“Why Twitter & Facebook Should Forget About China” On Sept 15th!

CN Reviews is partnering with Wharton School’s Supernova Group to host a conference call on Sept 15 (U.S.) / Sept 16 (China, Korea) about social networks and emerging trends in China’s consumer internet.  Kaiser Kuo, Benjamin Joffe, and other leading China-based consumer internet executives will share about a vibrant, social, and rapidly evolving consumer internet that most Westerners don’t hear that much about.  They will also share some of the barriers to success that Western companies will face.  The call is provocatively called “Why Twitter & Facebook Should Forget About China” and was inspired by a recent Mobinode post with a similar title by tech blogger Gang Lu.

Professor Kevin Werbach’s Supernova Conference is one of my favorite conferences of the year, because it brings together a diverse group of people together–public policy makers, computer scientists, social scientists, economists, entrepreneurs, and participants from leading technology companies–to do some out of the box thinking about what Werbach calls “The Network Age.“  In addition to the Conference, Werbach hosts a series of conference calls about various “Network Age” topics.  I suggested to Kevin that we do a call on China’s internet, and he agreed to host it and let me moderate it.

What we will cover:

Most Western coverage of the Internet focuses on the narrative of censorship and control, but misses the vibrant social nature of what is now the largest internet market of the world.  In the West, the internet started in business/academia/government, fulfilling mostly functional & utilitarian needs.  But in China, the internet started as a consumer phenomenon, focused on entertainment and communications.  Also, like most of the developing world, China’s internet has developed hand-in-hand with the growth of mobile, Internet-connected devices – about 25% of total internet users access the internet NOT on a PC but via a mobile device.  Some potential questions we’ll cover:

• Tencent – how this Chinese internet company achieved a dominant, $1 billion revenue position and at HKD $207 Billion (about USD $26 Billion) now exceeds Yahoo!’s market capitalization of $20 Billion.
• QQ as an example of a mobile, social application – different from the West.
• Virtual goods, casual gaming, and the nature of social exchange on QQ and other social networks.
• The upstarts and the copycats – RenRen (Xiaonei), Kaixin001, and the rest.  Casual gaming and what is powering the growth.
• Opportunities in mobile applications – China Mobile’s mobile application ecosystem.
• The growth of video – Youku, Tudou, 56.com, and segmentation of the video market in China.
• Why Facebook and Twitter should forget about China

When is the call?

• The call is on Sept 15, 2009 at 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time US / 7:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time US.
• In China, the call is on Sept 16, 2009 at 7:00 am Beijing time / in Korea, 8:00 am Seoul time.

How do I access the call via web or phone?

• Call in Number – +1-347-945-6578
• Web and Chat - http://tobtr.com/s/662500
• More information here.

Who is on the call?

• Kaiser Kuo – (Twitter: @kaiserkuo)-Kaiser Kuo is an American-born writer, rock musician, technology watcher and cultural commentator. In 2007, he joined the leading advertising agency Ogilvy as their director of digital strategy for China, but left in early 2009 to devote more time to writing and to his advisory work for several Chinese Internet startups, including consulting work for China’s leading Internet video site, Youku.com. He currently also serves as digital strategy director, Team Nokia, for ad agency Wunderman. Previously, he served as China bureau chief for the Silicon Valley-based magazine Red Herring, and worked as a freelance technology and business writer for such publications as Time, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and TelecomAsia. He has worked extensively in China-based Web and mobile startups. He is a frequent guest on CCTV-9 program Dialogue, where he has debated issues ranging from Internet vigilantism to Feng-shui. Kaiser has been the anchor columnist for the popular English-language magazine that’s Beijing and its successor, The Beijinger, for almost eight years, contributing the monthly satire column called “Ich Bin Ein Beijinger.” An anthology of 61 of his columns was published in a volume of the same title in June, 2009. Kaiser is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and holds an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona. He was co-founder and lead guitarist of one of China’s most successful rock bands, Tang Dynasty, and continues to be active in Beijing’s rock scene as lead guitarist of Chunqiu. He lives in Beijing with his wife and two young children. Kaiser is currently working on a new book on people-to-people relations between China and the United States in the Internet age.
• Benjamin Joffe (Twitter: @benjaminjoffe @plus8star; Plus8Star) – Benjamin Joffe founded the digital strategy company +8* (www.plus8star.com) after being part during the past 9 years of Japan’s mobile revolution, Korea’s Internet boom as well as China’s mobile crash and web 2.0 revival. +8* works with large companies (Adidas, Microsoft, Nokia), investors (MIH, leading investor in Tencent) and startups (IMVU, Baihe.com) to bring them proven and innovative service concepts and business models from advanced Asian markets.  Benjamin is a regular keynote at industry events (Ad:Tech, GSP East, Asia Venture Capital Forum, eComm, etc.), he was selected among China’s Top 100 Mobile Industry Influencers in 2007 and 2008 and co-founded Mobile Monday in Beijing, the leading mobile industry forum in China with over 3,000 members.
• TBD - I’ll be updating this post with another participant who is an operating executive in a leading social media company in China
• George Godula (Twitter: @web2asia)- George Godula, Shanghai resident for 4 years, is co-founder of Web2Asia– a full-service market entry partner for Western Internet companies in China, Japan and Korea. The company additionally incubates and invest in local start-ups in the region. George is also the Managing Director of the international direct marketing agency MH | direkt’s Asian subsidiary.   George is an active member of the Asian web scene and co-founder & organizer of several established events and conferences such as of the pan-Asian web conference Open Web Asia. He also runs the monthly Shanghai Lunch 2.0  and together with partners CBN and CNReviews organized the China 2.0 Bloggertour in 2008 that for the first time introduced leading international bloggers and journalists such as Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Techcrunch, Mashable, The Next Web and CNet Asia to Chinas biggest Internet companies and hottest start ups. Recently George and Web2Asia started working with FoundersFund to organize the Geeks on a Plane East Asia tour (http://www.geeksonaplane.com), which took Silicon Valley investors & entrepreneurs through the tech sectors of Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. George frequently speaks at conferences about Web 2.0 in Asia and publishes in online blogs such as Techcrunch or VentureBeat.
  George holds a Master’s Degree in International Business Administration, Marketing and Economics from Innsbruck University/Austria and Handelshögskolan in Göteborg/Sweden. He is an Austrian national and speaks German, English, French, Swedish, Spanish and basic Mandarin.
• Elliott Ng, moderator – (Twitter: @elliottng) – Elliott Ng is a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur and occasional angel investor/advisor to Chinese internet startups.  Companies Elliott has co-founded have created value for venture investors via acquisitions and one NASDAQ IPO, valued at $400 million.  He is currently co-founder of UpTake, a new travel search engine, and founder/blogger of CNReviews, a blog about China’s business, technology, and what’s interesting about China.
• Kevin Werbach, host, Wharton School’s Supernova Group – (Twitter: @kwerb @supernovahub) – Werbach is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder of the Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm. He advises companies, writes about emerging trends in communications and information technology, and organizes Supernova, a major executive technology conference. He co-led the review of the Federal Communications Commission for the Obama-Biden Transition Project.  Werbach is a fellow of the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) in Japan, a director of the TPRC Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy, a member of the International Editorial Board of I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, and an advisor to Socialtext, Knowledge@Wharton, and Public Knowledge.

I’ve always been impressed by the caliber of the participants on Kevin’s calls and his events.  If you are in China and can get up early, please join us.  If you are in the US, I encourage you to join the call!