Net

Tencent Mind 2009 Guangzhou

Qzone's General Manager Peter Zhen and I shake hands after the social networking panel at the Tencent MInd 2009 Forum in Guangzhou. My friend and moderator Gang Lu on the right. Some videos posted afterwards: 

• My short talk (what's up with my accent?)
• Interview with QQ Finance 

Had a great time in Guangzhou and really appreciate the invitation from Tencent. I'm glad to getting involved in China again.  

Talking at Tencent Mind 2009 Forum

I'm in Guangzhou, China getting ready to talk at Tencent Mind 2009 Forum . Tencent's conference for its biggest advertisers in China. It's a great honor to be talking with QZone's General Manager Peter Zheng about social networks trends in China and in the world at large. Of biggest interest to the 500 advertising executives invited to the conference is probably the return of investment for advertisers on social networks. 

QZone - the Worlds biggest Online Social Network

Many people are not aware of that China hosts the biggest online social network in the world, namely QZone with than 200 million active users. Of whom around 50 million are concurrently chatting on it's immensely popular IM service QQ. 

While some social networks are struggling to find a sustainable business model beyond standard online advertising, Tencent clearly shows the way. There is a lot to learn here, and that is actually a point I am going to make. While many accuse Chinese Internet entrepreneur for taking the easy way out by "Copy-to-China" (C2C), the Chinese is actually leading the innovation on the Internet in terms of business models. 

Virtual goods and micro-transactions are well established here and I think that there is a lot the Chinese can teach the rest of the world when it comes to monetizing the social Web. And with the advent of the iPhone OS 3.0 enabling micro-transactions on iPhone apps, I strongly believe that we are going to see an explosion of monetization opportunities for the social Web. 

If you are an iPhone game developer or publisher. Check out OpenFeint! The mobile social gaming platform.

Joined Aurora Feint Advisory Board

I am very excited to announce that I recently joined AuroraFeint's Advisory Board. Aurora Feint is the company behind the tremendously popular Massive Multiplayer iPhone game, Aurora Feint and more importantly, behind OpenFeint the Social Gaming Platform for the iPhone that recently announced OpenFeint 2.0 in connection with the WWDC covered by Techcrunch.

I'm very impressed by how the two creators of AuroraFeint, Daniella Cassley and Jason Citron managed to develop such a great game and then move to a social gaming platform in no-time signing up popular titles like: Pocket God, SticksWars, MyBrute, Knights On Rush, iDracula, EpicPetWars, Ankagua3D, KnowitAll, Optime 4 in a row, Sneezies and many more. Over 3 million users have now joined the OpenFeint social community.

What is then OpenFeint 2.0 and why should you care? Well, if you're an iphone game developer you have probably realized how increasingly difficult it has become to be discovered in the iphone app store. Just as social discovery through friends and people you care about drove the usage and engagement of applications on Facebook, it's going to become very important for games on the iPhone. Through social discovery, your friends become the filter for what is relevant and important to you in a sea of clutter. People are more likely to download applications and play games if they discover that their friends are using them.

OpenFeint 2.0 is really all about answering the question What Are My Friend's Playing?'
in a myriad of ways. The developers of Aurora Feint has taken every
piece of OpenFeint and injected a healthy dose of Friends into it.
Every page you look at, from a game's iPromote page to your
achievements list, has social context.

iPhone games that have integrated OpenFeint have seen a significant boost in sales as a result of the social discovery features embedded in the platform. The developers I met with are very excited about OpenFeint 2.0 and what an impact it will have on their games in terms of user-engagement and the fact that you don't have to worry about developing leaderboards, achievements, profiles, chat rooms and friends list imported from social networks. The best of all is that it only takes around 30 minutes to integrate.

Since I had the privilige to work on Facebook Connect related stuff while at Facebook before it was rolled out in the open, I am very excited to see that through OpenFeint 2.0 game developers get full Facebook Connect integration as well as Twitter and MySpace integration - winn!

So if you're an iphone developer that want to provide your game with some powerful social plumbing and boost your sales don't hesitate go here now: OpenFeint and if you want to get in touch with the team at AuroraFeint - feel free to reach out to me directly.

Click here to get OpenFeint now.

My Business Card

If you need a real business card, just print and use scissors!