Since then new social media platforms have become relevant, either side of the Great Firewall, and so we have reworked the infographic to reflect some of the changes.

[Click the graphic to view a larger, clearer version]

Some of the more interesting changes:

The merging of SNS and Microblogging categories: The line has always been blurred between Chinese SNS and microblogs, but with recent changes made to Sina and Tencent weibos that make them as much like Facebook as they are like Twitter, as well as the increasingly “Facebook-like” role in society of these platforms, I felt we had to reflect this in our infographic.

The addition of Purchase Sharing: Only a very rough equivalent to Buyosphere, platforms like Meilishuo and Mogujie allow people to share photos of what they have bought or might buy and allow easy links to shopping sites. These are growing quickly in popularity, especially among young women, and are an important force in branding that I believe marketers must do more to take advantage of.

The addition of Light-blogging: A number of Tumblr clones, such as DianDian and Sina’s Qing, have become popular in China among those that want a change from the “noisy” nature of Weibo.

The addition of Online Dating: You don’t get much more social than China’s dating websites, which are exploring various revenue models and have even gone ahead with some high-profile stock-market listings.

Of course, making graphics like this is far from being an exact science. Much of the changes we made are debatable, in many cases the Chinese equivalents have different features to their equivalents, and there are inevitable difficulties relating to category crossovers. We welcome any suggestions in the comments!

The rise of “geili”, which means awesome or cool and is sometimes translated as “ungeilievable”, has gone hand in hand with the staggering development of SNS and content-sharing platform Sina Weibo.

The word  – along with many other Chinese internet neologisms – drives me mad. I always thought Geili, which I found was first used on Weibo on September 24, 2009, would die out quickly, especially after major brands such as Intel (cl.) started using in their social media campaigns. Instead geili has proved unstoppable, and has been mentioned 66,374,879 times since then.

More so than Western equivalents Facebook and Twitter, Sina Weibo has a powerful search function that allows you to search for relatively complex keyword strings according to specific date and location. This means you can do some pretty interesting quantitative analysis.

Based on the number of mentions, I was also able to work out that Saturday was the most geili day of the week, that July 3, 2011 was the most geili day in history, and that September 20, 2011 was the least geili day – some may remember that it was this day that saw Sina Weibo mysteriously taken offline for several hours.

I did so because for a long time I’ve been convinced Tencent Weibo is an important platform that will soon rival Sina Weibo. Putting it there is a way of starting a conversation with the marketers I meet about how we should be taking this platform more seriously.

For those less familiar with social media in China, Weibo is the dominent SNS/content-sharing platform in the country right now. The platform shares many features with Facebook and Twitter and is used in same ways as these platforms by both users and brands. There are 2-4 other Weibo platforms, of which, by the way, none are mentioned on my business card.

So, why am I so enthusiastic for Tencent Weibo?

1. In terms of functionality, the platform is as good as Sina Weibo. In fact, there are great features that Tencent had before Sina (photos that don’t get buried in brand feeds, for example) and others that Sina has yet to copy (built-in photo collage functions, Twitter-style public lists, and so on).

2. Tencent Weibo has loads of registered users. Credible estimates have this number around the 200 million mark. Fine, they might not be as active as they are on Sina Weibo, but still…

3. Tencent Weibo has loads of active users. Admittedly, one way Tencent is able to achieve such high registration numbers is thanks to its ability to channel traffic from its dominant instant messaging platform, QQ.  This has led to lots of zombie fans and, arguably, a less engaged user base. Yet estimates have the number of active users on Tencent still high, at around 115 million. More importantly, for me, my own observations of online activity and chats with a range of people around the country tell me that there is a major increase in enthusiasm for Tencent Weibo.

Don’t get me wrong, Sina’s Weibo platform is still ahead. Currently only Sina Weibo can match the levels of engagement and the society-wide importance that  Facebook enjoys in the West. For this reason Sina should in most cases be the first option for a brand hoping to engage with consumers in China.

The growth of Tencent Weibo, however, should be watched closely by marketers. Some brands and agencies are making moves on this platform, yet I believe not enough are stepping out of the “Sina Weibo comfort zone”, something that we would benefit from doing more often.

Since then new social media platforms have become relevant, either side of the Great Firewall, and so we have reworked the infographic to reflect some of the changes. We have also widened the scope to include more platforms within some of the categories.

Major changes include:

Three new categories: professional social networks, which may become more important with LinkedIn’s China future still uncertain, mobile chat, and online music.

GroupOn’s Chinese platform: Although just launched, if their planned investment is anything to go by and they get over some of their initial obstacles, GroupOn China is likely to become a major player in the next few months.

Quora: Although different to Yahoo Answers, which it replaced, Quora is now the Q&A platform everybody is talking about. On the China side we have included its direct equivalent, Zhihu, as well as Baidu Zhidao and Tianya Wenda, which are more like Yahoo Answers.

More Tencent: This Chinese internet giant has been given a lot more face than last time, with the addition of their microblog and the highly populated but relatively inactive Qzone.

…

Of course, making graphics like this is far from being an exact science. Much of the changes we made are debatable, in many cases the Chinese equivalents have different features to their equivalents, and there are inevitable difficulties relating to category crossovers. We welcome any suggestions in the comments!

“Can you give us something like the Vancl campaign?”

This has often been asked of China marketers since the run-away success of Vanclize in the summer of 2010. The campaign, from online clothing retailer Vancl, allowed (or even encouraged?) potential consumers to take an already popular ad, Photoshop their own version, and share it online.

Handing self-expression over to the Chinese social media user, along with control of the brand message, is now commonplace among brands trying to engage with consumers in China. The premise is simple: consumers, having invested time in producing something, will try their best to show all their friends, spreading the brand’s message in the process. Either that, or there are offered incentive to do so in the form of a competition.

In China (there is some precedent in the West, for example ScionSpeaks), brands are now taking this further and making it easier for consumers to create something with browser-based applications, thereby lowering the barriers of entry and making it even easier to share.

Kappa’s Rabbbit DIY

This activity, based on an independent mini-site and linked to a Douban page, calls on users to share their very own DIY rabbit ad, which they can create with a specially-designed Flash application. Incentives include the chance to win an iPhone or iPad. Winners are decided by public vote.

Chow Tai Fook’s I Have a Dream

This fully Douban-based activity from jewelry brand Chou Tai-fook takes self-expression even further, giving consumers free rein to create whatever they like – with no branding – using a Flash application. The brand communication comes in when a notice that the person has taken part in a Chou Tai-fook campaign appear in the news feeds of the participant’s friends. Winners are chosen either by a combination of votes/judges, or by a random draw from all participants.

LensCrafters’s New Year Campaign

This recently-concluded campaign makes it easy to create and share your own cartoon strip, by just filling the blanks. Again, this is a contest. Winners — chosen by Douban from a list of the most voted — receive a free pair of frames.

Nescafé ’s Inspiration Campaign

Although Douban is a great choice, since it attracts creative/artsy types, other platforms are hosting this kind of campaign.

This RenRen-based mini-site targeted students with a variety of activities, giving them the chance to win various prizes and one of 100,000 goodie bags. Participants can – among other things – share their own song, which they “compose” with a keyboard-controlled piano, and cartoon strips, which they “draw” by filling in blank text fields.

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I like these campaigns because they allow participants to “own” a piece of the action: by giving an opportunity for low-barrier-to-entry creation and providing attainable incentives, they are making their messages very tempting to share and in doing so have guaranteed a degree of virality.

Another interesting factor at play is the balance between grassroots participation and influencer engagement: anybody can take part and, with a decent creation, has the chance of winning. However, the campaigns are smart because they encourage people with more online influence to activate their social graphs to vote for their work — i.e., people with more friends take part because they have more chance of winning. By gaining their participation the message is spread further by people with the most influence.

If the people behind these campaigns had been asked for “another Vanclize”, then they have succeeded to an extent. However, these activities aren’t cheap – it requires a lot of work to create these games and the platforms in all cases will require money for hosting the campaign. The online execution of Vancl was cheap: it didn’t need a contest or a fancy Flash application. Instead, it succeeded in part because it used a piece of intellectual property that already had high levels of mindshare: the Vancl ad that so many people copied was already popular. Despite being amateurish Photoshopped copies, people instantly recognized the ads as belonging to Vancl’s campaign.

Update: Since writing this (and not uploading it!) a couple of weeks ago several more similar campaigns have got underway. For example, Nanyang Commercial Bank and Harman.

At the time of writing Oprah Winfrey had 4,927,206 followers while Yao Chen, a Chinese actress, had 4,927,256 followers, or “fans” as they are referred to on the Chinese platform.

This is the first time that the ten most followed microbloggers are not ten most followed twitterers and is a cool demonstration of both the size of China’s online population and the impressive growth of the Chinese platform.

Weibo, or Sina Microblog, is thought to have around 50 million users while the US-based Twitter, which is blocked for the vast majority of people in China, is estimated to over 200 million users.

It’s no surprise Oprah lost her place in the top ten: Oprah just posts a few times per month while Yao Chen posts several times a day and makes the most of the Chinese platform’s powerful features, for example adding a photo to every “tweet”.

Some more on Weibo:

Sina Weibo’s 4 Steps to Dominance in China (TechRice)

Sina Weibo: 5 Must Follows (BloggerInsight)

7 things Sina Microblog (Weibo) has that Twitter doesn’t (Ogilvy Digital Map)

An Weibo application recommendation from Dora Yin (DI, BJ): Weibo Analyst. This free software analyzes your own Weibo behavior – for example, telling you where most of your retweets come from or when people mention you most. Anybody involved in managing a Weibo account should consider this tool.

尹禾(北京, DI) 推荐给大家一个微博小应用:微博分析家, 它可以帮你知道自己什么时候最喜欢发微博,什么时候的微博反响最热烈,还有互动的人脉图关系展示甚至某一条特定微博的分析.这简直太符合微博平台越来越开放的趋势了！

YL Liu (DI, SH) recommends a Kaixin-based app that allows users to compare photos and lets brands set up photo-comparison activities. Using photos and fun choices instead of text and a “one-size-fits-all” approach, this format allows brands such as H&M to say more about their products in a fun, interactive way.

刘燕(上海, DI)推荐给大家一个开心新组件“评比”,它主题性强,可以更明确的传播核心概念.如:“H&M的新款小DRESS,你会选哪条？”,图片传播可有效提升网友的分享兴趣,避免企业传播文字过多或过于说教的问题,只要有大量优质图片可供运用,不妨一试.目前内容的构成,确定了该组件的时尚风格,可帮助品牌更好的提升其时尚感.

Robin Wang (BJ) loves Uniqlo Try, a Japanese minisite that the clothing retailer has devoted to bras. Click on a picture to reveal the details of one of the women’s age, height and bra size. With Uniqlo, underwear info has never been such fun!

Robin Wang (北京) 爱死了优衣库的新网站Uniqlo Try, 因为设计师针对优衣库的新“变态”创意-他们的迷你site瞄准了女性的胸罩.随着电子乐不断变换排列组合女性的大头照组成的矩阵呈现出新奇的3D空间效果, 还可以看到其中女性的年龄,身高,以及胸围之类的.用肉眼观察内衣统计信息从来没这么好玩过！

Flora Lai (BJ) has never seen such a comprehensive push for a movie as the Tron: Legacy promotions. From viral campaigns, a scavenger hunt in 27 locations across 25 countries, strategically-timed teasers, aggregated facebook app, designated webpages designed to engage fans and engaging offline events, Tron: Legacy has integrated their story into EVERY aspect of the campaign.

很多好莱坞大片有大把大把的钱来宣传他们的电影，可是Flora Lai(北京)从来没有见过哪个电影像《创：战纪》这样的规模。从病毒活动，一个横跨25个国家多达27个地点的寻宝游戏，到非常有战略性、时间恰如其分的电影预告片，Facebook应用、各种主页，再到各种线下活动，《创：战纪》真是把它们的故事主线融入到了营销活动的每一个方面。

Jason Zhou (DI, GZ) thinks Nine-square Diary is an interesting new online platform that we should be aware of. This online diary, which asks users to record their day by following a standard “nine-square” format, is becoming popular among students and white-collar workers for its user-friendliness and integration with other social media platforms.

周瑛智（广州，DI）最近发现了一种比微博还要微的“九宫格日记”正风靡网络,九个方方正正的小格子,您可像做填空题那样”对号入座”,这种便捷、有趣的新型网络日记正深受学生和上班族的热捧.

And one last-minute entry from Claire Ma (BJ), who loves how H&M opened their flagship store in Amsterdam with this beautiful combination of large-scale 3D projection and online video.

最后投稿的还有马佳佳(北京),H＆M阿姆斯特丹旗舰店的开幕很酷的将大型3D投影和在线视频完美地结合了起来.

But last week I came across two very interesting examples of just this, from Chinese Internet giants Tencent and Qihoo 360. Using a platform like Weibo could not be more important than during times of controversy, and do these guys have controversy right now…

A vicious feud is taking place right now between Qihoo 360, China’s biggest antivirus provider, and Tencent, maker of QQ chat and other online services. The controversy centers around accusations of spying on users and anti-competitive practices (more here).

With both their corporate reputations at stake, both Qihoo and Tencent have turned to Weibo – thought to have 10-20 million active users – as a direct and instant channel to communicate with consumers, journalists, and other interest groups.

Each has been keeping their large followings (Tencent: 60,000+ fans; Qihoo: 80,000+ fans) up-to-date with their own side of the story. And people have been listening too, with some updates being forwarded and commented on many thousands of times.

More important to these companies, perhaps, is that the press has been closely following their Weibo updates. Rather than waiting to hear statements from a company spokesman, dozens of journalists are now quoting these feeds directly as they cover the ongoing feud.

Global Times, just one of hundred of articles to directly quote from Weibo

Qihoo, which had been building its following for a year prior to the controversy, is making more of Weibo’s potential than Tencent (admitedly, Tencent is probably eschewing Sina Weibo in favour of it’s own, far less popular, version of the microblog system). Qihoo is updating round the clock, responding to comments, and engaging with third-party content; Tencent, in contrast, has put out only a dozen or so infrequent posts without any interaction since the controversy began.

C-suite social media involvement is another good way to build an authentic corporate voice. Here, Qihoo seems to be trumping its rival again — on Sina Weibo at least. Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo, has been providing views on the situation to his almost 400,000 followers. Tencent’s Ma Huateng, on the other hand, has remained quiet on Weibo, sticking instead to his personal feed on Tencent Microblog.

Which company, if any, emerges from this feud with a communications victory will of course depend largely on their offline response; action taken by on Weibo should only be one part of the overall issue management strategy. Yet the value of reaching and engaging with Weibo is clear: direct and instant communication with between 10 and 20 million of the people that matter the most.

Dora Yin (DI, BJ) loves this video from T-Mobile, which features 500 real performers putting on a seemingly impromptu show at London’s Heathrow airport. Could there be a more fun way to spread their “Life’s for sharing” message?

 尹禾（北京，DI）很喜欢T-Mobile新拍的Welcome Home，他们联合500名表演人员，在伦敦希斯罗机场T5航站楼为旅行回家的人上演了一场音乐舞蹈的伴奏，再一次诠释了“生命在于分享”的广告语。

Fang Yu (DI, BJ) likes how Lipton is appealing to Chinese office workers’ love of virtual gifts with their new Kaixin activity. Not only is word-of-mouth achieved through the initial gift giving, buzz is sustained as receivers tell their friends about their gift for a chance to win a real box of tea. 

郁芳（北京，DI）喜欢立顿唤醒下午茶新送茶活动,不只是一个虚拟礼物上的自发口头传播，更是因为他们有机会由此得到一盒真正的红茶从而更多的讨论到它，形成二次传播。

Liu Yan (DI, SH) likes how Converse in China has invited young celebrities to start their own blogs within the official website’s new blog channel. Writing about various things including art, sport and fashion – without any product/brand hard sell, these influencers are helping build the brand in a subtle way. 

刘燕 (上海，DI) 看到converse在自己的官网上作了一个blog频道，邀请了很多在年轻人中比较有名气的文艺青年开博，从艺术、文学、运动、潮流等几个角度让converse品牌更充实，并不断发起各种互动活动，不但提升目标群体的关注，而且强化了对品牌的喜爱。

Mars Li (DI, BJ) thinks MINI’s latest location-based iPhone campaign in Sweden is putting the brand at the forefront of digital marketing. The concept is not easy to explain… best check out this case study video.

Mars Li（北京，DI）认为Mini在瑞典的最新iphone定位功能的案例将这个品牌推到了在数字营销的最前沿。这个概念是不容易解释…最好看看这个案例研究视频。

Andrea Fenn (DI, SH) is excited about Bing’s new social-function: from last week, search queries include results from your social networks. Now it will be easier to find out what your friends think about the issues you care most about, and social networks will become more important for brands to promote their image.

安仁为Bing搜索引擎的新“社会化”功能而感到兴奋：从上周起，Bing的搜索结果会包括你社会化媒体之中的结果。现在，你会更容易地发现你朋友对你所感兴趣的意思的意见和想法，并品牌会更加关注社会化媒体与在其之中推广自己名字的方式。

facebook might be blocked for the average user in China, but in its place have developed a number of equally sophisticated equivalents. Different demographics have gravitated towards their favorite social network based on the different features and marketing strategies adopted by the various sites. The infographic below presents the typical users of five online social networks, Kaixin, facebook, Douban, Renren and QZone.

Of course, our infographic is at best a broad generalization and it’s important to remember that many Chinese use more than one social network (the average number of accounts per person is 2.8).

Our social network infographic draws on our own research and various third-party reports (CNNIC, iResearch, Nielsen and AppleAp).

Click here for a Chinese version.