I have heard about the magic of Google AdWords for many years. However, I did not believe that AdWords can actually generate any revenue for me. I thought it was designed for those big companies with very large sales.
Today, Andrew Rowland introduced AdWords to us and shown us the back stage of a AdWords that he created for a website. I was attracted and decided to give it a shot.
The AdWords will appear on Google soon! Let's expect how Google can connect us with our potential customers!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
*Help!!* How do you make a decision of buying a sofa?
*Help!!*
How do you make a decision of buying a sofa?
Where do you start? What are your specific needs? What tools do you use to find potential suppliers? How do you evaluate their quality and ability to meet your needs? What influenced your decision? Which stores or websites do you check out??
Thanks!!! :)
How do you make a decision of buying a sofa?
Where do you start? What are your specific needs? What tools do you use to find potential suppliers? How do you evaluate their quality and ability to meet your needs? What influenced your decision? Which stores or websites do you check out??
Thanks!!! :)
Friday, March 18, 2011
What Makes China's Top 4 Social Networks Tick?
What Makes China's Top 4 Social Networks Tick?
Kai Lukoff is co-founder of TechRice, a China tech blog. Follow Kai on Twitter or Sina Weibo.
Mark Zuckerberg may have come to China, but Facebook is unlikely to enter anytime soon. Neither Facebook nor the Chinese government are interested in a messy compromise on freedom of expression (all Chinese networks are censored), especially after the Facebook-fueled revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
Instead, China’s social media scene is different from anywhere else: Four homegrown networks are vying for the mass market. Renren, a faithful copy of Facebook, is China’s leader and is planning for an IPO soon. In addition to its nickname-based network (Qzone), internet giant Tencent is at long last awakening to real-name social with its new network, Pengyou. Finally, Kaixin001 is dying, stuck between the decline of its social games and rise of Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter).
In addition to the top four, China also has a “long tail” of social networks that are more specialized — just for children, gamers or lovers. Here, we take a deeper look at those top four networks and what makes them tick.
Renren: The Leader
Renren is like a miniature Facebook with a mean streak and a quest for monetization. One year ago, Renren was concerned that Kaixin001 might overtake it. Kaixin001 attracted a white collar audience before Renren had fully expanded out from its on-campus origins (like Facebook, Renren started at its nation’s elite universities). But Renren has since left the slower Kaixin001 in the dust and is now China’s leader in real-name social networking (even though Tencent’s Qzone has far more users overall).
As one social network operator (who asked to remain anonymous) described it, “Renren is all about business. Kaixin001 has a tech founder [Cheng Binghao] who wants to do more than just copy.” Kaixin001 was reportedly offered the domain name Kaixin.com for 500,000 yuan (about $75,000), but the Binghao passed. The consummate businessman Chen Yizhou, chairman of Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI is Renren’s umbrella group), jumped at the opportunity. OPI set up an exact clone of Kaixin001 at Kaixin.com. That cutthroat tactic was a masterstroke.
Anything Facebook releases, Renren immediately copies: Connect, Like, Places, Groups, etc. To be fair, a few features are localized: brand advertising, a game layer and emoticons.
Renren is strong when it comes to monetization. Brand campaigns are sold to companies at high prices. Fan pages, while free on Facebook, start at 600,000 yuan (about $90,000). That said, Renren’s fan pages are like mini-sites, such as the example from Nike above. Targeting is used only sparingly and the “long tail” of small, local advertisers has yet to arrive in China.
The umbrella group, Oak Pacific Interactive, is building an empire on top of Renren. Renren users are channeled toward Oak Pacific Games (gaming is the traditional cash cow for China’s Internet) and now Nuomi, one of China’s top Groupon clones. OPI is far more aggressive than Facebook in terms of monetization.
Renren has the most open third-party ecosystem of any social network, but unlike Facebook, it has been unable to effectively monetize social games. One of its competitors is now opening up to third-party developers. That could be a point of weakness for Renren.
User experience cannot suffer too badly during Renren’s aggressive monetization and IPO focus in 2011. Renren’s social graph is strong and it executes faster and better than any of its competitors, but it’s still nowhere near as dominant as Facebook is in the West.
Tencent: The Sleeping Giant Awakens with Pengyou
Tencent should own real-name social networking in China, but has instead been sleeping on the opportunity until now. Tencent has similarities to AOL, circa 1998. Its walled garden is the Internet for many Chinese, particularly in second- and third-tier cities. QQ, its dominant instant messenger, claims 637 million active accounts, a flood of users that it can direct at any service or content it cares to. Moreover, Tencent monetizes much better than AOL was ever able to via games and virtual goods.
But Tencent struggles among sophisticated netizens (though most still use QQ Messenger) and is playing catch-up in real-name social. Tencent’s most popular social network, Qzone, claims 492 million active users. It’s unclear just how active those users are though; many profiles are simply skeletons. And just like on QQ, many users go by a nickname rather a real name. Users are younger and from comparatively more rural areas of China, making it less attractive to advertisers.
Benjamin Joffe, Tencent expert and CEO of Internet market research firm +8*, states, ”Tencent is definitely not the best in terms of products or innovation — similar to Zynga in that sense — but their ability to deliver a ‘good enough’ mass market service and integrating it within their ecosystem is impressive.”
On January 6, 2011, Xiaoyou’s users were just merged into a new social network, Pengyou (friends), which is finally Tencent’s attempt to reach the entire population of Chinese social networkers.
With Pengyou, Tencent is pushing into real-name social and taking a step toward becoming a more open and mature firm. The network has an open platform with about 90 applications and games – a step forward for the notoriously closed Tencent.
But ”open” still has limits in China. “The problem with the Chinese market is that the social networks are game developers themselves. There is a conflict of interest. If your games are popular, they’re not only not helping you but even put pressure to squeeze you out,” says Liu Yong, the CEO of social games firm Rekoo. Rekoo is based in Beijing, but focuses on the Japanese market.
But Tencent can use QQ Messenger to direct near limitless traffic to its own offerings. On the downside, it’s difficult to persuade China’s sophisticated netizens to “trade down” for a service with a less urbane user base. That’s the reason why Pengyou is Tencent’s first major product that is not branded with the cute and youth-friendly QQ penguin.
The sleeping giant is awakening from its slumber, though it still has a long way to go in real-name social. 2011 should be a decisive year in the Pengyou (friends) vs. Renren (everyone) showdown.
Kaixin001: In Troubled Waters
In 2008 and 2009, Kaixin001 gained a widespread following among white collar office workers in top tier cities and threatened to become China’s leading real-name social network. But it’s now in trouble.
Kaixin001′s meteoric ascent was fueled by two factors: 1) social games, and 2) a content forwarding feature, where users share the hottest news, jokes or celebrity gossip, with comments attached.
These two attractions have since lost appeal. Social games have dropped in popularity, and post forwarding — quick updates on the hottest news — is now provided in a purer form by Sina Weibo, China’s popular micro-blogging service. The other opportunity they missed is group buying. Kaixin001 had a huge amount of white collar users, which is the perfect match for a group buying service.
Because Kaixin001 is still popular in tier one cities like Shanghai and Beijing, foreigners in China often have a warped perception of the network’s nationwide popularity. In reality, Kaixin001 does not have much traction elsewhere, nor does it have the funds or network — like Tencent (Pengyou) and Oak Pacific Interactive (Renren) — to push into China’s “lesser-tier” cities.
All the tech insiders I’ve spoken with tell of a site in decline. One post on Zhihu (China’s Quora clone) estimates that Kaixin001′s acquisition value has fallen from 500 million to 50 million ($75 million to $7.5 million). Kaixin001′s Binghao has expressed his ambition to join the rush of China tech IPOs, but that seems highly unlikely.
These setbacks will test the true strength of Kaixin001′s social graph. But not all news is bad. The network does still command a large, high-value audience, and it has strong ties to the Sina Corporation, so being acquired is a possibility (Sina holds a stake in Kaixin001 and Binghao is a former Sina CTO).
Sina Weibo: China’s Red-Hot Microblogging Service
Sina Weibo is a microblog that far surpasses Twitter in functionality (threaded comments, groups, audio messages and direct video uploads). And it is hot in China right now. Sina Weibo has more than 100 million registered users, expects to keep growing rapidly, and perhaps even exceeds Twitter in active users. This explosive growth has brought the value of the network up to an estimated $2 billion.
Yu Jin, analyst at China International Capital Corporation, writes: “Microblog services became popular at the end of 2009 as [they] match the needs of Chinese Internet users. They have acquired users at an astonishing speed, to some extent at the expense of SNS websites.”
Sina, also the owner of China’s largest portal site, has lofty ambitions for Weibo that could compete with traditional social networks. It’s constantly experimenting with new features and already seems to have stolen away much of Kainxin001′s audience. You don’t understand China social if you don’t understand Sina Weibo.
The Next Tier of Networks
In China, the difference among the “top four” social networks and the next tier is not as vast as the gulf in the U.S. between Facebook and “the rest.” Notably, 51.com and Douban are two mid-sized networks that are neither mass-market nor niche.
51.com started strong with backing from Sequoia and Giant Interactive and an audience of users in rural areas but now has no chance of conquering the mass market. Social networks often operate on an elite spread basis: You can move down the “social ladder” but not up. It’s no accident that Facebook started at Harvard and Renren started at China’s elite Tsinghua University. Although 51.com has dropped off from the top ranks since last year, it still claims to have 40 million monthly active users. But Chinese tech news site DoNews reports that its peak user base is down from 11 million to 700,000, a big flameout for a site that once had intentions for an IPO.
Douban, an urban network built around fan groups for books, music and movies, has 20 million active users. Douban has a highly engaged and participatory user base, making it worth watching.
In addition, there are countless additional Chinese social networks for dating, business, and any other community you can imagine.
Despite government regulations that make the Internet an “invisible birdcage,” Chinese social networks have just enough space to fly. The social media space is diverse and thriving, with Renren, Qzone, Pengyou and Kaixin001 leading the pack. Just don’t attempt to directly port your “global” Facebook strategy here.
Kai Lukoff is co-founder of TechRice, a China tech blog. Follow Kai on Twitter or Sina Weibo.
Mark Zuckerberg may have come to China, but Facebook is unlikely to enter anytime soon. Neither Facebook nor the Chinese government are interested in a messy compromise on freedom of expression (all Chinese networks are censored), especially after the Facebook-fueled revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
Instead, China’s social media scene is different from anywhere else: Four homegrown networks are vying for the mass market. Renren, a faithful copy of Facebook, is China’s leader and is planning for an IPO soon. In addition to its nickname-based network (Qzone), internet giant Tencent is at long last awakening to real-name social with its new network, Pengyou. Finally, Kaixin001 is dying, stuck between the decline of its social games and rise of Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter).
In addition to the top four, China also has a “long tail” of social networks that are more specialized — just for children, gamers or lovers. Here, we take a deeper look at those top four networks and what makes them tick.
Renren: The Leader
Renren is like a miniature Facebook with a mean streak and a quest for monetization. One year ago, Renren was concerned that Kaixin001 might overtake it. Kaixin001 attracted a white collar audience before Renren had fully expanded out from its on-campus origins (like Facebook, Renren started at its nation’s elite universities). But Renren has since left the slower Kaixin001 in the dust and is now China’s leader in real-name social networking (even though Tencent’s Qzone has far more users overall).
As one social network operator (who asked to remain anonymous) described it, “Renren is all about business. Kaixin001 has a tech founder [Cheng Binghao] who wants to do more than just copy.” Kaixin001 was reportedly offered the domain name Kaixin.com for 500,000 yuan (about $75,000), but the Binghao passed. The consummate businessman Chen Yizhou, chairman of Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI is Renren’s umbrella group), jumped at the opportunity. OPI set up an exact clone of Kaixin001 at Kaixin.com. That cutthroat tactic was a masterstroke.
Anything Facebook releases, Renren immediately copies: Connect, Like, Places, Groups, etc. To be fair, a few features are localized: brand advertising, a game layer and emoticons.
Renren is strong when it comes to monetization. Brand campaigns are sold to companies at high prices. Fan pages, while free on Facebook, start at 600,000 yuan (about $90,000). That said, Renren’s fan pages are like mini-sites, such as the example from Nike above. Targeting is used only sparingly and the “long tail” of small, local advertisers has yet to arrive in China.
The umbrella group, Oak Pacific Interactive, is building an empire on top of Renren. Renren users are channeled toward Oak Pacific Games (gaming is the traditional cash cow for China’s Internet) and now Nuomi, one of China’s top Groupon clones. OPI is far more aggressive than Facebook in terms of monetization.
Renren has the most open third-party ecosystem of any social network, but unlike Facebook, it has been unable to effectively monetize social games. One of its competitors is now opening up to third-party developers. That could be a point of weakness for Renren.
User experience cannot suffer too badly during Renren’s aggressive monetization and IPO focus in 2011. Renren’s social graph is strong and it executes faster and better than any of its competitors, but it’s still nowhere near as dominant as Facebook is in the West.
Tencent: The Sleeping Giant Awakens with Pengyou
Tencent should own real-name social networking in China, but has instead been sleeping on the opportunity until now. Tencent has similarities to AOL, circa 1998. Its walled garden is the Internet for many Chinese, particularly in second- and third-tier cities. QQ, its dominant instant messenger, claims 637 million active accounts, a flood of users that it can direct at any service or content it cares to. Moreover, Tencent monetizes much better than AOL was ever able to via games and virtual goods.
But Tencent struggles among sophisticated netizens (though most still use QQ Messenger) and is playing catch-up in real-name social. Tencent’s most popular social network, Qzone, claims 492 million active users. It’s unclear just how active those users are though; many profiles are simply skeletons. And just like on QQ, many users go by a nickname rather a real name. Users are younger and from comparatively more rural areas of China, making it less attractive to advertisers.
Benjamin Joffe, Tencent expert and CEO of Internet market research firm +8*, states, ”Tencent is definitely not the best in terms of products or innovation — similar to Zynga in that sense — but their ability to deliver a ‘good enough’ mass market service and integrating it within their ecosystem is impressive.”
On January 6, 2011, Xiaoyou’s users were just merged into a new social network, Pengyou (friends), which is finally Tencent’s attempt to reach the entire population of Chinese social networkers.
With Pengyou, Tencent is pushing into real-name social and taking a step toward becoming a more open and mature firm. The network has an open platform with about 90 applications and games – a step forward for the notoriously closed Tencent.
But ”open” still has limits in China. “The problem with the Chinese market is that the social networks are game developers themselves. There is a conflict of interest. If your games are popular, they’re not only not helping you but even put pressure to squeeze you out,” says Liu Yong, the CEO of social games firm Rekoo. Rekoo is based in Beijing, but focuses on the Japanese market.
But Tencent can use QQ Messenger to direct near limitless traffic to its own offerings. On the downside, it’s difficult to persuade China’s sophisticated netizens to “trade down” for a service with a less urbane user base. That’s the reason why Pengyou is Tencent’s first major product that is not branded with the cute and youth-friendly QQ penguin.
The sleeping giant is awakening from its slumber, though it still has a long way to go in real-name social. 2011 should be a decisive year in the Pengyou (friends) vs. Renren (everyone) showdown.
Kaixin001: In Troubled Waters
In 2008 and 2009, Kaixin001 gained a widespread following among white collar office workers in top tier cities and threatened to become China’s leading real-name social network. But it’s now in trouble.
Kaixin001′s meteoric ascent was fueled by two factors: 1) social games, and 2) a content forwarding feature, where users share the hottest news, jokes or celebrity gossip, with comments attached.
These two attractions have since lost appeal. Social games have dropped in popularity, and post forwarding — quick updates on the hottest news — is now provided in a purer form by Sina Weibo, China’s popular micro-blogging service. The other opportunity they missed is group buying. Kaixin001 had a huge amount of white collar users, which is the perfect match for a group buying service.
Because Kaixin001 is still popular in tier one cities like Shanghai and Beijing, foreigners in China often have a warped perception of the network’s nationwide popularity. In reality, Kaixin001 does not have much traction elsewhere, nor does it have the funds or network — like Tencent (Pengyou) and Oak Pacific Interactive (Renren) — to push into China’s “lesser-tier” cities.
All the tech insiders I’ve spoken with tell of a site in decline. One post on Zhihu (China’s Quora clone) estimates that Kaixin001′s acquisition value has fallen from 500 million to 50 million ($75 million to $7.5 million). Kaixin001′s Binghao has expressed his ambition to join the rush of China tech IPOs, but that seems highly unlikely.
These setbacks will test the true strength of Kaixin001′s social graph. But not all news is bad. The network does still command a large, high-value audience, and it has strong ties to the Sina Corporation, so being acquired is a possibility (Sina holds a stake in Kaixin001 and Binghao is a former Sina CTO).
Sina Weibo: China’s Red-Hot Microblogging Service
Sina Weibo is a microblog that far surpasses Twitter in functionality (threaded comments, groups, audio messages and direct video uploads). And it is hot in China right now. Sina Weibo has more than 100 million registered users, expects to keep growing rapidly, and perhaps even exceeds Twitter in active users. This explosive growth has brought the value of the network up to an estimated $2 billion.
Yu Jin, analyst at China International Capital Corporation, writes: “Microblog services became popular at the end of 2009 as [they] match the needs of Chinese Internet users. They have acquired users at an astonishing speed, to some extent at the expense of SNS websites.”
Sina, also the owner of China’s largest portal site, has lofty ambitions for Weibo that could compete with traditional social networks. It’s constantly experimenting with new features and already seems to have stolen away much of Kainxin001′s audience. You don’t understand China social if you don’t understand Sina Weibo.
The Next Tier of Networks
In China, the difference among the “top four” social networks and the next tier is not as vast as the gulf in the U.S. between Facebook and “the rest.” Notably, 51.com and Douban are two mid-sized networks that are neither mass-market nor niche.
51.com started strong with backing from Sequoia and Giant Interactive and an audience of users in rural areas but now has no chance of conquering the mass market. Social networks often operate on an elite spread basis: You can move down the “social ladder” but not up. It’s no accident that Facebook started at Harvard and Renren started at China’s elite Tsinghua University. Although 51.com has dropped off from the top ranks since last year, it still claims to have 40 million monthly active users. But Chinese tech news site DoNews reports that its peak user base is down from 11 million to 700,000, a big flameout for a site that once had intentions for an IPO.
Douban, an urban network built around fan groups for books, music and movies, has 20 million active users. Douban has a highly engaged and participatory user base, making it worth watching.
In addition, there are countless additional Chinese social networks for dating, business, and any other community you can imagine.
Despite government regulations that make the Internet an “invisible birdcage,” Chinese social networks have just enough space to fly. The social media space is diverse and thriving, with Renren, Qzone, Pengyou and Kaixin001 leading the pack. Just don’t attempt to directly port your “global” Facebook strategy here.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
CRM of Golder
Last month, a professor asked us what CRM is. Everybody knows something about it and we had a great discussion on it.(Although I kind of thought of Prof. Paul Berger saying that CRM is just like high school sex. Everybody talks about it. Everybody thinks everyone else is doing it, and those that are doing it are doing it poorly...XD)
The professor said that CRM (Customer Relationship Management)is all about creating values for customers. I couldn't agree more because I think the toughest part before starting a business is to think of something that's actually valuable or create some values that people never thought about. I guess for Golder, we do create unique values for our customers to keep them satisfied.
There are countless factories in China manufactures low-priced products. Why us? The following picture can help us to answer the question.It definitely addresses the importance of Value Differentiation.
Even though you may think that Golder is just one of the manufacturers in China. Yes, we offer low-priced products. However, these facors make us different:
- Great quality.
We have a 100% positive feedback on AliExpress. Till now, every single customer says our product quality is really great. Here's a quote from a customer's email yesterday:
Hi Nicole,
Received the package yesterday! Wanted to say you THANK YOU! Very nice product, so happy with it.
If I would like to order more, what is the best price will be with the same quality and shipping?
Thanks for excellent service and product.
- Innovation.
- Outstanding service.
We will keep our advantages and try to create more values for our customers!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)