Invite colleagues
There’s a lot of imitation in any industry, let alone emerging markets. I know, call the obvious police. We all know why. Everyone wants to play catch up, and how better than to take the Next Big Thing and stick it in the Next Big Market? And with China’s own particular affliction of counterfeit culture it’s easy to disregard these copycats as just that.
Weibo’s no copycat, it’s poised to become a unique global social media platform. Hey, 140 million users can’t be wrong.
Let’s look at Twitter. It wasn’t formed in a vacuum; it’s deliberately Spartan design was a conscious choice, an attempt to strip the bells and whistles of social media down to 144 characters. Twitter has none of Facebook’s walls and tagged pics, no browser-stopping apps and none of the blogosphere’s prolific over-share. The success of Twitter was that it carved a quick and convenient niche in an already crowded online space. But the space in China is still far from crowded.
And Twitter’s niche is still very, well, niche. Add to that research arguing that Twitter’s vaunted ‘175 million users’ represents a substantially lower number of active regular Tweeters. API data shows that only 56 million accounts follow more than 8 other Twitter feeds.
Compare this to Facebook.
Facebook is valuable because everyone you know is on it. Would you bother logging on if they weren’t? Independent research by iStrategy Labs have put 71% of US internet users on the ‘Book. Facebook’s about page puts its active users around 500 million. Grain of salt aside, that’s a lot of people. Chinese analog social media hubs such as Kaixin and Renren are in a markedly different position.
Combine the low install base for the older social media platforms with increasing busy lives for the burgeoning middle-class, and then throw in the still very low accessibility of computers and the fast advent of mobile browsers to fill that niche, Weibo has done what the other Facebook imitators Kaixin and Renren have failed to do - become an almost ubiquitous and arguably unique social media platform.
Oh, and did I mention an English version is launching this year? Better get on it.
TL;DR
- Weibo is the most popular and fastest growing social media platform in China
- Weibo was launched in 2009 and already has 140 million users, surpassing full-service local platforms Renren and Kaixin (117 million and 102 million respectively)
- Weibo users communicate moods and experiences, share pics and videos in a way traditionally owned by Facebook-style platforms
- Weibo integrates with Jiepang (the Chinese version of Foursquare), parent company Sina’s (okay, the Chinese Yahoo) blog service, Dianping, China’s most popular F&B comparison service, and others
- You can post photos and even view video directly on Weibo, instead of redirecting to third parties such as Flicker or Youtube
- @atme works, but hashtags don’t – the search engine works on content though
- Better get tweeting; with pics, video, links and polls, your message is even more likely to get lost in the feed. Think revising your daily tweet metric J
* Rich Akers has been bouncing around China generally and Beijing specifically for 11 years. He’s currently running marketing for 2 foreign-owned f&b startups and interning at Digital Jungle.
Written on Friday, 17 June 2011 08:24 by Rich Akers