SMWHK Day 2: Navigating China Social Media Space

I just came back from Hong Kong, attending 1 day of Social Media Week which originated in the US and being brought down to Asia for the first time. One of the event I co-organize is China Social Media which I have to say generated a lot of interest. Aside from highlight of growth potential, people were also asking if any of China major player of SNS like Renren or Sina would go International, so far their reply is that they still have a lot of ground and room to cover within China.  People were also asking in regards to censorship issue, upcoming trends and also Weibo as a mass communication tool in China.

Dr. Gang Lu the moderator posted one overview of the presentation from Meg Lee - General Manager of Sina Hong Kong on "Weibo Is the Mass Communication Platform Beyond the Media". One of the media partner - Smoothweb did a live broadcast via Facebook, I'm hoping it will be available at a later date for offline viewing (will keep you posted on this one when I have the link).

All and all Social Media Week Hong Kong is a groundbreaking success in getting people more involved whether it is for marketer or for community.

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JiePang Update

After weeks of testing out JiePang, I've discovered several interesting features - JiePang will show your heat map on the city (see picture below) and where you have been, although it can be scary as people will start to know your routine like literally. Users data are also available to general public, you don't have to be a user to see where everyone is, where they have been, etc, so it is rather concerning that it is very much open. The other thing is that the number of check-in is unlimited like Foursquare limits you to 2 check-in per one GPS location, with JiePang you can check-in multiple times giving you multiple point collections (wondering if they will do a point barter system in the future). They also recently just connected an integration with Facebook, although so far I have no luck in setting it up, several of my friend has done it.

According to JiePang, they have about 203k users right now and grows an average of 10-15% a week depending on promotions. Demographic is 24-39 and 20-35, 60% male 40% female. 65% are iPhone and remaining are mostly Android mobile users. They can also help business owners or big brands to build custom badge that can actually be shown for rewards and the badge carries an activation, for example it gives you four free beers, everytime you ask for a beer, the staff will click your badge and the number goes down, pretty cool.

I wonder how will JiePang holds up with Renren launching their places as well, although it is still far from getting their full capabilities (and I did try adding new place or location to Renren places and it wouldn't let me do that, just realized it also does not have a photo uploading capability, so still lots of work to do there, not mentioning whether they will develop a back-end content management for business owners or just approach it case-by-case which can be rather huge considering their market base); would it be the same case as Facebook Places impacting Foursquare users. I do wish JiePang would have integrated the uploading photo model like Gowalla, that would probably go a long way in building a photo map.

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