Anytime and anywhere

Internet is now a MUST to most human beings. Emails, instance messaging, social networking…..etc, people are looking for more possible ways to simplify the life. Connect to internet on everywhere is so important. We can get most of information that we want from Internet. We will surf by our phone when we are waiting for bus, travelling on vehicles or killing times in café.

For people easier browsing, websites are providing mobile versions. It contains more text than graphics for faster access. Like the local information website Openrice. It contains Hong Kong’s restaurants information such as address, opening hours, contact numbers and the most important thing – comments from customers. Most of the Hong Kong people now will take Openrice as an index for restaurants’ quality. People are welcome to comment on any restaurants.

Openrice developed a mobile version after they learnt how influential the mobile network is. People can now search for the right restaurants on street anywhere, anytime. That’s why Openrice is now the No.1 restaurant index websites in Hong Kong!

It's Facebook's turn!

Facebook, definitely is the most popular social networking platform at the moment. People can make friends with everyone or to join any interest groups on Facebook. You can get the most updated news about your friends or your interested page/groups. The biggest different between Facebook and WeiBo is that you can interact with others not only by words, but also by joining events, playing games and commenting on others.

Brands usually create a “Page” for people to subscribe. Once you clicked “like” to the “Page”, you will be on their mailing list to receive their promotion message. To compare with eDM, people have no choices to stop receiving the messages from the Page unless they clicked “unlike”. Marketing of the brands can easily distribute the marketing messages (or any update information in graphics or photos or external links) to fans and customers.

Please take Burger King (HK) as a reference. She launched a campaign on Facebook by requiring fans number to hit the target and will reward by discounting their food price. Fans number jumps from 2,000 to 4,000 within 1 week and keep increasing to 5,000 after the campaign.






Here comes the other example from Hollywood. The movie series, Twilight attracted more than 7 million fans to join their page since launching. By posting news of the movies and the artists, fans are happy to keep updated with the news.






Facebook provides around 70 different languages versions, which is one of the most important elements to develop and to be popular.

Twitter?WeiBo?

To continue with last entry, some people may ask “Why don’t you put Twitter on list?”. Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Twitter enables people to communicate on internet by words. You can consider it as “Micro-Blog”, which is a blogging service allow people to write a statement within 140 characters.

Twitter is popular among the world but one new networking service is taking her place among Chinese society, WeiBo. This micro-blogging service is provided by Sina China which doesn’t provide the English version (Of course it allows English words in the blog).

The reason of WeiBo’s being popular mainly due to the high register rate of Asia’s artist (China, HK &Taiwan). Once the fans subscribe to the artists’ WeiBo, they can receive and update with the artists’ status and words at once. Hundreds of artists are using WeiBo and it is one of the best channels to communicate fans with artists and also – the brands mentioned by the artists.

If you are an in-house marketing of a brand, I won’t suggest you to register a WeiBo account. But, to sponsor artist/celebrities and be exposed on their WeiBo!


Famous Artist Tony Leung is also blogging on WeiBo


Famous female artist Fala Chen helped promoting the sponsor’s brand on her WeiBo

Let get start with ABC about social networking platforms

Someone said online media platform will finally take the place of traditional print media, like newspapers and weekly magazines, etc. Of course, someone said no to the statement. No matters what the future will be, no one can deny the quick development of online media and how the netizen1 are enthusiast to internet.

I’m going to talk about some social networking platforms which are very popular in Hong Kong and Asia in the following entries. Here are the links to some of the popular social networking websites among Hong Kong market:

Facebook: www.facebook.com
Openrice: www.openrice.com
Yahoo Blog: hk.blog.yahoo.com
Xanga: www.xanga.com
Blogger/Blogspot: www.blogger.com
Mini Blog(China): t.sina.com.cn


Note:
1. Netizen: A term representing people who actively involved in online communities.

Useful Link:
Explaination of "Social Networking" on Wikipedia