Clément Renaud

In what ways are Chinese social trends and behavior ahead of US social trends and behavior?


Social media in China are already largely made of leisure content (entertainment, food, etc.) mostly created by a few big content providers.

Looking at Twitter, Facebook - and Quora, I think social media worldwide are following the path of other media before (radio, TV, cinema …) : large streams of entertaining content for the masses made by a very structured and profitable industry.

In this regard, I think Chinese social media is ahead and have already turn into a real content industry, not only some web services with advertisement. I can explain this by several reasons :

  • The social media industry is run by content providers : Tencent & Sina have large news portals and create lots of content.
  • Censorship of the web has forced the industry to turn more and more towards entertainment, as “news “ can be more sensitive and risky - and therefore generate additional costs.
  • The Chinese social media users tends to follow more brands and stars, which naturally brings a bigger focus on entertainment content.

This text was originally published in quora.