post "It’s Hard To Watch The Newsosaurs Turn A Blind Eye To Their Own Extinction" from Techcrunch, which lampoons many of print media's slow response to the digital media revolution, I encountered one “Newsosaur” ,The New York Times, and their endeavor in adapting themselves to this new media world. The timing was just too good and the contrast just too big, I could resist blogging about it.

I remembered that not too long ago, when I was reading articles from The New York Times, it was always a pain for me to share its articles on Twitter, as the little share button at the end of each articles did not include a shortcut to Twitter. But today after I finished reading an article, I was surprised to see a little button below exclusively devoted to Twitter along side other Share and Email buttons. After I finished rejoicing about how the New York Times has finally moved to embrace Twitter, I was hit with an even bigger surprise: The New York Times has rolled out an online community for their readers: TimesPeople!

While people can join TimesPeople by logging in with their New York Times membership account, they can also use their Twitter account to register, and NYT will pull Twitter profile information and contacts to their TimesPeople account from the beginning. Score one for good interoperability! This got me right on board.

NYT defined TimesPeople here:

"TimesPeople is a social network for Times readers. But it's not a social network like Facebook or MySpace — you won't have Times friends, and it won't get you Times dates. Instead, you'll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you'll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network. For example, when you recommend an article, comment on a blog post, or rate a movie or restaurant, these activities will become visible to other TimesPeople users in a special toolbar at the top of every NYTimes.com page. You'll also have a personal page that keeps track of your TimesPeople activities and lets you browse your network of readers.

TimesPeople is a great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with other NYTimes.com readers."

Looks like NYT is very clear about what they are doing with TimesPeople. It’s not another Facebook, it’s not another Myspace. It’s a community that is especially designed just for you to better find and share NYT's content, and of course it supplies you with your pre-existing offline social networks which has been proven to be the panacea of engagement in online communities. While social media like Twitter are becoming more and more prominent news centers on the internet, traditional news sites cannot escape this trend, nor can they be ostriches putting their heads in the sand and pretending that nothing is happening. They might as well just face their problems and try to turn them to own advantage, like what The New York Times is doing now.

Were You Awake at 4am This Morning?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:13:00 +0000

(Less than half an hour after the L.A. earthquake this morning, the term "earthquake" dominated the local Twitter trends in L.A.)

Unfortunately, I was, when the earthquake in the L.A. area happened around 4 am this morning. According to the US Geological Survey, it was only a 4.4 magnitude quake and was centered about 12 miles under the city of Pico Rivera. Sounded minor right? But it did feel very real to me this morning when I was lying in bed in the dark. For about ten seconds I thought I was on a flying carpet when the whole bed was jolting and the windows above my bed were whistling. A couple of seconds later, lying in the dark, hearing the car alarms going off on the street, a pretty surreal feeling struck me when I realized that an earthquake might just have happened. "Was it just further proof that I was really living in the restless city of L.A. or was it all just a dream?" I asked myself. But since everything quickly returned to normal in the middle of the night, I knew there was only one place in the world at that moment that could give me the answer.

Twitter!

I turned on my laptop, which was placed on the edge of my bed, thank goodness it hadn't been slipped to the ground during all that shaking. I searched "earthquake L.A." in Google about five minutes after the earthquake, and the first three results that came to the top were about old earthquake entries from USGS, but the fourth one was real time results from Twitter. According to the results, many people were already engaged in an intense discussion about the earthquake that had just happened. The discussions were not only from L.A., but also from China and South Korea. Nice, it was not a dream.

My friend Julie (glad she was awake too!) tweeted at that moment that this was the first time she turned to Twitter for news, just as I had. I have heard so many anecdotes before of how Twitter has been such a useful platform for people to exchange information during emergency circumstances like the Mumbai terrorist attack. But this time, I experienced the power of Twitter, the real-time news outlet, myself. It was for real!

Here are some interesting tweets that really helped to ease my nerves in the aftermath of the earthquake:

earthquake in LA. fault just a few miles from parents house. son's ok but dad wondering how I heard so quickly in China. :)

christinelu‎ - twitter.com - seconds ago

Earthquake in LA. Over 300 related tweets every 5secs. Amazing how realtime the technology is! #fb

tohir‎ - twitter.com - 3 minutes ago

Is amazed at how many people are up at 4AM talking about the earthquake in LA. Hi from South Korea!

AndrewLeonard‎ - twitter.com - 3 minutes ago

I think like 50% of the people I follow live in LA. Based on these earthquake tweets, at least.

oceana_roll‎ - twitter.com - 3 minutes ago

Los Angeles Earthquake: 4.4 Tremblor Hits Pico Rivera

Huffington Post - 3 minutes ago

4.4 earthquake in CA, near LA... Glad everyone's ok! RT @ninjabetic: 1 picture fell off the wall. Kids are a bit nervous.

martin_j001‎ - twitter.com - 4 minutes ago

	There was an earthquake in LA? Can't find it on any media but my Twitter is filled with updates on the case.

minieerikki‎ - twitter.com - 4 minutes ago

Privacy: The Price of Being Online?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:05:00 +0000

As much as I wish I could be at this year's SXSWi, I have enjoyed reading the keynote speech reports from social media scouts like Techcrunch and also the tidbits floating on social media venues from my friends who are there. That is the beauty of this new media world, instant- knowledge sharing, and impact-amplification. Joining this new knowledge-sharing force, I personally feel I have become a thousand times more resourceful and knowledgeable than I could ever be otherwise. That is one of the things I love most about social media.

But there are always pay-offs for the advantages that social media have brought to us. SXSWi's keynote speaker Danah Boyd's speech about how social media messes with people's personal and public lives really struck a cord with me, as recently I have been trying to redraw the line between my personal and public activities on the internet. It is especially hard for me to do so because social media to me is not just a personal space, it is also a professional setting since I want to develop a career within it.

For most of my friends who do not have this dual identity issue with social media, they may probably have easier answers to this problem: purge employer-unfriendly content from their profiles before they apply for a job, or just completely close off their Facebook account and limit the content only to private friends. The pre-requisite here is that people believe and actually do have control over their content online. In Boyd's speech, she also noted how important this sense of control plays in people's feelings of their online privacy, and when this control gets breached, people will feel their privacy has been violated.

But do people actually have as tight a grip over their online content as they feel they do? Unfortunately, not all the time. Even though sometimes they do, this control is still very vulnerable and largely subject to a social media platform's arbitrary changes. In Boyd's speech, she named the two recent privacy blunders by Google Buzz and Facebook. Everybody has already known about the damage Google caused due to their eagerness to get people immediately Buzzing on their network, and therefore forgot that "you want to help users understand the proposition. You need to ease them in, invite them to contribute their content."(Boyd)

But for Facebook, I assume even until today most Facebook users still have not even noticed the damage they have caused. Three months ago, Facebook changed the default setting for people's profile to open to "everyone". I have been noticing in the past three months, for every new person I have met, though their Facebook profile may be locked, their pictures are totally open for me to view. I'll bet 90% of these people do not have any idea that their pictures are open to everyone on Facebook. Boyd also noted this unfortunate situation: she asked around and had not yet found any non-techie Facebook users whose actual Facebook privacy settings matched the settings they thought were in place. That is a really terrible breach of people's trust of their content to Facebook. Whoever is reading this blog post, please go back and check your Facebook pictures' privacy settings and make the necessary adjustments.

Thanks Jason Kincaid for bringing Boyd's speech to us, these are other great takeaways from Boyd's speech:

"Different groups of people think about privacy. Teenagers are much more conscious about what they have to gain by being in public, whereas adults are more concerned about what they have to lose."

"Most techies think about Personally Identifiable Information, but that the vast majority of people are thinking about personally embarrassing information. People often share private information with their friends in part because it allows them to bond, it makes them somewhat vulnerable and establishes trust."

Given these findings, there is really a great deal for social media platform designers to think about when they handle the content and privacy people have put into their hands. When they are writing the code for their platform, designers are also setting up the laws for interacting in a digital age. As responsible legislators of the online world, they have to seriously consider if these laws being drafted can effectively uphold the order of that world and can protect their citizens' security. More careful thoughts and consideration needs to be invested, otherwise these citizens may riot and retreat from that unstable world.

Why Would Chinese Singers Accept Piracy-tinted Music Awards?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:07:00 +0000

Last week, while I was watching a popular Chinese entertainment channel on satellite TV, I was bewildered by a scene of many of China's most popular music stars happily accepting MTV Video Music Award-type trophies from Chinese search engine Baidu during an award ceremony co-hosted by Baidu and a national TV station. Seeing these celebrities dressed in sleek couture walk on stage to proudly receive awards like "Most Searched Artist on Baidu" gave me a very surreal feeling. I can still remotely recall that not even five years ago, these singers led waves of campaigns seeking public support in battling illegal online music downloads. In these campaigns, China’s largest local search engine, Baidu, was portrayed as an accomplice of illegal music download sites because Baidu first gained massive popularity by prominently displaying illegal MP3 music download sites in its search results, to the delight of hordes of music fans. As a result of that, Baidu has constantly found itself in many disputes and even got sued by major music labels and singers in the past.

Not many years have passed, but things have changed drastically. These singers and music labels are no longer at war with Baidu, even though Baidu today is still providing easy access to millions of illegal music download sites, and has even come up with more music lists such as "Top 100 Most Popular Downloaded Songs" to help guide people's illegal downloading. It looks like these music labels and singers have given up on battling online piracy and have aligned with their ex-enemy. What turned these past foes into today's bed-fellows? I later found a good answer, courtesy of my classmate Lisa who introduced me to Chris Anderson's new book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

As said in Lisa's review of Anderson's book, Anderson optimistically, yet assertively, painted a picture of information flowing free like water, seeking lower ground in today's digital world as the reproduction and distribution costs for information products are getting lower and lower. This has prompted our society’s evolution towards a new “Free” economy. In Anderson's book, he gave numerous examples of how companies benefit from this Free business model. One chapter is devoted to the “Freemium” model adopted by information giant Google, which gives out many of their popular services like Gmail and Google Map for free, then build a 20 billion dollar advertising business out of the immense content generated by users on these free services. Anderson also states that 80% of internet companies today are built on the same Freemium business model in which they give out basic services for free to the majority of their users, and charge a small percentage of their users for upgraded services after these users have gotten hooked on the basic service. Though some of these so-called Freemium models do sound like "digital age ‘bait and switch’ marketing or stand cross-subsidy economics" according to Lisa, she believes that Anderson did a good job in his book defining "how [the] traditional brick and mortar or atom-based economy defines value by money, money, money and how the digital/bits economy defines value by attention (traffic) and reputation (links)."

This new digital age measurement of value through attention and reputation helped answer my earlier question of why the Chinese music industry would align with its former foe, Baidu, as it is becoming increasingly clear that Baidu can bring them attention and reputation through its search service. The current digital environment has witnessed an irreversible trend where songs can be turned into free-flowing bits, and this is especially true in China, a country which has a cultural tradition of tolerating piracy of intellectual property. After the revenues of Chinese music labels were crushed by the online spread of pirated music, and without a viable legal alternative for revenue in the digital age like Apple's iTunes in the U.S. (even iTunes gets popular in China, I highly doubt people would pay for cheap music if they can get it elsewhere for free easily), music labels have accepted the situation and started to fight in a different battle field—for fame and reputation, which can still bring them millions of revenue through concert tickets and endorsing other brands with their reputation. At this point, I recall that executive Long Danni, from one of China's most successful entertainment agencies, Tianyu, once said in an interview that today albums are like a singer’s business card, which they use to introduce themselves to their audience instead of making money out of it. Long Danni's remarks provide a good explanation for the state of the music industry. Chris Anderson also made some comments specifically about how the music industry should respond to new digital trends coincides with Long's remark, according to another review of his book by Malcolm Gladwell from The New Yorker: "To musicians who believe that their music is being pirated, Anderson is blunt. They should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and “yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online.” "

In Gladwell's article, he takes the Freemium concept advocated in Anderson's book with a grain of salts and also threw in a couple real life examples of how the internet business stays free when they try to sell free. One example he mentions is online video site Youtube. It is without a doubt that Youtube has garnered unparalleled fame and reputation in the internet world, but it still has reported financial losses for the past several years. According to Gladwell, because of the nature of Youtube's amateur content, it is quite hard for Youtube to make huge profits by selling ads on these videos.

I agree with some of Gladwell’s other critical perspectives on Anderson's Free economy, but I have to disagree with Gladwell on this particular point for focusing on the short term monetization value for Youtube. I believe by being the undisputed leader in the online video field, Youtube possesses incredible power, which they may not have fully unleashed yet. But even at this point the site has added huge intangible value to Google's overall search businesses, which by itself does pay off and has exceeded the cost to run Youtube within the Freemium model. The potential expansion of Youtube's revenue streams has also been noted by many Wall Street analysts, and a recent comment by Google CEO Eric Schmidt even suggests that Youtube may bring in profit for the company this year. In the near future, when Google finishes building its integrated content empire, these amateur videos on Youtube will be an essential element in it. At that time Youtube's monetization powers will also be fully unleashed. I have no doubt that the money Google paid for this Free video sharing site will prove to be worth it.

No matter if you agree with Anderson's of advocacy of the Free economy power or not, the Free age has arrived. Look around on the internet, the most popular and promising internet businesses such as Facebook, Twitter have all been handed to their users for free. Facebook has reported huge revenues by selling targeted ads while Twitter is still trying to figure out its way to make money. While I believe selling ads should not be the only or primary way for these Free online businesses to make profits, I do keep an open mind to potential new monetization business models that have yet to be revealed in the coming decade. I believe whoever can successfully build these original business models in this Free world will be the next Bill Gates for the 21st century.

The Golden Key to SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Last night, Gregory Markel from InfuseCreative revealed to our class the myth of SEO. Enjoying a dual rock-star status in both the SEO industry and the "real" world, Gregory has been working on SEO since the pre-Google days. With his frank speaking style, Gregory jokingly pointed out that at that nascent stage of technology, SEO was as primitive and simple as "a bunch of geeks trying to fool search engines."

Looking back at his decade-plus work in the SEO field, Gregory has witnessed how times have changed since then, and how SEO has evolved alongside the growth of search engines and their search algorithms. From the early days' emphasis on keywords, to today's focus on inbound links and site structural aspects, there are so many factors nowadays that determine whether a site will be optimized to be picked up in search engine results. Search engines like Google have become more omniscient and sophisticated in assessing if a site is worth being presented to its users. As we all know, Google's goal is helping its users find quality websites which provide relevant content, and providing its users with a good web experience. As a result, a site that does provide a good user experience will always succeed and find for itself a favorable place in Google's world. This is also the golden key to SEO passed onto us by Gregory through his speech: after he touched base with us on numerous useful SEO technical skills, all these skills ultimately pointed towards the same direction: building a well-structured, content-relevant website that can provide a better web experience for its users. Yes, as simple as it is, it's the core of SEO. SEO is not just about making friends with search engines, but at its core is about how to better serve your users, as they are the real bosses of search engines.

Given this, it is unarguable that SEO is really something that should be built into the genetic code of a website. It should be taken into consideration from the very first phase of planning the construction of a website: is your site well structured? Keep in mind that an error occurring on your site during your user's visit is more likely to reduce your site's ranking in Google's search results, as it indicates the poor web experience you provide for your users. Are your title, content, and descriptions relevant to what you want to convey? What can you do to design a better landing page for your users? Also, is there any other way to creatively build keyword-relevant content? What can you learn about your competitors? All these questions were raised in class, and made for a fascinating discussion on the topic of SEO.

As I have become very engaged in the SEO topic, I am glad that I will get a chance to do a presentation on this topic for one of my classes in two weeks. This way, I can explore SEO more deeply, and then share my findings with all my classmates and the readers of my blog!

SEO, here we go!

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:31:00 +0000

Ever since I started to try to looking beyond a website's surface appearance and dig deeper, I have consistently run into the mysterious word "SEO" (search engine optimization). Now I am very excited that my APOC class has provided us a chance to learn this concept systematically, as I truly believe that in a world of immense information, the search engine, which provides the road map for people to find your content online, is critical for successfully delivering your content to people that would find it of interest. According to many social media expert like Chris Anderson, content is not the king anymore. Context is, and search engines match things in the right context and help people find it.

Here are five tactics I came up with, at the threshold of the big SEO universe, to improve my blog "Social Media Is Great". 2 months after it has launched, I am very happy to see the site's has been indexed by Google for 49 times and by Yahoo for 3 times. I still have a long way to go, but at least the site is searchable through these two popular search engines now.

The first tactic is to sort the meta elements of my blog and add a meta description for my website, basically, talking to the search engine's robot head directly, hoho. If I can more clearly describe what my blog is about, the search engine can better categorize it and search for it.

The second one would be sorting the content of my blog and taking careful note of the words I put in my article content and titles to make it easier for the search engines to recognize. I should think more carefully about what specific words I choose, because certain words may be more "hot" than others, and come up more in search results.

Third, I add tags to my article. I currently have used labels to tag and categorize my blog posts, but have not done it systematically. I think much more effort could be put here to browse through my posts and see what tags may frequently come up. That way I can have a deeper library of tags within my own blog.

Also, trying to exchange links with other sites and getting my name out there. Thanks to my APOC peers, our blog links have been exchanged a lot, but let's keep it up! We can all help each other by linking and creating more "buzz" for everyone!

Besides that, I have been using many pictures in my blog, so remembering to add ALT tags to these images is another great way to directly talk to the search engines and let them know what my blog is posting about.

SEO, there is still so much to learn, and I am really looking forward to it!

Get Back Your Forgotten Myspace Password, Join The Real Time Music Hunt!

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:16:00 +0000

(The UI for this App is a slick piece of design: big buttons, simple elements, bright contrasting colors, and one single click leads people to what they want)

This is truly the first time Myspace gave me a pleasant surprise since I involuntarily signed up for a Myspace account months ago: the refreshing real-time music search app, "We Are Hunted Myspace Radio Station" just launched, not only on the Myspace website, but also on iPhone and Android at the same time. Trying it out, I have to say Myspace has finally done something right with their valuable music assets after such a long time. They have fused the two hottest things on the web right now: crowdsourcing (or more precisely, "hordesourcing" according to Wired) of millions of Myspace music lovers' picks, and a real-time music feed, to rejuvenate its long neglected music gold mine. As a result, this app will likely help Myspace and its indie music groups open up to a larger public audience.

Here is more detailed information of how it works, according to Myspace:

We monitor what MySpace users are listening to via the MySpace Real Time Stream. Depending on the time of day, we hear 15 to 100 updates every second.
The most popular artist in the last 60 seconds plays next.
The service is tuned for music discovery service. The programming is biased to favor new and emerging music popular right now. We play only 60 second samples of each song with a voice intro so you know what is playing.

Listening to these 60 seconds tracks, when you catch something that is interesting to you, you can also easily drag it to "my favorite tracks" box on the right side of the app page. Also, one simple click on the album icon can lead you to the artist's Myspace page to learn more about them.

After listening to it for a while tonight, I have to say it is really not bad. Besides these new, refreshing music tracks themselves (finally something other than the ubiquitous Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga songs playing for the millionth time from the car radio), I simply love the interesting mash-up of different genres of music. Listening to my familiar genres of music on Pandora is safe and delightful, but going out there and being a little adventurous with a crowd-sourced DJ on Myspace can open up a whole new world of music.

One additional bonus: this app is quite easy to use, as long as you can find your Myspace password after abandoning the site for so long (ha!), one minute is all you need to get started with this app. Try it out here.

What Makes Things Go Viral On the Internet?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:13:00 +0000

(This viral video currently has 890 tweets on Twitter according to bitly.tv)

Speaking of things going viral online, the first thing that came to my mind is bitly.tv, an experimental project by social media trend-capturing star bit.ly. As defined by themselves, Bitly TV "showcases the most viral videos shared on bit.ly". Besides showing videos, Bitly TV also displays dynamic, real-time buzz and conversations of the video on Twitter. With all these conversations being captured and documented, it would be very interesting if there was research done on Bitly TV's top 100 viral videos and the reasons people were talking about them. Some common qualities of these viral videos may be revealed through this research. These common qualities of viral videos may make it possible to create a formula for producing successful viral videos and messages. Just as the Heath Brothers wrote in their book, Made to Stick, there are certain qualities that make messages "sticky" and stay in people's heads. Would the most commonly shared qualities of these viral videos and messages be humor, embarrassment, surprise, controversy or heart-touching emotion?

In Wikipedia's explanation of "Viral Marketing", viral messages usually rely on "pre-existing social networks" to spread, and "high Social Networking Potential individuals" are the most powerful force in helping spread messages. In that case, if viral marketing was designed to specifically cater to these two criteria, would it more likely for that piece of content to go viral?

Another question I have about viral marketing is that after a company successfully creates some viral buzz on the internet, how does the company turn that one-hit wonder into something that can sustain the brand? I still remember last spring the hot buzz stirred by Burger King's "Sacrifice your Friends" for a free Whopper program on Facebook. At that time, it was widely talked about, and I still remember it today. However, I did not see how that would have a specific effect on my purchasing behavior towards Burger King.

With so many questions about viral marketing in my head, I am very looking forward to hearing Social Media Whiz Matt Singley from M80 share his thoughts on this topic with us in tonight's class!

Google's Nearby Search Function Adds Strength to Its Online Review Service

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:09:00 +0000

Last Friday, Google released the “Search Nearby Me” function in its search options panel. This new search function helps people find relevant search results based on their real-time geographic location instead of solely searching based on key words. I vaguely remember at sometime point last week, when I was Googling something, a toolbar box popped up asking me if I wanted to disclose my location to Google. Sure, I clicked. Now when I try to use this new function to find Chinese restaurants, a bunch of restaurants near my default location (you can set custom locations too) pop up, along with local Chinese restaurant information from popular review sites like Yelp and 10Best.com.

What I found most handy from this function is that it also pulls in the combined information of local Chinese restaurants that have registered with Google's Local Business Center, with their locations showing up in the Google Map. The scary part of this is that once you click into any of these restaurants, not only are their location, hours, price and other useful basic information displayed, but like an octopus, Google has also compiled a list of ratings and reviews of that restaurant from other review sites. And if you sign in with your Google account, you can write a review of it right away on the spot. So far I have seen reviews pulled from couple websites like 10best, Trip Advisor, Yahoo Local and Urbanspoon, but I have not seen any reviews directly pulled from Yelp. Does Yelp not allow Google to aggregate their reviews? What is the deal here?

With this Google Nearby search function, the pace of local businesses building their presence online may only accelerate. Having a profile registered with Google’s Local Business Center will soon become a must for any business that wants to be searchable and survive the intertwining offline and online world.

The Google Nearby location-based search function shows how aggressively Google is in approaching the local business review sector pioneered by Yelp. Google has encroached upon the property of traditional media’s online content and news, then pulled in social media feeds (via Google's recent incorporation of the social media feeds into its search results), and now they are reaching into the reputation-review systems that was mainly supported by online review sites. Right now, I think the biggest weapons that review sites like Yelp can use to fight back against Google are the communities inhabiting their sites, whose users passionately contribute their reviews there instead of on a broader Google review platform. Google’s services are almost too ubiquitous. Users with Google accounts hardly view themselves as valued members of a “Google community”, thus Google can hardly enjoy the stickiness brought by the social side of a community. But in the long run, with Google's efforts to build a giant system that covers every aspect of people's online activities, it is likely that Google may still win in these aspects of web services due to its overwhelming scale.

Reputation Bank Yelp's Problem With Its Own Reputation

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:41:00 +0000

(image from Internet Deformation Blog)

The recent legal dispute between Yelp and a veterinary hospital in Long Beach has once again highlighted the clash between local business review site Yelp and local business groups under an intense media spotlight, because this is not the first time Yelp was accused by businesses of manipulating reviews for financial gain. Yelp, as a business, is thriving by providing an objective account of local businesses’ reputation, and has thus has become a trustworthy “reputation bank”. It stores and spreads the impact of reputation with new social media technology. And we all know that among all businesses, the business of banking is one that is based fundamentally on reputation. In this sense, there is no doubt that as a "reputation bank", Yelp itself should be much more cautious about their own reputation, and handle their monetization process with more care and thoughtfulness in the future.

The objectivity and fair treatment of people's reviews is a promise Yelp has made with its large army of volunteer reviewers. As stated by Clay Shirky in his book Here Comes Everybody, this kind of mutual agreement and mutual expectation between the website and its users, called a "bargain", along with the promise and tools provided, are the three essential elements that make an online communities work. The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales has made a bargain with Wikipedia’s contributors that the wiki platform will forever be free and available source of knowledge for people, and he later adopted the GNU Free Documentation License to reassure contributors of this original bargain.

I can totally see how Yelp began with a legitimate promise to its reviewers that the site would summon the collective strength of all its Yelpers to improve the services of local business and hold them accountable; it also utilized a set of effective tools, such as open online forums for public comments that other users could quickly jump into and contribute to, and features that established social ties and recognition between members, thus encouraging contribution to the community. The bargain was also legitimate: Yelp would objectively use its Yelpers' contributions for a good cause, and even though Yelp is a profit-driven firm, this implicit expectation of them to place this cause as their top priority above pure financial gain was also a bargain written into their original "contract" with users.

Yelp was doing a good job in the past and built up their good reputation as a trustworthy destination for reviews of local businesses by keeping up with the three elements. But if it decides to breach this bargain with its users, and place their financial goals ahead of objectively displaying reviews, that would likely ruin Yelp's credible reputation, and could lead to catastrophic consequences if contributors and users who base their decisions on trusting Yelp feel that trust has been breached.

At the same time, this fierce and public collision between local businesses and a reputation-storing/spreading bank like Yelp has also called much attention to how local businesses should handle the impact of this new generation of reputation-rating. Where prior e-commerce ratings by customers on sites like Amazon and eBay only affected other e-commerce participants, buyers, and sellers, Yelp’s reviews are directly impacting businesses whose primary day-to-day transactions occur offline and didn’t necessarily choose to participate in e-commerce. In the next blog post, I will discuss how local business should respond to this new wave of impact from the electronic reputation storage and spreading system and actively build their positive reputation in the virtual world.

Four New Media Journalism Forays Into L.A.'s Local Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:24:00 +0000

In the past two months, I have been lucky to sit in on four Annenberg noon seminars that have all explored a common theme: how journalism equipped with new media technologies could better serve local communities, and what opportunities new communication technologies have brought to many previously media under-served communities in the Greater Los Angeles area. I was glad to see that even though new media has, to a large extent, facilitated the globalization process and shifted people's focus to a bigger scope, yet under this globalization context, our local communities are not being ignored but are instead being injected with vitality through the innovative usage of new communication technologies.

Alhambra Project

This project is under the umbrella of the USC Annenberg Metamorphosis and Intersections project. The project’s early research of the media supply in the area revealed a lack of common storytelling networks that bridge local ethnic groups together, thus leading to a low civic engagement rate in the area. The project thus will focus on building a shared multi-lingual storytelling network for Alhambra's diverse ethnic local residents, and hopes to increase the low civic engagement rate in Alhambra and also explore a new model for supplying media in culturally diverse local communities in the United States.

AOL's Patch:

AOL’s Patch.com has committed $50 million to build a nationwide network of hyperlocal news sites. At the seminar, Marcia Parker, the west coast editorial director of Patch.com, claimed that the site is robustly growing and opening more and more branches in many cities, so L.A. is a new battle ground. They are also currently scouting for community reporters who are rooted in L.A.'s local communities and will bring 100 percent community-flavored news to their site and to their audience.

Radio Bilingue

Through L.A. Public Media Service Radio Bilingue's research data, they found out currently in L.A. there are over 1 million minority ethnic groups that are undeserved with news information. They are very aggressively ready to jump into fill this gap with information. Also, they would take a multimedia platform approach to bringing their news and content online and deliver to mobile channels! Talent needed!

The South Los Angeles Report

This one is another USC Annenberg Metamorphosis and Intersections project. This very cool project works on increasing local citizen's media advocacy to help them produce news for themselves! By conducting workshops in South Los Angeles communities to equip local citizens with basic journalist report skills, the USC South Los Angeles Team has inspired many local residents to produce interesting content for The South Los Angeles Report website. Definitely check out this great piece of video news, What Our Tax Dollars Pay For, produced by South LA resident Delores Kelly after she attended one workshop. It is a fairly raw piece, but you can not miss the authenticity and advocacy power conveyed by it!

The Current and Future of Gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:44:00 +0000

Today a friend of mine who studies gaming design at USC showed me two very cool game trailers, the first one is the next generation of a famous Japanese game franchise called Final Fantasy (yes, of course it is a Japanese game), which he describes as delivering the best graphics design the current video game industry can achieve. The second one is a preview for Xbox’s Project Natal, which will be launched later this year. As an amateur video game player who has only been into Super Mario all these years, I was very enticed to play these two games after watching the two short films about them. What will the future of gaming be? Just combine these two games in your head, and you would see a picture that in the near future everyone of us will be projected into a sophisticated video game world, controller free!

Final Fantasy XIII

Project Natal Xbox 360 Announcement

Family Relationship-Based Social Network Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:15:00 +0000

USC Annenberg's Center for the Digital Future Director Jeffery Cole brought up a hypothetical scenario in our first APOC class: What would happen when your parents started to comment on your Facebook page? Most people probably will agree with the answer Jeffery came up with: just image what young people would feel if they ran into their parents in a night club! Yes, as social network sites, which started with young adult demographics, begin to penetrate a broader audience, the "night club" door is opening more and more to parents now! What would you do?

There is no doubt that many people feel, just as they would for their real-world social circles, that they do not want a mix or clash of their online social circles either. That is why so many interest-oriented or profession-oriented niche social network sites have emerged to provide different venues for people's different social circles, like Couchsurfing.com and Linkedin.com. But what about a place online that mainly designed for people to network with their family members, as if they have not networked enough with them in their offline lives? Believe it or not, there actually have been many family relationship-based social network sites out there trying and thriving, both in China and in the U.S..

According to their focus and functionality, these family relationship-based social network sites can be divided into the following two categories:

1. Providing a private space for family members to share and collaborate with each other, document their lives, and reconnect with out-of-touch family members. This type is especially useful within large families with their members spreading across long-distances. Sites like this include: myheritage.com, myfamily.com, famiva.com,genetree.com, geni.com, genetree.com, familylink.com, familyreunion.com, amiglia.com, storyofmylife.com, ourstory.com, and familycrossings.com. Some of these sites have their own special traits like helping you find people that might be related to you within the network, but in general they all focus on internal connections within the family. They all include basic functions like photo and video-sharing, blogging, commenting, event planning, calendars and reminders, world maps, profile and updates, and family tree-building. Some of these sites allow members to import their family trees from ancestry.com or to link to their Facebook profiles. The content on these sites provide rich material for genealogy study. One site called werelate.org is actually a public genealogy wiki for people to contribute and assist researchers in this field.

2. Providing a community for people to socialize as a family unit and connect with other families to create a network of families. Sites like this include: commily.com and Disney's family.com. These two are both focusing on sharing parenting skills between families. A notable site in this category is also piqniq.jp, it is " a social network for English-speaking families living in Japan", and its main purpose is for families to discuss: "Raising kids in Japan, babysitters or daycare centers, schools and activities for kids, and the ultimate family getaway." Also, another very popular family relationship-based social network site in China called babytree.com encourages mothers to share parental skills and document their babies' growth. These SNSs truly remind me of a comment made by a friend of mine studying sociology. He said that in our modern lives, the biggest opportunities for people to meet someone new mainly occurs when they are taking kids out or walking their pets in public places like parks. These sites prove that this is also true in the virtual social environment, kids are the new glue that brings families together.

Among all these family relationship-based sites, security and privacy are the most addressed important issues. By sociology measurements, there are two kinds of social capital existing in our society: bonding capital and bridging capital. The first category of family relationship-based social network sites provides bonding capital to its members, helping them develop deeper relationships within their existing social circle, while the second kind provides its members bridging capital by facilitating their outreach to new families. It is hard to weigh which kind of capital is more useful to these families, and maybe the perfect case is combining and balancing the two functions into one site.

Practical issues like how many members of a family would be active online due to varying ages and interests, and to what degree people would feel comfortable to share their family content with other people might determine the fate of these family relationship-based social network sites for now. But at the very least we can rest assured that family relationships have been taken into considerations and addressed by the social network sites. I also hope to see how these sites evolve and gain more traction with the upcoming "born digital" generations.

"I just met you, but I love you already!"

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:38:00 +0000

Do you still remember the cute dog in Disney-Pixar's movie "Up", which had an automated collar that could translate his thoughts into human languages? When he first met the little boy in the movie, he looked at him with a waving tail and happy tongue, saying: "I just met you, but I love you already!"

That was the cutest scene I remember from that movie, and now with the help of a new piece of technology designed by toy company Mattel, your doggie can "tweet" to you.

Here is an excerpt from "Mattel taps into social media craze with Puppy Tweets" from the L.A. Times:

"Tapping into the social media craze, toy giant Mattel Inc. is preparing to release Puppy Tweets, a high-tech toy that will allow dogs to publicize their everyday activities on Twitter via a sound and motion sensor.

Attached to a dog's collar, the plastic tag randomly generates one of 500 canned tweets when it detects barking or movement and automatically posts an update to Fido's own Twitter page.

A round of woofing could lead to a tweet of "I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home." A frenzied run through the backyard might garner "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing, and . . . OOUUUCHH!" "

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww, dog lovers, how cute would that be? Real-time conversations with your doggie, even when you are apart!

Another bit of light-hearted news I came across earlier today (well, considering the nature of the news, maybe light-hearted is not the right word, so please take a moment for a silent tribute and farewell if necessary...after you've brushed off the amusement you get from the news) was about people's response to the imminent death of Internet Explorer 6.

In a report by Techcrunch, a funeral for IE6 will be held by Aten Design Group on March 4. Of all the news I heard recently about the leaving of IE6, this one conferred the most dignity to the departure of this internet veteran that has been with us for almost a decade. Techcrunch cited the following text from the site IE6funeral.com:

"Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight."

IE6, please rest in peace.

News from China: Youku: A Leading Web Entrepreneurs in China

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:06:00 +0000

Last week, I briefly introduced the fast-growing Chinese Social Network Site Kaixin001.com's eye-popping growth story. This week, I’d like to highlight another Social Media star in China: Youku.com.

Launched in December 2006, Youku.com has grown to become the most successful video sharing site in the country. As the company has reported, "Youku.com delivers more than 150 million daily video views as of June 2008 and total user time spent exceeded 30 billion minutes per month." Traffic ranking company Alexa has ranked Youku.com as number 10 in China and number 52 in global traffic. According to the Alexa traffic stat graph below, in the past 30 days, Youku has also run far ahead of its main Chinese video sharing competitors, Tudou.com and 56.com, in terms of daily traffic.

Calling all these video sharing sites “Youtube clones” is not exactly correct. Even though they brand themselves as site for user-generated content (the videos and comments are submitted by the users), there is also a lot of professionally-produced content there, like hot TV shows and movies, due to holes in enforcing intellectual property policy in China. At this very moment, looking at the Youku front page, about 90% of the featured videos on the front page are professionally produced content. So it is really more like a Chinese Youtube/Hulu hybrid. You can basically find anything on it, even some pirated versions of newly-released movies. Besides user-submitted professional media content, as Youku gains more traction with its users, it has also attracted many professional media groups, like TV stations, to set up pages and upload full length versions of their programs sites for users to watch.

An editorial focus on professional content is probably a major reason Youku has separated itself from its competitors in China. Unlike its competitor Tudou, which put emphasis on user-generated content and feature them on the front page, Youku acquires traditional broadcast news channel contributions, and usually selects and features current event news clips from authoritative news stations like CCTV on its front page. For many people who have gradually abandoned TV in their lives, Youku has jumped in to fill that spot perfectly. it does not only provides professional entertainment, but also editorially-selected daily news content.

According to Youku, until July 2008, it has received 80 million dollars in funding from international venture capitalists including Bain Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital, Maverick Capital and Chinese Venture Capitalist Chengwei Venture.

Youku has also launched a program called Daily Buzz to report its hottest videos, along with an introduction of background stories in English. It could be a great source for foreigners to access the hottest online buzz in China. Kudos to Youku for providing a window for the outside world into all the social dimensions of China. Below is a teaser I put here for you to visit the buzz site at http://buzz.youku.com/. Is your interest piqued for starting your own web venture in China now? Then check out this detailed guide from Read Write Start: Never Mind the Valley: Here's Beijing

"Uploaded on: February 5, 2010 Total Views: 688,693 Thumbs Up: 5.6% Comments: 5,283

Feng Jie (凤姐) is really short at just 1.46 meters, with buck teeth. Yet she considers herself very pretty and smart. What piqued the, um, interest of millions of Chinese gentlemen are Feng Jie’s requirements for a future husband: must be a graduate from either Peking University or Tsinghua University (the two most prestigious in China), and — she’s very specific on this — needs to have majored in business or management. Her other requirements? International vision, height between 1.76 to 1.83, no child, a residence permit for an eastern coastal city, and age 25 to 28. A classic quote from Feng Jie: “I started reading when I was 9 years old; my knowledge reached its peak at 20.” You can’t fault a girl for reaching high, right?"

Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy: How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:35:00 +0000

Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang published the article Web Strategy: How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website in his blog Web Strategy three years ago with great foresight. Today as the online community has proven to be the epicenter for online conversations and interactions, more and more web technologies and companies that provide these services, like KickApps, have emerged to help companies revolutionize their website to be more community-friendly and "relevant" to their customers.

POM Wonderful is one of the pioneers in transforming their company website from a static information center to a dynamic “pomegranate-lover” community. Another great examples is Dell's IdeaStorm project: customer ideas to improve products prompted endless inspiration to Dell's product development teams, which would in turn help them better meet the needs of their customers. After all, who else could be a better person to turn to for advice on better serving your customers than the consumers themselves. They congregate and speak up ardently about your products in these online communities. No matter if these opinions are positive or negative ones, they are all valuable ones for the company to listen to. This kind of listening was once done by small and expensive focus groups, but social tools and online communities have largely reduced the transaction costs and afforded companies many more channels to listen to invaluable opinions from much larger and passionate groups in a real-time setting.

Also, letting these conversations happen at “home” is better than letting it happen elsewhere, because by providing a place for consumers to voice their opinions on your own website, not only does that generate valuable customers insight for you, but also shows your real respect and care for your consumers.These actions invite them to truly be owner for your brand and build the brand with you.

Since social network sites started to take off in China 3 years ago, they have undergone exponential growth and their traction among Chinese netizens has subsequently made these sites the new battlegrounds for Chinese companies to connect with customers. Now, these companies are just one step away from bringing these users and conversations back to their company websites by incorporating social media functions on these sites. I have translated Jeremiah Owyang's prescient article into Chinese, hopefully helping it reach more people that would find it of great value. Thank you Jeremiah Owyang.

网络营销策略：如何进化你不相关的企业网站

Jeremiah Owyang

传统的网络营销策略需要进化，此篇博文旨在激发下一代的网络营销策略

企业网站是什么？

它是他们用来让你在每一个广告后了解更多关于那个公司或企业的信息的，你知道的，任何公司.com。

但是我们已经厌倦了这种企业网站以及上面所有的积极正面的市场营销宣传语，一大堆刻画着看上去很机灵的男人们或者少数族裔的女人们围坐在电脑旁盛赞你的产品的照片，这种正面的公关宣传稿，这种快乐的消费者感言，这一大排的公司老总照片，这些你的企业捐助的救灾款项信息，这种一边倒的信息在你的企业网站上没有止境。

即使你企业网站的流量可能会增加，这也并不能显示你的企业网站是如何被消费者们使用的。网络分析师们并不会告诉你人们为什么会去你的网站，而且这个原因有可能并不符合你想要他们去你网站的初衷。

【企业网站是一系列夸大事实，人为品牌营销，以及偏向企业利益的不具备公信力的信息的收集。由此导致了，人们往往在网络上别的地方做出他们觉得更可信的决定】

为什么你的企业网站是不相关的呢？

网络市场营销理念已经改变的，它不再只存在于两个网络领域

很多网络市场营销者都有这种印象，那就是网络营销之战只在谷歌（Google）搜索引擎以及企业的网站里上演。但是在现实生活中，网络市场营销已经散布到许多别的对话产生的领域：社交网站，评分网站，网络聊天室，甚至博客中。就这个话题，我撰写了一篇独立的博文进行探讨：为什么网络市场营销不只发生在两个网络领域中。

决定在人们去到你的企业网站之前就已经做出

昨天，在和一个大学生吃午餐的时候，她告诉我她的同伴们通常通过消费者评分网站或他们的同伴来获取信息帮助他们做出产品购买决定。他们会使用网络聊天工具，Facebook（以及别的网络社交网站），但是很少直接打入企业官方网站的地址去搜寻信息。如果这个情况属实的话，那个我们可以推断这些潜在消费者的决定在他们在来企业官方网站获取关于产品的事实型的信息之前就已经做出了。

事实型的信息

从法律上来讲，企业需要发布关于产品的细节的信息，这是消费者们使用企业网站的一个重要的原因。但是在我随后和这个Y时代（通常指美国的80或90后，指成长伴随着新的通讯科技使用的一代人）的对话中，她告诉我她一般通过企业的网站去获取一些关于产品的功能或价格的核心的信息和数据，但是那通常发生在她在听取她同伴提供的产品反馈，并做出了决定之后。

未来，如何保持网站相关性：

网站被消费者们创建

这是扰乱现有的规则的，但是我预测未来最为相关的网站将会是由消费者们连同企业员工们一起创建网站。这种最有效的网站将会同时承载着来自于企业产品员工以及消费者的平衡的视角，即使消费者对于企业产品有一定的质疑。

未经过筛选的消费者感言将会出现

你将不再是在你网站上发表内容的唯一一人，消费者，潜在消费者，以及别的网络社区的成员们将会拥有直接的通道去你的网站上发表内容。当然，一些控制将会被施行来确保这些发布的信息都是真实的或者被审阅过的，但是很明显对于大众来说网络营销将不会是你的网站上唯一的声音。

内容将会同时包含关于你的产品的负面的以及正面的评价

这是个难以下咽的观点，但是你将如何建立最高程度的信任？答案是通过以开放的，真实的，以及透明的姿态去面对市场。通过调查我们知道，最高程度的信任通常被赋予那些“和我一样”的人，一个精明的市场营销者将会允许来自其同行，消费者，以及市场的内容出现在其企业网站上。这些内容不会总是关于一个产品的热赞，事实上它有可能会是一个直接的批评，这样做的原因？去采纳那些反馈意见，同时清楚明白地向公众展示你将会根据它们来提高你的产品或服务的质量。案例分析：戴尔用这个理念来策划的IdeaStrom。

你的网站将会成为一个社区资源

这意味着你将会把你的消费者放在第一位，我这不是开玩笑，而是说真的。这意味着你将提供不仅关于你自己，而且也关于你的竞争对手的分析，这也意味着你将会在你的企业网站上放上你的竞争对手的链接。听上去很疯狂？我在自己是一个网络社区的管理者的时候就曾经这样干过，我为我的消费者们创建了一个维基板块（wiki）去添加我的竞争者们的链接，这样做让我更具相关性。

【企业网站的未来将会是一个包含着观点和事实型信息的具有公信力的信息源头，它的作者将来自于企业和网络社区。结果呢？它将成为一个具有公信力的第一站社区资源，在那里信息的流动将推动企业创造更好的产品和服务】

成果

消费者将会把你的企业网站作为他们获取信息的第一站，网站信任度也会提高，通过这个实时的反馈，你将会制造更好的产品和服务，最为重要的是，你（的企业网站）将会成为一个帮助你更快的满足你的消费者所需的社区资源。

展望

我们将会看到消费者们开始帮助企业去书写他们的企业电子报，企业网站的RSS信息源里加入了行业博客，消费者们通过媒体（音像和影像）来对他们想要得到提高的产品的功能和特性进行评分，排名以及投票。产品员工将在一个实时环境里与消费者直接合作，同时消费者们也将互相支持。

From Google Wave to Google Buzz... or Vice-Versa?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:24:00 +0000

Google Buzz has been around for about two weeks now, and some of my tech savvy friends on Buzz have already mastered it like they did for Twitter, using it as a broadcast tool to create word-of-mouth effect for their brands or events. Many websites like Mashable have also become early adopters of Buzz, actively promoting it alongside the ubiquitous “follow us” Twitter and Facebook buttons. For now, I am still resisting the urge to Buzz my contacts, in contrast to my continued usage of Twitter as a public announcement tool, because I do not feel like being force fed by Buzz messages (Susan discussed this problem in length here), thus I am also very hesitant to possibly force feed my friends.

Another serious issue with Buzz is its privacy problem. Because the default opt-in settings disclose people's close contacts to the rest of the world, this has irritated many people as an intrusion to their privacy. But through my conversation with a friend who has been using Google Wave, he brought up an interesting point that the opt-in existing contacts function in Buzz might be a lesson Google learned from their experiment with Wave. He thinks that the reason Wave has so far failed (relatively) as a social networking/messaging platform is because the nature of its "closed Beta" means each user does not immediately have enough existing contacts to connect with and keep the momentum for the Wave experience going. This might be a universal problem for any closed beta platform, but it is extremely disruptive for a social network platform. He thinks Google probably wanted to avoid the same problem with Buzz, so by default it opted in a user's existing circle of friends so people could immediately connect and communicate.

Considering the pressure Google is facing from other Social Network Site, this opt-in is an understandable business move to quickly connect users. But in relation to Google's recent threats to leave China over protecting its users' privacy and freedom of speech, this action may seem a bit self-contradictory. Georgetown University Research Fellow Evgeny Morozov commented in his blog Net Effect:

“I am yet to hear a Google executive mention privacy as one of the values that are constitutive of the freedom of expression. Whenever they talk about the latter, they always make it very clear that privacy inhabits a completely different universe. I think they operate on a very flawed logic, which makes all their other efforts on this front look very insincere. Moreover, I think it is likely to cause Google much more damage in the long run: what's the point of protecting the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists if you tell the rest of the world who those people are talking to?”

Google is on its way to building an empire of free flowing information, but the huge amount of data and immense trust it receives from people also places a great burden of responsibility on its shoulder. This responsibility will only grow heavier in the future when its new products will face similar choices, especially between its business gain and people's personal privacy.

The Third Place In Online Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:32:00 +0000

As Oldenburg described in his book The Great, Good Place other than our home and work place, the third place where people can meet others and relax, for example the local coffee shop or local bookstore, is much needed and essential in human social relationships. There, people can relax from many responsibilities from their regular lives and dive in to a casual environment to enjoy social ties with other people, and maybe even be a different person for a while. This literature, which was published ten years ago, has many implications for today’s computer-centric communities, as these online communities are indeed serving the need of a “third place” for people, and provide a public place for people to meet and interact.

Among all the online “third places” like forums or Wikipedia, I am most interested in the third place in social networks. As we all know, at the center of popular social network sites like Facebook or Chinese social network Qzone are people’s personal profile page, where people manage their contacts and post personal updates. They interact with their friends mostly through wall posting and messages; this personal profile page serves as the “home” function in these SNSs and people occasionally go to their friends’ “homes” to visit and say hi. Besides the profile page, there is also a Home page, which is fed with news and updates from people’s friends, and it functions more like a information center.

The real third place for people on these SNSs to socialize with each other and especially to meet people outside of their current social circle actually lies elsewhere: they are the online game spaces and public pages created either by commercial groups or other institutions. After more and more people settle into their homes in these SNSs, these public third places as the “cafes and bars” start to appear and take off. When people are gathering in poker rooms in Chinese SNS Q-zones’ online game space to play poker with each other, or when people are pouring their love or hate of a product onto a brand’s Facebook page, they interact with each other outside their “home” and outside their usual social circle. In these third places their social need for more causal ties with other people is satisfied. People are also willing to pay these third places for the functions they provide, for example, paying for virtual plant seeds in a Farmville game is essentially the same as paying for a bottle of beer to start a conversation in a bar, right? This might explain the rosy business prospects of virtual goods in the SNS world, because in these third places, people are willing to pay for the social capital they gain. Building good third places on social networks for people to hang out and interact with each other is just as essential as building good third places in the real world to sustain people’s needs for a community.

Why Don't American Teenagers Fancy Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:17:00 +0000

I recently read an article on USA Today about a survey from Pew Internet & American Life Project that revealed that teens in the U.S. are not as interested in using Twitter as most people expected: only 8% of 800 American teens ages 12 to 17 who took the survey reported using Twitter, while social networks like Facebook have penetrated this demographic with a 73% high rate. These results seemed counterintuitive to me since common sense tells me that teens are usually the first adopters of new technology trends, especially in social media.

While reading about the perception of Twitter by teens in the report, who described it as “lame” and “feeding the beast”, I think this phenomena of teens preferring social networks could be explained by the entry cost, exit cost and voice theory discussed in Professor William's class last week. The theory states that the higher the entry cost and exit cost is to participate in a community, either online or offline, and the more a participant feels their voice is being heard, the stickier the community is.

For the Twittersphere itself as a community, the entry cost to this community is definitely very low, it only takes a simple registration process that has been simplified to just a user name, email address and password, especially compared to Facebook’s more established profiles that rely on your pre-existing real-life social network to join online. Once you join Twitter, because everybody’s tweets seem to flood at you with little organization, it is so hard to manage any real conversations. Your own voice may be difficult to hear by followers, even if you have hundred followers, they might each be following another hundred people. The exit cost for Twitter is also very low. Twitter is simply providing a venue for public speaking, and people do not leave much information like personal photos and conversations with friends like they would on social networks like Facebook. Twitter’s genes of low entry cost, difficulty in being heard, and low exit cost mean Twitter as a platform can not achieve the same penetration rate as social networks have among teenagers, who prefer tighter, more controlled communication. Twitter does not seem to be as sticky in people’s lives as social networks are, not just for teenagers' group. It is undeniable Twitter has its own unique advantages; But without addressing these shortcomings, it is not impossible that one day Twitter may be replaced by other newcomers in the real time communication field like Google Buzz or its old foes like Facebook and other social network sites which continue to strengthen this "Twitter"-like function on their sites.

News from China: Happy Chinese New Year, Especially to Palm

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:02:00 +0000

Happy Kaixin001.com :)
Poor Palm :(

Chinese New Year just took place over the past three-day weekend. According to Chinese customs, this holiday lasts for two weeks after New Year’s Day on the Chinese lunar calendar, and people will celebrate each day with different celebrations and rituals. Right now the entire country is still immersed in the holiday spirit.

Besides the New Year festivities, there has been some other interesting news coming out of China. About a week ago, there was much speculation that Palm's mobile phone business was in trouble after news leaked out that Palm was going to halt manufacturing of their Pre and Pixi phones in China for at least the next two weeks in February. Yes, Palm has been facing strong competition in the mobile market, but their situation is not that dire yet. Palm had to release a press statement to clear up these rumors, and state that the pause in production was simply because it was Chinese New Year in China, and their workers were getting the holiday off. Seeing this news, I had very mixed feelings, and also suddenly had the urge to start a weekly column to write about news from China, hoping this would provide a window for viewers to get to know more about Chinese culture and the business environment there. In the future if you see speculation similar to what Palm had to deal with, maybe you can laugh at it, since you already know this time of year is Chinese New Year.

One other tidbit about China came my conversation with a friend who is currently doing research about the Chinese Social Network environment. She interviewed the founder of the “Chinese Facebook”, Kaixin001.com, and she was told that during the past two years since Kaixin001.com was launched in late 2007, the user base has been growing exponentially and reached 90 million at the end of 2009. Growing up in China, I was fully aware of the huge population and the hot market there, but I was still very astonished by this figure.90 million in two years! People must be rushing to this website, and this number is for sure going to multiply in the next couple of years.

Another popular Chinese social network site, Renren.com, which targets a younger demographics like college students in China, has also gathered tons of people. What is more, it has also successfully monetized its huge user base. Besides the revenue generated from traditional ads and selling virtual goods, it also limits the number of friends people can add for free to 1000; anyone who wants to have more than 1000 friends must upgrade to a VIP account, which costs about 10 RMB per month (less than 2 US dollars). With the VIP account, you can add as many friends as you want and incorporate personalized backgrounds and other features to your page. Many of my friends are spending the 10 RMB each month on their accounts. Also for all the brands and companies that want to target more than 1000 fans, they have to pay for this VIP account as an entry fee.

Right now, the two biggest social network sites in China have also been proven to be worthy of investment, and have successfully attracted many brands and social groups either through fan pages or through creative means like embedded game elements and charging you for adding more friends. After five years of existence, Facebook finally reported profits last year. And if people are still skeptical about how social network sites can make money, they should look no further than China. Even though these Chinese social network sites were originally copycats of Facebook, I think they really have built something that their western counterpart may want to take a look at now.

What Happens Online...Should Live Offline

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:42:00 +0000

This seems to be a very obvious fact: all the most successful online communities and social media campaigns are the ones that have made a real impact in people's offline lives. But since more and more effort is devoted to crafting complex online tools that encourage people to interact with each other more deeply online and for longer periods of time, online buzz itself has become a major measurement of certain social media campaigns, sometimes at the cost of ignoring a very basic fact of online social media:

People do not live in the virtual world at all, rather, they live and breathe in the brick-and-mortar world, and what happens online does not necessarily translate into what happens offline. People in the digital era may have more Facebook friends and online contacts than people did in past decades, but according to a study by University of Chicago psychology professor John Cacioppo, American people have fewer people to confide in their lives than they did 20 years ago.

Last week, in the class discussion with our guest speakers Charles Porch from Ning, Roger Jackson from explore.org, and two APOC alumni Liz Burr and Eddie North-Hagar who actively participate in the social media sphere, many valuable concepts for building viable online communities were brought up, including the idea of "meet-ups". Charles mentioned that many offline meet-ups between community members would hugely strengthen the ties between people in the online communities. From my past experience working on building the BMW Online Customer Club in China, I saw the most important feature of online automobile clubs was helping organize tours or meet-up events for car owners to connect offline; also, from my research with Annenberg’s Consumer Communities project of successful American car brands' online communities, most online car communities in the U.S., no matter if they are started by brands like Ford or by fans, get their vitality from offline parties or caravan driving tours for these car drivers to meet. The discussions, pictures, and videos of these offline events pump energy into the organic growth of the online community.

Pepsi’s recent social media campaign during the Super Bowl is also a good example of linking people's online activity to an authentic offline endeavor. Inspiring people to think about how to make a difference in their local community is a really beautiful thing, even though there may be commercial interest behind it. I was really touched by the proposals brought up by people through the first phase of this campaign. I really see the hearts behind the ideas, and making the online connection to offline actions makes Pepsi’s campaign very effective to people like me.

Of course, there’s the biggest counter-argument to my point: what about the prospering online gaming world? People build a whole package of social identities in these gaming worlds and seem to live online without the need for connecting to real people behind the computer screens. But in a research project about the virtual game “Everquest II”, led by Dr. Dmitri Williams, the rule of proximity held true as data shows that players in this game had much more interaction with people from the same physical geographic location, so through this we can deduce that the physical world does play a role in the virtual world even though the effect was not fully explained.

Many social media strategists have also argued that the ultimate goal of an online community is for companies to listen to what people speak online, and for those companies to adjust their services and products accordingly to better serve customers. Online communities are not just a place for companies to indoctrinate their customers, but a place for companies to gain valuable customer insights and make a difference in the real world.

With all these examples above, I am a firm believer that what happens online...should definitely live offline.

What makes Ning different from Facebook and Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Today we will have Charles Porch from the rising social network platform Ning.com coming to our class to share with us his insights about the social media world and also about the unique aspects about Ning. I have heard of Ning and registered an account there couple of months ago. My recent exploration at Ning showed me how convenient and easy to build a social network site on it, and also these very interesting niche networks there that attract circles of people sharing the same interest and passion. To my surprise, it supports Chinese language, so I created a social network for my Chinese friends back home, and I also started another social network site on it called Happy Chinese New Year, for Chinese people living in L.A. to share their experience living oversea, and celebrate the Chinese New Year that is coming along next weekend.

While Ning exhibits its strong point by providing people a intimate social network experience, many people like me might also be curious what the difference between Ning and other popular social network platforms like Facebook and Myspace is. According to a recent interview of the Ning's CEO Gina Bianchini from Tech Crunch, Gina does not view Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn as their competitors, instead, she thinks that these social network platforms have developed their own edges and are dominant in their own areas. Compared to the experience provided by Facebook and other social platforms, the features of Ning deliver a more in-depth and immersive experience with the brands and things centered in Ning's networks; thus Ning can integrate the service of other social platforms like the Twitter as the distribution channels, and at the other end, Ning would be the destination of the interest and passion where people settle and engage with the each other in a deeper level.

From TV to Internet: Commercials at Super Bowl 2010!

noreply@blogger.com (Ruby_C_Zhang) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:58:00 +0000

Hurray for the New Orleans Saints! Their first Super Bowl trophy in their franchise history! They really pulled out a fantastic show starting from the unexpected twist at the beginning of the second half, that was a real momentum builder, and from that point they just rocked! Cheers also for the four Trojan alumni on the two teams that played tonight! Fight on, Trojans!

Twitter went out of capacity during the Super Bowl Game!

Besides the football game itself, the excessive TV commercials have also become another star in the 4 hour long Super Bowl game! Before the Super Bowl started, Pepsi's decision to withdraw from airing Super Bowl TV commercial and instead invest in social media has attracted so much attention. To some extent, it also helped show how expensive commercial advertisements for these Super Bowl are! After all, this is the most-watched TV event in America, and every second on TV is worths tens of thousands dollars! Advertisers, watch out for how you spend these seconds!

When I was watching the Super Bowl, I was also tweeting, and I noticed on Twitter that the Twitter trend in Los Angeles area showed "super bowl commercials" and "bowl commercials" as among the top ten tweeted key words, which reveals how talked about these TV commercials are! At one point during the game, Twitter was out of capacity! Too many people were tweeting! Here is the picture I captured to record this historical moment:

Fail Whale! Yay!

Three trends from Super Bowl TV Commercials:

Among all these million-dollar commercials, there are definitely many "awww" ones and many "what a waste of the money" ones, and also some pant-less ones out there. One trend I observed is that today so many brands are using TV commercials to direct their viewers to their website for more information, at the end of most brands' TV commercials there is usually a link to their websites. Among brands advertising their website were Lexus, NFL, Doritos, Kmart, and companies ranging from every industry. It almost feels like these 30 second commercials are like movie trailers saying, "Wanna watch the whole show? Go to our websites!"

Another trend is that more and more websites and online services are using TV commercials to tap into the mass audience of traditional media, such as Google.com (first ever Super Bowl commercial!), Monster.com, GoDaddy.com, Homeaway.com, Carmax.com, Etrade.com. I especially felt Etrade.com (I have to say their commercial using talking babies are kinda freaky though) and Carmax.com were the two biggest online players with Super Bowl TV Commercials, and the number of their ads almost tied with the number of automobile commercials! Who says that New Media has to always be at war with Traditional Media like TV? They could totally help each other out in some circumstances, just like tonight!

Another interesting trend about the Super Bowl Commercials is that some brands do not just use their TV commercials to direct the viewers to their official webpage, but to their social media webpage like Facebook.com. Honda's TV commercial served as an intro to their Facebook campaign: Everbody knows somebody who loves a Honda! Most of my friends and family drive Toyota, and I really do not know anyone around me who loves a Honda, but after I participated in their Facebook connection, I did find a friend on the Facebook page who does love Honda, ha, I guess their theory proves true with me! Good job, Honda!

Here is my list for Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials:

The Best: My heart went to the well-crafted, little romantic love story told by the Google commercial, very succinct, very neat, very Google:

Thumbs up: Coca-cola, Honda, Monster.com, Teleflora, Intel, Motorola, KIA

Thumbs down:

Most of those Bud and Bud-light beer commercials were just really silly (in a bad way) and made people who drink Bud Light look really bad!

The worst of the worst:

Vizio Forge: it is sooooo dark, and sooooo scary!

Chrysler's Dodge Charger: you don't need to make life feel so dull and miserable just to contrast the joy men may get from driving your car, very depressing!

For people who missed these commercial, you can go to Hulu adzone to review the commercials and vote for your favorite ones! Hulu scores this one! yay!