Last week, I attended the Ad:Tech conference in Beijing and participated in a panel discussion on microblogging, a relatively new phenomenon on the Chinese Internet, as it relates to marketing. The reason microblogging (for example: Twitter, Sina Microblogging, fanfou, etc.) has received so much attention is that the format is fresh to most Chinese netizens and is growing very quickly. As a result, the potential opportunities are worth paying attention to.

Since blogs and web 2.0 hit the world, information no longer spreads merely from top to bottom or from the minority to the majority. The microblog enables information to have more sources and become more diversified and authentic. However, microblogging has not yet become hot in China. There are several reasons for this, such as the controls on the Internet in China (Twitter and Fanfou are blocked), the level of knowledge amongst netizens in China, the polarization of thinking, etc. Microblogging appears ready to explode in China due to its growing energy.

The panel discussion on microblogs began with its potential impact on ads and promotion. As a result, the opinions of attendees on microblogs in general were not expressed. For some, microblogs are a new method of promotion by ad service providers. To web portals, it is a tool to help generate page views. What on earth is a microblog? I am a Chinese blogger and a Twitter user. I am co-founder of BloggerInsight, a startup that relies upon Chinese professional bloggers for social sourced intelligence. From my point of view, the microblog is a simplified version of the traditional blog. It focuses on short length and convenience so that people can post their opinion quickly. It shares many characteristics with traditional blogs in that it is characteristic, social, and passes trust to followers. But it has its unique features as well, such as breaking and hot news that connect people more directly. Blogs and microblogs are not one-way marketing that leads directly to more sales or larger market shares. Blogs and microblogs represent character–and to some extent, the formulaic, industrialized, big brands have unfortunately lost their unique characteristics and are not able to adapt to the microblog. Topics on microblogs are posted quickly, but also fade away quickly as well attracting attention for only a short period. For the promotion of topics that need longer-term attention, it is necessary to use microblogs in conjunction with other outlets such as websites and traditional blogs.

Now back to the panel questions we discussed. The first question asked was whether the microblog is a good or bad thing for ads and marketing.

For brand owners, microblogs are positive as it allows for additional contact with consumers. That is a relatively obvious and positive opinion.

To web portals which need traffic to attract more ads, microblogs are also beneficial. The attention span of modern netizens is becoming increasingly short. With the ability to generate a large number of hits in a short period, microblogs enable new issues to spread faster and attract more concentrated visits. As traffic increases, it can be roughly viewed as a gathering place of readers, which means that it’s a gathering place for an audience to view advertising. As a result, a web portal can sell more ads.

Personally, I believe that microblogs do no harm. To companies that consider consumers God and really want to know about the demands of the market, utilizing microblogs is a way to convey a grassroots feeling and close the gap between companies and consumers. But to those who still have the intention of “educating” consumers and “guiding” the target market, to those which fail to change or listen to the demands of consumers and to those who still place themselves above consumers, microblogs probably represent the beginning of a nightmare as the microblog has the ability to screen information. Information that is unconvincing, not beneficial or boring will not be spread. Every blogger is a processor who selects information he/she wants to spread.

Another phenomenon we have to pay attention to is that the young generation in China has changed its way of consuming information. The impact of ads on traditional media like TV, radio, newspapers, etc is. decreasing and many people tend to say, “Ads are just bragging.” This tells us that people don’t trust ads very much. On the other hand, recommendations from friends and sharing experience via the Internet are booming. People gather together to share good products and warnings of bad products. There is no right or wrong in it–it’s just their choice in the market.

The above are just personal observations, the reasons for which are relatively complex. One point that cannot be ignored is that bloggers want their content to have an impact. They hope that companies openly receive their suggestions and that their value is respected. Those who have high value naturally become opinion leaders on the Internet (distinct from “Internet Stars” who are promoted to entertain netizens).

How to define opinion leaders in the world of blogging and microblogging?

Openly available data include the amount of contributed content, the number of followers, time started, etc. But that information alone is not enough. We are all aware that information no longer spreads in limited directions: opinion leaders are not limited to a few individuals, but can arise from a large number of microbloggers. What’s more, an opinion leader should be someone who has unique perspective or rich knowledge in one or two fields, has been contributing a decent amount of content, and has a large number of active users following him. Generally speaking, microblogs create communities. It’s human instinct for people with similar characteristics or interests to gather together. Microblogs are just a platform that reflects the instinct of the Internet to classify opinions. Those who can gather a community are anything but ordinary. Last but not least, the ability to influence others is actually as important as how trustworthy the content or opinion is. If a piece gets lots of promotion (retweets) once it is published, it shows that people who are paying attention agree with and trust what the blogger puts forward. Then there are bloggers who are rarely trusted, and they cannot get extensive retweets even if they say “Please RT this for me” in their messages.

I want to especially put emphasis on the fact that opinion leaders are not objects for netizens to make fun of, nor are “Internet Stars” there to entertain the public. They are important amongst their community and they are strongly connected to their followers.

Opinion on paying bloggers to write Ads

As to this question, all three panelists disagreed. Let’s look at some facts first. Once there were some companies that closely interacted with many top bloggers and tried to use their blogs as a medium to promote clients’ products. The result was that no company was able to survive through this business model, which shows that this approach to promotion is not appreciated by the market. Ad agency, Blue, also claims that they wouldn’t promote this way. It takes some time for famous bloggers to build up their audience and gain their reputation. Insincere characters and opinions cannot survive or be spread in the virtual world of the Internet. Fake information is not accepted by most bloggers and as a result, it is not worthwhile to write phony articles for money. On the other hand, there are companies who pay bloggers to tell the truth. They ask the bloggers to share their real experience of using a product and express their true feelings to a product or a brand. That is different. Under that circumstance, the money represents respect, not a buy off.

I regret to say that most of Chinese netizens are lazy and are not content contributors.  We are far away from the ideal web 2.0 world, with each netizen as an independent knowledge disseminator. These people are easier to be led and used. They will thus become stepping stones for companies which pursue nothing but profit. Fortunately, I am witnessing Chinese netizens, especially bloggers, become increasingly mature and many networking techniques such as microblogs will bring us together and produce social intelligence, which will soon realize its value in the development of companies. The chance to take advantage of ignorance will disappear and this may catch many people off guard.

“Microblogging, flattening the world” (“微动力，广天地”)

Only those who understand the character of the microblog and its value can truly enjoy this Chinese phrase. It is a tendency for micro values to be gathered and become the energy supporting companies to grow. I would say more and more tech or applications will be innovated to empower social intelligence. BloggerInsight is one of them.

"This information is harmful, will be screened out!"

“The Green Dam Youth Escort (Green Dam) could lead to a large-scale disaster.”

Recently, there have been many similar negative comments regarding the Chinese government’s new policy that all the computers produced or imported after July 1st must have the web filtering software “Green Dam” installed. The Chinese government said that the Green Dam software was intended to protect youth from unhealthy and harmful material on the Internet. In order to allow users to use the software and its service free for a year, the Chinese government paid 41.70 million RMB to its developer, Jinhui Software.

The public is not reacting quietly to this. I have read many posts about it and would like to reflect on people’s comments with the following points.

Software with a series of flaws

The Green Dam was tested by many experts but I found it hard to find one single positive comment on its quality. One particular post from the Chinese blog 可能吧 (“ke neng ba”, roughly “probably/maybe”) titled “‘Green Dam Youth Protection’ Is A Joke” had a lot of details and screenshots, talking about how awful the experience was.

Just one point to highlight here:

Installation notice said that “This software can filter out harmful information on Internet, but cannot guarantee that all the harmful information will be filtered out, and cannot guarantee that shielded information is not harmful.” – It seems this software cannot do anything.

As a result, the software removes lots of content with “F-words” and pornography but also other content that is not even close to being “harmful”. The page looked incomplete, with lots of stuff on the site missing, such as user’s logo.

The Green Dam made anti-virus software go crazy, once uninstalled there was no longer an alarm.

The Green Dam eats up internet bandwidth, once uninstalled, the speed of opening websites increased.

There is the need to reformat and reset a PC after uninstalling Green Dam.

Hacking risk

Due to a series of software flaws and the fact it will be widely installed on a massive number of PCs, this could allow hackers to steal users’ private information without a way to stop it. Isaac Mao, a blogger and researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center,  and many other experts talked to BBC News here: China’s computers at hacking risk

Internet control

This youth software is not only designed to control youth but also all people who use a PC with it installed… No wonder people have been saying that the government is just trying to use a “good excuse” to control the internet, to avoid information spreading that they don’t want to people to know about. Green Dam is another GFW. Another software expert proved that users could not tell what kinds of information were removed.  Therefore, Government has no right to decide what information were harmful, what information cannot be known by Chinese neitzens.

• “绿坝”过滤了什么？
• “绿坝”，看上去有点“霸”
• 强令安装绿坝软件是否违宪

A waste of tax money

Surprisingly, a software program designed to deal with a social problem brought its developer, Jinghui Software, a huge profit. The government purchased this software for over 40 million RMB to make the first year of service free to users. After a year, how much will consumers have to pay for this service? Many people believe it could be a billion RMB business.  Imagine a software installed on millions of PCs that controls what can and cannot be seen, is there any business model that cannot be developed based on this advantage? With the government’s strong support, this company could easily become the largest software company in China. Well, at a minimum, the company doesn’t need to do marketing themselves. The developer denied it has a special relationship with the Chinese government but most people wouldn’t believe this to be the truth.

• “绿坝”上网过滤软件生产商否认有官方背景
• 今天你绿坝了没有？

Computer producers say yes or no to this government policy

There were over 52 million PC that have already installed Green Dam. I would suppose that all the Chinese producers have already received notice from government: Fouder did, Dell did. I guess they just have to say yes to the policy even if they don’t want to in order to keep their businesses running. For foreign producers, the choice is to give up the Chinese market or allow the software installed to their products.

• “绿坝”争议不止，各PC厂商反应不一
• 下乡电脑试水装“绿坝” 部分厂商提前行动

Methods have been developed to cheat this software

We cannot stop the government’s policy, but can we do something else to protect our rights? Don’t underestimate Chinese talent and determination. Solidot published a method of hacking this “Green” filtering system (Chinese), which was found by a pupil. By replacing the kwpwf.dll file with D0970714757783E6CF17B26FB8E2298F, all the passwords automatically change to 112233. No more “unhealthy” websites would be reported to parents.

Currently a search for “hacking green dam” (绿坝破解) on Google has 108,000 results, Baidu has 348,000 results.

Chinese netizens as children

Are Chinese neitzens all children in need of parenting from the government? People hate Green Dam, even before the software has taken effect. I was overwhelmed by this relaction when reading these posts. For this reason, I would not be surprised if there was breaking news saying that the Green Dam was being uninstalled from millions of PCs starting on day one.

Keso’s June 2nd post

We will remember today, because many good international websites, such as Bing.com, Live.com, Twitter.com and Flickr.com, became inaccessible thanks to the GFW. The Internet of China became the largest LAN.

The GFW is a black box. No one knows where the order came from, what were the reasons, who would be the next, or how to get out from this black box.

Within one to two hours, the phrase “fuckGFW” ranked second as the top topic on Twitter. Chinese netizens extremely hate to be locked up by the GFW, which was built with our own hard cash. Please keep in mind, we are very angry.

We might not yet have the power to break down this wall, but we are vengeful, June 2nd, 2009, a day so dark that it took my breath away. Fuck the GFW!

Laobai’s June 4th post

I wanted to say something but felt my heart was empty, hard to find words.

What happened twenty years ago is reflecting clearly in my mind like seeing a film right now.

A year ago, a journalist from “Shenghuo” magazine interviewed me about my personal experiences of the Chinese restructure. I was at a one-way street in the Old Summer Palace and talked for at least two hours. Although I do not know what happened after, I at least vented a whole lot.

But today, I do not even have the opportunity to vent, or I do not have the guts.  20 years ago, my mother said, the gunshots sound as if they are shooting up at the buildings. 20 years later, aside from the stray cat downstairs, I hear nothing.

Tonight no one can (talk) but “sleep”.

Herock’s June 4th post

Digitalboy

I heard that he was “invited” to the police station more than once to explain himself because of this T-shirt (see right).

Ranyunfei’s June 4th post

Everyday is June 4th.

During the past twenty years, the society has been developed, economically, that I cannot deny. However, the disaster continuous to today, and if we cannot directly face the real situation of human rights, then the real problem of 6.4 hasn’t been solved yet, and people still have to suffer.

I believe there were many more posts published on June 4th or over the past few days that spoke of freedom of speech, human rights, the GFW, etc.  I collected these post NOT to tell you what is wrong with the Chinese governments, but because I wanted to show you how Chinese bloggers reacted to the situation, we (the Chinese people) never stop fighting. We do not just fight on June 4th.

I want to see China get better.

Yesterday’s evening news reported that over 50% of international travel bookings were delayed or canceled due to the fear of H1N1. The Chinese tourism industry is now faced with another blow after the global financial crisis.

Because of the global economic downturn, the number of international tourists visiting China have declined  dramatically, with long distance visitors from  Europe and the US more reluctant to travel to China than those from Russia and neighboring Asian countries. International tourists are more price sensitive,  requiring more bang for their buck.

At the same time, the domestic travel market is still hot, with three-day “long  weekends” and the seven-day “October Holiday” and “New Year Holiday”  still being peak travel periods as people make the most of their time off. Clearly the market is shifting to the domestic market, and travel service  companies are beefing up their marketing campaigns aimed at local tourists as  evidenced by the increasing prevalence on travel ads on the streets and web.

There have been lots of optimistic media coverage and official  statements from the government saying that the Chinese travel industry will be  growing 10.4% annually over the next ten years, with personal and business  (government) growing at rates of 9.8% and 10.9%, respective, until 2020.  Domestic travel turnover increased 12.6% in 2008 and would increase similar rate in 2009.

What are they so optimistic about?

I certainly hope these growth rates become accurate. For now, I only can talk  about what I have seen behind the growth of the Chinese travel industry.

Many of my friends and I have not changed our travel plans; perhaps because we  choose to visit nearby destinations around Shanghai. Most people I’ve spoken with also did not feel a need to cut back on their traveling budget. Generally speaking，travel expenses can be reasonably managed.  For example, I went on a daytrip to Suzhou (four people in a car) for about 300RMB in total; A weekend in Huangzhou came out to 900RMB, which included hotel rooms and great meals.  Compared to a bottle of Lancome lotion (500RMB) and an ONLY top (300RMB), I’d much rather spend that money traveling. If I had to skimp on clothing and cosmetics  in order to travel, I totally would. Many people would agree with me.

Thanks to media coverage and China’s super events, such as the 2008 Olympics and 2010 World Expo, Chinese people have been educated to believe in China’s future and confident in spending their money.

When exchange rates dropped on US dollars and British pounds, there was clearly an  increase in international travel. The package price for a ten-day European tour dropped under 10,000RMB per person from Oct, 2008. More and more Chinese  people are taking advantage of the more favorable exchange rates. I have friends who have recently returned from enjoying their holidays all over Europe for a fraction of what it would’ve cost a few months ago.

Another interesting development is tourism-dependent cities all across China heavily investing in infrastructure, accommodations and service. In  Guangzhou and Sichuan, for example, government investment on travel-related  projects have increased dramatically.  Shanghai ’s 14 subway lines will be completed by 2010. Two subway lines are being  joined under my apartment and there’s lots of construction going on.

Travel agents in China have to adapt to the new business environment. Travel  service providers are now more innovative, coming up with more inventive  packages to entice domestic travelers. For example, the 2009 Flowering Spring Tour was a huge success. The Chinese have a tradition of Taqing, which is a short distance break from the big city to see the green of Spring with family and friends.  The Flowering Tour marketed tours in nearby destinations famous for different followers, giving more choices to this traditional break. These packages  tend to be lower-budget, short distance deals that bring smaller profits. In the current business climate, even large travel websites like Ctrip that don’t normally offer these kinds of packages are getting involved.

I’m also seeing capital injections into the travel industry. Co-founder of tuniu.com, a travel booking site that allows customers to custom-tailor their own trips, told me that they secured their first round of funding  from Gobi Partners. I was very happy for him.

A newly launched application piqued my interest recently. “Du Jia La“, which  means ” taking  a holiday” provides prospective travelers with real picture mapping  technology that allows them to look around and explore the travel  destination online.  The website is created by a tech group that developed real videoed photograph of Tokyo for Google Japan.

Dujiala-reality map

Click here to “visit” the Mountain of Tianmu in Hanghzou.

As diversity leads to prosperity,  I expect to see more and more improvements coming out from the Chinese travel industry.