Shanghai Impressionen

22. und 23. Juli 2010

Chinese love the Internet, which shows in China's rapidly growing online population of up to 222.4 million netizens at the moment (Wikipedia). The Chinese social media landscape is developing quickly as well: there are more than 40 microblogging tools, even more social networking sites, and various video, photo and music sharing portals. Looking at these figures, one can easily understand that marketing and PR specialists are driven to take advantage of these highly accessible and scalable social media publishing techniques to reach target groups and spread messages.

To catch up with the dynamic developments myself, I had the pleasure of participating in the China New Social Media Forum 2010. The two-day forum took place at the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, where the over 100 participants awaited a well organized event with a distinguished agenda, a Baidu-(Twitter) wall, simultanious translation, and much more (check out the PICTURE GALLERY).

20 keynote speakers held great presentations on social media marketing, corporate PR via social media, trends in the Asia Pacific region, or search engine optimization. High profile speakers like the general manager of China's biggest search engine Baidu, the vice president of one of the biggest Chinese social networking platforms 51.com, the marketing director of the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portalor SINA with its popular Twitter clone, or the vice marketing directors of Ford Mazda and Intel, gave insights of current social media trends in China's and the Asia Pacific's B2C and B2B business. Some social media trends in China are (s.: Nielsen):

• Local players dominant
• Market still under-monetized
• Games are main traffic triber among platforms
• Over 80% of social media content are bulletin boards
• 71% of all Internet talk is on skincare
• 40% of Chinese netizens contribute content
• Chinese are more likely to share negative comments
• "Grass roots" celebrity tracking dominates online talk
• Sina microblog will become even more influential

The most genuine insights were given during lunch or coffee breaks. Just like at the table that was meant to be: Bayer, Henkel, Dow Corning, and Cognis. We freely talked about the Chinese approch to social media. One participant said that: "Even though it seems like we have a freedom of speech the internet as such will not exist in the future. All there will be left is a huge 'Chinese intranet'. All social media platforms that don't have their servers located in China will be banned (like Facebook or Twitter), since the Chinese governement can not control information via e.g. IP tracking or key word controll." Nevertheless, China's social media landscape is just as diverse, exciting and creative as the social media landscapes in the western hemispheres. Be prepared though, that some Chinese Facebook or Twitter clones might cross your social media way. Let's have a look at a few Chinese equivalents, since listing them all would take forever:

"We" have...	China has...
Facebook, Orkut, Mixi, StudiVZ	Xiaonei, Kaixin, 51.com, QQ
LinkedIn, Xing	Linkist
Twitter	Komoo, Sina, Digu, Taotao
Youtube, Kideos, Vlog	Youku, tudou, Ku6
Flickr	Yupoo, 5gme
LastFM	Kugou, Komoo
Blogger, Blogspot	Sina Blog, Blog.cn, bokee

If you want to know, what the most popular blogs in China look like, try this:

Lao Xu	Xu Jinglei was a popular teenager idol back in mid 1990s and became well-known after a popular TV. She is basically the first super celebrity blogger. Xu blogs about her life as an actress, a movie director and an editor (hosted on Sina, 132 million Page Views (PV) since Oct. 2005) .
Han Han	Han Han dropped out of school to become a full time novelist, which caused a controversial debate back in late 1990s. He became successful after all, selling many copies of his books. Han blogs about current news, society, personal stories (hosted on Sina, 111 million PV).
Lao Sha Blog	Lao Sha is the founder of 4 financial newspapers and blogs about the newest stock market developments every day. Due to the craziness of China’s stock market, the blog receives nearly 200 million PV (hosted on Sina, 105 million PV).