Following a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong on social media and journalism, Marketing Interactive did a quick video interview. They summed up my comments as: “Social media is a bigger threat than opportunity.”

I like (or +1, I should say):

Google+ has felt like a refreshing reset from Facebook. (h/t to Jennifer 8. Lee for the reset concept) My Facebook friend’s list is filled with many people whom I barely know. The people popping up on Google+ are all the first crowd who brought me into social media: Joi Ito, Loic Le Meur, Ethan Zuckerman, Andrew McGlaughlin, Yat Siu and others. Great to get a focused update on their activities.
- The import feature is impressive. I did not have to do anything for it to place my blog and YouTube channel in my profile. (These may have been imported from my Google profile.)

What makes me wary:
Will it simplify my online social life? If so: Winner. If not, G+ will go the way of Google Wave.

A very minor issue illustrates the concern that came with a photograph posted by Joi on Google+ of Ethan. I commented in the stream how much Ethan resembles Benjamin Franklin. Later, I inadvertently clicked on the photo, only to see no comment from me. This confused me. I had left a comment. Going back to Joi’s stream, I saw my comment again.

Apparently there is one set of comments that live in the stream and another set of comments on the photos. Separating them, however, divides up the conversation.

This may seem deep in the weeds of functionality, but if Google+ divides rather than gathers people, it will face a tough road to success!

More striking, however, was the selection of post-reel videos that YouTube suggests you watch afterwards. As shown in the adjoining screen shot they are (I am not exaggerating):

- Scary 2012 Obama Martial Law Concentration Camp & Coffins posted Dec 31, 2009, 19,574 views
- Obama 2012 World War 3 doomsday Prediction! SCARY!!!! Dec 19, 2009, 32,315 views
- Top secret 2012 World War 3 Illuminati Antichrist Conspiracy! Feb 27, 2010, 423,506 views
- Magic Hour 2012 (Unofficial Obama 2012 campaign video) Nov 2010, 282 views

Most of these are videos bear the label Prophecyfilm.com, a site that includes much Bible-related doomsday predictions.

I am not sure why YouTube finds these videos relevant to Obama’s declaration of candidacy in 2012. Comments by rival candidates or even footage from Obama’s previous campaign would have seemed more relevant.

Note to self: Be careful about what YouTube might post after any election video!

While PR was the function of agencies that benefited most from social networks, social will play an integral role across all parts of agency work, including advertising and in-store retail.

For that reason, agencies need to break down silos: “Social media permeates everything. To restrict it to one discipline would be silly.”

Social media in Asia sits at the crossroads of Sorrell’s three obsessions: New markets, new media and research.

How can social media be incorporated into existing firms? Sorrell suggests building a social media practice into each aspect of the company – all the account groups, creative groups, and media groups – and then, if possible, graft on acquisitions.

Since trading my career as a globe-trotting correspondent to work in social media, I seldom seem to get time to take well-considered photographs. Amy’s party offered a great opportunity. Themed after Wong Kar-Wai’s “In The Mood For Love”, women wore a range of colorful qi pao with Hong Kong’s skyline as backdrop. Details on the 1960s fashions at the party here.

The party itself was great, but Facebook discussions continued long afterwards about the images. Just a few years ago, a fun evening like this would have been forgotten quickly. Thanks to social media, the event lives on cyberspace, enjoyed even by those who never attended.

Hardly a revolutionary thought, but for someone who spends a good deal of time helping companies use social media, it was great to see the power of self-publishing for individuals.

PS: This photo features Amy Wood and arts consultant Jonathan Crockett.

As always, feedback welcome on these infographics. The ecosystems move so quickly.

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 accessible on these devices.

With Android, mobile devices in China are increasingly replacing laptops as the primary device and quite often as the only device. Chinese people think that mobile technology is smarter and more user friendly. Mobile devices are also much cheaper than laptops.

China is known for a more aggressive monetization policy than in the West and this is likely to continue. Mobile devices make micropayments a lot easier so we will see a strong increase on that front in China, Gary added.

- The growth of Social Media in Asia, as reported by Nielsen

- One of the challenges in implementing a Social Media strategy is dealing with Asia’s wildly different digital ecosystems. She quoted me about this point and the point that it is extremely difficult to keep up with the changes in Social Media in Asia.

- The upcoming trend in Asia will be “mobile engagement with consumers”. Markets like Japan and Korea, which are well along in this area, as well as Indonesia and India, which are certain to follow suit. Crampton reasoned that the mobile trend is set to rise due to the increase use of the mobile Internet even as smartphone prices drop.

I have already published some of our Social Media equivalents charts: Vietnam, Japan and China. Coming up soon: Korea!

As ever, feedback welcome on these infographics. The ecosystems move so quickly.

Beyond the geeky joy of turning text into HTML5, Scribd aims to merge the print and online world by socializing the reading process. The platform aims to allow people to share, talk and rate their readings in real-time. An added layer to the reading experience.

But what about the business model?

According to Trip Adler, interviewed in the below video, there are already several ways of monetizing the content: Money from advertising, premium accounts and – in the future – a percentage of the direct sales from publishers to consumer.

For example, while they may share the same name, MySpace UK and US are quite different, according to Simon Daglish in this video below. Simon runs MySpace UK.

In the UK, MySpace primarily works as way for those passionate about music to find new or unknown bands. Highly content driven, MySpace has become a sort of online agency where artist can reach their fans and get a lot of information about who they are and what they like from the Artist Dashboard provided by MySpace.

The US version, on the other hand, adds another layer to the experience by focusing more on the peer-to-peer communication. More a Social Network than music site.

Looking ahead, MySpace UK looks to develop into a record label 2.0, meaning that they will develop stronger ties to the bands, help them organize gigs and eventually develop a variety of e-commerce models.

The second graph, also from DCCI, shows that from June the majority of content online in China was user-generated. This shows that “Made in China” is not just cheap plastic goods, but also Internet content.

The original AFP article, picked up by the Jakarta Globe, Channel News Asia, Yahoo News Asia and others, included a number of stats and other interesting points, excerpted below.

- As of December 2009, China had 221 million bloggers or more than twice the number in the United States, according to Nielsen.

- Nearly three out of five people in Singapore having a Facebook account

- Crampton noted that Facebook’s ranking of leading markets showed Indonesia was already a close third behind the United States and Britain in monthly active subscribers — and poised to take second spot within months.

- Data from market research firm Inside Network estimated that monthly active Asia-Pacific users of Facebook numbered 117 million, or more than 20 percent of the global figure.

- “Twitter users in Asia, mainly located in Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, account for 37 percent of tweets,” said Semiocast, Internet research company Semiocast, which studied 2.9 million tweets over a period of 24 hours on June 22. It said US-generated tweets now account for only 25 percent of messages on Twitter, down from 30 percent in March.

- Data from research firm Forrester showed Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and Australians creating video, music and text content for social media at a much higher rate than Americans did last year.

- Despite China’s ban on Facebook and Twitter, the nation still boasts the largest number of social media users in any country thanks to locally-developed substitutes, the Hong Kong-based Crampton said. “What has happened as a result is that domestic players have arrived, and these domestic players are the rough equivalents of what is happening internationally,” he added. He cited Chinese video-sharing website YouKu and social networking site Qzone as “being one hundred percent replacements” for foreign sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

AFTERTHOUGHT: In the article I am quoted as “social media guru Thomas Crampton,” which is not a title I would claim! Social media is moving too quickly for anyone to understand, much less become a “guru”. At best, I consider myself an enthusiastic student of social media.

Their conclusion, that Chinese are more negative than anyone else in Asia, will not surprise anyone familiar with Chinese social media. Comments written by Chinese online (mainly in bulletin boards) often take a negative tone, especially when companies have not joined the conversation in a productive way.

China was the only country in Asia for which the majority of respondents said they tended to post negative reviews rather than positive ones. Koreans, on the other hand, were found to be the most forgiving, with almost 75% of those posting online reviews writing positive ones.

Nielsen statistics are based on their Global Online Survey done in April 2010 respondents, n=7,063.

Although often described as “YouTube copycats in China”, both Wang and Koo dismiss that description. (Wang actually founded Tudou one month before YouTube began, so dismisses the description on a historical basis.)

For Victor, the copycat status really misses the point about the role of online video for China’s netizens.

“Our sites best described as Internet TV, not online video,” Koo said. “The relationship that our users have to the platform is very different from YouTube.”

A key difference highlighted is that both platforms are heavily dependent on high quality and longer-form video. In the case of YouKu, up to 70 percent of the video is professionally produced video, while much of the remaining video was professionally produced for the Internet, Koo said.

The form of content changes the way that people interact with the video in a number of ways, including a stronger focus on the screen itself.

This format difference opens the way for a tolerance to advertisements running in a way that would not be possible with YouTube. Popular formats for advertiser engagement include:

- Pause ads when the video is loading (pre-roll and during the program). This is particularly important in low bandwidth parts of China. Tolerance for these ads is such that some run up to 30-seconds. Something almost unheard of in YouTube, for example.
- Product placements
- Sponsored productions

There are differences between the platforms, however, with Youku being more popular among older males in northern China and Tuodou being more popular among women.

Among the challenges raised in the discussions it that state-run media are now investing serious funds into creating online video content.

One person I spoke with had calculated that government agencies had set aside 120 billion RMB to develop online content. This could prove a challenge to these sites if traditional media begins investing real
money into online video.

In the discussions about television, it became clear how wildly fragmented the TV market is in China, part of the reason for the web platforms’ success. Although CCTV is the most famed national broadcaster, every province has its own TV channels. There is such competitiveness, in fact, that CCTV has only a 15 to 20 percent market share nationally, one person said.

In one discussion, when Wang and Koo were challenged to show how their business model would work, they raised a very interesting point. In some demographics it is no longer a case of arguing that online
video is more effective at reaching some demographics more effectively than TV. In some cases online video will be the only way to reach those demographics.

Interestingly, Australian online engagement peaks on Mondays and the peak time (all days) is 5pm. While the trough of engagement on Saturdays reflects my personal Internet habits, I was surprised by the peak on Monday. Perhaps people catching up on email (and gossip from the weekend).

A few other stats:

1. Internet Use: 14.84 million Australians used the Internet in the past month
2. Stickiest Site: Facebook is responsible for 90% of all time spent on social media sites in Australia
3. Social: Over 70% of Australian Internet users visited a social media site in the past month
4. Peak Times: 5PM & Mondays are the heaviest times of the week for Internet use
5. Mobile Web: Mobile Web usage jumped in the past month – more than 250K Australians accessed the Web through a mobile device

Hat tip to Brian Giesen for highlighting the report.

A few extracts:

How have social media networks developed in Viet Nam in recent years, and in comparison to other Asian countries?

Viet Nam is at the fascinating intersection of a developing nation, a young population and a Government that has supported the development of the internet. How this plays out remains to be seen, but as Indonesia has shown, populations can come online at breakneck speed with incredible results. In the last year, Indonesia overtook the UK as the world’s second leading nation on facebook, much of the usage coming through mobile devices.

How do you expect social media to develop in Viet Nam in the near future?

Social media has already taken off in Viet Nam and the growth is set to continue in coming years. More and more people are accessing the internet from home, but one of the main drivers of internet usage seems to be 3G.

Mobile internet in Viet Nam saw a growth of more than 800 per cent last year, reaching a total of 110 million mobile subscribers in early 2010. As for the future, keep in mind that over half of Viet Nam’s population is under 30 years old, representing a generation that grew up and will continue to live on the internet.