Guest post written by Henry Fong
Henry Fong is CEO of Yodo1, a Beijing company that helps developers enter the China mobile gaming market.
When answering that kind of question, here’s five points I usually make:China probably has more social media users thanFacebook has in the entire world combined, but to many of my Western colleagues, the market still remains a mystery. It’s very large, they acknowledge, but why should it interest them as developers or investors?
China’s Social Media Market: Nearly a Billion Users — Mostly on Mobile
With China’s entire population at 1.4 billion, this estimate of 1 billion Chinese social media users may seem exaggerated, until you do some basic math: QQ, one of China’s oldest social networks — born in the 90’s as a clone of ICQ and now the primary entry point for Qzone, a Facebook-style social network — was architected to work on any phone in China, even cheap models with 2G plans. Consequently, it’s difficult to find anyone in China without a QQ account. In July 2012, the company reported 700 million monthly active users on QQ, and 500 million monthly active users on Qzone. Those are just the social network platforms of one company. Several others exceed 100 million users (see below). Just as notable, most Chinese social media activity happens on mobile: QQ is mainly accessed by phone, as is the second leading network, Sina Weibo, which boasts 60%+ mobile usage.
China Has Many 100 million+ User Social Networks For Many Purposes
Unlike Western-based social media, largely dominated by Facebook and Twitter, China has several networks which exceed 100 million active users. They can largely be categorized by their main usage modes; again, note that most are mobile-driven and becoming more so each day:
From an app developers’ perspective, this diversity of usage changes the calculus of social network integration – with so many huge social networks to choose from, it mainly depends on what you want your app to do.
Facebook and Twitter Will Never Dominate in China (Even If They Were Allowed There)
Mark Zuckerberg’s pre-IPO visits to China fueled rumors that his social network, now blocked by the government there, will finally be allowed into the country. But as I’ve written before, barring some dramatic change, Facebook will never, ever be a dominant force in China, even were it allowed into the country with the state’s full endorsement (highly unlikely in itself).
Facebook’s primary revenue model, advertising, is strictly regulated there, as is its second revenue stream, gaming. In fact, every core feature of Facebook would require several government licenses, each of which would likely take months to procure. It’s also possible that their activity in China would be frowned upon by their Western audience and regulators. (Most of these problems, as you might have guess, also apply to Twitter, making its successful entry into China equally unlikely.)
So without Facebook and Twitter, does that mean China’s social media users are unreachable by Western social networks?
Not exactly:
LinkedIn: A Bridge for the West and China’s Business Professionals
Linkedin enjoys some usage in China (last April, the company reported 2 million mainland Chinese users of its English language service) and the real number is probably a lot higher than what LinkedIn can track, since many Chinese users register their accounts from overseas. As such, LinkedIn is probably the social media network with the most active Great FireWall crossover. (Here’s my own Linkedin account.) It’s a fairly good East-West business networking tool, but due to lack of China-specific functionality and content, its use as a business networking tool between Chinese people has been limited. None of the LinkedIn “clones” in China have really gotten much traction yet, with Ushi being the latest in a string of start-ups trying to build the LinkedIn of China. Instead, Sina Weibo seems to be becoming the de facto standard for Chinese professionals looking to connect with other professionals online.
Western App Developer Advice: To Succeed in China, Find the Right Network, And Local Help
Since China’s social network ecosystem is so huge, the sheer number of options available for Western developers to leverage can sometimes be confounding. Fortunately, many of China’s leading social networks are becoming more open to integrating with app developers from the West: Mobile game devs interested in expanding to China should consider integrating Sina and Tencent Weibo into their titles, while Web games will do better on QQ’s QZone. Be warned, however, Qzone’s social network is still a relatively closed platform. By comparison, Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are relatively open, and offer open API integration to mobile developers. That said, most of the API documentation is still in Chinese, so either having someone on staff or a Chinese partner who is fluent in Chinese tech lingo is the most effective way to get integrated.
Before coming to China, however, you probably want to consider working with a local partner who can handle regulations, help protect your IP, and manage promotion of your app, aspects I discuss at greater length on my company’s blog. Leveraging Chinese social networks is a great way for mobile apps and games developers to reach the Chinese consumers. We’re seeing great startups like Handy Games (Germany), Defiant Development (Australia) andRobot Entertainment (U.S.) join us in this space. To be sure, it will take some time and patience for Western and Chinese companies to work well together. But with so many social network users in China, especially on mobile, the opportunity is too great to ignore.
