Shuai’s Box of Chocolates

Okay, I really want to share my China trip experience with you every day and I planned to do this. But I realized the second day I arrived: I simply can’t keep up with my changing schedule here. All my original plans and schedules have been changed almost every day and it’s still changing.

Is this a bad thing? So far, it’s actually very exciting to me and working well with what I want to do during the trip. It’s just that there are so many people, things, events, and information that come to you all the time in China…all these lead to a very interesting new schedule that you didn’t expect. So I canceled my flight, changed my meetings, even now need to change my departure date.

This is how fast China is going. I guess I’ll just follow the flow and let things lead to where I’m supposed to be.

Also, I realized that I won’t be able to share my day-to-day travel experiences with you as I planned (just remember, change is a lot faster than plan in China). So I’ll try my best to enjoy the trip for now. And I’ll share more thoughts and updates with you in separate posting when my trip ends in September.

Enjoy the excitement if that’s what you are looking for in China; Enjoy the order of life if that’s what you are looking for in US. Or I should say, enjoy both no matter where you are

Tags: china, travel

Some people want to lead a life that is predictable, simple and sortable. Some people enjoy the craziness & the richness of the disordered, unpredicted and changing life. If you are the latter, you will fall in love with Shanghai so easily!

I got extremely excited while flying over the Pacific from US to Asia and I thought heart-attach can easily be developed. Without sleeping during the 17-hour trip, my mind has been fired up like a hot engine - spinning, spinning and spinning!

Why?

I don’t know. I only know this happens to me normally when I’m physically close to places like New York City.

My first taste of Shanghai hasn’t really started yet. I arrived at 9PM at Pudong International Airport. The minute I stepped out the airport building, I said, wow-it’s humid and warm (just like what I thought). Then 30-min we drove from the airport to one recently developed home&business community center in Pudong. People were walking, shopping, and getting into the bars. My friend who picked me up said to me: the life of Shanghai just started (10PM).

Everything is so available even at night: shops, bars, people, voices, lights, street-vendor fruits, food…It must be an exciting and lovely place to be, I told myself before sleep. Well, just found out that stuff like Facebook and Twitter are NOT available! Crazy - it will be a crazy but fun place to be!~

Now, it’s 4AM Shanghai time - I had a 4-hour sleep and I guess I’m waiting for the day to start. So I can really see who Shanghai is!

Have a great weekend.

Tags: Asia, Business and Economy, china, New York City, Pacific Ocean, Pudong, Shanghai, Shanghai Pudong International Airport, travel, trip

I’m going to visit China for a month in Aug. I do want to post my trip experience here and share it with friends. One thing that I’m sure: this is not the China that I knew! Which China? It is a China that I need to re-define, re-look at, and re-understand!

One thing that I can’t decide: should I write in English or in Chinese?

So, I’ll just follow the flow - let my brain and present feeling to decide which language the post will be written.

Here is the first pre-trip conversation that’s related to my travel and it is in Chinese

今天晚上和一个朋友吃饭。他在美国呆了许多年，去年回国创业。这次回到湾区办事情。能在我回国前见个面真的是很好！他给了我些很中听的建议，我总结为 “我是骗子”：

1，不要以为你还是中国人，你已经不是中国人了；中国人都是犹太人

2，把你自己想成是骗子(总要站在对方的立场上考虑问题）。大家都假设对方（或者自己对于对方来说）是骗子；然后慢慢通过了解，通过合作才取得一步步地信任

3，多听，多了解，抱着虚心学习的态度

4，做什么都行，只要闷着头做，都能做出来

最后他又说，“没问题，你前途无限”。我听了大笑。有这样一个朋友真是不错！到了上海争取再和他吃顿饭。哈哈！

Tags: china, travel, trip, 中国

Wow! You’ve got to watch this video on Techcruch - a fun pizza ordering app on iPhone! The UI is so delicious and it is fun!

Imagination wins!

Tags: imagination, iphone app, pizza

I like Zappos, because they are good at social networking, online and offline. I like Amazon too, because they provide the easiest way of shopping online.

I wrote about Zappos’ social marketing activities earlier. To me, they are the one company who gets social media!

• Zappos’ Facebook page and Twitter are well integrated
• They fully leveraged all types of media (pictures and videos)
• Their employee engagement is very high: it’s a place naturally to be social - it’s personal!

People can comment on Amazon’s acquisition from different perspectives. To me, I wonder how Zappos’ social gene can be passed and emerged into Amazon. I’m not sure if that is a benefit from business value part, but I do see it would help to shape the culture and the company’s social value.

Tags: amazon, Facebook, social media, Social network service, Twitter, Zappos

ComScore recently did a research, which found that among 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Russia has the world’s most engaged social networking audience, with the average online Russian spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per month.

Brazil ranked close behind Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The US ranked at #9  in terms of social network engagement, with an average of 4.2 average hours and 477 pages consumed per visitor.

I was surprised at once, because I thought that the Asian countries will definitely top the ranking. But neither China, Korea, or Japan is even showing up in this top-20 list. So I looked closely and found out that this data/research doesn’t include the internet Cafe or mobile web browsing…

This is really a good example of showing how mis-leading a social networking research could be. In my opinion, this research totaly ingored the big social networking factor - how it’s being social networked. In other words, in what way people are socializing. Without Internet Cafe data, China of course will not show up; without mobile web browsing, Japan, Korea, South Africa or China will probably not show up. Because that’s how people in those countries socialize. If you cut their main social networking platform, there is no way to understand how they are engaged.

Here is the list of the top 20 countries from ComScore research:

Tags: Australia, Canada, china, ComScore, mobile, Puerto Rico, Russia, Social network service, social networking, Spain

The beauty of social media is that there are so many ways of doing it. To some people, this might sounds challenging, if it’s viewed as “too many things, where to start?”. If you look at from a different angel, it actually shows how social media is powerful, and can be very easy and simple at the same time. One example that I just saw while I was looking at my Facebook page:

• Target posted a simple feed to the fans “Targets want to hear what you think about our guys’ clothing selection” and there are 3 more detailed questions within the same feed.
• Within the first 12 hours of posting, it received over 250 Likes and 800 Comments!

two screenshots:

1, how this campaign shows up on my personal profile page:

2, all comments of Target wall:

Why this is so exciting:

• the cost is so low: it’s just a facebook feed. it’s so easy & quick to implement and doesn’t even require any money!
• the response is huge: look at the numbers of responses within the first 12 hours. Comparing with your traditional campaigns or research, how can you get feedback this quick?
• it’s a great way to get customer feedback: it’s almost like open ended questions. All the comments are from the Target fans and it’s great insight and valuable data!
• it’s a great way to keep the dialogue and build communities: traditional media and research won’t give user any chance to interact, but in this campaign, people can see each other’s comments - that’s the best way of building WOM

Conclusion: don’t be scared about social media. It can be simple and easy. The point is that you need to get started somewhere now!

Tags: Facebook, On the Web, Online Communities, research, social media, social network, Social network service, Twitter

As part of iPhone creative minds this week along with Apple’s WWDC, post-it can be used for iPhone paper prototype in a fashionable way!

There is a post-it design contest around it too! Have fun designing with paper!

Tags: creative post-it, design, design contest, iphone, iphone app, iphone prototype, paper prototype, post-it

You are what you clikced on, or, you are what sites you visited… this website discovery visualization tool tells you what other sites people also visited. It’s sort of like Linkedin for websites.

Below are some of my finding. Try it out youself

• Yelp’s site network: VirginAmerica is also connected with Yelp - my biggest surprise! Maybe VirginAmerica is targeting at all food networks for advertising purposes, because people use food sites especially when they are traveling? Interesting!

• Twitter’s site network: it’s all the tools that people use around twitter. The power of having API? Or a sign of improvement that Twitter needs?

• Difference between Facebook and Linkedin site networks:

It’s fun to play around with it. Try it yourself!

Tags: advertising, Application programming interface, linkedin, On the Web, Online Communities, social network, Twitter, website discovery, Yelp

Today is the Chinese traditional Dragon Boat Festival (端午节, DuanWu）。 Two fun & main elements of it are: Dragon Boat Contest and a special food - 粽子（Zong Zi). Enjoy the holiday

Lots of yummy pics of 粽子 on Flickr

Tags: festival