Twitter & Weibo

Microblog is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links".

The earliest and the most famous microblog is Twitter in U.S. As of January,2010, Twitter has more than 75 million registered users worldwide. In August, 2009, Sina, the biggest portal in China, launched "Sina weibo" private beta, firstly introducing the microblog to the Chinese netizens.

I have used Sina Weibo for more than one year, and when I came to U.S this summer, I also registered on Twitter. However, after comparison, I feel that Weibo has stronger functions than Twitter, though Weibo initially learned a lot from Twitter. No offence.

About comments:

Sina Weibo provides two choices for users to comment: you can comment directly to others' messages, or click " retweet at the same time" when leaving the comment on others' twitters . Therefore, an entire discussion around a specific entry can be seen in one place. The interface of Weibo is more like Facebook. On Twitter, the replies and comments appear independently in the feed, so your comments could not be noticed on others' timeline, and others whom you don't wanna to see the comment would notice it easily.

http://www.williamlong.info/archives/1990.html

About retweeting
Sina Weibo allows users to retweet the original content with extra 140 characters. Also, you could @ people and choose to "add the comment to the writer at the same time" while retweeting. Twitter does not have such settings. In contrast, Weibo could retweet more contents.

About multimedia
The weibo offers a more convenient and direct solution when sharing pictures and videos. The visual attachments can easily be viewed without leaving the weibo page. The twitter is only made up with words and links. So, weibo is more like the micro media.

http://task.zhubajie.com/1229980/24097501.html

The censorship of Microblog

http://www.sacredwaste.com/censor_button-145380570316350001.html

I never noticed the censorship of my everyday used Sina Microblog until one day when I posted one microblog talking about the content I just watched on the American Chinese TV. Actually I wrote it in anger and wanted to express my love for China because I thought some content about Communistic and Falun Gong was unfair and misunderstanding. But the minute I clicked the "send" button, my microblog disappeared. This happened to my another similar comment.

I suddenly realized that there are some restricted key words topics in China. And I began thinking about Microblog censorship.

 

On September22, words saying that China Government would disseminate the licenses for Microblog runners, but Sina was not in the list spreaded on the Internet, causing great disturbance. Though Sina officially denied the humour, more than 10 billion dollars of Sina was evaporated over one night. However, whether there would be the license for Microblog or not, the PR person of Sina didn't give the response.
But there might be licenses.

In the two years since its inception, Sina Microblog's userbase has rocketed to 200 million as of June and the microblog is now a top-10 website in China. Microblogging has changed the way ordinary Chinese citizens are obtaining information and communicating with others, and is becoming a popular platform for voicing their views that would otherwise have been censored. However, that number is making China government officials sweat as Sina Weibo has been increasingly used as a soapbox for anti-government sentiment. So more and more stringent tabs are required to keep on its users.

Now Sina is taking considerable new measures to censor millions of its posts that it and authorities deem are "Internet rumors." It also plans to form a "rumor-busting team" of about a dozen editors to sift out unwanted or undesirable blog posts and implement a rating system to assess the credibility of users, Sina’s CEO Charles Chao said at a forum on digital media in Beijing.

All the meddling by Party officials has made investors nervous. Sina’s stock has taken a number of hits over concerns about restrictive regulations. On September 20, the stock dropped 15 percent.


http://news.chinabyte.com/39/12164039.shtml


To my own perspective, the censorship is a double-edged sword. One one side, there is indeed a sea of unconfirmed information that floats around in cyberspace—"rumors" that can spread across the Web in a flash, and cause the panic and even the destruction. Rumours of shortening summer holiday in Twitter finally led to the students protest in French, and brought many meaningless damages. on the other side, the desire for speech freedom is the reason of Microblog's prosperity, and in the Internet era, it's impossible to control the words. "The more they block [on the Internet], the more illegitimate the government becomes. They can shut it down, but this will make the government an enemy of the people." Chinese dissident journalist Li Datong told Voice of America.
　

My day

                                                             

9:30 AM:  The alarm woke me up. After opening my eyes, the first thing I did was to check my Renren (Chinese facebook) and Microblog ( Chinese twitter) account on the iPhone. I lay in bed and responded to the messages my Chinese friends left comfortably. There were a lot of messages waiting for me due to the time difference. Having browsed the news and jokes on the Microblog, I got up.

10:30 AM: I said good night to my mum via Weixin, a communication tool similar to the Talkbox. My friends found me online, and came to chat with me on QQ, an instant messaging software.


http://weixin.softonic.cn/phones

 12:30 PM: In the afternoon, most of my friends in China fell into sleep. So I mainly contact the classmates in U.S.A. I initiated an event for the weekends, and @ all my NYU classmates on Microblog or Facebook. We discussed the plan on these platforms.

6:30 PM：I began my evening class. And in China, a new day began.

8:30 PM:   I finished my class, and most of my friends started to work in China. They opened their computers, also with their RenRen or Microblog. These Chinese social media became lively again. My friends commented on the newly posted photos on my RenRen or Microblog. Also, my closest friends and mum sent me the voice messages via Weixin. I almost used four kinds of social media at the same time, so the night was my busiest period.

12:30AM: I checked all of my social media Apps again, then went to bed, waiting for the tomorrow.
This was my one day. And this is almost my everyday life. You can see that how much time I have spent on the social media, and how heavily I depend on the social media to stay in contact with my family and my friends. In fact, it's social media that make the separation more acceptable. My mum relaxed a lot when she knew that we could keep in touch at any time, at any where via Weixin. The difference of time and space doesn't matter now.
I believe this is not only my life, but also the life of most young people.

A wonderful Social Media Crisis War in China

Could you recognize the difference between two banknotes? Don't they look similar?

Actually, the first one is the China's ￥100 bank notes, and the second one is the so-called "Pan Currency" (or "Panbi"), which was created by the netizens to satirize a real estate tycoon, but in turn was used by the tycoon to advertise his new business.
Let's review this China's recent PR war.

Oct.6,2011, Steve Jobs passed away. Pan Shiyi, chairman of Soho China, the largest real-estate developer in Beijing, said on his Microblog that the best way to honor the memory of Jobs would be for Apple to offer its bestselling iPad and iPhone for under 1,000 yuan (about US$157). This remark courted controversy, and was slammed as disrespectful by internet users in China, who said Pan should offer affordable real-estate prices after he himself passes away.

"If Mr Pan passes away, please offer houses below 1,000 yuan per square meter. More than one billion people will remember you," one said.

Things got worse. Netizens ironically created the new units of measurement for the house price.: 1 Pan Currency = ￥1000 ( US＄157) / ㎡. Some people even made the new currency " Panbi".

http://www.nddaily.com/

 Pan and his SOHO faced a crisis. However, Pan is definitely an experienced marketing and advertising expert. After finding that the Netizen-making Pan Currency was the hottest spot in Microblog, he decided to make use of this topic.

On Wednesday, Pan unveiled his Panbi, or Pan currency, on his microblog feed. His one-Pan bill looks suspiciously like a Chinese 100-yuan note, except with a picture of Pan on the front instead of Mao Zedong. The back of the Panbi features a quote from the Baha'i faith, of which Pan is a prominent practitioner. In addition, the back of the one-Panbi features one of his new Wangjing Soho developments in Beijing, Soho China's logo and a sales hotline number.



http://house.ifeng.com/special/panyiqian/zuixin/detail_2011_10/27/10191928_0.shtml

In his latest post, Pan said he hoped China's central bank wouldn't object to the new currency.

Of course he was just joking. But we can see how successful Pan's Crisis management is.

This is an era when the social media bring opportunities to corporations, but being exposed to the public also means more PR risk. It's easy to trigger a controversy, which gradually develops into a crisis. So how to react in a " social media" way to solve a "social media" problem is critical.

Pan knew well how to bind his message with a hot topic,though it's detrimental to his company , and saw happily that the media and thousands of people helped retweet the advertising,just for free! He conformed to the majority by self-mocking, changing the problem into fun.  He chose not to keep silent, but to reverse the attention and put a spotlight on the company.
Fighting back in a humourous way, isn't it really a bold and creative crisis management plan?

Social media changes the crisis management strategy



http://hollywoodoncrack.net/camille-grammer-quits-real-housewives-beverly-hills-reunion-sho/

Recently, I am required to consult on one crisis Bravo faced two months ago.
Bravo is a cable television channel owned by NBC Universal, and produces original reality content, such as "The Real Housewives", "Inside the Actors Studio", and others.

"The Real Housewives" is one of the most popular reality series. The series follows the lives of relatively affluent, bourgeois housewives and professional women in the suburban or urban areas of several American cities, and the suffix portion of the title takes on the name of that metropolitan region. ( Wikipedia)

On August.15,2011, "the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" husband Russell Armstrong killed himself. Because Russell once mentioned this TV show made his life under big stress in an interview with People magazine, his death put Bravo and its Reality TV franchise into a difficult situation.

Then how did Bravo handle this crisis?

Russell's death was reported on August.16. In the wake of the Armstrong suicide, Bravo executives didn't hold the press conference or respond to journalists as expected, instead, they declined all the interview requests. On the contrary, Bravo executive Andy Cohen immediately acknowledged the death of Russell on his own Twitter, said, "I am so very sad about today's news. My prayers and thoughts are with Taylor Armstrong and her family." Other cast members also reacted to this strategy on twitter and Facebook quickly. A statement from the Bravo's official forum reads: "All of us at Bravo are deeply saddened by the tragic news of the death of Russell Armstrong. Our sympathy and thoughts are with the Armstrong family at this difficult time." Messages were spread out fast on the social platform, and before the journalists making any comments, many people had already known about the accident.
It's interesting to notice a fact: Bravo chose the social media as the first battlefield instead of the big media. Also, in the whole process, Bravo took more measures on the social media. In this case, traditional media was not regarded as critical as before to solve a problem.

In the past, journalists were the only bridge between the truth and the audience. However, the delivery of information was edited and time-costed during the completed process. Uncompleted disclosures easily lead to misdirection, and many cases were not perfectly handled due to the misdirection of the reports. Now, the social media provides a platform for corporations to enable their words heard directly and widely in the shortest time. Companies could take more control in their own hands of the communication with audiences. No wonder Bravo and other companies would choose to skip the traditional media at the first minute when the crisis broke out. They have to disclose the real situation and create a favorable public opinion environment before the intervention of the big media.

Social media does not only change the way of Marketing, but also change the way of crisis management strategy.

Forever 21& Social Media

Picture: http://fashionlawyerblog.com/?p=371

Celebrated by many fashion-conscious and trend-savvy shoppers, Forever 21 has become a phenomenon in the fashion world, and is developing quite rapidly.

There are several brands under Forever 21: Forever 21, Heritage 1981, Forever 21 Girls,and 21 Men. Literally we could tell that its main target audiences are young people.

Many factors have contributed to the success of Forever 21, one of which is social media.

Forever 21 currently uses a vast number of social networkings. Its web site is polished-look, and convenient for customers to purchase online.

 Link: http://www.forever21.com/

Besides web sites, Forever 21 is active in Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the Skinny ( Blog). Its Twitter has already owned 215,965 followers, and 5,167,081 people like its Facebook.

Also, Forever 21 follows in the footsteps of other big brands like Kia, Snuggie and Toyota, tapping into the YouTube audience with a new online video contest called the ‘Haul of Fame Contest.’ This contest asks girls to make their own haul videos showing off their favorite ‘Back to School’ fashions. Contests like this are great publicity for brands, because each  haul video is spreading the world to tell about the brand and this fun opportunity to win cool Forever 21 prizes.

These social networkings all provide a link to its official website. Therefore, an information network was developed through the social media with Forever 21's official website at its hub, sending the latest news directly and widely to customers as soon as possible. This network not only offers customers an integrated online experience, but also enables the company to hear what the audiences really think.

The active performance on these social media shows the emphasize Forever 21 has put on these new communication platforms. As Forever 21 clearly positions its target audience under 30, who are also the main users of the social media, it's necessary and smart for Forever 21 to make this strategy. Let's look forward to a better social media campaign conducted by Forever 21!

Reference Link: http://socialtimes.com/forever-21-youtube-contest_b19901

iPhone5 turns out to be iPhone4S

Yesterday's Apple Special Event: Let's Talk iPhone turned out to be a big disappointment to most Apple fans.

There were several rumors of concerning the launching date of the iPhone 5, but no one doubted the actual existence of this new product! People had been eagerly anticipating the arrival iPhone5 for a long time and some of had even waited on line to buy one. As Apple always likes to use the “hunger marketing strategy” to generate interest in their new products, once again the customer's appetite had been stimulated to ravenous proportions. However yesterday, Apple did not meet everyone’s expectations and the result was a severe fall of its stock price.

Now the emotion of anger and disappointment is spreading on Twitter and Weibo. People make jokes of iPhone4S as "iPhone for s**t". And there are many other interesting comments on this event, such as " There were always surprises in Apple's launching conference every year; this year, the biggest surprise is no surprise at all!". The most funny thing is the cry of China's Emulational mobile phone makers. They have already created the copies of iPhone5!



picture: http://store.taobao.com/shop/view_shop.htm?user_number_id=334927212



                                picture:http://news.itxinwen.com/yejingdongtai/2011/1005/354505.html



Like most people, I was a little angry with Apple at first. I remembered in September there were news re-twittered by thousands of people that iPhone5 would be launched on October 5th.. Then I suddenly realized that Apple never officially announced the coming of the iphone5. I searched on the Weibo and Twitter only to see " We are going to launch a new product in October" . Also, the invitation to media was creative and mysterious, but never referred to iPhone5. So, the fact was that the launch of iPhone5 was just media speculation, but became a ‘fact’ after several misquotes. What Apple did concerning this rumor was to just keep silent. This unique company really did good work on strict confidentiality, which successfully satisfied people's curiosity and created the much more buzz for Apple.

Only rumors, no truth. It seems that Apple played a trick on all of us. But maybe we would be more correct in saying that this time people worldwide deceived themselves… with the strong help of social media.

excitements of Internet

Internet has became an indepensable part in my life. But even now, I would sometimes be shocked by the strong ability of the Internet. And, as a student major in Arts, I am so curious how were these magics completed by the technical experts.There are some exciting moments still fresh in my mind.
1) Google
Google is absolutely a powerfulsearch house. I gain most of my information from Google. However, I was still shocked when my friend put my Chinese name as the key words. The eightpage results were all about me. These results included all the articles or words I ever published on the newspaper or online, all the name lists I was on and all the prizes I received,etc. My friend immediately knew my past quite well as soon as she
clicked on the "Search" button. At that time, I was astonished at the plentiful information about myself, some of which even I could not remember, feeling I was naked publicly.


2) Instant message

Almost everybody in China has a QQ account. 2011, QQ launched its new software Weixin (Which is similar to Talkbox). You could not imagine how satisfied and grateful my mum was when she knew she could send and receive voice message instantly with me via Weixin. As I would go to U.S.A, mum was quite worried about the usual communication difficulty with me due to the difference of telephone operators and the time zones. But Weixin made these obstacles disappear. She was greatly released after I taught her to use this tool. I could still remember my mum's big smile on that day.



Picture: http://baike.soso.com/v1728583.htm
3) Online mapping tools

When I put my uncle's U.S.A address into Google Map, I could not only see the drawn map,but also the satellite images. The clear picture of sky, houses, garages and the road let me know in advance about the real place I will go to, though I was still in China. Also, I could click on the map to have a detailed view of houses or cars. The feeling of reality is very strange, but fantastic!



4) Spireware

I never took the Spireware seriously until one day my computer crashed. My friend forced me to install a Spireware. Then it found and killed more than 100 virus in my computer. I was quite shocked, and fully realized our computers would truly get contaminated and ill just like human beings. Then every time, the spireware warned me of the attack or the suspicious virus, I could not stop wondering how could it recognize the good or the bad. What a powerful and patient doctor!


Picture: http://www.yesky.com/115/1802115.shtml

5) Taobao
Americans have Ebay, we have Taobao. It's amazing when you find something which you don't expectto be sold online on Taobao. Now I don't doubt the fact that Taobao sells almost anything, including poison I think.Just joking. I was always surprised at the creativity of the sellers and the vitalityof the whole virtual market.



Picture: http://tb123.banzhu.net/

Link: http://www.taobao.com/

Today, more social media merged to satisfy people's need for social,especially the social networking sites which have become an important part in the youth's life.

In USA, social networking has experienced several transformations. From the first generation of the social networking site SixDegrees.com to now's Face book, Twitter,etc, it's quite different no matter in technology or the social approach.  In China, there are also similar social networking sites such as Weibo, RenRen,etc. They all have a considerable amount of audience and seem to be able to sit back and relax.

However, the quick fall of Myspace( USA) and Kaixin Net(one social net once owned the largest audience in China ) has warmed us of the risk the social networking sites face even in their blooming period.

picture: http://info.ic98.com/1/n12413.html
(This is also a link to the article discussing about the fall of Kaixin Net)

From my perspective, the priority of a Social networking site is to keep their current audience. Strategies vary in different corporates. Some focus on the development of new customers, while some take more care of the current audience.I think a mature social networking site should definitely be the latter one.

Take my experience as example.During my undergraduate,I used RenRen( similar to Facebook) as my social platform because most of my classmates were on it. Then Weibo( similar to Twitter) was introduced by Sina, and became hot among people. But to me, I never thought about trying this new social media, as I already had large followers on RenRen, and I got used to it. However, now I am a Weibo Fan. Why? Because gradually, most of my friends spent more and more time on Weibo, and in order to communicate better with them, I had to create and update my Weibo account. Now, when I want to post some news, I will surely choose Weibo. Same situation occurred to my other friends. They wanted to know more about my status, so they began to change their platform. According the butterfly effect, Renren Net lost a large amount of audience in short time.

        

And of course, more participants and more news make a social networking prosperous and energetic. Therefore, from this case, we can see that the audience of the social networking usually act like an ant colony. They could get together quickly to raise a net up, but they could leave like avalanche, causing disaster in short period. In conclusion, people's desire of social is the key to the success of social media, but it also could be the poison.

On the contrary, if a social networking site could keep a group of people, then more people will gather naturally. Therefore, how to keep the current audience is the question all the social media need to think about first instead of how to attract new group, I think.

Social Media in Marketing

 Recently I am attending the Strategic Marketing Communication Program in Interpublic Group(IPG).

During the training, we learned and practiced the key elements in Marketing communication. When we case-studied one corporation" Ports", I came up with some view of social media on the context of Marketing.

As we all know, there are four circles essential to a successful marketing communcation-clients, brands, delivery and content. In the midst, "delivery" is critically important as a bridge between organizations and republics.

Time is changing. In the past, the model of delivery was called " push" model. The "push" model showed the traditional process of persuation: The corporates just put the selective information in front of audience. It's one-way communication. However, in today's such complicated and different communication environment, the model of delivery became to " pull", which means audience are now more willing to discover the deep information from various resources by themselves. This change helps the delivery of message, but also makes the delivery hard to control.

In this "pull" model, social media is one of the three basic online systems used mostly by audience to visit the media. Another two media are Internet/ Search Engine and Mobile phones. From this fact, we could see the importance of social media. And that's why most marketers use social media as tools.

" We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it!" Erik Qualman said. Actually, most young people are using social media. And I believe the most users of social media belong to the young generation. From this point, I began to think whether how a brand treats social media will decide, to some extent, which group of customers it will have in the future.

Take the case of " Ports" as example. This is a Chinese brand which always intends to be luxury and sets the
high-end people as the target audience, especially successful women. So Ports became a synonym of " mature" and "stereotype". This could be confirmed by the participation of Ports in social media. The followers of Sina weibo is just 4498 which is so miserable compared to those well-known brands such as Chanel and Coach. The messages delivered by this Sina weibo is just 129. According to this, we could see Ports doest not take social media into serious consideration. I should not judge the strategy of Ports. However, this will lead to a risk of losing such a huge amount of potential group, for other similar brands are trying their best to interact with audience and show their customer-friendlyness at the same time.

Ports' Ignorance of social media may judge from the fact that most of current customers are not Weibo fans. However, the ignorance of social media will result in the very difficulty to discover a new and young customer group which will become the target audience someday. Now Ports wants to deliver a fashion and energetic image. But without social media, I doubt the efficiency of its effort.