#11 Chinas Social Media Boom.
In 2012, Mckinsey & company released a paper that presented the findings of some very extensive research into Chinas Social Media Boom.
“Social media is exploding world wide, and China is leading the way”
Firstly to discuss the statistics. The Mckinsey survey of 5,700 internet users in China found that 95% of those living in Beijing (Tier 1), Guangzhou (Tier 2) and Shanghai/Shenzhen (Tier 3) are registered on at least one social media site; in addition, the country has by far the worlds most active social-media population, with 91% of respondents saying they visited a social media site in the previous 6 months, compared with 30% in Japan, 67% in the US and 70% in South Korea. This survey is the first of its kind in China, exploring the behaviour of Chinese consumers on social networks.
When further investigating Chinas unique social media landscape, local chinese sites mostly dominate it. While Facebook and Twitter are fixtures of daily online use in the West and in other Asian countries, there is no access to these sites in China. instead Chinese consumers are favouring sites that are exclusive to them. these sites go by the names of Qzone, Sina Weibo and Ren Ren.
In Terms of Facebook like services, RenRen is the one that is most commonly used amongst university students. Of all the social networking sites in China, RenRen is most similar to Facebook in its functionality and appearance. interestingly the site is organised by School and graduations classes.
The only Western social networking platform that is commonly used in China and is probably the only site that manages to filter through the great firewall is LinkedIn. Only 100 million Chinese are actively on the site, not that that is a small amount of people, However it is considerably less than native social networking sites that host 6 times the amount of active users.
I think its fair to say that China isn't really missing out on an awful lot by having the great firewall in place. Of course there are things that are blocked due to censorship, however, on more of a social or daily usage level what they have on offer sounds fantastic.