I’m in Guangzhou, China getting ready to talk at Tencent Mind 2009 Forum . Tencent’s conference for its biggest advertisers in China. It’s a great honor to be talking with QZone‘s General Manager Peter Zheng about social networks trends in China and in the world at large. Of biggest interest to the 500 advertising executives invited to the conference is probably the return of investment for advertisers on social networks.
QZone – the Worlds biggest Online Social Network
Many people are not aware of that China hosts the biggest online social network in the world, namely QZone with than 200 million active users. Of whom around 50 million are concurrently chatting on it’s immensely popular IM service QQ.
While some social networks are struggling to find a sustainable business model beyond standard online advertising, Tencent clearly shows the way. There is a lot to learn here, and that is actually a point I am going to make. While many accuse Chinese Internet entrepreneur for taking the easy way out by “Copy-to-China” (C2C), the Chinese is actually leading the innovation on the Internet in terms of business models.
Virtual goods and micro-transactions are well established here and I think that there is a lot the Chinese can teach the rest of the world when it comes to monetizing the social Web. And with the advent of the iPhone OS 3.0 enabling micro-transactions on iPhone apps, I strongly believe that we are going to see an explosion of monetization opportunities for the social Web.
If you are an iPhone game developer or publisher. Check out OpenFeint! The mobile social gaming platform.
A year ago I was interviewed by Rebecca Fannin, international editor of the Hong Kong weekly Asian Venture Capital Journal and former International News Editor at Red Herring for her upcoming book: Silicon Dragon: How China Is Winning the Tech Race“.
The books message is that we shouldn’t be surprised if the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates will be coming form China.
Through an in-depth account of the new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs that is challenging the U.S. for global high-tech leadership, Rebecca is trying to take the reader behind the scenes to provide an up-to-the-minute account of a phenomenon that is just now breaking the surface in mainstream media and business press.
I was one of the entrepreneurs interviewed through my involvement in Maxthon as was Jeff Chen, Maxthon’s founder. Rebecca just let me know that the book will be hitting the shelfs anytime soon and you can pre-order it already from Amazon (see link above).
I have not yet read the book, but for anybody interested in how the Silicon Dragon is taking on the U.S for global high-tech leadership I think it will be very interesting reading.
Last year when I was visiting Hong Kong and met with the Simon Lee & the guys at Bullpoo, they complained that there where not enough web entrepreneurs in Hong Kong. And if there were, they were not aware of each other. I then suggested that the meet up with a few people I had been in contact with and start meeting informally for drinks once a month. Guess what? Today Simon tells me over Skype that the initiative I started have just resulted in the fourth Hong Kong Web Start up Meet up, and they were almost 200! Amazing!
EditGrid hosted the last meetup, Yahoo HK have started to show-up and Catharina Maracke from Creative Commons was there as well. I am really excited about the fact that it was started on my initiative and in one year has grown to such an extent. There is nothing more gratifying than being able to help and connect people with each other.
And of course, what event/group can be taken seriously if they don’t have their own Facebook group? Join HK Web 2.0 on Facebook here.
I for sure will come by next time I have an opportunity to join the meetup. Good luck – and thanks Simon for sharing the story.
Last week I attended the First Virtual Goods Summit at Stanford University, organized by CRV’s Susan Wu and Charles Hudson
and reported about it here. On the panel “Are virtual goods the next big business model?” I realized that I this really might be the case.
Accel’s, Kevin Efrussy who invested in Facebook, got a lot of question about Facebook’s introduction of virtual gifts. Kevin said that if he who is a pretty boring non-cool person with pictures of his kids on his profile got gifts that people have paid $ for – then imagine what people (read attractive girls) who are cool & in receives!
Susan Wu also reported that prior to the panel she got a virtual pizza thrown in here face by somebody she didn’t even knew. And this person paid for that. How weird is that? Although virtual goods is extremely popular in Asia and a huge revenue generator the uptake in the US and Europe has been very slow. Enter Facbook. Min Kim from Nexon, added that Facebooks introduction of virtual goods is paving the way for a general acceptance of virtual goods outside of China, and in particular in the US. Judging from the popularity of virtual goods on Facebook – he just might be right.
But why on earth are people buying bikini’s to their girlfriends avatar or virtual flowers that dies after two weeks?
According to Doppelganger‘s Tim Steven, its a real expression of affection, identity and emotion. People really feel just as proud wearing a pair of branded jeans in a virtual world as in real life walking across the school yard. It’s the expression of the same thing. Moderating the panel Susan Wu, clearly stated that she would invest in a company selling virtual goods on Facebook! We have just got used to all the applications being launched on Facebook by companies hoping to gain distribution like a Trojan horse, now be prepared for the same companies getting ready to sell virtual bikinis, pizzas and why on iPhones to make some money too.
So are virtual goods the next big business model? Probably. If Habbo hotel make 90% of their revenues on virtual goods, they sell more furniture than IKEA and girls in Korea spends more money on their virtual haircut than on their real – there must be something in it…
Technorati Tags: Facebook, Nexon, vgsummit, virtual goods, virtual worlds
I have been following the guys from Cooliris for a bit more than a year now and today they came to see me and demonstrated their new product: Piclens. Piclens delivers an immersive and full-screen experience for viewing photos on the Web. By downloading a browser plugin, you can search and browser images from Google, Flickr, Yahoo, Friendster and more in full-screen theater like mode. I think it really rocks and totally changes the way images can be experienced on the Web.
Download Piclens here!
Technorati Tags: piclens
Here are some additional thoughts I have for the next Le Web 3.
- Lifehacker competition
- Virtual goods, world & economy panel/speakers
- Bootstrapping – building the most effective and cheapest bootstrapping budget
Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, leweb3, lifehacking, Lifehacks, vgsummit2007, virtualworld
I am at the first Virtual Goods Summit taking place on Stanford Campus. Virtual worlds and good are really getting hot and here are some amazing facts:
- Tencent with the QQ IM brand in China has more than 254 unique million users & 28MM simultaneous users
- Neopets: 40 MM registered users and 750, 000 daily transactions
- Nexon: 3.5 MM registered users, virtual goods cost between $0.60-$1.00. People by functional & decorative items like a rainbow colored balloon to use in a game rather than that standard balloon because people don’t want to be like all the others.
- Nexon users spend more money on virtual haircuts than on normal haircuts!
- Habbo Hotel sells more furniture than IKEA!
I am really happy that I decided to go here and skip the second day at Supernova. Virtual goods and worlds are going to be so huge – the fun has only got started.
Technorati Tags: Habbo Hotel, Neopets, Nexon, Virtual economy, Virtual worlds, puppy, puppy, QQ, Tencent, Vgsummit2007
Inspired by Timothy Ferris book "The 4 Hour Workweek" and AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, I have just taken the first steps to outsource my life. Being a Swede/Israeli living in Israel, running the business of Maxthon, based in China while spending lots of time on the road especially in the US and running Mashup Media can be quite a challenge.
So when I heard Timothy Ferriss speak at the Web 2.0 Expo last month I got inspired. I have always been of the opinion that you don’t need to run around, answer all your emails and talk on the phone all the time to get real results. I never picked up the book, but today I stumbled upon Timothy’s website and read the account of how AJ Jacobs outsourced his life.
This is music to my ears! I just know that this is the right thing todo. I immediately contacted Brickwork
, and now I am sitting here all excited waiting to take the first step in oursourcing my life. I already work on a daily basis with China, US and Europe, so why not add India to the sauce as well? I’ve always loved a good curry.
I will let you know how it goes as the story develops..
The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.Tao Te Ching
Let the story begin..
Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, Timothy Ferris, 4 hour week, AJ Jacobs, Esquire, Brickwork, Maxthon, Mashupmedia, Lifehacks, India
There is nothing more stimulating than when you see passionate users creating their own stuff to promote their favorite products & services. This is true love. The Maxthon community is a perfect example for this. I digged through the Chinese Maxthon Forum and found a couple of cool banners with a unique twist.
I have no idea what they say yet (Chinese readers – help me out on these two 
but I like them. And there are tons of them. I will digg some more and see if I can find some more interesting stuff.
Follow me!
