Month: October 2011

Comment on a classmate, Kobe Zhou’s blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/kobezhou/2011/09/26/blog-2-renren/

As social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, companies in China have set up their own social networking sites in Chinese. Renren, which is the Chinese version of Facebook, and Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, have gained a large popularity in this few years. Statistics has shown that Renren has around 130 millions users and weibo has around 200 millions users. As the popularity of smart phone increases, people can easily access networking sites wherever they are. They can take photos and videos everywhere, and share them instantly online with their friends. The trend of technology has greatly promotes the use of online social networks, and Renren and Weibo have caught the opportunity, and successfully position themselves, as Chinese Facebook and Twitter,  in the market. They keep introducing new functions to attract more users and create more value for users. For example, an article from China Internet Watch talks about the new enterprise version of Weibo, where as companies can shares their information on Weibo and communicates with their customers. Just like Twitter, Weibo has a lot of celebrities’ verified accounts. This is a very effective marketing strategy to attract users.

Just a few days ago, we’ve lost a great entreprenuer and innovator, Steve Jobs. He is the co-founder of Apple. In 1996, he brought Apple back to life by introducing the innovative products including iMac and iPods. From that time, Apple has became well-known for its innovation and special design. In 2010, when the iphone hit the market it became such a great success that everyone had to go through lineup and long waiting time to purchase an iphone. Just half a year later, the iPad was another great success of Apple, making millions of sales. Apple has successfully and accurately assessed customers’ wants and needs. For example, developing small portable ipod with large storage capacity and long battery life.  Their marketing strategies have been successful in capturing and applying customer insighs. They have also build up strong customer loyalty by creating values for them. A Mac users will hardly switch to a PC since they are sastified with the Mac system and become used to it. However, the recent released iphone 4S has raised negative feedback from many people. Other than an upgraded iphone 4, many people are expecting a different and more innovative iphone 5 after one and half years of waiting.

Here’s a video that introduces the new iphone 4S:

Talking about Apple, it has always been a exciting and inspirainal story. But the future of Apple depends on whether it can continuously be innovative and accuratly assessing the market.