Exploring China SNS, MicroBlog environments and their differences to the west, Ch. 3

By now, I am struggling from being overwhelmed by the many choices, and available SNS, blogging and micro blogging services just in China alone. In the west, there are a large number of applications for the purpose of managing and sync'ing your tweets to other blogs, microblogs and SNS such as the Tweetdeck, Twirls, HelloTxt, FriendFeed, etc...
In China, while there are much less third party apps for the tweeter like services such as FanFou, Digu; these services offer their own sync'ing solutions like Hellotxt. One can easily get into an infinite loop situation if not careful in configuring what sync to what.

Last week, I Deleted my Twitter account "kittysanhk' because I got freaked out by the distraction caused by the many 'interesting' tweets from people I followed. I realize the productivity in my research has reached a situation of information overload, and my brain has become so fragmented and my writing/blogging productivity has dropped to ZERO except for the 140 char micro blogging if you call my conversational and occassional sharing of things I read 'blogging'.

I took a time out from Twitter and in a few days my mind seem to settle and I am able to re-focus my research on China's mobile and social media services and the differences with the west.

I started writing in sohu.com's SNS, called 白社会. It fills a slightly different purpose than this blog. In the 白社会 diary, I feel comfortable to write partial thoughts like I would in the old fashion diary. And that migration fro the 140 char habit, to longer diary entry, clears up my writer's block and allow me to return to this blog post.

My apology for the cut and paste inclusion of my 白社会 diary entry here, some of which are written in Chinese. I will in future include an English translation of the Chinese diaries for this blog.


Translation of my 3rd diary entry in 白社会

June 6, started to explore Fanfou. Fanfou's user interface looks almost identical to Twitter.

I decided NOT to configure 'sync' on any of the social media services. I prefer to use SNS, microblog as a two way conversational relationship with the user community on those services; and not use them as a one way 'broadcast' vehicle.

When I sign on to 白社会 every day, it has a cute feature that asks me to 'punch card', like a worker punch the clock upon arrival at work. Each time I punch the card, I would earn some 'gold coins'. I am still not used to the SNS culture in China where these entertaining features are in their DNA.

I started with 0 follower in FanFou. I wonder how long it would take me to gain the first follower. For the record, I made my first fanfou tweet on June 6, at 5:30pm.

I have used Digu for about 2 months and have 1510 followers as of this afternoon.
I have 0 follower in FanFou. I have re-joined Twitter two days ago and have 12 followers.
I lost a follower in the last hour.. I wonder if it's because today, I tweeted primarily in Chinese.

I updated my Twitter Bio to: Follow me on my journey in exploring SNS, microblog in China and discover the differences with the West.


我的SNS,微博客这兩个月的个人体驗 - 第三回

六月六日,開始飯否旅程..同Twitter UI 一樣...

決定不做同步! 感覺还是做双向溝通那種用户,而不是單向广播的!

还是覺得登陸白社会每天打咔領取5个,10个小金币好挍笑. 内地的SNS都是大家的遊戲室..邊玩邊做傳媒,要慢慢習惯. 難度Learn only when you have fun是这些平台的DNA?

吾知要多久才有飯否用户發現,跟随我呢? 六月六日約5:20pm 在飯否發送第一个信息. 记录

用了Digu兩个月,現有1510跟随者. 在飯否0个跟随者.

剛更新了Twitter的自述: Follow me on my journey in exploring SNS, microblog in China and discover the differences with the West.