Qzone‘s General Manager Peter Zhen and I shake hands after the social networking panel at the Tencent MInd 2009 Forum in Guangzhou. My friend and moderator Gang Lu on the right. Some videos posted afterwards:
- My short talk (what’s up with my accent?)
- Interview with QQ Finance
Had a great time in Guangzhou and really appreciate the invitation from Tencent. I’m glad to getting involved in China again.
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.
I am very excited to announce that I recently joined AuroraFeint‘s Advisory Board. Aurora Feint is the company behind the tremendously popular Massive Multiplayer iPhone game, Aurora Feint and more importantly, behind OpenFeint the Social Gaming Platform for the iPhone that recently announced OpenFeint 2.0 in connection with the WWDC covered by Techcrunch.
I’m very impressed by how the two creators of AuroraFeint, Daniella Cassley and Jason Citron managed to develop such a great game and then move to a social gaming platform in no-time signing up popular titles like: Pocket God, SticksWars, MyBrute, Knights On Rush, iDracula, EpicPetWars, Ankagua3D, KnowitAll, Optime 4 in a row, Sneezies and many more. Over 3 million users have now joined the OpenFeint social community.
What is then OpenFeint 2.0 and why should you care? Well, if you’re an iphone game developer you have probably realized how increasingly difficult it has become to be discovered in the iphone app store. Just as social discovery through friends and people you care about drove the usage and engagement of applications on Facebook, it’s going to become very important for games on the iPhone. Through social discovery, your friends become the filter for what is relevant and important to you in a sea of clutter. People are more likely to download applications and play games if they discover that their friends are using them.
OpenFeint 2.0 is really all about answering the question What Are My Friend’s Playing?‘
in a myriad of ways. The developers of Aurora Feint has taken every
piece of OpenFeint and injected a healthy dose of Friends into it.
Every page you look at, from a game’s iPromote page to your
achievements list, has social context.
iPhone games that have integrated OpenFeint have seen a significant boost in sales as a result of the social discovery features embedded in the platform. The developers I met with are very excited about OpenFeint 2.0 and what an impact it will have on their games in terms of user-engagement and the fact that you don’t have to worry about developing leaderboards, achievements, profiles, chat rooms and friends list imported from social networks. The best of all is that it only takes around 30 minutes to integrate.
Since I had the privilige to work on Facebook Connect related stuff while at Facebook before it was rolled out in the open, I am very excited to see that through OpenFeint 2.0 game developers get full Facebook Connect integration as well as Twitter and MySpace integration – winn!
So if you’re an iphone developer that want to provide your game with some powerful social plumbing and boost your sales don’t hesitate go here now: OpenFeint and if you want to get in touch with the team at AuroraFeint – feel free to reach out to me directly.
Click here to get OpenFeint now.
- What are the pros and cons of an apps only strategy?
- What are the best practices around a hybrid website/app approach?
- And, is there still such a thing as a website only strategy?
This and many other questions will be discussed at the Consumer Web – User Acquisition in the Era of App Platforms panel that David Hornik, August Capital, Jason Oberfest, MySpace, Rashmi Sinha, Slide and myself will participate in moderated by Dave McClure, Founders Fond this Friday at TieCon 2009.
What do you think? What is your take on the above questions?
I was recently interviewed by Rebbecca Fanning for Asian Venture Capital Journal about VC’s facing global challenges. The cover story describes how VC’s are spending more time (than money) huddling in conference rooms with CEO’s and entrepreneurs, revising business plans, bugets and strategies. Some interesting data points:
- Asian fund-raising peaked in 2008, with a jump of 8% to $20 billion in new funds. In the first quarter of 2009, Asian venture fundraising plummeted to $1.7 billion. The first quarter 2008 comparable was $6.9 billion.
- In Asia, investment declined 22% to $22.3 billion in 2008. The first quarter of 2009 recorded 114 deals totaling $1 billion, compared to 375 deals totaling $8.2 billion for the same period in 2008
My advice to entrepreneurs struggling in these tough times (by no means meant to be comprehensive) can be found at the end of the article.
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Facebook Connect is all about making the Web more open and social. Over 6000 developers have so far has integrated Facebook Connect to their sites and contributed to this mission. Today, just launched our first social widget for Facebook Connect – we call it the Comments Box.
Wei Zhu & Ray He explains in this video how you easily can implement the Comments Box on your site and contribute to make the Web more open and social.
They did it again! The team at Nana10 has just launched their second Facebook Connect integration in one week. This time we are not talking about the Israeli Elections, rather the most popular reality show on Israeli TV: Survivor. The show which will air every day on Nana10, will show viewers what’s happening to the participants and let Facebook users live-comment on the show.
Another great example of what a smart team of developers can do with Facebook Connect.
To get started with Facebook Connect click here.
I just love this. Xoopit, a Firefox-plugin integrated with Facebook Connect has just brought social context into Email. Ever since I became a Facebook user I have been thinking about how cool it would be to bring the social graph into my Email. Email is still the main platform through which people communicate on the Internet and so surfacing social context into email – just made email so much more social,exciting and useful.
Xoopit has obviously integrated Facebook Connect and is plugging into Gmail through Firefox, BUT if you are an ISP or an web-mail provider – you can do this yourself without the need of a plugin or the support from Facebook. I’m really excited to see this innovative integration of Facebook Connect via a plugin into mail, but there is so much more an webmail provider can do by integrating Facebook Connect directly.
I would love to see Facebook Connect integrated into leading local webmail services around the globe and make email more social.
Click here to get started with Facebook Connect.
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