Why are there no brands from China that leverage digital channels to the fullest and do so globally? Moreso than the Internet in China being insular (e.g., Weibo instead of Twitter and Baidu instead of Google) and censored (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, and others are blocked), digital marketing agencies (and in-house departments) lack talent. Read On…
I’m in Dalian, China until August 29th (and coming back later) working on Weibo Agent, a lead generation SaaS tool for Chinese social media, that got funding from Chinaccelerator.
UPDATE
We successfully rocked the room at Demo Day in Beijing on Oct 30th, 2012. Here is our press release: Read On…
In late October I took up a consulting offer from a small US company operating in Shenzhen, China. Read On…
Stay up to date on tech and marketing in China straight from the boots on the ground. Read On…
“Once upon a time, in the ancient and medieval worlds, to count as properly foreign you had to seek out a life among peoples of a different skin colour or religion. They were probably an impossibly long distance away, they might well kill you when you got there, and if you went too far you might fall off the edge of the world.”
– An Economist article on being foreign
Today the longest distance is no more than a 24-hour plane ride away, pickpocketing rather than murder tops the list of out-of-towner concerns, and the world is considered flat in a whole new way. Yet no country allows unlimited immigration. To live outside the country of your birth – for those not diplomats, refugees, students, or dual nationals – you must possess skills. “Talent is a passport and is nationally blind,” as Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information Technology once put it.
Read On…
I got the following alert when I signed into my Gmail account after allowing Sina Weibo to access my address book:
Read On…
I noticed China Daily advertising on both Facebook and Twitter.
China Daily USA on Facebook. Odd accompanying picture.
China Daily USA Twitter promotion
“The paper largely reflects the foreign policy of the Communist Party,” says Wikipedia. Following the expansion of the Confucius Institutes and the recent Times Square billboards, I find it interesting the ongoing tactics the Chinese government uses to boost their image.
Tianji, “the LinkedIn of China”, has an English version. Here was my experience. I clicked “English” in the upper right corner and proceeded to fill in the registration form. I clicked “Sign Up Now” and was presented with the registration form again, this time in Chinese. I filled it out again and hit the registration button, but was told my name didn’t validate as it wasn’t in Chinese characters. I gave up and left the site.
Later when I tried it again, once I got to the Chinese registration form I clicked “English” in the corner and was presented the registration form in English, which I filled in and registered successfully. The site makes you click “English” even after you continue to click “English” the initial time.
Poor user experience and I don’t see them growing that much because of it.
Interestingly enough, 51.com is the best – URL has the username instead of user ID, unique title, and the meta description is what the person wrote on their profile instead of boilerplate text. Renren is the worst – if you click on their result you are redirected to their login page.
How does a small Chinese e-tailor of wholesale apparel, often copied from designer brands, manage to outrank websites like Victoria’s Secret and the Gap, pull in $16 million a year, and last week get a multi-million dollar investment from Sequoia Capital?
I decided to find out.