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Google+: The Future of Business?

So, Google+ is out of the gate and running. People are still getting to grips with it, finding their way around. Many are saying it’s better than Facebook, some aren’t convinced. Below, I’m going to tell you why I think Google+ holds the keys to the future.

While there are many different models of SNS floating around in cyberspace, they all share common similarities. Google+ is no different in that regard, offering a persistent profile and the ability to share information, talk with friends and colleagues and keep up to date with the comings and goings of the world.

It’s the friends and colleagues bit I want to talk about. You see, as those of you who have already tried Google+ already know, there is this idea of Circles. As many of us have different social circles within our lives (that often don’t overlap) Google+ has the perfect solution. You can organise your contacts into different groups (or circles), for work, family and friends and so on. You can then post comments to specific circles, that the other circles won't be able to read. This is a key innovation and one of those ideas you wonder why someone else didn’t think of it first.

The fact that you’re able to differentiate between business and personal contacts is the key to a whole new way to work with SNS. Being able to post comments and such that relate specifically to business is smart because it allows you to not only narrow the contacts, but also to target specific persons with specific information.

Other people have commented that it’s a way to stop certain people from seeing certain information, but I think it’s more about targeting and focusing information, in a way that makes it highly efficient.

The games and enhanced social features may yet come, but for now, Google+ is offering a highly focussed, clutter-free solution for business networking.

Google+ will, of course, also be launching it's own version of FB's Brand pages soon and we'll be covering that in detail. So stay tuned for more about this exciting new development.

Article by Daniel Morffew

China blocks Google+?

Well according to some local reports and pretty much confirmed by monitoring services, it looks like Chinese authorities may have already slammed the gate down on access to Google's new social service Google+ from Mainland China.

The "Great Firewall of China" as it's known already blocks several well known social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Looks like Google+ made quite a splash.

We'll keep you updated.

Update:

Looks like Google+ is being "Throttled" rather than outright blocked.

Many in China report being able to use the service, albeit with with some issues.

London Invites China

China is not only in the news these days…it is the news. In London, the impact of China’s economic growth can be seen everywhere – from the property market, to tourism, all the way to the high street.

Once the preserve of Russian millionaires, it is now the Chinese buyers who are paying the most for property in London, with an average spend of £6.5million from buyers from mainland China. While buyers from Hong Kong are averaging a £6million spend.

Tourism has seen a dramatic shift in priorities, with many UK companies looking to increase profits by appealing to the huge increase of Chinese tourists to the capital, as China grows more and more central to the global market. The new campaign, Visit Britain, is focusing specifically on visitors from China and south-east Asia; hoping that the Olympic Games, taking place next year in Britain, will be a big draw, with event rider Alex HuaTian named as ‘goodwill ambassador’ to China in a focused effort to draw in the Chinese crowds.

It is perhaps on the high street where the effects of Chinese tourism are being felt most keenly. London department store Harrods recently announced plans to install 75 Chinese bank-card terminals to entice customers whose Chinese bank-cards are not compatible with the western chip-and-pin terminals. Harrods recognises that it has recently seen a 40 per cent rise in sales to Chinese tourists in the first quarter of 2011, with the average shopper spending around £3,500 in a single visit.

Marks and Spencer also recently announced that, following an upturn in profits, they would be focusing on ‘emerging markets’ such as China, acknowledging the tremendous potential for growth.

What does all this mean for Britain? Well, it isn’t so hard to see that now is the time to get involved in the fastest growing market in the world. The online space is the best way to access China and Ren Media can show you how. For the best advice on getting the most out of China’s online infrastructure, contact us today.

Will Sina Rule The World?

Sina Weibo is almost always in the news these days. We’ve featured it in a lot of our recent articles, too. Sina is a company that seems to go from strength to strength. All over the web, there are articles about Sina being ‘the next Twitter’, or how it’s set to usurp the western giants.

So, why all the praise? What is Sina Weibo doing so well? Well, in China, Sina has established itself as the leading microblogging platform, with 140 million users online, as of the 11th of May, 2011 (nearly 8 times the users of Twitter, which has a not unimpressive 17 million). Not only that, but Sina offers its customers more of a hybridisation of Twitter and Facebook, offering its customers more than one western company alone can offer.

Sina also understands the needs of its own market. Always self-censoring its own sites, it has earned the respect of the Chinese government, who trust Sina with their own content.

While other companies, such as Tencent, are starting to nip at Sina’s heels, it looks as if the social networking powerhouse cannot be stopped. Indeed, as we have reported before, Sina’s reach has already extended outside of China, with celebrities, businessmen and politicians from the western world all seeing the potential that Sina holds for reaching the elusive, yet fastest growing global market in the world.

Have you noticed Sina Weibo in the news? Maybe you’ve seen their app on the appstore? Want to get involved? We at Ren Media are here to give you all the expert advice you need to understand Sina Weibo, make use of their services and reach the world’s biggest global market through the world’s biggest microblogging service. Contact us today.

Android: A Window To China

While Apple has dominated the headlines recently, its main rival Android has been steadily staking its own claim on China’s fast growing smartphone market.

The incredible adoption rate of mobile phones in China is huge, with over 800 million users already in the country. The Chinese consumer also has a budget in mind and this strongly favours the Android.

Baidu comes as the default search engine on many Chinese Android phones. While this isn’t what Google wants to see (surely preferring its own search engine as a default) it does show the flexibility of the Android platform.

Because of the ease of customisation (and potential hacking) of Android phones, this can lead to many community-developed apps and services, another popular feature for the Chinese market, where anyone can have an app up and running in no time on the service. It’s this ease of adaptability which makes Android such an appealing prospect the world over. Apple may have the brand, but Android has the options and the availability.

Android is an unpredictable and exciting brand in its own right. While Apple marches steadily onwards towards its global domination target, it needs to look behind, to the side and maybe even in front of itself to watch out for Google’s smartphone challenger.

While getting into the iPhone market can be daunting for some, Android offers a far more customisable, approachable structure.

Here at RenMedia we have expert knowledge and great enthusiasm for both Android and China. Want to see your business flourish in this space? Do you want help navigating the fast growing Chinese Android marketplace? If yes, then contact us today, and see how we can help you get started.

Facebook and Baidu?

Well, many reports are saying Facebook and Baidu have come to an agreement on starting a standalone SNS in China.

If true, this is a major development and acknowledgement that the social media giant cannot afford to ignore China any longer.

What kind of service will this be? How will Facebook deal with privacy and and censorship issues?

Also, can Facebook and Baidu come up with a credible challenge to the established heavyweights in the China market like Tencent QQ, RenRen and Sina?

However it works out, this is going to be an interesting one to watch.

Stay tuned!

Some Recent Developments in China Advertising and Marketing.

Sina Weibo

The explosive growth of Sina's Microblog service is changing the landscape for those looking to use Chinese Social Media as part of their strategy. "Older" services like Kaixin001 are falling behind. Learn about Sina Weibo (Weibo means Microblog in Chinese) and how to use it to your advantage. Other Chinese companies such as the mighty Tencent, are also players.

China Microblogging is a social media space to watch!

Tightening Restrictions

A surprise move by the Chinese government is a restriction coming into force next month on outdoor advertising for luxury "foreign" products. A hefty fine will be levied for illegal ads!

Although surprising, this move is in line with tightening restrictions by the CN government across the board. See also the recent Google and LinkedIn issues.

Make sure your strategy takes the new restrictions into account.

Mobile

Lots of growth in mobile, with foreign and homegrown companies all jostling for a piece of the pie. Chinese mobile internet users are becoming a major force to reckoned with. Have you got a mobile strategy for China? If not, maybe it's time to get started.

Any questions? Want to know how you can get started in China?

Get in touch!

Gmail blocked in China

Looks like another popular internet service has fallen victim to China's Great Firewall.

Many users are reporting that Gmail, Google's popular email service is inaccessible from the mainland today without a VPN.

Eg @gaeloizel‎ Gmail blocked in China w/o VPN at the moment

China has been stepping up net censorship recently.

Update: 9:24am GMT Some users can access, so only partially blocked.

LinkedIn Blocked in China

UPDATE (10.18 GMT 25/02/11) Looks like LinkedIn is back for some. We'll update as the situation changes.

As of 14.35 GMT 24th February it looks like LinkedIn has been blocked by the Chinese government.

The site had recently seen growth in China and was holding off the challenges of several clones like Ushi and Tianji.

It's downfall may be linked to recent events in China and it's connections to Twitter (a site already blocked by the Chinese "Great Firewall") Things may change, but right now you need a VPN to access the site from mainland China.

Doesn't bode well of course for any IPO plans that the site has.

UPDATE (10.18 GMT 25/02/11) Looks like LinkedIn is back for some. We'll update as the situation changes.

China Mobile Users, Facts and Figures.

Read an interesting survey today looking at Chinese mobile use, compared to other countries, here's a summary of the key points:

"Deloitte, the consultancy, surveyed 30,454 mobile users in 15 countries, a list including China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and US.

It reported that a majority of individuals in South Korea, the US and the UK possessed more than one such device, and 10% had three.

Indeed, 5% of the South Koreans and Americans polled placed this figure at four, and around 15% of Chinese participants pegged it at ten, although that typically resulted from hoarding old handsets.

By contrast, 90% of the Chinese sample used SMS a minimum of once per 24 hours, standing at 50% concerning email, and 30% regarding social networks.

In all, 70% of Chinese consumers regularly leveraged the same channel on the move as well as in static locations, almost doubling the totals yielded by South Africa, South Korea, the UK, US.

80% in China, 55% in the US and 40% in the UK have positively reacted to mobile ads.

Within this, 45% of Chinese contributors had looked for further information, falling below 20% in the US and less than 5% in the UK.

Over 40% of Chinese had clicked on a link, around three times the US and UK scores.

Another 15% of Chinese have previously told a friend about a mobile ad, approximately five percentage points in front of the US and UK.

A fifth of the Chinese cohorts actually bought the featured product, compared to 15% of Britons and 10% of Americans."

Read the full piece here

Bannka - bridging the English/Chinese Social Media Gap?

Bannka - Bridging the Chinese/English Social Media Gap?

I've been using a Chinese app called Bannka (http://bannka.com) on my phone for a while now. It's a similar service to trendy apps like Instagram and PicPlz, with the ability to post and share photos straight from your smartphone.

Like those services it offers an easy way to share your photos on other social sites like FB and Twitter and also view others photos in a public (or private) timeline.

The added bonus for me and the reason I use it over PicPlz is that it can also share to other sites like Google Buzz and crucially Chinese sites like the red-hot micro-blog Sina Weibo and Douban, a popular SNS.

Added features are optional location tagging, comments and much more. The interface language can be switched from English to Chinese.

Signing up is easy, with your Twitter, Facebook, or Google Buzz account. Why not give it a try? You can follow me at http://bannka.com/ThomasMorffew

posted by Thomas Morffew

Creating Global Chinese Brands

As China ascends from its “world factory” image, there is still a general feeling among brand experts that Chinese brands may not be able to compete with major international brands in the global market. Only 9% agree that Chinese brands are on par with international brands, despite these statistics, we only need to look toward Chinese multinationals such as Lenovo to find successful global brands; the real obstacle is in the global consumer and their perception of China.

Chinese Brand to Global Brand:

Consumer electronics multinational, Lenovo is one of the most successful Chinese brands in the overseas market but some brand experts are not aware that Lenovo is a Chinese company. This may explain why Lenovo does not face the same misconceptions over quality and safety that other brands have come up against.

The general feeling is that China is only able to compete with brands in ‘value’ terms otherwise they lose out over quality, credibility, safety, trust and/or ethics. This has relegated many Chinese brands to the low end of the global market; in addition, brands from other countries have already filled up a sizeable portion of the market’s high end.

China faces difficultly building up global brands because fierce domestic competition and the stigmatisation of being the world’s factory for cheap labour. In 2009, 66 percent of 700 international brands considered Chinese goods as being “cheap” and cited low quality for being the main barrier to entry in high end markets (Newsweek, 2009). Christian Blanckaert, former Executive Vice President of Hermes International, believes that it could take at least 20 years before a luxury brand emerges from China because like European brands such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci, Chinese brands will first need to develop an image in their own country before a world-class reputation can be born. Consumers will also need to challenge their perception of Chinese brands in the coming years.

Leveraging success:

The TNS report suggests China continue to leverage their value advantage in the global market while also addressing issues over poor perception. Quality should be prioritised and then PR & advertising campaigns need to take over and communicate these improvements throughout consumer markets.

6 Strategies for Improving Brand Perceptions:

- Make genuine efforts towards improving quality

- Communicate the improvements in quality through positive PR and other channels

- Develop or enhance the after-sales culture to build trust with consumers

- Manage positive word of mouth (WOM) campaigns to build trust and awareness

- Advertise to build awareness and communicate the value proposition of Chinese Brands

- Re-evaluate current pricing, and aim to set prices that signal higher quality

The Chinese Brands Going Global TNS report can be found here

Contributed by Steve Law

Social Media in Hong Kong

For many years, Hong Kong has been a magnet for attracting business with 7 million people densely packed into an urban sprawl of billboards and flashy logos promoting the likes of Samsung, Adidas and Budweiser. Shopping is such a popular pastime in Hong Kong that the online marketing approach is often overshadowed and considered to be a high risk, low return outcome. Some executives have become cynical after living through the economic downturn of the 90s and the dot-com crash thereafter (ClickZ, 2010) but despite all this, there are a number of companies experimenting with online campaigns and branded content in social media.

Brands Heading Online:

A couple months ago, Swatch launched a Facebook fan page targeted at Hong Kong’s youth demographic, it made use of interactive quizzes, competitions and an application that allowed users to share their mood with friends. The ‘Happy Index’ application expressed the variety of colours available in the ‘Color Code’ line by drawing parallels to the range of emotions people feel every day, the Facebook page has grown to over 4,000 fans since launch.

In a clever viral marketing twist, Korean cosmetic brand Sulwhasoo was able to attract over 151,111 clicks from a charity post on Sina Weibo. Sulwhasoo promised to donate one dollar to the Chi Heng Foundation each time a person reshared the message on Weibo and word-of-mouth handled the rest. Even famous celebrities participated, spreading the message to their friends and followers.

Adidas opted for a traditional and digital marketing approach with their Neo Label line of fashion. Billboard advertisements were placed around local youth hotspots to generate buzz while Sina Weibo and Facebook brand pages were launched to allow people to communicate and connect directly with the Neo Label; Adidas' social media efforts have accumulated up to 10,000 visits in two months (Erica Ng, 2010).

Hong Kong: Demand for Digital Marketing?

Hong Kong is near the size of London and foot traffic can be incredibly high in certain districts, this has a positive effect on billboard and magazine advertising. By contrast, there are 5 million internet users in Hong Kong, half have a social media profile and broadband penetration is currently at 29%. It comes as no surprise to see that traditional advertising is more effective at penetrating higher audience segments than online. But social media also has the ability to increase public perception over brands, this digital presence can additionally be used to market the brand overseas. For example, Ocean Park’s Facebook page and Hong Kong Disneyland’s YouTube page are able to be viewed internationally; a huge benefit for those in the tourism industry.

Web 2.0 is picking up pace in Hong Kong with 9/10 internet users currently viewing around 12.7 hours of online video a month, these figures are set to grow as broadband becomes the norm. The 18 – 35 demographic are the heaviest internet users right now but youths are fast becoming netizens themselves; brands will need to key into this growing online audience in order to connect with the tech savvy lifestyle of tomorrow’s consumer.

Children: Key to Understanding the Future

Contributed by Steve Law

China 2.0

A Guest Post from John Artman

China 2.0: Rise of a Digital Superpower was an eye opening experience. As someone who's been on the sideline of both the China watcher/China tech community for the past year or so, the opportunity to not only see speak, but also meet, some of the big players in China's business and tech communities was a much desired kick to the brain.

Of course, one can always read the various blogs, listen to the podcasts, and keep up with the news. However, there is no substitute for the concentrated information one can suck up at a two day conference.

Sponsored by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), China 2.0 (Twitter: #China20) brought together topics and people most relevant to the Internet and new media ecosystem in China. As one can expect, such topics as mobile Internet, social networking, gaming, and e-commerce were all featured with expert panels.

Attendees were also graced by some keynote speeches from some of the bigger companies, such as video site YouKu, telecommunications provider China Mobile, business to business service provider Alibaba, and search engine Baidu.

To take about sixteen hours of information and shove it into six hundred words is no easy thing. So, I'll try to hit some of the more interesting, and easily digestible, points.

In China there are currently about 420 million Internet users and 833 million mobile phone users. However, in comparison, there are still only about 25 million people who use a 3G network to access the Internet on their mobile phone. To really bring it into perspective, there are 1.3 billion people and *only 2% use 3G phones.* Obviously there is a lot of room for growth.

At this point the only thing holding the market back is infrastructure and pricing, both of phones and service. As the supply of 3G capable phones and 3G coverage increases, the price of both decreases while inversely the number of users increase, thus generating more revenue and more opportunities for entrepreneurs, start ups, and established players. China is currently behind the curve, but not for long.

Another engine of growth in Chinese ICT coincides with the rise of the consumer economy: E-commerce. Alan Hellawell, managing director of Deutsche Bank in China, predicts that between 2009 and 2013 we will see a 42% growth in revenue from electronic commerce, totaling over 1.5 billion Renminbi (RMB). Again, lots of growth, but at the moment there are too many players offering services that in any other market would have put them out of business through the hemorrhaging of money. Competition is fierce, but inevitably there must be consolidation.

When it comes to purchases in real life, the Internet is fueling yet another aspect of the Chinese juggernaut: marketing through social media. Whereas traditional marketing and advertising relies on getting as many eyeballs, marketing 2.0 relies primarily on engaging the target audience while creating a personal and direct conversation with the audience. Using social networking sites as a loudspeaker, the word-of-mouth effect is increased tenfold. For example, Scarlett Li, CEO and Founder of Ourebo, an event management company, was able to increase ticket sales for an event from 3,000 to 18,000 tickets in only three days.

Unlike their counterparts in the US and Europe, Chinese Internet users are leapfrogging into the social media space. Whereas in the West, we've slowly, and with trepidation, moved into the social web, Chinese youth have fully embraced it. If we take into account the one-child policy, it is easy to see why so many have jumped on-board: they want to meet people and make friends of the same generation.

As we can see, the development of the Chinese Internet, while in broad strokes very similar to what we have seen in other markets, is actually quite unique. The convergence of mobile, social, and consumption brings many challenges, but also a multitude of opportunity for those savvy enough to navigate the twin challenges of both the consumer preference and regulations. In a domestic market of 1.3 billion people, the peak has yet to be reached.

You can reach me on Twitter (@JohnArtman), on LinkedIn (John Berkeley Artman), or on Google Buzz (john.b.artman@gmail.com)

The Luxury Brand Market in China

China’s love of contemporary culture and expensive brand labels has seen a nation of Chinese tourists heading overseas toward London, New York and Paris for global fashion hotspots. Luxury brands such as Chanel, Rolex and Lacoste have captured the hearts of China's post-80s generation who see western culture as a beautiful and glamorous lifestyle. At present, China is the second largest consumer of luxury goods consuming 27.5% of luxury products in the world.

The Chinese Luxury Consumer:

In the late 70s, Chinese economic reform began opening foreign direct investment in the mainland increasing western brand presence in China. Growing investment from families following the one-child policy also helped push overseas education which has played a pivotal role in creating brand awareness among doe-eyed Chinese youths.

Luxury brands have come to value China for its supply of youthful high-end consumers, where currently 75% of luxury purchases are from people under the age of 40. This is in stark contrast to the dominant senior adult consumer demographic in developed countries (China Decoded, 2010).

Age and Education of Affluent Chinese Consumers

China is home to 875,000 millionaires with an average age of 39 years old; living in the richest cities of Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai. Generally, those with money like to wear their wealth on the outside in order to reflect higher status and ‘Face’; the Asian concept of pride and dignity. The middle class are modest but they still like to feel unique and consider luxury brands as a good way to set themselves apart from others.

Luxury Purchases Start with the Wristwatch:

In China, there are over 200 domestic and import watch brands, 60% of these brands are imports belonging to labels including: OMEGA, RADO, LONGINES, ROLEX, TISSOT, TUDOR, TITONI, ENICAR and CITIZEN (Alibaba, 2009).

Asia was the world’s largest market for Swiss watches in 2009, receiving 48% of Swiss exports. As it stands, Swiss wristwatches account for 99.6% of high-end wristwatches in China and the outlook for jewellery and watch suppliers in the China market are very optimistic. With China already proving its ability to bounce back during the economic downtown, insiders predict that within the next five years China will eclipse Japan to become the world's largest luxury market.

The Importance of Creating Brand Value:

Wristwatches are regarded as the as the entry point for further luxury purchases, this is a very important stage for fashion labels because the wristwatch has the ability to instil lifetime brand loyalty in the buyer (China Luxury Panel; Valerie Seckler, 2009). Chinese affluent customers only select the most famous luxury brands and are unwilling to invest in unknown ones despite signs of good craftsmanship, therefore, luxury labels need to possess high brand awareness in order to drive buyer demand toward their fashion products.

China’s Luxury Brand Market in the Future:

China’s luxury market will soon become crowded with not only foreign brands but also Chinese brands. Shanghai Watch, China’s first high-end watch company has already reinvented themselves into a nostalgic watch company with a modern Chinese twist. With the stigmas toward China’s low quality goods set to fade, as with Japan in the 1970s, consumers will feel a growing patriotism toward home-grown brand labels; something foreign companies cannot replicate. Therefore, foreign luxury brands must already hold brand presence in Asia or be heading into the market soon in order to establish a successful international label (Latecomers such as Apple are still arriving into the China marketplace).

Looking into the future, the median age of Chinese people will mature beyond that of the United States by 2025. A combination of modernisation and the one-child policy will influence China’s slowing population growth; the average age of China’s wealthy will also mature to that of developed countries. Louis Vuitton has already shifted their target market toward the emerging middle-class shopper which is expected to become the next profitable market for luxury brands.

Contributed by Steve Law

China’s Digital Content Drive

China has revealed plans to boost the nation’s digital publication industry by aiming to have digital publications account for one forth of total revenue in the publication industry by 2015 (Xinhua, 2010).

The push for digital growth is being driven by mobile internet usage in China which has increased 5.1% in the same six months that has seen desktop utilisation rates increase by only 0.2%. The mobile platform still has room to grow and a further breakdown of mobile network applications shows that while internet messaging sees the highest penetration rate (61.5%); the video, gaming and entertainment segments should soon see adoption rates grow with new portable devices arriving into China market. The iPad in particular, will drive this change because its large display caters to a richer mobile internet experience; soon China's netizens will use mobile internet for more than just IM.

Apple: Pushing the Paradigm Shift:

The most recent Apple store in China opened September 25th 2010 in Shanghai selling the iPad (5 months after US) and iPhone 4 (3 months after US) upon the China launch date. This is a significant step up from previous Apple releases in China since the iPhone was only officially first available in China last year.

The opening of flagship stores in China shows that Apple has a newfound investment in the Asia market, this is good news for the company, especially with the Chinese digital publication industry seeing significant rise in profits last year. The general feeling is that the influence of foreign tech companies i.e. Apple and Google, will place an even greater emphasis upon mobile internet so digital media (books, videos, advertising models etc) will need to branch out into the world of apps and optimised mobile websites.

Apple's iPhone 4 goes on sale in China

Taiwan’s Next Media Animation: China Going Global:

Next Media Animation (NMA) videos have been popping up all over the internet recently and these highly satirical web TV segments have already become worldwide hits online. While the unorthodox re-enactment of news stories in funny 3D animation is certainly an attention grabber, it is the speed of content creation that makes NMA videos a viral sensation.

NextMedia Animation YouTube Channel

The Turner Network, Reuters and the BBC have already commissioned news dramatisations from the Taiwanese company to add value to news coverage. The quick one-day turnaround from storyboarding to finalisation enables the NMA to cover breaking news stories as they happen (The Hollywood Reporter, 2010).

Digital Domination:

China is already fast establishing their digital media presence online and they are now catching up to the rest of the world in adopting new technologies (iPad). Chinese local website audiences are expected to reach 318 million by the end of 2010 so there is even more incentive to push digital media within the country; however, China’s abundant human resources and Taiwan’s technological innovation could soon see Asia gaining a foothold in foreign markets as well.

Contributed by Steve Law

RenRen vs Kaixin001 vs Douban

An interesting graph on Alexa shows how close the race is between China's top SNS sites.

Link to image

The graph shows that previously Kaixin001 was on top with RenRen a close second and Douban some way behind. However in recent months, while RenRen has actually overtaken Kaixin001, both Kaixin001 and RenRen have lost ground to Douban.

Many brands are choosing Douban as a platform to launch their campaigns as an alternative to brand pages on RenRen, or Kaixin001.

See here for a full current list http://www.douban.com/partner/

This is going to be an interesting space to watch, especially with the growth of other services like Sina WeiBo, so stay tuned!

Mobile China. Why mobile is the key battleground for connecting with Chinese consumers.

Everytime a stat about Mobile comes out of China it's astonishing.

China's mobile subscriber total rose to 804 million in August.

China Mobile - 564.3 million (13.4 million 3G subscribers)

China Unicom - 160.2 million (9.5 million 3G subscribers.)

China Telecom - 79.9 million (7.2 million users at the end of June.)

Source

More than 300 million access the internet by Mobile Phone and that's likely to grow to 800 million within three to five years according to former Google China head honcho Kai-Fu Lee.

Source

Half of these Mobile users download apps and games compared to 22% in France, Germany and the UK.

Two thirds of social networking users in China were willing to pay for access to their favourite social networking sites.

Source

With Android, Apple and others all looking to China, Mobile is definitely the space to watch.

Casinos, Libraries and Dorm Rooms. Different Aspects of Chinese SNS.

A post inspired by this discussion over at LinkedIn.

There's a few big players in China's SNS scene. They all have different models and cultures. Lets have a quick look at three of the most popular.

Kaixin001 is one of the biggest sites in China. It's all about Games, Brands and Fun. It attracts a mainly White Collar audience seeking respite from the Workplace. Games like Happy Farm keep users coming back. Addictive and Casino-like.

RenRen is a more student oriented site, with an emphasis on connecting college and school friends. It's previous incarnation Xiaonei was completely college based. (like an early Facebook.)

Douban is an SNS that attracts a more creative and engaged audience. It's a great place for online events and campaigns like this http://www.douban.com/minisite/absolut/ that rely on user engagement.

Check out the LinkedIn thread for a more in depth discussion.

China K.I.S.S.

Sometimes when dealing with China you can get bogged down in a morass of articles and advice telling you what you should and should not do.

Sure China is a complex place, and definitely a different space than the US, or the UK. Many of the Marketing, Advertising and PR strategies that you take for granted aren’t going to work.

For example Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are blocked. That’s three popular strategies out the window straightaway.

However, this doesn’t mean you need to get overelaborate. Something that’s funny, awe-inspiring, cool, or innovative will often still work across cultures. Equally a simple gesture like a video piece to camera can still resonate. It also still makes a difference if you keep to basic 101 techniques like responding to and engaging your audience. Great content is always a win.

Do your research, plan and execute.

Keep It Simple.

The Elements of the Social Business Power Map

Got this from Christoph M on Google Buzz.

Interesting overview of social media for business from Dachis Group. (Western SM Focused)

In rough order from top to bottom, this list represents what those in social media need a good grasp of at a strategic level in order to be effective. Depending on your industry, specific ratings on the maturity scale may be slightly different, but all of these elements must be in the vocabulary of those seeking to tap into the business benefits.

Social Analytics.
Effectively participating in social media as an organization requires a lot of listening, but how do you make sense of the totality of what you’ve heard? Enter social analytics, which has recently seen a major uptick, from virtually no discussion of it in 2008. Many organizations are now realizing that, like Web analytics was early on in Web, social analytics will be crucial for obtaining a strategic understanding of what’s taking place in social media, either on the Internet or within their organizations. The hold-up preventing widespread experimentation in social analytics at the moment is that there are still too few vendors and even fewer compelling and mature products.

Social Dashboards.
iGoogle showed how many people would use a dashboard (hundreds of millions) and now there are now too many dashboard products for social media to count. They range from feed readers to apps like the popular TweetDeck, which provide a convenient way to consume and participate with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FourSquare, and others. Enterprise equivalents now exist, and are typically included as features of the more mature enterprise social software suites. At this time, most users are experimenting with social dashboards but they have not collectively broken out into a full-on adoption climb. Aggregating of social experiences will become increasingly important however and dashboards are well positioned to solve a significant portion of the channel fragmentation challenge of social media.

Microblogging.
With the rise of Twitter and its approximately 200 million users, microblogging has hit it big though it’s still not quite mainstream. The convenience and format of microblogging ensures that just about anyone can participate and this has made it very popular online and increasingly so in many businesses today. However, social networks remain overall more compelling for many despite often having a similar status message format. Those seeking the simplest and most straightforward social experience however are finding microblogging attractive. Expect microblogging to proceed to the mainstream level in the next year or two in the consumer side and a year or two later in the enterprise space, for which the tools are still emerging.

Mobile Social.
I covered this more detail in my recent Six Social Business Trends To Watch post. The world of social media is moving to mobile devices in a big way this year. Social networking apps for iPhone and Android remain among the top applications for those devices, particularly each platforms’ respective apps for Facebook. More compellingly, some of the most interesting new mobile social apps, like FourSquare, will only really function on GPS-enabled devices. Mobile social is on a fast rising adoption curve and will hit the mainstream in relatively short order (as in next year) as new large-scale usage trends take hold, such as the move entirely away from desktops, and even laptops, towards truly capable mobile devices like smartphones and slates (also known as ultra mobiles) such as the iPad. As for enterprise adoption, a recent survey by Citrix indicated that surprising 84% of businesses will not only allow iPads in the workplace but will actively support them. What this all means for mobile social in the enterprise is less clear but it will be significant.

Social Location.
This trend is tightly coupled with mobile social since effective location-based services typically requires hardware-based GPS. More and more social applications are becoming location-aware and it’s telling that Facebook has apparently decided to join in the ‘check-in’ bandwagon to compete with potential location-aware rivals like FourSquare. That said, location is definitely a good bit behind the broader adoption wave to mobile social. However, it’s on target to become an integral part of Social Business as location-enabled mobile apps get better at mining the value of physical location with new features and capabilities such as better contextual advertising and improved Social Shopping.

Federated Social Identity.
While OpenID and Facebook For Websites (the identity feature formerly known as Facebook Connect) are taking the lead at the moment, there is still a long way to go before there is a real social identity victor. Federated identity, a technical sounding term that really just means you can select the user ID service of your choice and use it on any social service you’d like, inside or outside of the firewall. A robust and usable federated social identity that automatically brings your social graph, avatar, and other personal data is barely on the radar today and mostly consists of individual standards (see Open Standards for Social Media, below). There is a good chance that OpenID will add many of the needed capabilities, but the jury is still out and most social identity today really isn’t very social, yet.

Crowdsourcing.
I’ve explored the growing promise of crowdsourcing many times in the past and great many experiments over the years have proven the model out fairly conclusively. Yet uptake has not been as broad as it might be because of the perceived shift of control issues combined with lack of familiarity and competence in crowdsourcing by most businesses. Fortunately, given the rise of innovation programs based on the crowdsourcing model, recent success stories, and other independent data points. Expect it to start climbing the adoption curve in 12-18 months. Most organizations should start planning this year to ensure they get first mover advantage, which really matters when trying to build a community of contributors in an industry or vertical market.

Facebook Connect/FFW.
Now called Facebook for Websites, the uptake for this feature has been very strong across the Web given how much it increases the percentage of users that register, up to 2 out of 3 new registrations by some estimates. Over one million Web sites have integrated with Facebook and climbing fast. Though many organizations are reluctant to overly depend on Facebook to manage their user data, the risks can be managed and it has become a leading way to access a user’s personal information and social data upon request. FFW will probably remain in the adoption phase for a couple of more years and has the potential to be disrupted by more open social identity systems.

Social Search and Recommendation.
The information that our friends are interested in is what we’re likely to be interested goes the theory. Social search is already part of the Google search engine, making it score higher on the Power Map than it otherwise would. Another way to look at timely knowledge that flows through the news feeds and activity streams of our favorite social networks is “search that finds you”. Mostly a consumer Web phenomenon, with leaders such as Mahalo and Wikia there are some business players. For example, Vivisimo’s Discovery Module has an especially interesting enterprise social search capability. Thus social search as well as recommendations are a significant and growing element of the social Web today. Social recommendations are already featured in many Facebook applications and other popular services such as Yelp. Social search has not, however, consistently found its way in terms of prime mover utility to grow a major service or revolutionize business processes yet. It will likely enter the adoption phase in the coming 24 months as more products are designed around the potential and ways to access ROI is more focused.

Community Management.
All social communities require some level of community management, which I dubbed an “essential” capability for Enterprise 2.0 last year. Almost always under anticipated at first (after all, most of us are just learning about large scale online communities and what they need to survive and thrive), community management has steadily gotten more respectable and the some of the credit it so richly deserves, though there’s a long way to go. As a result of the growing community management competence of many large-scale commercial communities and many successful customer communities, ad hoc and otherwise, this capability has had a great year. One part best practices, one part enabling technology, and two parts dedicated people, this skill is well into the adoption phase (all successful online communities today have the skill set and staff). Community management is on target to become mainstream in the enterprise within 36 months, even if it’s nearly mainstream on the consumer Web today.

Social Networks, Blogs, and Wikis.
As we start heading into 2011, it’s clear that social networking has become truly mainstream at a global scale. The data on the right shows that social networking is the now most used Internet communication tool today, with usage having eclipsed e-mail — the previous #1 method of communication — entirely. This is a sea change in societal behavior for which businesses are still now only beginning to understand the implications. Blogs have been mainstream for years and wikis exist by the tens of millions. In fact, virtually every medium and large sized business now has at least one wiki installation. What’s left? Social networking is now expected to surpass the top used application online, Internet search, in the near future. There is little likelihood that social networking will be disrupted in the near term though certainly most businesses have not yet adopted them internally and many current block their use from inside the firewall. Unfortunately, the number of businesses blocking access to social networks is going up, not down as they continue to get a handle on managing the perceived risks of social networking.. See my discussions on CoIT and how workers are increasingly using their own IT to route around excessive control of their channels of communication.

Social Gaming.
As my colleague Bryan Kotlyar said to me recently, “many people’s primary experience with social networking is with Farmville”. Farmville has become an enormously popular social game that has proved out the sector to be a rapidly-growing one. There have been many discussions of social game theory as a high-engagement way to maximize the value creation of structured user participation. Strategic thinkers like John Seely Brown has famously extolled multiplayer games as a better way to manage knowledge and work together. For now what’s clear that social gaming is a rapidly expanding consumer phenomenon that combines the high virality of social media with the focused outcomes of structured play. Expect social gaming to start to enter the enterprise world within two years (prediction markets are an early herald of what’s to come here), it will only become more significant and mature in the social media universe.

Social Shopping
When friends come together in social media to participate in the shopping process, the result is referred to as social shopping. While sites that are built around or offer social shopping features have been around for years, often tied closely to the fashion industry, it’s only be in the last year that social shopping has started to get serious attention. Grouped into three major categories, social shopping services can include group-buying, shopping communities, and social product recommendations. Typical offerings include BazaarVoice, Kaboodle, and Shop Socially. As retailers and other businesses catch on to the techniques and the features become more integrated into e-commerce platforms, social shopping is poised for major experimentation in the coming several years.

Open Standards For Social Media.
Standards for social media have not fared very well other than for the syndication standards RSS and maybe Atom. Standards are vital for new technologies to thrive because they create choice, reduce costs, increase the pool of knowledge, reduce the risks of lock-in and many other benefits. On the downside, standards can create a lowest common denominator effect and reduce innovation by proscribing advances that color outside the lines. Yes despite this, some Web standards specific to social media are climbing the maturity curve, mostly around the key functions of social networks. Except for OpenSocial, these standards are largely being ignored by businesses at this time, despite the great stake they have in shaping their future. For more details on these standards, you can consult my in-depth examination of the Social Web Technologies for 2010, but the ones to track are Portable Contacts (PoCo), Salmon Protocol, OStatus, PubSubHubbub, and xAuth in the Buzz category, Activity Streams (now used by Facebook, MySpace, and others), OpenSocial, and OAuth in Experimentation, and OpenID in the Adoption phase. For now, most organizations should focus on OpenID and keep an eye on the uptake and adoption of the others. See here for my in-depth discussion of OAuth, OpenID, and FFW and their significance to user adoption of social applications. Few social standards have lasted long or been successful but there is a sense now that we are starting to zero on the ones that we really need. Future Power Maps will track their progress.

Social CMS.
Drupal has apparently won the social CMS wars in the open source space with literally tens of millions of users. With this, traditional content management systems will never be the same and Drupal has shown how success is defined in this space by having a common sense open architecture, a rich plug-in ecosystem, and embodiment of best practices for social CMS. I’m also bullish on enterprise versions of Drupal, like Acquia. Yet there remains a nagging feeling that social software suites (see below) may ultimately become the center of focus for social in the workplace. Social CMS is the last mainstream model of social media but there is long-term potential for trouble as consumer social networks and enterprise social software suites begin to encroach on the feature space.

Unified Communication with Social Media.
The enterprise world of unified communication has amazingly had very little unification with social media. But that is starting to change with the advent of social media aware unified communication products such as Lotus SameTime and arguably Cisco Quad, which got the lion’s share of attention of such products recently. However it’s mostly buzz at this time but unified communication will reconcile with social media soon enough as I predicted earlier this year in my 10 Emerging Enterprise 2.0 Technologies To Watch list.

Expertise Location.
Despite years of promoting the fact that social tools let people find out who knows what, dedicated tools like FineBrain and features in well-known tools such as Jive’s Social Business Suite are finally coming to the fore. While still an emerging category, expertise location is expected to become a key capability as enterprise start going social in a major way.

Social ECM.
The often-stodgy vendors of enterprise content management (ECM) platforms have been incorporating more and more social media capabilities into their products in the last year. OpenText is leading the way here and most other vendors I’m tracking are following suit. You can get a sense of how many by looking at the blue space in my full breakdown last year of Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Enterprise 2.0.
The use of social media to drive collaborative performance has been a hot topic for several years know. I’ve covered this in great detail elsewhere and we’re now seeing that adoption is well under way and is likely to be the first major enterprise use of social media to hit the mainstream (most people in most enterprises engage in it) sometime in the next 12-24 months.

Social Media Command Centers.
Gatorade famously made a splash earlier this year with their high-gloss social media command center and I think it’s safe to say that generated enormous interest in the concept. As social media becomes a critical channel to engagement in and deal with, command centers (more practically realized as virtual tools and teams than physical ones) are going to be a hot topic with widespread experimentation consisting of integrated sets of monitoring, analytics, and engagement tools increasingly happening in the next year.

OpenSocial Apps for the Enterprise.
Jive and SocialText have added support for internal only OpenSocial applications that lets enterprise build or buy business apps that tap into their worker’s social capital. It’s still very early stage yet but now that the app containers and providers exist, it’s likely that this will grow into a strong ecosystem in the next couple of years particularly if an enterprise app store is successfully built to create a low-barrier distribution conduit for business-grade OpenSocial solutions.
Enterprise Syndication. The proliferation of social media on the Web drove the need for syndication. Now enterprises are in the same situation but vendors have been struggling in this space for a long time now with poor enterprise-friendly syndication management tools and inadequate feed readers. That’s still only changing slowly as enterprise users are just now grasping how much their intranets are starting to look and work like today’s highly social Web. I expect this functionality to increasingly appear in social software suites and enterprise integration platforms like ESBs.

Social Media Monitoring.
Being able to listen to social media has now become an imperative for a large percentage of organizations and it’s been a banner year for listening platforms from organizations such as Radian6, Sysomos, and BuzzLogic. Expect it to remain a high growth adoption-phase trend for the next 12-18 months and the move to maturity.
Social Media Marketing. Marketing departments were one of the very first groups to get involved in social media and they are nearly ready to move into the maturity phase of adoption. While the best social media marketing campaigns are combinations of traditional and social media as part of an integrated approach, social media is where the growth and deeper opportunities will lie for the foreseeable future.

Crisis Management.
Combined with a good social media listening capability, identifying brand and customer crises and then responding effectively to them will be a capability that many organizations will build in the coming years. Expect lots of improvement in practices and methods as companies determine where best to locate and organize around this increasingly important capability that wasn’t required in the days before customers had louder voices collectively than most organizations.

Social Software Suites.
The premise with suites is that it makes sense to create an integrated whole out of the standards set of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, activity streams, social networks, social dashboards, and microblogs with the security, audit, archiving, and other business requirements that enterprises expect. Collaboration industry-leader SharePoint 2010 recently added many of these features while others such as Lotus Connections, Jive Social Business Suite, and SocialText have had them for a while now. Most CIOs and other senior decision makers looking to activate on the promise of Enterprise 2.0 are going to focus on the proven and ready-to-go aspect of suites in their evaluation efforts and it appears that they are increasingly favored for company-wide deployments while individual tools are selected to match specific, high value problems.

Customer Communities.
Creating or participating in customer communities is something that most organizations must do yet many of them are missing the opportunity, despite 70% of senior managers recently reporting that they offer significant business value. I’ve explored this paradox before and the urgency of letting customers engage before they go elsewhere to create their own or find companies that will work with them.

Enterprise Microblogs.
Twitter virtually created and proved out the value of making social communication simple and compact. Now the command-line of social media is coming to the enterprise. While still in the experimentation phase for most organizations, microblogging will be commonplace and growing in adoption towards a mainstream breakout in 18-24 months.
Social Supply Chains. Companies such as Inovis have been proving out what is possible when you bring social computing to the supply chain. I explored social supply chains in detail recently and while it’s still in early stages, those who are using it are achieving significant benefits. At this point, social supply chain will be well in the adoption phase in 24-36 months.

Updated: Top 10 reasons to use Chinese Social Media

A few months ago we posted 10 reasons why you should be using Chinese Social Media. Some things have changed, so here's our updated list.

If you're in an industry that markets to the Chinese; whether it's consumers, tourists, business to business or the public sector, you could be missing out on a huge potential audience.

Here are our top 10 reasons to use Chinese social media:

1) China has about 420 million internet users. Never mind all the Chinese speakers that live in other countries.

2) 92% of Chinese netizens use Social Media. source

3) Every social media user owns on average 2.78 social media accountssource

4) "But, we already use Twitter." Newsflash! The Chinese government doesn't like Twitter, and blocks it. Good luck marketing yourself in China if that's your only strategy.

5) "We've got a Facebook Page" Also blocked.

6) Oh and by the way, you thought Facebook was big? QQ has one billion registered accounts and more than 600 million active users. source

7) 277 million mobile internet users source

8) About 50 Million outbound tourists travelled out of China last year. 7/10 Chinese Travellers use the internet to source information about their destination.

9) 50% of netizens blog.

10) 142 million shop online. Source

Engaging Chinese Tourists

Last week, David Cameron (the Prime Minister here in the UK) issued a call-to-arms for the British tourist industry.

"I want to see us in the top five destinations in the world. But that means being much more competitive internationally. Take Chinese tourists, for example.

We’re their 22nd most popular destination. But Germany is forecast to break into their top ten. Why can’t we?

Currently we only have 0.5 per cent of the market share of Chinese tourists. If we could increase that to just 2.5 per cent this could add over half a billion pounds of spending to our economy and some sources suggest this could mean as many as 10,000 new jobs. "

It's a great idea and certainly Chinese outbound tourism is a huge growth area. But how can UK businesses tap into this market?

The answer is simple. The UK needs to ENGAGE Chinese tourists. The tools are out there.

As we've said before, 420 million Chinese use the internet, and that's a figure growing all the time. More than 90% of those netizens use Social Media.

But in China, Social Media doesn't mean Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

All those sites are blocked.

To reach the Chinese market, you need to use the sites they use. Sites like RenRen, Kaixin001, Sina WeiBo and Douban.

Time to expand your ideas.

Tudou - “That Love Comes”: Product Placement Advertising in China

At present, Tudou and Youku collectively share 80% of the internet video market in China; however, this all set to change when Tudou launches their original content production initiative known as the “Orange Box” later this month.

Tudou’s “Orange Box” Initiative:

Tudou’s first made-for-internet production “That Love Comes” (欢迎爱光临) is the first of many dramas. Tudou are hoping to engage the younger generation who find Chinese television based on history, family and wartime periods unappealing.

"That Love Comes" Preview Commercial

Tudou already attracts a community of cosmopolitan, fashion conscious, trend seekers and their made-for-internet dramas will continue to target this audience with universal themes of hope, dreams and romance; this also allows brands to aim their advertising budget specifically toward the 18 – 35 demographic.

With this business strategy a new revenue stream has been created with “branded content” appearing throughout “Orange Box” dramas. Product placement, script placement and brand mentions will be used to monetise this new business model. Long-term return on investment is predicted to be high despite production costs exceeding licensing costs for existing shows (Tudou, 2010).

Unilever’s Branded Content Initiative:

In 2008, Unilever used Chinese TV drama “Ugly Wudi” (丑女无敌) as a vehicle for promoting the Dove, Clear and Lipton’s Milk Tea brands and they plan to again with China’s new drama “Unbeatable”. This time Unilever will focus on the Clear dandruff shampoo brand with the drama’s plot revolving around a college graduate, who lands a job at an international public relations company that handles PR for the Clear haircare line.

“The heroine falls in love with the office janitor, who is really a spy from a rival pr agency, leading to problems that make her a tougher individual with "unbeatable" resilience.”

(For Unilever, Branded Drama is Unbeatable in China; Normandy Madden, 2010)

"Unbreakable" Preview Commercial

It is reported that Unilever’s marketing staff worked with the producers of “Ugly Wudi” to tirelessly integrate over 3,300 seconds of the Dove brand into the show’s first season, this prompted viewers to complain about the heavy-handed use of product placement. Unilever cited the simultaneous promotion of three brand products as the main mistake for their first TV drama. The new approach for “Unbeatable” will now only promote one brand to avoid making the same mistake again.

Are Product Placement dramas the future?

Tudou and Unilever’s use of product placement in drama are two very polarising cases because both want to integrate advertising with drama; however, there is a slight difference in approach:

Tudou Dramas are incorporating Brands

Unilever Brands are incorporating Drama

Ideally there would be a perfect balance between branded content and drama content, but it is clear from the “Ugly Wudi” approach that even an ideal balance is difficult to achieve.

With the mobile devices set to drive the growth of internet consumption in China, video websites such as Tudou need to look for new ways to monetise their business model, similarly, brands need to look for new advertising streams that go beyond the home television set.

If Tudou is successful, product placement dramas might just be the next big step in online advertising.

Contributed by Steve Law

China Netizens Account for 50.7% Content Online: What does this mean?

“For the first time in history, Chinese internet users have produced more content than professional websites…personal users on blogs, online forums, social networking sites (SNS) and question answers exceeded the amount contributed by professional organizations in news, search engine and e-commerce” (China Daily, 2010).

At a surface level, the information of Chinese netizens accounting for 50.7% of content online should not come as too much of a surprise given that China is booming in both population and rate of internet adoption; however, as we reach the end of our first 21stCentury decade and head into the next, a clear sense of pace has been set with China taking charge, at least as far as online is concerned.

How Many Bloggers in China?

At present, about half of all Chinese internet users are bloggers with 55% being students and 96.6% of all bloggers in June 2009 being readers themselves. What we find particularly interesting is that Chinese social networking services include a 'personal blog' as a feature within a feature, this could imply that the popularity of SNS in China will continue to nurture a nation of influential bloggers because of the feedback loop.

Trust is in the Masses:

A notable proportion of user generated content from online social media is sentimental (communication with friends etc); however, this is no less valuable than the news published on a professional website. For example, consumer purchasing decisions are largely informed by other netizens with 81% of BBS/blog users checking internet word-of-mouth before making the final purchasing decision (China International Business; Cohen, 2010). There is influence & trust in the masses which is why social media is so strong in China; it is a social mouthpiece where everyone is listening in on the conversation.

Contributed by Steve Law

Android Apps for Chinese Social Media

A selection of useful Android apps for Chinese SNS.

(Please point out if we're missing better ones.)

Renren.com - 人人Android

Kaixin001.com - 开心网

 Douban.com - aDouban

Youku.com - youku

Sina Weibo - 微博

Are Social Networking Sites Compatible with China?

This past week, a report published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) found that social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter are eroding the privacy of Chinese netizens (China Tech News, 2010). The debate over privacy online is nothing new in the social media arena; however the CASS report places a new emphasis on SNS use “as a tool of political subversion used by Western nations, including the United States” (The Independent, 2010).

2009: Xinjiang Riots & the Rise of Social Media:

In July 2009, the Muslim Uighur clash with Han Chinese people in the western region of Xinjiang left over 200 dead and 1,700 injured. The internet was immediately cut over suspicions that the riot was coordinated online through digital media and telecommunication; it was finally restored 10 months later.

It was also found that 2009 was the year that SNS became an emerging development hot spot in China. With 45.8% (176 million) SNS internet users in Mainland China active on social networking sites in January 2010, it is becoming apparent that the Great Firewall (GFW) of China is showing its age. It can only block Chinese netizens from visiting websites within China all the while overseas Chinese are able to surf the internet and share personal information freely whilst studying and working abroad.

With a growing number of Chinese SNS users predicted to reach 510 million by 2011, it fair to assume that China’s fears are squarely placed upon internet users and their ability to use SNS for seeding “political subversion” which would essentially undermine China’s communist state. Perhaps the bigger fear for China's economically, is the identification of Asian consumer trends captured for “Western intelligence services”; after all, giving away market intelligence via SNS data could become a big problem in China because Western companies are looking to break into the China market.

China’s Double-edged Sword and Why SNS will Never Leave China in the Long Term:

China isn’t without its compromises, only last week the government had decided to renew Google’s license to operate in China despite earlier conflicts over censorship in the country. With foreign companies such as Google eager to make into China’s growing market and China’s need for innovative companies to invest in the long term, the feeling is that social media in China is a double-edged sword with business opportunities to be had at the cost of governmental control. Social media and word-of-mouth can spread like wildfire and it seems as though China is understandably playing the safe card on this one although we are still not quite sure what their approach is right now; nevertheless, internet usage in China is continuing to show positive growth at an exponential rate.

Social Media, The Great Maze of China:

Social media is like a garden maze with paths that have still yet to be traversed, our feeling is that China wouldn’t mind clearing away a few paths to avoid nasty surprises but still, the stats speak for themselves:

92% of Chinese netizens use Social Media:

2010: 420,758,129 netizens use Social Media.

2015: 847,614,204 netizens will use Social Media.

Every social media user owns on average 2.78 Social Media accounts:

2010: there are 1,169,707,598 active Social Media accounts in China.

2015: there will be 2,356,367,487 active Social Media accounts in China.

50% of netizens blog:

2010: there are 228,672,896 bloggers in China.

2015: there will be 460,659,893 bloggers in China.

(Facts & Figures via Little Red Book Erwin, 2010)

China knows of the risks associated with social media from the Xinjiang riots of 2009 but the rewards are far too great. In having the world’s largest human population, China is already seeing foreign huge direct investment; however, China is also the world’s largest internet and mobile market. Taking into account that this market is still growing in China, the doors for social media and SNS is likely to remain open as the country readies itself to become the world’s largest economy; our feeling is that CASS’s report is just a little hiccup.

Contributed by Steve Law

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

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.

Baidu And Google Buzz

Discovered something interesting yesterday, 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.

See this thread for further discussion.

Building Buzz In China - Social Media Case Study

This weekend (March 26th 2010) our client The Royal Parks were featured on Chinese National Television (CCTV2). You can see the video here.

So how did they get there? And what did we have to do with it?

We started working with The Royal Parks in December 2009. We featured (and are still featuring) five of their London Parks on our website Londonlvyou.com.

Londonlvyou.com is our bilingual (English and Mandarin) guide to London. It's 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. We also use "Western" Web 2.0 like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, etc. (Though as you may know Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China, along with YouTube, among others.)

We haven't just been posting content though! We 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.

We were contacted via social media by a leading Chinese magazine, Southern People Weekly, (南方人物周刊) who had seen what we were doing on these sites. They asked us to write an article on London for their March 17th Edition.

Because of our engagement with Chinese netizens, we were confident that we knew what content would work as an article. We suggested our client The Royal Parks and this was accepted by the magazine. We then took content (copy and pictures) from our Londonlvyou.com site and condensed it into a article length piece.

The magazine article went out on March 17th nationwide. (The magazine has a circulation of 1 million+ households/airports/clubs/hotels) It was then placed online for the digital version of the magazine. You can view the full PDF here.

Once 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.

This is where CCTV 2 (Chinese National TV) picked it up and did a feature on it, (here) using the content and pictures originally provided by The Royal Parks on our site and associated social media.

As I write this today, the article and video are still being reposted across dozens of Chinese sites. Looks like it's going to be a very successful campaign all in all, (one that has only just started) and for minimal spend. 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.

Beating Google in China. A Baidu Story.

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.

Chinese Social Media for Hotels: Part Two

OK, so in Part One we found that Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are blocked in China.

We also know that China is shaping up to be the world's most important outbound travel market.

So what can we do to engage with them?

First we'll look at China's two biggest Video-Sharing sites. Youku.com and Tudou.com

Youku.com

Youku (优酷) was ranked #1 in the 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

Find out more here

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.

Find out more here

Both of these sites operate in a similar way to Youtube. Create a channel and upload your video. Obviously both sites are Chinese language, so you'll need someone with Chinese skills.

Consider adding a Chinese language voiceover to your video, or at the least, subtitles. Also you're going to have to consider what your audience wants to see. What does your Hotel offer them?

For example:

Over 92% of Chinese Tourists Prefer to Stay in Hotels that Provide Chinese Language Television Programs.

Chinese Tourists prefer friendly and responsive Hotels.

In Part Three we'll look at Social Networking sites.

Chinese Social Media for Hotels Part One

OK, so you've read up on Social Media. How to "Engage" and "Win Trust". You've created a great Facebook Fan Page and a Top Twitter profile. You've spent hours with your Social Media Guru learning how to write a fantastic Blog that's going to have your customers begging for more.

You've even made a Hotel video that your Social Media Guru assures you will "go viral" on YouTube.

Your Staff have been to the Social Media Workshop that cost you a lot, but you know it was worthwhile

Then someone comes along and talks to you about China. You know, China, the country that's expected to exceed 50 million outbound tourists this year, the country that spent upwards of US$ 42 billion abroad in 2009. The outbound tourist market that everyone wants to capture.

You know, the Country that blocks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Yes, that's right. Blocked.

So what are you going to do?

In part two, we'll find out.

UK Pavillion At Shanghai Expo Uses Chinese Social Media.

If you need a great example of how Chinese social media is being used, take a look at the great campaign being run by agency Profero for the UK Pavillion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

The UK Pavillion claim to be the only national level participant at Shanghai Expo to have invested such significant resource in a digital media presence.

See here for the blog post.

"Our Expo website incorporates the functionality that Chinese users respond to; but it is our work on digital marketing campaigns that truly sets us apart. Since starting our UK@Expo “buzz” campaigns to coincide with the launch of the Expo website, expectations have been far exceeded: we have received nearly half a million effective viewers. The number of people who have engaged on the topic of the design of the UK pavilion, and the search for a nickname for it, has been 1500% above our objectives; and the total number of clicks/views almost 350% of target (with 42,000 views and 2500 comments). 90% of all comments have been positive about the UK pavilion; with the remaining 10% neutral. Discussions for a nickname for our Expo pavilion already run to 67 pages on one site; the same site has also recently launched its own nickname campaign for the top 10 Expo pavilions, very much following our lead with a successful idea.

It’s been important in our approach to reflect the distinctly different preferences among Chinese users for the look, feel and most of all the functionality of social networking sites."

You can see the UK pavillion site here and their Douban group here

Great to see that organisations are starting to wake up to the possibilities of using social media other than the holy triad of Facebook/Youtube/Twitter. And great to see that Douban was chosen for the campaign, one of the most accessible, user friendly and best designed of the China web 2.0 sites out there.

8 Essential China Market-Facts

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.

Social media with Chinese characteristics (具有中国特色的SNS)

具有中国特色的SNS - Social Media with Chinese Characteristics (a political digression)

I was reading an article on Deng Xiao Ping and the idea of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (Stay with me people.) and I noticed that several ideas were very applicable to the current problems that Foreign internet companies (Google/Twitter/Facebook/etc) are having in China.

This sentence in particular: (from Technological Determinism & Socialism with Chinese Characteristics)

"Deng Xiaoping rejected the Maoist tendency to forswear the technological trappings of the so-called West (including soft technology in the form of Social relationships) and embraced the idea that modernity required copying many of the traits of the Western capitalist nations."

And Old Deng himself said:

"Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system. As they develop, the people's material and cultural life will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the People's Republic was that we didn't pay enough attention to developing the productive forces."

There you have it. Chinese social media will always beat Western social media in China, because the Chinese understand what the West doesn't. That to defeat an opponent, you must first understand him. (Or something like that.)

Any thoughts?

10 Chinese websites you must know

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:

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.

Top 10 websites popular among Chinese college girls

Continuing our Top 10 theme, we found this list on a website called marketingfuture.com. Take it with a pinch of salt especially as there are some errors. (Xiaonei is now called RenRen for example) Interesting research though nonetheless.

Here are the top 10 most popular websites visited by most Chinese college Girls. From the list, we can clearly divide the websites into 5 types: SNS, health and skin care, blog, fans forum and online shopping center etc.,

Tianya Forum http://www.tianya.cn

Rayli Female Forum　 http://www.rayli.com.cn

Taobao　 http://www.taobao.com

Taobao Shops Collection http://www.913579.com

MOP　 http://www.mop.com

Xiaonei 　 http://www.xiaonei.com

Sina Blog　 http://blog.sina.com.cn

Lose Weight Healthly 　http://www.68263.com

Hudie 　 http://www.hudie.com

10.

Fans Forum e.g. Baidu Post Bar http://post.baidu.com

Top 10 reasons to use Chinese Social Media

Top 10 reasons why your business should use Chinese social media.

We're sure that by now, we don't need to tell you how important social media is. What we do need to tell you is that Chinese social media is more important than you think.

If you're in an industry that markets to the Chinese; whether it's consumers, tourists, business to business or the public sector, you could be missing out on a huge potential audience.

Here are our top 10 reasons to use Chinese social media:

1) China has about 400 million internet users. Never mind all the Chinese speakers that live in other countries.

2) 92% of Chinese netizens use Social Media. source

3) Every social media user owns on average 2.78 social media accounts source

4) "But, we already use Twitter." Newsflash! The Chinese government doesn't like Twitter, and blocks it. Good luck marketing yourself in China if that's your only strategy.

5) "We've got a Facebook Page" Also blocked.

6) Oh and by the way, you thought Facebook was big? QQ has one billion registered accounts and 500 million monthly active users. source

7) 233 million mobile internet users source

8) About 50 Million outbound tourists travelled out of China last year. 7/10 Chinese Travellers use the internet to source information about their destination.

9) 50% of netizens blog.

10) "I'm already ranked on Google." Heard of Baidu? It beats Google hands down in China. Last year's earnings were a 42% improvement on 2008 and it has at least a 75% market share.

Google Buzz and China

Well Google Buzz has been up for a couple of days now, and already it's seen huge takeup. Media are reporting that 9/10 million "buzzes" have already been made.

Some Blogs here and here for example, have been pointing out that it's only a matter of time before China puts Google Buzz (GBuzz?) behind the GFW (Great Firewall of China.).

Many discussions on this are taking place all over the Chinese net. In a Google group on Douban for example http://www.douban.com/group/google/discussion Chinese netizens are already discussing how to get around the inevitable block.

What will happen? Time will tell I guess, but we'll certainly be following developments with interest.

Chinese Social Media 101 - Microblogging

Microblogging in China has come on in leaps and bounds since the GFW (great firewall of China) decided to limit access to Twitter.

Some the more popular services out there include Sina WeiBo (Sina MicroBlog), Digu and Zuosa, as well as Baidu's service iTieba (although Baidu claim that it's not a MicroBlog)

It's interesting that unlike Twitter, two of the most popular services, Sina WeiBo and Baidu's iTieba, all are offshoots from another service, Sina for Blogs and Baidu for search. A demonstration, if one were needed of Chinese internet companies ability to evolve and adapt.

Of course all these companies also benefit from being local and homegrown.

Chinese Social Media 101 - Douban

Douban (豆瓣) www.douban.com 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 other cultural stuff.

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."

(See the whole interview on Danwei.org http://goo.gl/1tr7 for more from Ah Bei).

Where it differs from most is that it's also the biggest online book, film and music database in China. (more than two million) The site primarily acts as a user review and recommendation service for films, books, and music. Users can run online events, rate, review and share stuff they like and listen to music, via the newly introduced Douban Radio. (豆瓣电台)

Douban Radio is a music player with a database of uploaded songs. It plays these songs at random according to your "perceived" taste. If you don’t like the song, you can dump it; in time, Douban Radio learns your tastes and begins to cater to them more accurately.

Douban is one of our favorite sites at Ren Media because of it's usability and intelligent, culturally aware users. Give it a try, you might surprise yourself. (but don't forget to learn mandarin first) ;-)