SNS

There is a new popular social networking Services (SNS) in Chinese. The article said the international services, like Facebook, was not popular in China because of language. I checked Facebook right away and find out it does offer multi language and in Chinese too, so it may be misleading. But I am not in place to judge since I don't know whether it is true or not.

But anyway, the point is this new Chinese version of Facebook offer virtual money to buy virtual car and diamond. So everyone was sending out invitation to everyone they know to earn the virtual money. People post meaningless comments and chat on the net. It is like a virtual world. I have been ignoring the invitation because I did not know what it was. The article did mention there are some new games but you would be bored after awhile. Therefore retaining the member might be a challenge. I did sign up with Facebook not long ago but I did not visit it often. Either because I have not discover the fun of it yet or I don't have many friends on it. Most of my friends are on MSN, so why would I need to "chat" with them on Facebook which is not "live". But I guess the difference would be Facebook is open to all friends to see and keep track of activities and conversations, like a blog but shorter.

Often I also wonder why would people have time to chat on MSN or Facebook. shopping on line or surf the net at work. Is it because they are efficient and I am not? I assumed most of the professionals would not have time for it. So if the company use SNS or this type of interactive tool, who are they talking to?

Other thought on SNS:

"Start-up for ‘super-networkers'" ia about the new SNS for "super networker". This SNS has a clear target market but some think it is late to enter the market in late 2008. Although research shows growth potential, I think the new online network need to be special for the target customer to make it work. Because most likely the "super networker" already join many existing SNS. There were actually many other SNS with special target market like Japanese biggest networking website expended their market to retired senior citizens aiming at the baby boomers.

"TEENAGERS FALL IN LOVE WITH NETWORKING SITES" said about 55% of American teenagers spend too much time on Internet, especially on SNS and reveal too much of their personal information. This raise another privacy issue that need to be regulated to protect the children. Too many of our personal information were open to public without our awareness. Many of us enjoy the convenience of Internet tool but often forgot to verify the setting of privacy and security.

There were also some legal issue regarding these SNS when people published whatever on their blog or space, is it illegal? It has became an difficult issue since it involved with people globally. If the user-generated content is a “user-stolen” intellectual property but not for business purpose. Some company encourage it as a word of mouth for promotion and some sue the individule for copytheft. where is the clear line? To punish MySpace is to stifle cyberspace