Sorry for the late post but I was at the monthly meeting of the Social Media Club of Long Island. Great stuff. It started a little slowly in that the speaker Constance Korol did the typical context-setting commercial but it really picked up and ended being quite thought provoking. (In this “fast twitch media world” had I not been in a seat, I might have clicked through. Glad I didn’t.)
The topic was social media in China and its use for commercial purposes. Sina Weibo is the social network of choice in China. Sina numbers only 100 million registered users. Did I just say “only 100 million?” China is big, in other words. And as a social media market it is going to get crazy bigger. In fact, when Nokia and Microsoft figure out how to create a US $49 smartphone, that hundred million number is going to jump…creating the single largest wealth exchange in the history of mankind.
The thing about China is…it’s China. You can learn by friending people through cracks in the firewall, but to really learn you need to have feet on street. The country is so closed off and so monitored only hacks will get you through. But what a country in terms of marketing opportunity! What a laboratory.
Everywhere is not America. To see the world through American glasses is ethnocentric. If we open our eyes and learn about other cultures we have a chance transnationally. As Waylon says “Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him. He ain’t wrong, he’s just different…” (Human rights, is a topic for another day.) Peace.