Photo-sharing apps and smartphones go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. So in China it’s no surprise that dozens of start-ups have gone the route of forming a light community based on a neat photo app. Before dismissing them as Instagram clones, remember the limitations of Instagram: it’s for iPhone only; has no browsable photos on the desktop, meaning its website is functionally useless; and it supports only four American social networks. Plus, Instagram moves so slowly that it might take years before it deigns to support other mobile platforms ...
Tag Archives: Social Media
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![Zaker: The News-Readin’, Page-Flippin’ Flipboard Clone [REVIEW]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/themes/penn2/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Zaker-app-01.jpg&w=250&h=250&zc=1&q=90)
![Why You’ll Want to Stack Your Tweets With StackRoll [INTERVIEW]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/themes/penn2/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2011/09/StackRoll-01.jpg&w=250&h=250&zc=1&q=90)
Oct 3 2011
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Kim Jong Il’s Grandson Retreats From Social Media After Accounts Discovered
After word got out that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s grandson was enrolling at a private high school in Bosnia, the 16-year-old Kim Han Sol found that his Facebook and Twitter profiles were suddenly under scrutiny. Over on his North Korea Tech website, Martyn Williams explains photos posted to Kim Han Sol’s social accounts were published by South Korean media, and subsequently public access to those accounts were restricted. There are a number of other social services that the young Kim had used, including a Wordpress called Pimp your Grades (Google cache), ...
Oct 3 2011
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Zaker: The News-Readin’, Page-Flippin’ Flipboard Clone [REVIEW]
Most successful international apps have a group of Chinese imitators. The success of magazine-style news-reading app Flipboard has brought with it many such Chinese “brothers,” such as Fruit, Netease reader, and perhaps the most popular of them all, Zaker. To commemorate its growing acclaim this year, it’s time to give it a mini-review. Zaker is made by Dooland, a web company founded in 2007, and has separate versions for iPhone and iPad. Like Flipboard - which got blocked in China back in May of this year - it carefully grabs news ...
Oct 1 2011
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It’s OK to Localize a Web Service, But it’s Not Cool to Copy the Website
…A case in point is the new Chinese social media app PengYou which is a clone of the social media dashboard-cum-diary Path. So it’s absolutely fine - and most welcome - that PengYou has made a localized kind of social media diary app that plugs into Sina Weibo, Douban, et al. In fact, I want to sign-up and try it out. But it crosses the line when it also so shamelessly copies Path’s entire website too. Compare upeng.me and path.com (pictured side-by-side in the above image) and see the exact ...
Sep 14 2011
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Social Media Engagement in China: Top 20 Luxury Brands
A new annual report from the L2ThinkTank has been released today, giving insights into which big-name luxury brands are best engaging with Chinese consumers in 2011. The researchers dub it a “China IQ” - a measure of a company’s effectiveness on the web and social media among China’s growing middle-classes. The report’s authors stress that “success in the world’s fastest-growing prestige market is inextricably linked to digital competence.” They’ve identified a list of top 100 companies in this regard, but we’ll boil it down to 20 top web and social media ...
Sep 14 2011
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StumbleUpon Should Include Indonesia as an Interest
To us, StumbleUpon is a platform where we can share and consume content, and connect with new readers. In some ways it’s like a random blind date. And happily, we’ve picked up many new readers through the social bookmarking site. I know this because from time to time people who StumbleUpon our site have emailed us their compliments; plus a fair share of people have given us suggestions or tips on things that they would like to read on our blog. So the feedback, both negative and positive, is always welcomed ...
Sep 13 2011
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Facebook: Do you have a Chinese name?
I’m currently spending some time in Taiwan, and shortly after my arrival here I was greeted by Facebook with the alert box (above) asking me if I have a Chinese name. As an ethnic Chinese who is mostly based in Singapore, that question piqued my curiosity… Why is Facebook asking? And how did Facebook determine who to ask for their Chinese name? Perhaps the question is triggered by my Taiwan IP address. Or perhaps Facebook knows that many of my friends in Taiwan have already keyed in their Chinese name on ...
Sep 8 2011
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My Thoughts About Tiger Airways’ Miscommunicated Flight Delay
I’m on vacation this week! That ought to mean relaxation and some carefree fun, but unfortunately my bliss was broken almost immediately by an experience I had trying to take a flight with Tiger Airlines. My flight was scheduled for 10 AM, and that’s what was printed on my ticket. But at the desk, a Tiger Airlines rep told me the flight had been delayed until 12. That’s annoying, of course, but it happens. Then when I reached the gate, I discovered the departure display board had our flight leaving at ...
Sep 5 2011
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Why You’ll Want to Stack Your Tweets With StackRoll [INTERVIEW]
Twitter can sometimes be a difficult medium to master. Very often we want to get people’s attention, but at the same time we don’t know when is the right time to tweet a joke or a great article or a funny video. There are a number of third-party tools that can help you schedule tweets, and here in Indonesia we have one too. It's called StackRoll, and was created by Didik Wicaksono from Kualiku Apps. We interviewed him in an effort to learn more about his service. 1. StackRoll is the ...
Sep 6 2011
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Kickstarter-Funded Film ‘Blind’ Portrays Post-Nuclear Tokyo
In the past we’ve written about how many creative individuals have used the crowd-funding service Kickstarter to raise money for projects or start-ups. It has proven especially useful in Japan after the March 11 earthquake, particularly in helping with measurement of radiation (see Safecast and Smart Radiation Detector). Those projects were very much driven by a need to find out more information about the radiation threat in Tokyo. In the absence of reliable, easy-to-understand data people get scared. And the latest Kickstarter project from Japan is an attempt to visualize ...
Sep 2 2011
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What’s popular on Google+? Find out on Journal+
Journal+, a website that gathers popular posts from Google+, was released by User Local last week. It's a web magazine that brings together popular pictures, videos, and news articles on Google+ by various categories, or by country. Taking a quick look at Journal+, users can get a snapshot of what's most popular on Google+. The number of times a post has been reshared, and the amount of +1s it has received, are some of the factors that decide what is displayed on the site. There are more than 6.2 million posts ...
Sep 1 2011
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Using Social Media for User Acquisition
Yesterday’s Founders Drinks topic was focused on using social media for user acquisition. Typically start-up founders use make use of digital platforms like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter as tools use to engage with users. But often, depending on the nature of your business, it can be tough to use these tools effectively to generate significant buzz or convert fans to users. Of course, there’s no fool proof way to solve this problem, so e27 and Penn-Olson have lined up a star-studded list of panelists to provide the Founders Drinks audience with some ...
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