I was at a talk on how internet word of mouth (iWOM) works in China a couple of weeks ago. There were a few noteworthy things that Sam Flemming, CEO and Co-Founder of CIC, said:

1. Social media is very much existent in China, but it’s like it’s on steroids: 298 million internet users, 105 million bloggers, 91 million members on their Bulletin Board Systems or BBS (discussion forums around different topics), and 58 million people on social networks. It’s all about perspective: Facebook has only 200 million users WORLDWIDE. 

2. BBS have a huge influence on consumer purchases - over 80% look at reviews there or go there to ask questions before making a purchase. Much as I like Amazon, that’s not where I go to decide what to buy: but could Amazon or something like it channel prospective buyers in such vast numbers successfully?

3. QQ, China’s largest social network, has a revenue model that surprisingly very few other social networks have replicated: they don’t make money off ads but through digital micro-transactions with their own currency: QQ Coins. In fact, QQ Coins have become so successful that China’s central bank is considering cracking down on it because of its increasing use to buy real-world goods. 

4. Group purchases, in the model of Dell Swarm, are on the rise. This has interesting implications for brands, who can easily reach their target audience on BBS. 

5. Brands get inspiration for new products by tracking discussions on these forums. When Chinese sports apparel brand Anta wanted to create a new line of products for their ambassador, basketball player Luis Scola, they realised that fans were referring to him as ‘Four Carat’ on the web, so created a line inspired by this which went on to become a success. 

6. This is a phenomenon which clearly marks the difference between the East and West: more people access the internet on their mobiles than they do on a PC. 

Here is CIC’s White Paper on the role of iWOM in making purchase decisions, which Sam presented:

..and here is another interesting one on the development of iWOM and online communities in China.

There is so much talk about Facebook, Twitter and the like that sometimes we forget there are much more wide-reaching platforms - in a different part of the world. Surely there are lessons there that we’re not taking the time to learn?

Yesterday I went to the RSA to watch Wired editor-in-chief and author of the Long Tail, Chris Anderson, speak about the issue visited in his latest book, ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price’. He started off by covering the history of free through the ages: from Jello who used to give away free recipe books to drive demand in the early 1900s (a pioneering marketing tactic at the time), to Microsoft BizSpark’s model in the current decade where start-ups that are less than 3 years old and have a revenue of less than $100 million can access it free, but others have to pay. 

He also presented Alan Murray (executive editor of the Wall Street Journal)’s 5 tips on charging for content, something that we often discuss at Made By Many, and that will be useful to everyone who has thought of the micro-payment system. Murray’s tips are:

1. The best model is a mix of paid and free content.

2. You can’t charge for exclusives that will just be repeated elsewhere: A timely example was the news of Michael Jackson’s death as reported by TMZ - if they had restricted access to that content, everyone else who reported it on their (free to access) blogs or sites would have got all the traffic and traffic-supported ad revenue.

3. Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site. 

4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches. 

5. The narrower the niche, perhaps the better. 

You can read Murray’s thoughts in detail here. 

In Anderson’s words, the best model is not paid vs. free but ad-driven free vs. ‘freemium‘. 

The newspaper industry had to be touched upon, of course. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell has focussed on this aspect of the book in his review of it in the New Yorker. Anderson mentioned during the talk that he responded to Gladwell on his blog, and said that he felt that as far as journalism was concerned, the world has changed from traditional journalists being the authors of most forms of (paid) news in the past, to anyone becoming in author in today’s times and publishing their content for free, thanks to the web. So his solution is ‘to scale the economics of media down to the hyperlocal level’ - get people who are have alternate day jobs to contribute in return for non-monetary gains. Specifically, he was speaking with regard to his experience with GeekDad, a community that he runs. Now this is unlikely to be the salvation of the newspaper industry but ad-driven free vs. freemium is the model that remained with me as most likely to succeed. Co-incidentally, in response to a question from the audience following the talk, Anderson said that he did not think that micro-payments as a system would necessarily work because it was a question of the psychological vs. the monetary downsides of paying for a news article (’what the hell, I have to pay, can I be bothered’) - so personally though I wouldn’t mind paying £1 for a good piece (and with a proper audience that can multiply to very profitable heights - YouTube was an example someone from the audience quoted - 75 billion videos x (hypothetically) even 2p would be a decent sum of money), it’s a question of whether psychologically you think the benefit is worth the money, and that’s not always easy to gauge. 

A few thought-provoking ideas I left with:

1. Joseph Bertrand (1883) said that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. Is free anti-competitive, because it sets the default price to zero?

2. Anderson’s book is also being released as an audio-book in 3 hour and 6 hour formats. They are going to charge for the 3 hour format but not the 6, because in his words, ‘time is money’. So at what point does a piece of content become valuable enough to pay for so you don’t waste your (probably more important) time?

Here’s the presentation: it’s the same one he gave at the Wired business conference in New York 2 weeks ago.

Has the future turned out the way it was supposed to?

That’s something we’re very interested in here at Made by Many, so we’ve invited world-renowned author and futurist Howard Rheingold to present an evaluation of the outcomes and predictions he made in the 2002 best-seller “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”.

Howard’s talk will be followed by an open discussion - I’m sure it will be a lively one! The event will appeal to anyone interested in new models of mass collaboration, crowd-sourcing and emergent intelligence that are made possible with the advent of ubiquitous social computing. We’ve only got a few free seats left, so if you’re interested, get in touch with me asap at elin@madebymany.co.uk and I will try to get you on the guest list.

The event will take place next Wednesday (July 8th) at 15:30 - 17:00 in BBH’s offices at 60 Kingly Street.

Below is a video clip of a talk Howard gave for Ted on collaboration, and Smart Mobs has also got it’s own blog over at smartmobs.com. And of course, don’t forget to follow @hrheingold on Twitter!

Before another age goes by, here’s a round-up of the stuff we’ve been momentarily distracted by recently:

1. Twittersheep: See the key characteristics of your Twitter followers.

2. Business Guys on Business Trips: Solving global issues, such as page registration procedures

3. The Vendor-Client relationship in real world situations: Very entertaining - we all need to laugh at ourselves!

4. Twitter on Paper: Because none of us can get enough of Twitter. It closed shop on June 12th, having set up on May 26th, so I guess it’s too late to order your own tweet on paper now, but you know, I’m sure it was good while it lasted.

5. Boone Oakley: Because some of us are mildly jealous of their YouTubesite. 

6. Siri: A virtual assistant for iPhone users. I’m assuming the name is a play on ‘Sir, I’ (’need this’ or ‘want that’)? What do you think?

7. Twootles: Google and Twitter together? What’s not to love?

8. Fluid dynamics simulator in JavaScript: This one is very data-heavy, so be warned. But it is so SO cool.

9. BookSeer: Lovely little project that comes up with ideas for the next book for you to read. Sort of a combination of Amazon reviews with LibraryThing. Also worth reading this post by the creator that explains the concept behind it.

10. UK Hols: Where are you going this summer? Vodafone-backed project that plots the holiday destinations of people in the UK based on tweets with a specified hashtag:#ukhols. 

11. London Audio Guide: A location-aware app for the iPhone and iPod touch that takes you through key London spots. 

12. Collecta: Possibly the world’s first real-time search engine. No patch on Google…yet. 

13. Dunkin’ Run: You know when you have to run out and get coffees for multiple people in the team? Well, let’s assume you did. Then you’d find the Dunkin’ Run rather useful. 

14. Mig33: The ‘world’s first global mobile community’. Not quite sure if that’s an accurate description, but still interesting to know. 

15. Squares: And squares and more squares in different colours. Psychedelic. 

16. BBC Memoryshare: Plot your memories alongside a timeline of famous historical events. 

17. Happn.in: Find out what Twitter users in your city are discussing.

18. Mad Avenue Blues: Advertisingy spoof on American Pie.

19. JCDC vs. Lego: Lovely animated Lego fashion show. Lego = fun. Rocking music = cool. Fashion = sexy. All together? This is what it’s like!

JCDC Versus LEGO from Four H on Vimeo.

20. YouTube War: Jeff Crouse and Aaron Meyers have written a blog post about this augmented reality card game played in front of a live audience.

We’re very excited about today’s launch of Facebook Connect for Protect The Human, Amnesty International UK’s digital campaigning platform. Facebook Connect is great for external websites because of the huge social potential it offers (for those of you that have doubts, look at this presentation), but it is even more important for a site like Protect The Human because of the worthy causes Amnesty International supports. Protect The Human is all about rallying your friends behind human rights causes that you as an individual care a lot about. It is about transforming the power of an individual into the power of many. And, as Barack Obama said,

One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.

It’s pretty simple, really – all you need to do is sign in to Protect The Human, connect to Facebook with the Facebook Connect button, and start inviting your friends to join. Also, when you take specific actions on Protect The Human such as sending an email to ensure there is no crackdown on protests in Iran, you can post a notification to Facebook, alerting your friends there and (hopefully) encouraging many of them to do the same.

THIS is why the internet is truly powerful. 

I found this on Mike Laurie’s ace blog the other day - it’s a video put together by Ji Lee, Google’s Creative Director at the Google Creative Sandbox (just launched). The video demonstrates how much real people know about the Web. It’s a salutory reminder for anyone whose job it is to discuss complex ideas with customers and end-users: despite the nodding you shouldn’t assume they understand *anything*.

What I like most about Mike’s post is this bit, about inviting a bit of creative destruction into the design process, something we feel very strongly about at Made by Many:

No matter how clear, simple, relevant, engaging, interesting, entertaining, usable or smart you believe your communication or interactive media is, the end-user will always destroy it for you in a heartbeat. Which is why you need to get people destroying your ideas before they grow so that you can get on and create something that really does make sense to the people you want to interact with.