Review of the first two classes _(:3」∠)_

Honestly speaking, the first week in CUHK gave me a lot of brand new impressions that someone cannot experience in mainland China. The strongest impact within are those cutting-edge technology which do not exist on my old testbooks. In this class we talk about social networking, a booming market which have already started to change our lives these years.

The first class introduced definitions about social networking and showed some characteristcs. Among those statistics, two charts of user age and age distribution impressed me most, and then dragged me into deep thought.

A simple result which can be drawn from charts one is that most (25%) of the users on these social network websites are aged 35 to 44. At least if we wider the range of age to 25 to 54, the percentage goes to 62%. And then take a detailed look at chart two. Regardless of some client oriented websites like Bebo and Xanga, people aged from 25 to 54 still take up the most in these worldwide popular websites.

These results may not shock a common citizen in a western country, but if you are a student from mainland China, you must have some kind of unbalanced feeling in your mind, just like I do. According to my experience in mainland, the Chinese version of these charts would have a big difference. I tried but cannot find a most recent survey about age distribution of Chinese netizen, however, according to a survey of 2010, Chinese netizen aged from 18 to 30 take up over 50% of the whole group. Although the number of netizen aged from 30 to 50 are increasing, the rate is still lower than western countries. Despite a Chinese netzen cannot visit Facebook, Twitter or Youtube without the help of a proxy tool, we still have our Chinese version of these world popular social networks, and the number of their users is even bigger than the original one. So the truth is, the age of core clients of Chinese social networks is around 20 to 30, much younger than the counterparts in the world.

The best examples are my parents and their generation, people aged from 40 to 60 in China. In deed, they began to experience the Internet much later than their peers in developed countries, but that does not include social networks which just become popular these years. Up to now, I find out that the most things my parents do on the Internet are glancing over news, playing card games, reading online novels and watching movies. They do not know Renren.com and never create a Weibo account, some older people even do not know how to use QQ. Although these websites mainly talks about something they may not care about, but in my point of view, such social network websites like Dianping.com and Taobao.com are able to catch their eyes. In fact, they seem unwilling to touch these new things. In their bones they tend to follow a stereotype routine. Thinking about this interesting phenomenon, I find a similarity which exists in netizen of my parents’ generation, however, they are reluctant, even feared to try new technology which will bring changes to their lives. The same case can be found in the spread of smart phones in China. People of middle age are still willing to use cellphones which only have fundamental function like calling and SMS. Someone is using a smart phone but never install apps. On the opposite, middle-aged people in western countries still curious about new development.

It is a work of someone else to look deep into such culture difference. For a engineering student like me it seems too difficult to come out with a convincing answer. But for those operators of Chinese social networks companies, digging out these tremendous potiential clients maybe a considerable method to increase profit, and I think they are already working on it.