By Lisa Li, Zafka Zhang, Helen Yu

As a soaring sphere of China’s Internet, SNS has gain immense attention from Internet observers, marketers, and of course Internet practitioners. When our friends heard China Youthology was working on this topic, a lot of questions went to us about how big the potential of SNS is in China, how long the success of the current popular SNS operators can last, whether there is a room for International SNS and where, how the marketers can use this new platform of connection…

A great deal of observations and discussion on China’s SNS can be found in the blogsphere. For example, here, here and here. However, our way of looking at this topic is a bit different – we want to look at it from the perspective of people by trying to understand ‘how SNS changes the life and mind of Chinese young people’. We believe a good understanding of people will shed light on the understanding of the Internet as well as of social marketing. (When studying ‘users’, we look at their behavior and attitudes on SNS in the context of Internet usage; when studying ‘people’, we look at their behavior and attitudes on SNS in the context of their lifestyle and values as a whole.)

How we did the research? We sampled 15 SNS users aged 18 – 30 yrs. The selection of participants cover a good mix of city tiers, geography, age, gender, users of Xiaonei, Kaixin001 and facebook, heavy users and light users. (We did not study the users of 51.com although it is also one of the biggest in China.) We observed their feeds on SNS on daily basis for about 20 days in Dec, visited and observed their use of SNS as well as other Internet application via offline ethnography. Some of heavy SNS users were ‘deprived of’ SNS for one week and asked to write notes whenever they wanted to use SNS about why they wanted to use and what they felt they were losing when not able to use SNS.

The China Youthology team are all heavy users of SNS as well as other social media (from Facebook, Xiaonei, Kaixin001, to Douban, to Twitter, Fanfou, to flickr, Slideshare…). However, we still found it spiritually-rewarding to obtain a fuller understanding of SNS after the research. Yes, SNS is more than an online tool for relationships. It has altered the way many young people perceive, construct, and manage their sociality, self-expression, learning, and entertainment, and hence their identity and relationship with the outside world.

Let’s start from sociality…

Building and managing social capital on SNS – increased social capital through ‘moderate socializing’ (浅社交)

Yao, a first jobber, has 5 close family members (parents and grand parents), 4 best friends, about 150 classmates from primary school to college, about 30 colleagues and 20 clients, about 20 friends known in non-school non-work socials, and more than 50 friends known on the Internet…

So many contacts… sounds pretty much a headache. And as a matter of fact this is quite a minimum case. But Yao feels ok about it. She has more than 100 numbers on her mobile phone. Most of the numbers she hardly dials. But at holidays she text greetings to many. There are more contacts on her msn and qq. Yes, she has to keep both msn and qq because some old time friends are on qq while people she knows at work are mostly on msn. There are about 200 contacts in her Xiaonei network. And since she started to play Kaixin, she found herself easily connected to more people – from old time classmates, ex-colleagues, to people she ‘randomly’ knows at dinners or parties.

‘I cannot imagin how I can be connected with so many alumni without Xiaonei… and now I start to ‘store’ my new acquaintances on Kaixin if they are on it too.’

We can understand drivers of using SNS and/or choosing operators by understanding how SNS has changed the social network and interaction of young people:

Width of network – connections to more people can be ‘stored’ and managed on SNS.

‘For some of my friends, we are currently connected only via Xiaonei. I cannot contact them if I don’t use Xiaonei.’

‘And I was really stunned by Kaixin’s magical capability of introducing ‘people you may know’. They are almost 100% accurate to me.’

Relevant applications: ‘friends you may know’, ‘friends news feeds’, ‘rewards in games for introducing friends to the network’, ‘groups’

Warmth of the connection – it is easy to keep moderate ‘warmth’ of the relationships.

‘You know, just by buying a friend as my ‘slave’ and treating her with a ‘spa’ now and then, I will not feel abrupt to give her a call even though we have not spoken to each other for a year…’

Relevant applications: ‘virtual gifts’, ‘friends for sale’ (and the personalized tasks and treats for friends), ‘parking war’, ‘poking’, ‘biting’, ‘truth or dare’, ‘how much you know me’, ‘tag in photos’, ‘polling’, ‘songs for friends’

Efficiency – and how efficient it is to maintain the warmth of a connection through ‘friends for sale’ or ‘parking war’ or keep updated about status of friends through news feeds! SNS is particularly suitable for the hectic lifestyle of young people who need to make the most of fragmented time.

Relevant applications: ‘message’, ‘status update’, ‘comment’, ‘polling’, ‘virtual gifts’, and other games

Free of intrusion in private space – leaving a note on SNS is perceived more intimate than emails, and less intrusive than phone calls and instant messengers. People on SNS find themselves more in control about their sociality now.

Relevant applications: ‘message’, ‘status update’, ‘comment’

‘I hope everything could be controlled by myself and made perfectly fit into my life and schedule…’

The above four features of socializing is increasingly desired by the young people today in their life on and off the Internet. China Youthology would like to put it ‘moderate socializing’ – a form of socializing that enables establishment and maintenance of a large number of connections, in a moderate strength of relationship, with high efficiency, and minimum intrusion of private space of people. It is increasingly important because of people’s higher needs in enhancing social capital via building and managing weak ties.

‘CNNIC report 2009’ shows that about 26% of college students and 20% of office workers in China are on social networking sites. SNS are yet to obtain a majority of Netizens in China. There is a lot of debate on whether SNS will continue to grow as rapidly as 2008. We are not experts on Internet or technology, but from user insights’ perspective, unless greater tools of sociality can be invented, we see a steady growth of SNS in China because SNS fits people’s changing need in sociality and networking. Brands should start to adapt to new ways of connecting with Chinese young consumers on SNS.

As we have already seen, sociality in SNS is highly integrated with the experience of gaming, content sharing, etc. To some of the SNS users, entertainment, content, or self-expression may even exceed the importance of sociality.

We are going to talk about the other aspects (self expression, learning, and entertainment) and implications for brands soon… And your comments and ideas are welcome!

Filed under: Internet & Web2.0, So What?, China, Facebook, Helen Yu, Kaixin, Kaixin001, Lisa Li, SNS, social media, social networking site, sociality, Xiaonei, Zafka Zhang