Feb 27, 2011
The world’s largest social network may be blocked in the world’s most populous nation but – according to the latest stats from Social Bakers – China has been the fastest growing Facebook nation over the last three months. Before attacking the messenger, Social Bake is a highly credible source of statistics on Facebook, which is
Feb 24, 2011
Facebook holds sway as the default social network in many parts of the world across all Internet demographics. In China, where Facebook is blocked, a handful of homegrown social networks attract segmented audiences, ranging from upmarket urban youth to university students and migrant workers. While the world’s big focus these days is on Renren preparing
Feb 23, 2011
Chinese will soon overtake English as the largest native language of Netizens. That said, many of those Chinese are learning English, so I don’t think it will spell the end of English. This infographic from The Next Web gives an illustration of how things currently stand. Interesting how Portuguese ranks as the 5 largest language
Feb 22, 2011
Ongoing unrest in the Arab world already prompted China’s government to limit news on the unrest and filter searches and Tweets. Beyond censorship, these actions now may have financial impact on China’s most prominent Internet properties. Deutsche Bank last night downgraded their outlook for Sina, based on potential government action against Sina Weibo. Although filtered,
Feb 20, 2011
Never really one to share comics, but this one touches on two key parts of my team’s work: Facebook and China. According to Dilbert, that makes relevant. Being described as “relevant” by Dilbert may be something to worry about!
Feb 15, 2011
While China’s Internet is already dominated by power players in a way that the US Internet is not, investment bank CLSA sees further consolidation through lose alliances. A recent report by the investment bank describes the evolution of China’s Internet as a sort of “Three Kingdoms”, the classic piece of literature about the fluid alliances
Jan 26, 2011
The Queen of Talk, Oprah Winfrey, no longer reigns supreme. She has been passed as the tenth largest tweeter on earth by Yao Chen, a Chinese actress who is the most followed person on Weibo, China’s nearest equivalent to Twitter. The power of Yao Chen’s microblog has been further demonstrated in the last couple days
Jan 9, 2011
I wrote the below article for China Business Review, the magazine of the US-China Business Council. I’d be interested in feedback from the readers of this blog! Tom As Chinese consumers spend more time online, foreign companies should deepen their knowledge of domestic social media platforms. by Thomas Crampton Much has been written of late
Nov 30, 2010
The Social Media team for Ogilvy Beijing created this great graphic to explain the personality differences between social networks in China. Unlike other parts of the world, where Facebook or other social networks dominate, Chinese users tend to join with their peers from a similar background. Another posting that may be of interest is the
Oct 16, 2010
In a recent conversation with Gary Wang, founder of Tudou one of China’s YouTube-like video sites, he spoke about recent trends in online video. The future will rely highly on mobile and tablet devices, Gary said (see video below for more details), while adding that Tudou is currently working to make the entire video library
Oct 6, 2010
Of those living in China’s first tier cities, one third replace their phones because they feel they are not trendy anymore. A few minutes on the streets of Beijing or Shanghai confirms the affection Chinese consumers have for the latest mobile phone, but it is interesting to see research supporting the observation. This is from
Sep 28, 2010
I ran into Dr Gang Lu of Mobinode last week at the Social Media World Forum where he shared two interesting graphs published in June by DCCI. The first shows that the dominant activity online in China is now Social Media (apparently at the expense of people reading news, from the sharply declining yellow line.)
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About Me
Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the
International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
