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On this episode of Spark: Nostalgia
- Robert Scoble and Brad Kellett document obsolete skills
- Peter Hirschberg shares his love of games through his own personal arcade: Luna City
- Tom Lucier on people who have never dealt a physical hand of solitaire
- Jayant Agarwalla and John Chew on the popular and controversial digital Scrabble game Scrabulous
- A clip from “Scrabulous” by TastesLikeTV.com
- Sam Flemming on the Chinese trend of Tuangou (“team-buying”)
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “The Incredible Joyfulness of Sentience” by DJ Rkod
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “45rpm needle drop.wav” and “45 rpm needle off.wav” by
- “‘Pretty’ guitarish/EP track” by duckett
- “airtone/rt52-rm1/”>rt52 rm1″ by airtone
- “Pop Circus” by Neurowaxx
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That Luna City is sooooo cool.
Too bad it’s in Virginia.
Just heard the segment on Tuangou, and though I should point out that this sort of thing has been happening in North American for years, though it seems not on as grand a scale. It’s generally called a “group buy”, and they’re often organized via community forums just as your guest explained about the Chinese. Common examples would be found in any of the hundreds (or thousands) of automotive enthusiast message forums. In my experience, though, group buys do not usually involve a large number of people physically traveling to a store together, but rather take the form of a discount from an online retailer.
This also responds to your guest’s point that social networking is somehow new in North America but not in China. Not so. While the most popular forms of social networking in North America – Facebook and Myspace – are relatively new on the web, that in no way means online communities are new to us. Just as in China, the sorts of community forums organized around products or special interests have been around in North America for as long as the Internet.
Hmm. I agree that we're talking about a question of scale/degree rather than a difference in kind between the two situations.
I got an email from a listener who pointed out the relationship between team buying and the older tradition of co-ops.
What I find interesting is how the networking tools of the internet are actually letting people reclaim some of these older, 'terrestrial' skills and habits.
Hi Tom,
Appreciate your comments. I was the guest on the tuangou segment.
As Nora mentioned, I have been in China for 10 years, so cannot claim to be speak from extensive knowledge of the North American market. However, from what we see, the key difference between social networking and team buying between the two markets is the scale.
I would certainly agree that social networking/online community is not new to the North America, but I would suggest that it has not been nearly as ‘mainstream’ as it has in China until recently with SNS like Facebook and Myspace. Yes, there have always been online message boards in North America, but they have not been key drivers of traffic for portals like they have in China. SNS-like sites such as QQ have been among the top 10 websites in China for years. For product specific communities, we see that there are about 10x more online message board messages about mobile phones in the China than there are in North America.
Regarding tuangou or team buying, certainly it exists, but i don’t think you see Best Buy feeling threatened by team buys (see my blog for an example in China) or posting advertisements claiming it is better than team buying. I also am not sure you have cases of consumers signing up for group purchases of BMW’s either. Ask just about any Chinese white collar worker, they will know team buying. I am not sure the same could be said of North American white collar workers (but correct me if I am wrong).
Overall, I think social networking is happening in the US, it just became mainstream earlier in China (also in South Korea). As a result, you have QQ in China which has 300mln active accounts compared to Facebook’s 60mln. QQ had US $523 mln in revenue in 2007, with Facebook much, much less ($150million). A nice article covering more on this angle can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3nvh5h
Hi Nora and Spark Community,
Just had to add this regarding kids not using dictionary books and not ever doing anything other than in a digital or on-line way:
My friend’s 20 year-old son was told the other day (still lives at home but is in post-sec school) that he had a doctor’s apt at ten to one.
He said “Is that, like, 12:50?”
His mother said yes and questioned him…he said he doesn’t know how to read a clock, he just knows the digital numbers on the microwave, TV, watch or clock radio! He can’t read a clock!
Crazy times.