Not sure what your like or dislike of the service, or whether you use it or not, has anything to do with the impact it has on society. I personally have never bothered with social media myself, and my interaction on the net pretty much just involves forums. But that doesn't mean I don't know how much they impact society. FWIW, I don't like QQ either. I have the setup program on my computer, in case someone I know wish to talk to me through it. That's pretty much it.
In China, is there any special forums and social sites for electrical engineers, technologists, or technical students?
Just ran a search on google and I got results, so yeah. The netizens there are much more organized and influential. Last year, pictures of a handsome beggar were posted on a forum and within days the netizens had found out his exact location and helped him back to his home village. They call it the 'human flesh search'. With the right motivation, within hours netizens can find out a person's details based on a picture.
So if I wanted to communicate with say 10,000 Chinese electrical engineers and engineering students, how would one do that considering I don't know how to read or write Chinese characters? Are there bi-lingual tech bloggers?
obviously not every single person, but we never had trouble finding anyone that spoke English, like I said earlier in the thread, we found more English speaking locals than most places in Europe I have been to. The kids and youth in China in particular speak a great deal of English
It was rare for us to find someone that spoke and understood English in Shanghai, from cab drivers to restaurant workers. At any given time at our hotel, we were lucky if there was one person at the desk that spoke English, and even the concierge desk did not have a person who understood English. We had 2 tickets to the Shanghai World expo we weren't going to use and we could not effectively communicate with the concierge that they could have them to use or give away. We were warned that, even at the Expo, we would not find many Chinese workers who could speak English. They had a handful of people (appeared to be college students) that were designated as 'interpreters' but other than those folks, workers there didn't understand much other than 'coke zero' .
I work for a social game developer in China doing international operations; we're on Facebook and most major SNS (social networking sites). Currently the biggest SNS players are QQ, Kaixin, 51.com, and renren. Kaixin is the smallest, catering to mostly older, urban audiences. 51.com and renren next with 51.com targeting rural audiences. QQ looks to be the big winner though, from the parent company Tencent, a company renown for brutally copying and ousting its competitors. QQ's products include all kinds of social things: a chat program like MSN messenger, a SNS/blogging site, gaming site, and tons more. Pretty much any social idea you find in the rest of the world is being grown in China. There are millions of driven, aggressive entrepreneurs that incessantly are looking for ideas to copy. The censorship is often overstated - you can easily find your politics, discussion boards and p*rn... and most people do. However, people are still careful to avoid getting too political in general (avoid getting in trouble with government). It is true that Facebook and Twitter and a plethora of other sites are blocked and searches are often filtered. It's hard to say if it's because they want to always have exercisable control, quash rising political parties and ideas, orient the culture of young generations or just create unfair markets for a few select businesses with particular networks. It's probably a little bit of it all (to think that the US does not do all these things is naive, they are just more bureaucratic about it, more tactful and at less of a degree). Ultimately, you'll still see your copies of Facebook, Google, and every social thing worth something. But it's not just copying - despite what most people think in America, China is inherently more social in many regards than the US. People grow up in high density population areas and individualism is more squashed. Suddenly being exposed to a hundred more people is an every day event. Making decisions off what your neighbors, peers etc. and social circle is much more common place. Two of the fastest-to-one-billion-marketcap US corporations in Groupon and Zynga were not home-bred ideas. To the surprise of many people, both are copies from Chinese successes and are two great cases to show people that innovation and the blatant copying often goes in the other direction when it comes to social. Also everything Sensei said is correct; creating "social" is so difficult in Japan because of certain conventions they have with social circles. One exception is Twitter, where I believe 15% of all tweets are in Japanese.
QQ software felt fairly bloated and hard to use but I will agree that it's big. That said, unlike facebook which no one uses an alternative in the U.S. (please don't say myspace), if I want to reach some one in China, MSN is a very viable alternative. I wasn't disagreeing with you on how big QQ is, but more that it's not the only avenue of interaction online. There are viable alternatives, though not as big. QQ = Windows basically, but MSN is rounding out the niche second fiddle apple role in public communication pretty well.
lol...why are you expecting people in china to speak english? you speak chinese for all the chinese tourists that go the the states?
I never said in my original statement that QQ was a monopoly, just that it dominates the market. Baidu isn't a monopoly either, as google and yahoo both have footholds in the market. I simply didn't understand why you agree with baidu but not QQ. As they both to me seem similar in terms of respective market domination. As for the exact market shares, crossover(the post above you) should have a better idea than either of us.
You obviously didn't comprehend by post. The poster I was responding to wrote "everyone in Beijing spoke English". I responded that "I find it hard to believe that everyone spoke English". I don't "expect" anyone in any foreign country to speak my language (unless it is an English speaking tour guide).
I was in Shanghai in Sept. at the World Expo and my impression was there was plenty of English used. I didn't test this directly as I pretty much exclusively spoke Mandarin while there but I did overhear English used and most signs were in English as well as Chinese. My experience has been that English is much more widely used in Hong Kong than in Shanghai, but that as a foreigner you can get around without speaking Chinese. Obviously speaking Chinese helps greatly but there are enough people speaking English there along with signs that you can get around. I haven't been to Beijing recently so I can't say what that is like but I have heard that you can get around without speaking Chinese. I was in Harbin in NE China and there speaking Chinese would be required to be able to get around. In rural China you better know some Chinese.
Unless it was someone in the yellow t-shirts (designated interpreters), we had trouble finding any Asian that spoke and understood English. Again, to be clear for those that may not understand, nor did we expect to. We were in line for about an hour just to get in and in the line around us, there was not a single person that could understand our questions. In addition the military guys that were standing there did not speak or understand English.
It really is just a matter of luck. Percentage wise, the number of Chinese people there who can communicate in basic English is low. But due to there being thousands of people, I'm sure you could find one if you ask around enough. But even with that said, Shanghai is one of the biggest most westernized city in China. And the World Expo attracts people who are generally better educated and wealthy, so it's a place more conducive to English speakers. In general, the number of Chinese who can even say more than hello in English represent a very, very small percentage. But in bigger cities, and notably areas that attract tourists, that percentage increase a lot.
That's not even close to true. I would say though, the younger generation of Chinese can pretty much all communicate with basic English because they are required to a take it throughout middle school and high school. The older generation, people over 40 for example, only a very small percentage can actually say more than just "how are you?" in English.
