Social media is huge in Asia, but very distinct from the Western world in several aspects. Check this video for a quick introduction.

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Thomas Crampton heads Ogilvy‘s team of social media specialists in Asia. A former correspondent for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune, he now is completely dedicated to social media and advicing businesses on how they should communicate with their customers. He is considered a leading expert on social media in Asia.

This video was produced for an internal meeting at Ogilvy and gives a very quick and efficient overview of how social media is being used in Asia. Personally I find it quite fascinating as people in Asia both love all kinds of social media at the same time as there are some very clear differences to the Western world. Did you for instance know that 88 million of the world’s estimated 242 million bloggers live in China?

Three major differences stand out:

Social media is mobile

In Japan there are no less than 75 million mobile Internet users – or 84 % of the population – while Vietnam saw a stunning 846 % growth in mobile Internet users in 2009.  Half of the population in Hong Kong owns a smartphone.

Users pay on social networks

One of the biggest networks, Cyworld, makes about 200 million USD every year in sale of virtual items. Several other local brand social networks also have a high income from virtual goods.

Several strong local brands

QQ.com is used by 376 million people in China

While Facebook is big in other parts of Asia, local brands dominate in markets like China and South Korea.

Check out the video from Thomas. You may also enjoy reading his article “Social networking habits across Asia-Pacific” for additional background.

Other blogs about social media in Asia

• 6 Things About India’s Mobile Landscape (penn-olson.com)
• Facebook scores virtual currency deal in Asia (news.cnet.com)
• Thomas Crampton: Overview: Asia’s Social Media Scene (huffingtonpost.com)

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The social media situation in Asia is very different from Europe and USA. Here are some very interesting facts and figures giving a good overview of who are the big players.

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The material in this blog posting should all be credited to Thomas Crampton, who is a former New York Times correspondent and now the Asia-Pacific director of digital influence at Ogilvy. He has been so kind to allow me to reuse this material.

Being based in Hong Kong, Thomas is one of the biggest experts on the social media scene in Asia. And it is indeed very interesting to see how different players have been able to build very strong positions in that part of the world.

Here is a presentation Thomas recently made about the social media in Asia. Click through it and I promise that you will get a quite good overview.

Some of the facts that I found interesting:

• Among China’s 338 million Internet users, only 400.000 use Facebook. 183 million use the Chinese social network site Qzone. In search the scene is dominated by Baidu – with twice as many users as Google.
• Facebook is strong in some countries, like Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Cambodia, while losing to other networks in other countries. For instance Friendster is very strong in the Philippines and Orkut dominates in India.
• Sale of digital goods is very important source of revenue for sites like Qzone

For some more elaboration I recommend that you look through this interview with Thomas Crampton, recorded by the blogger Robert Scoble:

The number of broadband lines in the world passes 400 million and is estimated to grow to 680 million in 2013, according to forecasts by Point Topic. And on the top of the list will be China. Get ready for some great Eastern web successes!

In terms of actual numbers, China will be far in front of any other country in broadband lines. Point Topic estimates that China in five years will have 153 million broadband lines against 117 million in USA.  The penetration ration will of course be much higher in a number of other countries, especially in the Scandinavian countries, as showed in this graph:

The strong growth of broadband lines in China is bound to have an effect on how the Internet develops further. We have already observed how a high penetration rate in the Scandinavian market has inspired numerous new products and dramatically changed how people use the web.

With almost one quarter of the world’s broadband lines in China in 2013, we should expect to see many more of the global winning web concepts coming from Asia.  So far the leading web brands mostly have been developed in the USA. My guess is that in five years time at least two of the top tens sites among Western users originally was developed in Asia.

It is exciting times, indeed!