全球社交媒体纵览

全球社交媒体纵览

标题：Social business around the world | ZDNet

来源：http://www.

推荐者： louyt

原文作者： Dion Hinchcliffe

原文语言： 英语

虽然以西方为主导的社交媒体在过去四年获得了很大发展，但它最近在亚洲的兴起更加引人关注。然而，就像MySpace、Facebook、Twitter以及正在起步的Pinterest（目前正呈指数发展）的发展轨迹一样，一旦用户数接近于实际的极限值，该社交媒体的发展将变得非常缓慢，而这一现象目前在亚洲尤其明显。

实际上，目前亚洲社交媒体行业的底线数据和用户增长率都基本上可以秒杀世界其他地区。而我所了解到的情况也很令人鼓舞：虽然Facebook和Twitter一般都很受欢迎，但当地社交媒体在很大程度上主导者了该行业的发展。说到消费者社交媒体，许多东方国家社交网络的商业敏感性和关注点更加聚焦和前沿，而且其商业开发也要比美国及其他西方国家早。此外，它所采用的模式也有所不同，政治命令的牵制不亚于文化背景和用户习惯的影响。例如Facebook、Twitter以及其他以美国为主导的社交网站就被中国封禁了。

 全球社交媒体的快速发展暗示了社会“巴尔干化”（注）的趋势将比以前更加强烈。这是我经常提到的通道碎片问题的一部分：在当地不能很好地融入社会生态系统，而它对行业的发展也是一种挑战。幸运的是，社交媒体已经成为一个很好的社会倾听和分析平台。尽管消费者不愿意与商业沾边，它也为企业活动提供了很好的平台。

然而，亚洲和东欧的社交网络与美国有很大不同。人人网（中国），微博（中国），Mixi(日本)，CyWorld(韩国)，Odnoklassniki(俄罗斯)以及VKontakte(俄罗斯)代表了这些国家最大的社交网站。

中国的社交媒体

 

我的第一站是上海，我所在的公司在上海举办了社交媒体峰会，我以及很多社交网络专家受邀在会上发表讲话。与去年底博雅公布的亚洲社交媒体研究情况相比，尤其令人关注的是过去几个月人人网和微博的增长速度。

在过去一年，微博和人人网的用户都翻了近一番。发言人Julien Chiavassa进一步指出，中国在过去三年增加的网民数量比美国目前的网民总数还多。人人网的李普庆对社交网络平台所使用的很多商业模式做了具体介绍，这其中包括团购、开放平台、应用商店和信用卡。

亚洲社交媒体著名人物Sam Fleming指出，卓越的社交媒体中心正在成为标准的票价（我称之为社交企业单位），就如同目前美国在该行业的发展现状一样。IBM的Alistair Rennie也出席了会议，他谈到了IBM的企业社会化历程及其全球客户管理经验，他指出IBM正在改造传统的客户关怀模式，即转为社会化客户关系管理（Social CRM）模式。

就如同中国将很快成为世界第一大经济体一样，社交媒体发展的趋势是清晰的，中国已经在社交媒体行业引起了轰动。总的说来，给我印象最深的是中国社会化商业社区的商业敏锐性和成熟性，虽然它通常与美国有很大不同，虽然他们更乐意在社交网络上进行活动合作，而不愿意分享个人信息。

俄罗斯的社交媒体

 

我的第二站是俄罗斯，Peter Kim和我受邀举办一个Social CRM讲习班，以及第二天在“IInd”企业2.0俄罗斯大会上发表关于社交企业现状的讲话。虽然我之前认为俄罗斯的社交媒体要比西方社交媒体落后好几年，但我的看法很快就被扭转了。虽然社交网络的利用情况很不平衡，但俄罗斯是一个有雄厚技术基础的国家，这意味着它有大量具备丰富经验的从业者。

当回顾我们的社交企业新著中所提到的许多原则时，听众对目前的一些成功案例尤为关注。这往往是听众的最正常反应，尽管他们可能也很难在各自的行业中复制这些成功的案例。Twitter和Facebook在俄罗斯非常受欢迎（不被封锁），而且Facebook网页，Twitter账号以及其他社交网站网址在企业广告中非常普遍。

与美国和中国相比，俄罗斯有一点比较特别，那就是其在会议或者其他场合使用移动设备和笔记本电脑的频率还很低。还有一点比较有趣的是，虽然俄罗斯的软件开发能力不错，但大部分用户都是使用美国的社交平台，比如Jive或者Microsoft SharePoint。

全球社交媒体比较

通过这次行程可发现，社交网络已经成为全球性现象，并且具有浓厚的地方色彩和细微的差别。大型企业纷纷调整自己的社交媒体战略以适应当地的变化和差异。毫无疑问，在目前，英语社交网络被规模更大的亚洲和东方社交网络掩盖了光环，因为后者可能受语言或者政治障碍的影响，这对商业也将产生不可忽视的影响。

此外，关于为美国的社交网络和社会化商业平台引入新的数字商业模式，我们也学到一些经验。这些企业需要遵守一个重要原则，即根据不同的国家制定不同的参与策略，做好准备应对持续的新进入者。

 

【译者注】巴尔干化（Balkanization）。地方政权等在诸多地方之间的分割，及其所产生的地方政府体制下的分裂，即“碎片化”（Fragmentation）。（百度百科） 

Social business around the world

By Dion Hinchcliffe | April 24, 2012, 11:32am PDT

Summary: We often think of social business as primarily a Western phenemenon, my trip last week across Asia and Eastern Europe shows that it’s truly global, and sometimes quite different when it comes to platforms, business models, and expectations.

Last week I had the distinct privilege of traveling in Asia and Eastern Europe to speak about social business and get a sense of the progress the industry has made elsewhere in the world. While social media has been a leading trend in the West for well over four years, the rise of the medium in Asia has been a more recent phenomenon. But just like the uptake of MySpace, then Facebook, Twitter, and now Pinterest was practically exponential in their early days, only slowing when they fundamentally ran out of users, the same is now taking place in Asia in particular.

In fact, both the bottom line numbers and the rates of adoption in Asia now substantially eclipse the rest of the world. And what I learned was fascinating: While Facebook and Twitter are often quite popular, local social networks are now largely leading the space. And for all the talk of consumer social media, the business sensibility and focus of many social network in the East is much more focused, upfront, and taking place earlier than it did in the United States and elsewhere in the West. The pattern of adoption is different as well, as much dictated by political fiat as it is by cultural reasons or usage habits. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and host of other largely United States-based sites are blocked by the People’s Republic of China, for example.

The implications of this rapid growth and transformation in the global social media landscape is that it now seems likely that social balkanization will occur more extensively than it appeared it would before. This is part of the channel fragmentation problem I’ve often noted is endemic to social ecosystems that aren’t well integrated and which is a signature challenge of the industry. Fortunately, it’s also one that is now being dealt with well by the latest crop of social listening and analytics platforms which create coherent pictures of activities for businesses, though most consumers aren’t availing themselves of such options (nor in fact are most aimed at them.)

No, the Asia and Eastern European world of social networking looks quite different than it does here in the United States. Names like RenRen (China), Weibo (China), Mixi (Japan), CyWorld(Korea), Odnoklassniki (Russia), and VKontakte, represent some of the largest social network offerings I encountered there.

Sizing up Social Business in China

My first stop last week was in Shanghai, where I was to speak at the Social Business Summit 2012 (disclaimer: This event is held by the company I work for), along with a range of invited speakers selected for their expertise in social networking in the region. What probably most stood out was the growth rate of RenRen and Weibo in the last few months, especially when compared to the Burson-Marsteller Asian Social Media study released late last year and shown above.

Since then, Weibo has nearly doubled their users to 250M in the last year alone and RenRen has done much the same. Speaker Julien Chiavassa further noted that China has added more Internet users in the least 3 years than exist in the entire United States. RenRen’s Donna Li gave a detailed explanation of the many business models that the social networking platform uses including group buying (saying their the most successful in the world), open APIs, app stores, and even a social credit card.

Sam Fleming, a well known figure in social media in Asia, noted that social media centers of excellence (what I’ve called a social business unit) are now becoming standard fare, much like they are in the United States today. IBM’s Alistair Rennie even made an appearance, talking about IBM’s social business journey as well as the experience of their global customers, noting for example that they are in the process of transforming their entire customer care model to be primarily social, ala Social CRM. I also spoke as well and my slides will be up on Slideshare soon.

The trends are clear: Just like China will be the world largest economy soon enough, it’s already taking the social world by storm. Overall, I was impressed with the business acumen and maturity that was evident in the social business community, even if it was often very different than ours. Users for example are less likely to want to share personal information in China, even as they are much more likely to collaborate on activities that are not overly personal.

Social Business in Russia

Next stop from Shanghai was Russia, where Peter Kim and I was asked to provide a workshop on Social CRM and a talk on the state of social business the next day at the “IInd” Enterprise 2.0 Conference Russia (no relation to the TechWeb event.) While I went in thinking that Russia has to be years behind the West in social media, I was quickly disabused of that notion. While use of social networks is very uneven, the fact that Russia is a country with a well established technology base means that there are plenty of practitioners with lots of experience.

While we reviewed many of the principles from ournew book on social business, the audience was primarily hungry for real-world examples of organizations that have been particularly successful. This always seems to be the case in audiences in general, even if they have issues adapting the example to their industry. Twitter and Facebook are more popular there (and aren’t blocked) and Facebook pages, Twitter account names, and other social networking URLs are quite prevalent in advertising there.

If fact, if there was a surprise, it was that use of mobile devices and laptops, both in the conference, and elsewhere was quite low compared to the constant in-your-face use that is common both here in the United States and China. It was also interesting to see, despite Russia’s competency in software development, that most users were looking at social business platforms from the United States, such as Jive or Microsoft SharePoint.

The Round-the-world Social Business Takeaway

If nothing else, the trip confirmed that social has become a truly global phenomenon that has established plenty of local color and nuance. Large enterprises have their work cut out for them to adapt their social media strategies to local vagaries and differences when it comes to listening and engaging with communities of customers, workers, and business partners. There’s little doubt that the eclipsing of English social networks by much larger Asian and Eastern social networks in general is going to have serious business impact, with cultural impact impeded for the time being by language — and in some cases political — barriers. I’d also say that we have some lessons to learn about experimenting with and adopting new digital business models in our social networks and social business platforms here in the United States.

For those organizations that much have engagement strategies that span multiple countries in this region, being prepared for a changing landscape and the continuing entry of new players as social business evolves will be essential.