From the category archives:

China SNS Snapshot

Ipart.cn; Undisturbed Digital Domestic Bliss.

09.24.2009 China SNS Snapshot
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Whilst it’s difficult to find a branded social community having little or no predators, ipart.com definitely leads the way. It could be one of the few communities that hosts a disturbance-free online atmosphere, and given the site basically operates a virtual ‘apartment’ where complete strangers (mostly boys and girls) live under the one roof [...]

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Social Media promotes generation ‘ME’

09.06.2009 China Consumer Profile
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This is an excerpt from an article on our sister site ZeroDegrees.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the bulk of Social Media evangelists consider the space as a way to promote themselves.  Nothing wrong with promoting yourself – I mean we can’t all have a ‘Don King’ like character doing our talking for us.
A report [...]

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QQ: Master of the Micropayment.

08.13.2009 China SNS Snapshot
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This is an excerpt of an article posted on LRB’s sister site: ZeroDegrees
QQ is China’s largest instant messenger service; in 2008 it owned 86% of the market, with MSN owning 5%, and a bunch of others owning less. QQ dominates the market – but the money made seems not to be from its instant messenger; [...]

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

07.10.2009 360QUAN
Thumbnail image for 360quan; Social network for teenagers proves China’s youth are insane.

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

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Building a successful Chinese social media network from scratch.

06.18.2009 Case Studies

I mentioned BA’s “secret” in-house project a little while back (here); this project is an attempt to create a popular Chinese social media site from scratch, solely using China’s already established SNS.
Now the initial impression for something like this is “yeah right good luck buddy”, and to tell you the truth I also almost bought [...]

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China’s Top 4 Twitter Clones.

06.08.2009 China SNS Snapshot

If you’ve been following along as I meander through China’s social marketing landscape, you’ll likely discover a familiar trend. Yes, dear friends, today we’ll be discussing another China social media clone – this time of the wildly popular Twitter micro-blogging sensation.

Twitter, meet your long lost Chinese twin.
The top sites successfully copying Twitter are 1. Taotao.com, [...]

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

05.27.2009 China SNS Snapshot

Social media stories tend to reflect a rags to riches theme – ie: one man sitting in the wee hours of the night typing away on his computer creates a network platform that services millions upon millions of users. This is how Douban started; created by a man named Yangbo in a restaurant called Douban [...]

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

05.20.2009 China SNS Snapshot

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

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

05.18.2009 China SNS Snapshot

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

Mop.com: A typical Chinese web portal… with a focus on crazy.
Now when [...]

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

05.14.2009 China SNS Snapshot

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

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

05.12.2009 China SNS Snapshot

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

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China Social Media; Tianya.cn: China’s Digital Watercooler.

05.11.2009 China SNS Snapshot

天涯 (tian1 ya2) means the edge of the sky in Chinese. Though aesthetically ugly as ugly can be, Tianya is one of the most popular sites in China; it’s the nexus of China’s online communications, a collection of simple forums, blogs, and groups; due to uber-popularity Tianya is the best place in China’s web to [...]

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China Social Media: Taobao.com

05.11.2009 China SNS Snapshot

Taobao.com is the site that killed eBay China. Created in 2003 by the Alibaba group; Taobao received 450 million RMB in funding to become China’s top C2C, B2C platform. The general consensus is Taobao.com is the largest online retail giant in China.
The term “Tao Bao” literally means “to search for treasure”, and implies that no [...]

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