I recently read and article from TechCrunch on Chinese social networking platforms. The article talks about the fact that many social networking sites in China are actually making a profit, more so then the best known site in the western world, Facebook.
I was interested in how these guys were making their money, as the question always asked of all social media today to is "wheres the business model?". What became more evident and striking to me however were the numbers of users on these platforms in China, the largest claiming 376,000,000.
China has a large population, of course there would be a large number of users. The platforms better meet the social norm's in China, better then say Facebook or Myspace. User numbers dont actually mean that much in the real world. Yes, I know, this all this makes sense, what I was interested with was the fact that 99% of the material I read had not mentioned the fact that the largest social networking site in the world was in China.
I was surprised with myself, that I was not aware of this small, but incredibly significant fact! While I daily get a flood of information with commentary asking how and when sites like Twitter will start making money, wondering on how much (if any) money Facebook is making, blah, blah, blah, there is a business model in China that has far eclipsed anything else happening.
I understand that the Chinese model may not work in the western world, the point is that I completely missed a major player in the market, time for me to take the blinkers off and have a good look around!
