INFORMATION DESIGN AND DATA VISUALISATION

Hat Tip to Uba Kontrovasie

THE DEFAULT OBJECTIVE OF AWARENESS NEEDS FRESH THINKING

Awareness fallacy

View more presentations from Mark Lester.

If you've received one brief too many, that says the objective is awareness, then this presentation is for you.

Great presentation by Mark Lester

SOCIAL NETWORKS IN ASIA PACIFIC

After my visit to China, I visited Singapore and met people from around the region. This included digital marketers from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Australia, and Indonesia.

As part of my presentation on social networks I looked at the history of networks in the region, and discovered that Friendster was until very recently the dominant platform in the region. It was pretty close to being unrivaled. Only in India, where Orkut was dominant was Friendster out of the picture. Now - just a few years later - Friendster is pretty much dead, and there is flight away from Orkut in India.

Facebook is now the dominant and leading platform right across Asia Pacific. According to Comscore Facebook is number one in pretty much all markets except for Japan (MIXI.JP rules there), South Korea (CyWorld rules there), India (where it is still slightly behind Orkut) and Taiwan (Wretch runs the show there).

There are still points of resistance against the Facebook juggernaut, namely: Hi5 seems to be holding out amongst the young in Thailand; and an interesting little microblog called Plurk seems to be growing rapidly. Its Alexa data shows its growing globally, but it seems to be have been particularly embraced by those in Asia Pacific.

I learnt a few things and reconfirmed a few things I knew already:

• Dominance in social networks is ephemeral. If you do not reinvent yourself and keep connected to your audience your days are numbered - ask MySpace
• Losing your audience is like a 'run on a bank' - once it starts it turns into a frenzy. A network with a large audience can disappear overnight
  
• Social networks are social-cultural mirrors - they reflect local culture and local relationships. Hi5, sticking it out, in Thailand's youth culture is an example
• Social networks exhibit network economics. Everybody moves towards the standard. Facebook has become the standard, and standing up against it requires great luck or great skill. Look at Microsoft in operating systems, and Google in search. This is 'winner takes all economics'.
  
• Although Facebook is dominant, the content, people, and conversations are all very different from those in other continents - in the same way that their local magazines cover different subjects, with different celebrities, and different passion points.

What was perhaps more fascinating was how through my blog I was able to tap into the knowledge of two fine digital minds to get better insight on the region as I traveled. Which further demonstrated how social networks make the world a smaller, smarter place. Hat tip to Dhiren and Charles Frith.

By the way, the building pictured above is the new Marina Bay Hotel in Singapore, which is completely out of this world to see.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN MADISON AVENUE AND SILICON VALLEY

Bridging the gap: Madison Ave vs. Silicon Valley

View more presentations from John Keehler.

A great deck on Bridging the gap: Madison Ave vs. Silicon Valley by John Keehler

SOCIAL NETWORKS IN CHINA

I've just come from Beijing where I was talking about social networks, only to discover that the Chinese are in many respects ahead of the rest of the us.

1. Size of their social networks

QZone the largest social network in China has over 567M registered accounts.Larger than Facebook, which has almost 500m but is spread out across the world.

Other notable networks are Renren - targeting young people (last estimates put users at just around 50m), and Kaixien - a professional network (around 30M). Most of my colleagues in China were on these two networks.

51.com is another one - which they hadn't heard of - but is reported to be the second largest and used by people who live in "lower tier cities" and rural areas.

International giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are banned and are consequently missing out on the hundreds of millions of Chinese online users.

2. The world's most lucrative social network

Qzone is owned by Tencent, inc which has revenues that are larger than Facebooks. Tencent hails from Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Founded in 1998, it had revenues of $1.8 billion in 2009. Although best known for QZone, its real innovation is its revenue model. Much of its profits come from online games and a virtual currency, called Q coins. Users purchase this with real money and use it to buy digital wares, such as virtual weapons to increase the powers of their avatars. Virtual goods and other “Internet valued-added services,” like avatars, dating services, online memberships, music and community sites are smart and lucrative revenue streams.

Social games, like Farmville, can trace their roots back to China. This is an interesting example of how the direction of innovation has started to change.

The one key thing that sets them back is the absence of open conversation. State control means that open community based conversation is out. The government appears petrified of open conversation, and the power of social media. Remember Iran, and how the protesters used Twitter and YouTube to fight state owned media control.

There is, however, a side of this argument that brands in the West can learn from. Brands see social media as open conversation, and are fearful of it - when actually social media has many components that are open to differing degrees. It shows that brands can use “Internet valued-added services,”, and tools as first steps and even alternatives to the cliche of open conversations - they are still social, and still very much on social platforms. Social media is broader than talking to a community manager on Facebook or Twitter.