language – Some Meowsings……

As anyone who follows developments in social media, even on the periphery, know, MySpace is losing the platform battle to Facebook. Late last year, Facebook overtook MySpace as the largest social media site in the world and while Facebook has continued to grow, MySpace has more or less stood still.

To compete effectively, MySpace had to so something radical or accept their new position as number two to Facebook…and given the growing popularity of Twitter, maybe even number three. One of the reasons Facebook has been able to attract so many new members has been their focus on adding new languages to their traditional english-based profile. Members can choose from a fairly comprehensive list of languages in which to navigate their social interactions with other members. This is a powerful tool as one of the reasons for the highly fragmented nature of social media has been the inability of some popular sites to localize their offering.

It makes sense of MySpace to also quickly add this functionality in their offering which they did recently. However, there is where the similarity with Facebook ends. Facebook, in their localization efforts, kept the philosophy of letting their members choose how they want to see their site. If they were existing members, they would initially see their site in english and were offered the option of changing it to whatever language was suitable for them in the Account Settings. If they were new members, they could opt for a change in language with the little icon at the bottom left of the sign up screen which would convert the screen to the language desired. This is a logical and fairly seamless way of giving your members options.

MySpace on the other hand, perhaps being now part of a large corporate entity, decided that they knew better than anyone else, especially their members, what language their members should be using. So in their latest effort, they automatically converted pages from certain countries to what they THINK is the native language without bothering to ask if thats what their members wanted. So on a given day, a member would try to sign into their account and find that everything has been converted into a language some of them don’t even speak.

I’m not sure what is worse. The assumption that they at MySpace know better than their members what they want, or that what they know is so obviously wrong. I will give you the example of my country of residence, Singapore. Singapore is a country in South East Asia and although the population demographics is about 70% Chinese, there is a significant Malay and Indian population as well. With this diversity, the medium of communication has always been English and not Chinese (simplified or othewise). Its not unheard of for Chinese Singaporeans not to be able to read Chinese. MySpace on the other hand, thinking that since Singapore is in Asia and that everyone in Asia speaks Chinese, set traditional Chinese as the default language option. In doing so, they made two mistakes. One, that all Singaporeans speak and read Chinese. The second is that traditional Chinese is used in Singapore. In truth, traditional Chinese is used in only two territories: Hong Kong and Taiwan. Mainland China uses simplified Chinese as do most other countries.

With the sign-in page showing everything in a Chinese dialect, its been difficult for users to convert their pages back to English because they can’t even find out where to make the change. In social media, if the platform is hard to use, no one will use it. Such has been the case with a number of my friends who have stopped using MySpace wholesale and decided to build a new profile on Facebook. The barriers to “churn” are extremely low.

If MySpace think that this latest initiative will help them take on QZone in China, then I think they are sadly mistaken. They also misunderstand the cultural differences between social media users in China and in the US. This latest foolishness just helped to alienate some existing, loyal members. They don’t stand a chance against Facebook.

Tong Hsien-Hui

I have had many interactions with groups of people in the last year on the subject of Social Media Networking. The number one question I get at nearly EVERY meeting is “How do I/we/my company/they/my dog/my cat/etc…. make money from Social Media”. Because thats so commonly asked, thats not the topic of this posting. Instead, I thought to post on questions that people pose to me either when no one else is around or through email or even, in one case, through his dad (I jest not). There are five common questions that people are afraid to ask (at least in Asia) when in a group.

This post will deal with the most common one….“What Social Media Networking platform should I use?”. This is not exactly the phrasing, but its the gist of the query. Its not as obvious as it may seem. There are several factors to consider:

1) What are most of my friends using?

2) How do I interact with them?

3) How do I know I am doing the best that I can?

The answer is not obvious and is actually dependent on where you operate. In the US, some will tell you MySpace or Facebook, in Brazil and India, Orkut, in other parts of the world, Hi5 or some localized platform that caters to the language. So even while Facebook has 175 million users as of end 2008 (I’m betting at least 30% are people adopting multiple personas on Facebook) and MySpace is a close second, the choice is not simply a matter of Facebook or MySpace. I believe that the biggest consideration is what most of your friends are on. After all, the main reason for Social Media Networking is to connect with friends. Language is obviously a show stopper, but that aside, if most of the people you know are using Orkut then it makes little sense to build up to significant a profile in Facebook.

Secondly, how do you interact with your friends? If you want to show them pictures of your holiday on your Social Media profile and have them look at it there instead of boring them to death showing them slides over dinner, then you need to choose a platform that supports this (most do). At a basic level, most platforms provide the basic interaction functions of messaging, picture libraries, comments and basic security functionality that allows limited viewership to specific groups in your contact list. More sophisticated plugins are available such as games, tests, etc…..on some sites like Facebook.

The third component is maybe peculiar to Singapore. I know the sentiment is prevalent globally, but so far, I have only heard the concept taking the form of an adjective in Singapore. The term is “Kiasu” and is derived from a Chinese dialect Hokkien to denote someone who is afraid to lose out. You know, those morons who stand in line for opening day tickets to Star Wars, etc….. The fear is that having invested time and energy to build a profile and network on one platform, they find that another platform offers them so much more but are too “unmotivated” to switch their whole personas over. Well folks, welcome to the real world. No one can predict what social media platform will make it or not. Just two years ago, MySpace was the biggest thing around, now its Facebook, who knows what it’ll be later. The only way is to stay current on developments within Social Media and keep testing new services that come out.
In case you were wondering….I use and create content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress and Blogspot. I have accounts with MySpace, Youtube, SlideSorter, Ortuk, Socialtrak, Ning, Flickr, Picasa, etc…..but seldom update my profile there.

The next post will be on the question of “Now I have a Profile on a Social Media Platform….how do I protect myself??”