Technology fast? Three days? Kill me!!!

Nowadays people living in a technology world. Even six grade student uses cell phone and computer in China. High-end technology products are becomes part of our life, like Smartphone, laptop and iPod. Now I will give up all technologies in my life for three days and become a primitive people.

First thing I did is calling my family and told them I would quite Internet and mobile for three days, don’t be worried if they couldn’t find me. After that, I put all my high-end stuff in a luggage and put it in the living room; I thought that could makes me feel better during these three days.

OK, here we go! Technology fast start!!!

Day one

Suddenly I felt my room was so empty and all what I could do was just reading magazine, free newspaper and even all the bills of our house. I couldn't get news from my friends on the RenRen and Sina Weibo. One of my friend won the first prize in a Korean language speech contest that day, and she posted this message and photos on RenRen. She also sent a message to my phone. Obviously I didn't get this news, therefore couldn't congratulate her at first. She told me lately that although she knew that I was doing technology fast, she was a little bit upset. 

In Ireland newspaper and TV, the news about my home country, China, was rare. I usually got news from Internet. But these three days would keep me away from the news about China. I was a little bit worried because I couldn't know what was happening in my home country in these days.

It was absolutely the most struggle day in my life, even worse than exam time! I was just sit around in my house today.

Day two

Finally, I realized that I have a lot of schoolwork need to finish, I just felt so happy about it. If I knew someone who was happy because he/she found some schoolwork to do before I did this task, I would say that he/she was crazy. However, I found that I couldn't finish my schoolwork without my computer. I need to write the CA by using Microsoft Word. I also need to access the online database to read some e-books and e-journals. What I could do was some basic reading. I did reading a lot that day. I also could not download the handout for tomorrow class from my e-mail and Moodle. So I asked my friend to copy the handouts for me.   

Day three

Last day! I felt boring and inconvenient without my cellphone and computer. I was so missing my cellphone and the Internet. 

The task was finished. I made it!!! I found  that it was very hard to quiet technology in my daily my. However, I still had to say that this was a really meaningful task, especially good for girls; keep us away from radiation and save my skin. I thought everybody in the world should try this at least once; it was good for our earth. Less electricity used good for our money. Stop young people to be addicted to Internet. Finally, I would say:”I love this task!”

Social Networking

There is no denying that social networking websites are getting more and more popularized in recent years. It gets people a lot of advantages. People can publish, share and get social interactions through social networks. You can stay in touch anywhere.

The most popular social networking websites in worldwide could be Facebook and Twitter. I don't use these two frequently, but have signed up. However these two and also some other websites like YouTube are blocked in China.

The most social networking websites in China are Kaixin, RenRen, Pengyou and Qzone. What I active on is RenRen and Sina WeiBo. RenRen has the same form with Facebook and Sina WeiBo has the same form with Twitter.

Social Networking websites have been seen as an effective tool to promote business. Many business organizations have developed Social Networks promotion plan as part of their overall marketing strategy. 

I would like to use RenRen as an example to talk about how business organization promoting through the Social Networking websites. In my perception, advertising on RenRen can be categorized into four forms.

First one is the banner advertising. This kind of ads always located on the side of the sites. The objective of this kind of advertising is to generate sales only. The GM of RenRen said that they have ads service platform for small/media business just like what Facebook does, but this is not the major advertising form they provide. 95% ads on RenRen are big brand ads. This might be the reason that why I only see one banner advertising on my RenRen homepage.

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The second one is creating a business profile on RenRen, companies can publish articles or photos of their business or relevant to their business. Then their followers can see and share with their social group. As what the GM of RenRen said, this kind of promotion is more likely brand image building than sales generation only. As I know, building a profile on RenRen as a business organization will be charged registration fees.

A RenRen profile page of a wedding planning company.

The third type is advertising on the comments. Here a popular Chinese website should be introduced. Taobao is an online shopping market just like eBay. Some sellers of Taobao advertise their Taobao shop on RenRen. They leave their shop introduction and link as comments under relevant articles or photos. For example, a user of RenRen built an album about teaching girls how to dress in fashion, a seller of female clothes from Taobao may said that he/she has these clothes in his/her Taobao shop and leave their shop link.

The last one is concealed advertisement. Publish articles or photos as a regular user, building and brand image in people’s subconscious, for example, an album of a collection of Coke Cola’s package design.                

Social Medias that I uses for my spare time

Social Medias changes people's life nowadays and no body can live without social medias. Young people may prefer uses mobiles, internet, TV at their spare time, old people may reading newspapers, listen radios more. For me, a foreign student. I spend almost 80% of my spare time online and another 20% on my phone.

Media types:
Newspaper- 0% never read
Radia- 0%
TV- 0% (I don't have a TV)
Mobile- 1hrs per day 20%
Online- 4hrs per day 90%

How to benefit your business through QQ Group?

“Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in Mainland China. As of September 30, 2010, the active QQ users accounts for QQ IM amounted to 636.6 million, possibly making it the world's largest online community”. QQ has such a large amount of users, if you can use it for your business somehow, isn’t it a good thing?

First, I will introduce QQ and QQ Group a little bit.

QQ is “an Internet Instant Message (IM) to support online message communications and instant voice, video and file transmissions”. QQ Group is “a multi-user communication service supplied in QQ. Once a QQ Group is created, the group builder can invite his/her friends as well as other people who share the same interests with the builder to join the group. In addition to this service, QQ is providing “Group Space” function in which members can take advantage of a lot of community-generated conveniences such as forum, photo albums, file sharing, etc.”.   

For most users of QQ groups, it is a place for chat. However it doesn't only mean a place for chat for some business people. Of course it is used for meeting new friends at first, and then it becomes a tool for E-marketing. For example, releasing adv. In QQ Group. Now, it can even be used to find opportunities to do business. Many people may still wonder that how QQ Group can be used to find business opportunities. So how can you realize this?

First, to standardize users’ display names. QQ Group users originally can set their display name freely.  In a business QQ Group, the users’ display names have to indicate what business they are involved in. For example, the user who is in Real Estate business can name like “Real Estate”. If you are in certain company, you should add your company name also. This enables all the users in the group to know what business is each member involved in.

Second, to actualize the virtual platform. Many people worry about that doing business in QQ Group is not secure. What you can to for this problem is to organize some activities like dinner, hiking, BBQ, traveling, etc. regularly to join the members who are in the same area or even world wide together. Therefore, members in the group could not only be assured to discus business in the QQ Group, but also make friends in real life.

Third, let the members in the group to help each other in business. If you have certain business right now, then you post relevant information in the group, you can get lots useful information back quickly. Moreover, in normal times members can discuss certain problem and exchange opinion on their business like marketing and management strategy and so on. For example, a Real Estate company wants to advertise their new buildings and then post the information in the group, and a advertising company in the group can just take over this business. After they discussing the requirements and price of the advertising, they can just to meet to sign the contract.

Fourth, expanding the platform. You should continuously adopt new people into your group. Therefore, the effect of the QQ Group will become more important for each member.

Using QQ Group to do business has become a trend. It is popular among business people because it is convent, quickly and instant. When you making new friends, you can get business opportunities at the same time and build business relationships.