Chaoren360: Social E-Commerce for Fashion-Minded Men

Whenever we’ve looked at specialist Chinese e-commerce sites that focus on fashion, they’ve pretty much all been aimed exclusively at women. And so the startup Chaoren360 – which is a pun on the word ‘superman’ in Chinese – is bucking that trend by selling only men’s apparel, shoes, and accessories.

Chaoren360.com is based in Guangdong in southern China – now home to over 10 percent of all Chinese startups – and is actually more of a magazine than an online mall because it just links to products on others sites such as Alibaba’s Taobao.com or Tmall.com. And so the startup is just curating all these men’s fashion items and wrapping them up in a social layer that resembles a microblog in which you can follow other users and ‘like’ their listed products (pictured below). And that’s fine, as it’s an interesting approach – sort of social commerce without the inventory and overheads.

The main social element of the Chaoren360 site.

To make it even more social, there’s a ‘club’ area that’s a sort of forum for fashion-minded guys to talk and post images, and a ‘VIP’ section that showcases some of the site’s most active and engaging users. Plus, it supports third-party login with Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) Weibo, or Tencent’s (HKG:0700) own Weibo or QQ platforms.

In further contrast to some of the female-oriented e-commerce sites, there are no official tie-ups with major luxury brands on Chaoren360 as of yet, and so the selection is cheap and cheerful.

Check out the Chaoren360 site or follow the startup on Weibo.

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Will 2012 Be the Year of the Dragon for Apps?

A recent report from Flurry showed that the final week of the year saw a huge number of app downloads, thank largely to the fact that so many new devices were activated over Christmas. Of course, the US stands out as the biggest holiday app downloaders by far, with 509 million downloads in that week. But I was a little surprised to see China in the two spot with 99 million app downloads, even though the country is the world’s second largest app market.

According to the report, China has about one-third of the US’s install base, but about one fifth of the relative downloads for that time period. I’m uncertain as to whether Christmas would have had any substantial effect on Chinese gadget shoppers (Christmas sales weren’t a big thing when I lived there), but perhaps we can expect China’s holiday download spike during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday.

As of October, Flurry showed that China had surpassed markets like the UK, Australia and South Korea in app session market share [1] as you can see in the chart on the right. This growth likely shot even higher late in the year, after Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) began accepting app payments in China’s local currency, the RMB. Distimo said that the China download rate doubled after the new payment system went into place.

As for Android, it’s difficult to say exactly what kind of download rate China sees, because while the Android Market isn’t blocked, there is still no support for paid downloads. There is also a wide array of alternative app stores for Android users, and while we have no idea of the download rate for those — it’s likely pretty darn big.

But given the trajectory that we’ve seen from China over the past year, as well as China’s appetite for Apple and other smartphone alternatives, expect 2012 to be a very big year too.

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1. Flurry defines ‘session’ as ‘one use of the application by the end user’ which usually ‘begins when the application is launched and ends when the application is terminated.’  ↩

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Rumor: Amazon’s Kindle Coming to China

The Kindle Fire, via Amazon

Perhaps those government talks we reported on back in October went well, because it looks like Amazon’s Kindle product line may finally be coming to China.

The rumor, which is being passed around in tech circles on Chinese microblogs, suggests that Amazon’s Kindle product line should be hitting China soonish. Amazon China spokesmen told reporters that while the company certainly wants to officially introduce the Kindle to China (there are plenty of sketchy Kindles available on the gray market), there is no official timetable as yet.

The rumor has been supported in part by job postings that show Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is looking to hire Kindle engineers in China. However, that in and of itself doesn’t necessarily mean anything as there’s no guarantee whatever they work on isn’t meant to be sold abroad.

Still, if Amazon can get the government to go along with it, it’s hard to imagine a better time for a China Kindle launch than soon. E-reader hardware competitor Hanvon has been losing ground and as we reported earlier today, Dangdang’s entry into the digital book market is looking weak. There’s a gap here for Amazon to exploit, but it won’t last forever.

[QQTech via TechWeb]

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Nico Nico Douga Hits 1.5 Million Paid Subscribers

Japanese online video sharing service Nico Nico Douga has got 1.5 million paid subscribers on January 3, 2012.

Nico Nico Douga, with its unique overlay user-generated comments, is known by users' videos, but recently it airs programs from TV and movie as well both in free and paid channels.

Nico Nico Premium Membership costs 525 yen (US$6.8) per month.

It passed 1 million paid users on October 13, 2010. These days it seems to add

Hulu Plus, a paid service of U.S. Hulu, passed 1 million subscribers in September 2011. Whlist Hulu has 40 million users in total, Nico Nico Douga's number, having 1.5 million paying out of 22-23 million users, is impressive. And it is not the largest paid video service in Japan.

You may check our past news on Nico Nico Douga here.

See Also:

Nico Nico Douga's Twitter bot celebrated 1.5 million paid users [J]

祝！150万人突破！！

2012/01/03 01:11:41 via web

Nico 150MAN BOT

nicount_bot

Nico Nico Douga Hits 1.5 Million Paid Subscribers

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Dangdang’s E-Book Platform Leaves Much to Be Desired (So Far)

Dangdang's ebook store

Last month, we reported on the launch of Dangdang’s Ebook platform and apps. According to Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), the thing has over 50,000 titles, the company has made deals with half the nation’s publishers, and it’s full of bestsellers. Sounds great, right?

Apparently it’s not quite as great as it sounds, though. First Caijing Weekly points out that on the front page, for example, one of the first books you see is a bestseller, but it’s a bestseller from ten years ago. The same author’s most recent hit, which is burning up bookshelves right now, isn’t available via the platform.

In fact, looking at Chinese social network Douban’s list of the hottest books right now, only one of them appears on Dangdang’s platform. That’s Steve Jobs’s biography — definitely an essential for any Chinese bookstore — but users will be disappointed to see that the ebook isn’t really any cheaper than the print edition.

The ebooks also have some compatibility issues for Dangdang. Its books aren’t bound to their platform as tightly as Amazon’s ebooks are — you can read them on Hanwang ereaders, for example — which means it will be harder for Dangdang to push its own ereader device. At the same time, its iPad reading app, for the moment at least, isn’t in the official Apple store and thus can only be installed on jailbroken iPads.

Dangdang’s actual ereader device isn’t out yet, of course, and whether or not that’s appealing could have a big effect on the overall desirability of the platform. But Dangdang may want to step on the gas pedal, as Amazon is clearly beefing up their branding in China and reportedly in talks to launch the Kindle here, too.

[Sina Tech]

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Top 10 Fan Pages: See Who is Rocking it on Facebook in Singapore

Christel is a social media strategist at Havas Media Singapore. Besides having worked on social media campaigns for DBS Bank and KLM Airlines, she has written posts for Social Media Today and conducted workshops in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. She observes marketing and social media trends on her blog and on Twitter.

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Rank	Page	Fan count*
1	Singapore Police Force	205957
2	Blackberry Singapore	194106
3	Resorts World at Sentosa	158459
4	Starbucks Singapore	155284
5	Charles & Keith	155328
6	Deal.com.sg	142619
7	Singapore Airlines	129763
8	Visit Japan 2010	129452
9	Channel U	121759
10	inSing	114450

Being a social media strategist here in Singapore, I recently found myself doing some research into which were the top Facebook Pages in in this country. After a little bit of digging, I’ve come up with the top 10 which are listed below. And yes, there are more than a few surprises here.

What can we learn by looking at Singapore’s best Facebook pages? How have they managed to capture so many fans? How have they managed to grow such active communities with high participatory rates? Here are some of my own thoughts on what most of these pages have in common.

1. Quality of Fans > Quantity of Fans

While the numbers here are all impressive, these findings demonstrate one fact: that these top brands value the quality of fans far greater than the absolute number of fans they have acquired.

The Singapore Police Force Facebook Page is an excellent example of this. What is surprising about this being the top Facebook Page in Singapore is that there is little/no way they could be offering promotional content, discounts, or deals to bargain-hungry Singaporeans to encourage participation. Instead they have focused strongly on adding value to the community – even providing links to external organizations, such as the Health Sciences Authority, to answer questions from the general public.

Engagement rates on the Singapore Police Force Facebook Page are particularly high, with a very healthy amount of comments, likes, and shares. In fact, members of the community on the Singapore Police Force Facebook Page have taken it upon themselves to even address queries by the general public, thus compounding the page’s value. All in all, this illustrates a number of good qualities: brand advocacy, adding value to the community, and allowing fans to have a positive stake in the brand.

2. Fans prefer content which adds value. Don’t be overly promotional!

Content which adds value is a practice which BlackBerry Singapore, the 2nd most popular Facebook Page in Singapore, advocates as well. For the past month in December 2011, it had only ONE active piece of promotional content about its smartphones. The rest of the content has been about quality content which BlackBerry Users in general will find useful. We’re talking about applications (adding value to even the developer community!), quick tips, and even videos from BlackBerry users on how the device has impacted their lives. The result? Active and positive engagement, multiple shares, and content which is relevant and matters to the community at large.

3. The Type of Content Matters

There’s a saying that “if content is king, conversation is queen.” How can brands in Singapore ensure a good balance of both content and conversation? The type of content does matter. All the top 10 Facebook pages in Singapore vary their content, and are more pre-disposed to posting photos and videos than just generic Status Updates. This is an important tip which brands in general – and I’m not talking just about brands in Singapore alone – need to remember.

This corroborates with Facebook’s Edgerank formula helps determine the top content that will appear at the top of your Facebook News Feed when you log into Facebook.

The News Feed is the first page that users will see upon logging into Facebook. So it is important to optimize the objects (status updates, photos, videos, links) which users will find more relevant to their interests, and encourage greater engagement.

Generally speaking, Facebook prefers interactive content. This means that photos and videos will have a higher propensity to be at the top of the news feed of fans compared to links and status updates. In fact, the equation is as follows: Photos & Videos > Links > Status Updates.

ALL of the top 10 Facebook pages in Singapore exhibit this varied content strategy, especially interactive media such as photos and videos. And generally, this is the content which attracts the most shares.

Timing and consistency matters as well. And you certainly can’t be lazy if you want to win big in the Facebook game. Every top 10 Facebook page in Singapore posts different content every day – some even at multiple times in one day.

4. Wait a minute. What about fan postings?

You may notice that BlackBerry Singapore, Charles & Keith, and Singapore Airlines don’t allow for fan postings. Why are they still so successful? When deciding whether or not to allow fan postings, I think it varies from brand to brand. Generally, such a practice isn’t encouraged as it could alienate your community. More importantly, set your expectations with the community right from the start. Will it be for news updates? Hot Deals? Customer Service?

If you’d like to read more facts and figures about Facebook in Singapore check out this slideshow that I’ve put together below.

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1. Statistics are according to my own research and are accurate as of December 31 2011. If I have missed out on any fan page, or if the rankings need updating, feel free to let me know in the comments.  ↩

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Events For The Week – 31 Dec-7 Jan

For a one-stop to all events related to or concerning entrepreneurship, certain industry-meets-business forums and seminars in Singapore, check out our Calendar. If not, you can also follow our bite-size updated posts for upcoming events for the week.

Events range from simple get-togethers to full-blown conferences. Get to meet fellow developers, entrepreneurs, startup CEOs & founders, and meet & learn from CEOs of established companies who have seen it all.

Our aim here at SGE is to make it easy for you to pick & choose from the event buffet. Enjoy.

Here are the events for this week. Events are mostly in Singapore (generally 30 minutes drive from anywhere), but we also include key events from around Southeast Asia and beyond.

Saturday 7th January:

(1) Singapore Geek Girls Meetup

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Entrepreneur seeking an investment? Here’s a survival guide

If you can't smile after signing a deal, chances are that you've been screwed over. Photo: Candie_N

Here’s a situation which some entrepreneurs would go through. They decide to take in an investor or join an incubator program. In front of them, an investor asks for “x” % of equity. The entrepreneurs then speak to different people in the community to get some advice. The opinions will be diverse. They turn to US tech blogs, which give them a totally different picture. All this adds up to a lot of frustration.

Any entrepreneur has to deal with this potential scenario and negotiate in good faith with investors. To help you, here’s a checklist of things to do before getting an investment deal.

Sit down with your co-founders to decide the value of your company.

A lot of entrepreneurs are stuck with this problem. They evade the question subconsciously because it’s one of the hardest questions for any entrepreneur to answer. How do you assign a valuation to your company? Nobody, including you and your co-founders, can decide that value so you need to have an honest and no-feelings-hurt type of discussion with your co-founders.

If you don’t have that value in your mind, don’t sign anything because chances are, no matter what you are going to do, you will regret it.

Here’s how you can do some math for you and your team: First, read and understand how dilution affects you and your startup. Then work out all the scenarios that are associated with rounds of funding that your company will need in order to be sustainable. It is an indicator to have an estimate on how much your ownership of the company (together with your co-founders) will be diluted at the end point before exit.

Yes, a lot of you want to build empires but reality is a bitch. What it comes down to is that you need to assign a value. This article teaches you how investors thinks of their shareholding differently from you and the market capitalization will help you work out the value of your company. Note that you have to do this calculation if you want money from others. Don’t expect others to calculate your valuation for you. If you can’t even do this, you should not be asking for money.

Work out a percentage equity for the investor where you will a) close the deal, b) accept the deal without feeling that you are suckered or c) walk away from the deal

Never walk into a negotiation with one value for your company and only one set amount of equity you’re willing to give away. Let’s do some math here: Say, you get $50K from an investor for 10% of your company. According to your investor, the value of your company is $500K.

For you and your co-founders, you want to give only 5%, i.e you think the company is worth $1M. Now, it is likely that both the investors and you are going to meet halfway (and halfway is not 7.5%). The halfway point is when both your co-founders, your investors, and you are happy.

A potential major roadblock would be that one of the stakeholders in the negotiations feel that they have been short-changed and it is inevitable that there will be tension and conflict in a few months when things go south. To minimize that, make a spreadsheet with a range of equity you are willing to concede to the investor to one decimal point, starting from 5 to 10% (on the x-axis) and associate the valuation of the company. Then carve out & highlight three regions: (a) the region you close the deal and you are happy, (b) the midway point where your team and you don’t feel suckered, and (c) the region that you will walk away.

Decide on the ROI you are setting for your investor

If your investors ask for more equity, the checklist that you want to have is what they can do for you. What are acceptable ROIs? First rule of thumb: do not give anything away if there is no money transaction i.e. if your investor values silly things like introducing you to big corporations as equity exchange, tell him or her to fly kite.

There must be money transaction and the next steps in how he or she will help you. A key difference between Singapore and US is the following: some investors in the US provide real value like setting up your next round of funding, helping you to scale the company with proper hires and closing deals with other companies. In Singapore, as very few investors are entrepreneurs in their past lives, you might be dealing with many investors who are previously bankers, i.e. they are totally clueless and bring no value.

Here’s a takeaway that summarizes what this article is all about: Negotiate in good faith, know your value and close a deal with investors that makes your whole team of founders happy. People will always come and offer you something. If what they offer doesn’t mean anything to you, just walk away.

In a future article, I will address what early-stage investors should look out for in deciding whether to fund a startup.

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Top 3 Startup Provinces in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong [CHART]

The Chinese startup database 17startup.com has compiled the location and category of all its listed young companies, giving everyone a nice snapshot of the indie tech scene in China. It shows that Beijing still dominates, playing host to 49.7 percent of startups in the country – way above Shanghai’s 17.9 percent. Guangdong, which is right next to Hong Kong and is home to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, comes in in third place.

It also shows that startups in the country are most likely to have some aspect of either e-commerce, mobile, or social in their DNA – but then that’s probably true of many other lively tech scenes.

The 17startup.com pies were kinda half-baked, so we took the liberty of utilizing the stats and then cooked up pie graphs of our own. First, here’s how all the Chinese startups break down by geographical location:

And, here’s how they look in terms of the type of startup:

Note that the site allows startups to be tagged in categories multiple times. In those categories we can find some names familiar to regular PO readers. For example, there’s the group-buying site Lashou, and smaller enterprises run by a few people such as Vida – both of whom are two very diverse examples of the two most popular types of startup in China.

Take the stats with a pinch of salt, though. China is huge and it is tough to track every one of the startups since they tend to be born and die quickly. Nonetheless, with a sample size of over a thousand startups (and judging by experience), 17Startup’s stats do paint a pretty good picture of where the Chinese entrepreneurs are working on their next big thing.

[Source: the 17startup blog - article in Chinese]

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