Social Networking is Hot in Hong Kong

The latest figures released by Hitwise (an internet traffic monitoring company) shows that social networking is hot in Hong Kong.

Social network Xanga (www.xanga.com)is currently ranked at #3 out of all sites monitored by Hitwise in Hong Kong, just behind Yahoo! Hong Kong (hk.yahoo.com) and Yahoo! Hong Kong Search (search.hk.yahoo.com). Xanga, is the highest-trafficked social networking site in Hong Kong, outperforming its competitors MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Bebo (www.bebo.com).

Over the past 12 months, Xanga's market share has rocketed from 2.49% to 3.22%, while traffic levels of its nearest competitor, Yahoo! Hong Kong Search, have stayed relatively stable. In addition, the Blogs sector has also experienced a phenomenal rise over the past year. Traffic to sites in the Hitwise Blogs & Personal Websites category in Hong Kong has increased by 52%. Xanga is the highest-ranked website in the Blogs category, consuming a massive 72.22% of market share.

Digital communications is surely a cost effective way of reaching an audience that is far larger than the most popular newspapers and magazines - but why aren't more companies doing it?

Is Twitter making you stand out?

I’ve been avidly watching Mad Men of late and been transfixed more by the business related scenes than the other storylines (I’m really not bothered by who is sleeping with who, who had a baby or the incompetence of Betty Draper as a mother!).

This weekend Don Draper said something that really hit home with me, and I quote:

“The success of our clients is based on how we make them stand out from the crowd, not conforming to what everyone else is doing.”

When I heard this, I immediately thought of social media and how ‘experts’ are all advising their clients to get on Twitter, develop an online game, use social media press releases etc etc. Twitter is the current the fad, much like MySpace and Facebook before it. But what is the next great application we should be looking at to make our clients stand out?

Digital/Social media is moving so quickly and in such unexpected directions that once you become familiar and jump on the current bandwagon, you worry that the next one is going to jump out and change the landscape again. How do we continuously make clients (or ourselves) stand out from the crowd?

TwestivalHK a great success...see the video here

A great night was had by all at TwestivalHK on February 12. I, for one, was impressed to see the number of Twitterati come along to support Charity: Water.

HK Twestival - join the unique event

I am proud to be helping out in the Hong Kong Twestival on February 12. It feels great to be part of a unique event that raises money for a great cause.

Hong Kong has proudly joined the ranks of more than 175+ cities worldwide to participate in the world’s largest Tweetup for Charity: Water. You can see great promo videos and find out more information about the cause here.

Hong Kong’s Twestival will be held at the Yumla Bar (just off the top of Pottinger Street) on Thursday February 12. It kicks off at 8pm and will feature live music from N™ and a DJ. There is information on the Hong Kong event here.

Tickets are just HK$100 and include a free drink. All proceeds go to Charity: Water. To ensure that none of the money gets “lost”, tickets must be purchased from the Twestival charity website in advance. Space is limited, so get your tickets early online. (You need to have a Twitter account, so sign up and experience the joys of Twitter too!)

I hope readers in Hong Kong can make it along on the night and join in the fun.

See you there

Internet Yellow Pages

The variety of social and digital media platforms is growing at a phenomenal rate. Almost every day I hear about a new tool or application that is the ‘next big thing’. It is hard to keep track of everything that is happening and to keep up to date.

A quick tip is to refer to ‘Go2Web20’ to update yourself with the latest buzz tools: http://www.go2web20.net/

This tool provides a comprehensive directory of Web 2.0 platforms and gives you a synopsis of functionality. It's a great reference tool.

Wikipedia becomes elite-ist

I’ve just come across this article in the New York Times about how Wikipedia is considering changing the rules to editing and posting of information.

In essence, the online encyclopedia is considering permitting only registered users to edit and post content. According to the article, because of ‘vandals’ changing facts on certain entries ‘"Wikipedia appears ready to introduce a system that prevents new and anonymous users from instantly publishing changes to the online encyclopedia."

This will mean a much smaller group of people responsible for published content. This raises a few concerns for me.

Firstly, it means the wide range of content will be reduced as the collective input will be smaller. Even if the content continues to be as wide ranging, it will surely take longer for the smaller group of people to come across new or interesting content. Secondly, we are relying on a smaller group of gatekeepers to decide what should / shouldn’t be published, what is fact or isn’t accurate and eventually what we actually see. Finally, part of the success of Wikipedia is based on user generated content from anyone who feels they have something interesting to share with the world or have a particular passion for a subject/issue. By introducing this type of ‘censorship’, is Wikipedia being elite-ist?

Social networking sites on the rise...

ComScore has just released its worldwide traffic stats for social networking sites for November (this does not include December). The top 20 sites and their unique visitor numbers are below:

Interesting points to note:

- The presence of regional sites like Baidu Space, hi5 and 56.com (China) and Orkut (India)
- Blogs are still very popular. Blogger tops the chart with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). - Facebook is expected to dominate soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent).
- Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.
- Yahoo’s Flickr rises to No. 7, enforcing the popularity of photo sharing

Top Social Media Sites (ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)