It’s SkyKiwi.com, the news and information portal that also boasts a Facebook-style social network for New Zealand’s Chinese-speaking community.

Marie’s talked about other Chinese social media on today’s Breakfast on One, but not many (English-speaking) people know about the Chinese social media site in our own backyard. We decided to find out more, and interviewed SkyKiwi’s CEO, Kylie Liu.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SkyKiwi.com has more than 80,000 registered users and 3000 unique visits per day, according to Kylie.

You can read all about the major social networks in China (where Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked, among many other sites).

Also mentioned by Marie this morning:

• The Auckland Public Transport animation that’s been a viral hit in New Zealand
• The Onyas, the oscars for web development in New Zealand
• Some New Zealand companies are using China’s version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, including Tourism NZ, Zespri, and Air New Zealand. In fact, Air New Zealand recently launched an account specifically for it’s Chinese-speaking customers in New Zealand.

Activities

According to the Nielsen 2010 Social Media Report, of NZ internet users:

• 81% sent or shared a photo
• 75% posted photos online
• 73% sent or shared a link

Of regular online activities:

• reading wikis is up 26%
• creating social network profiles is up 16%
• updating social network profiles is up 17%
• looking at others’ social network profiles is up 16%

Altogether, 1.92 million online New Zealanders have looked to their fellow internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands.

Platforms

Facebook

72% of New Zealanders use Facebook (source: Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton, quoted here)

From the Nielsen report:

• 82% of online NZers have visited Facebook
• 70% have a Facebook profile
• 79% of social networkers say Facebook is their main social networking platform (was 19% in 2007!)
• Of those who have Facebook as their main profile, 54% visit the site at least daily, and 39% are on the site for at least 4 hours per week.
• 84% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook (the most popular mobile site accessed)

And from Perceptive‘s July 2010 Omnibus, 15-24 year olds engage with Facebook the most frequently (surprise!).

Twitter

From the Nielsen report:

• 27% of online New Zealanders have visited twitter.com
• 11% have created a Twitter profile

From Saatchi & Saatchi / Colmar Brunton:

• 14% of New Zealanders “use Twitter”

From Perceptive’s Omnibus survey, again, 15-24 year olds spend the most time on Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a bit of a survivor. It’s older than most other social networks (established 2003) and it has successfully evolved from simply a place to post your resume online to a successful, business-focused social network.

LinkedIn has grown like topsy worldwide, and in New Zealand…

• There are more than 200,000 users according to Clifford Rosenberg, LinkedIn’s managing director Australia/NZ
• 8% of New Zealanders use LinkedIn, according to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton
• According to Perceptive, 35-54 year olds engage the most frequently with LinkedIn

YouTube

YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine. And in New Zealand…

• 15% of mobile social networkers have accessed YouTube on their phone (Nielsen Report)
• Kiwis love engaging with YouTube, with a skew towards the younger audience (Perceptive)

Bebo

Yep, Bebo. It’s pretty much on life support, and virtually unusable for businesses (especially since they’re no longer selling NZ advertising) but it still has people on it. However it’s on the outskirts.

• In 2007, 35% named Bebo as their main social networking site. Today, it’s 4%. (Nielsen)
• 23% of mobile social networkers access Bebo on their phone.

MySpace

While Bebo was the king in NZ just 3 years ago, MySpace was the king of the world. Not so much any more.

According to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton 9% of New Zealanders use MySpace.

According to Nielsen, more people have a main profile on MySpace now (5%) than in 2007 (less than 1%).

According to Perceptive, MySpace is mostly frequented by 25-34 year olds.

Business

From Perceptive’s Omnibus:

This offers some guidance to companies who often feel caught in the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” aspect of online engagement.

According to Nielsen:

• 42% of online kiwis are interacting with companies via social networking sites
• 44% have published opinions specifically about products, services and brands
• 73% have read other consumers’ product opinions
• Almost 2/3 of those who haven’t read consumer reviews and discussions intend to do so in 2010
• 44% of Twitter users in NZ say they have followed companies or brands

According to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton:

• 34% of kiwis want companies to actively interact with them
• 51% want companies to respond to requests on social media
• 41% want companies to solicit feedback
• 56% find companies on social media more engaging
• 57% feel better served by companies on social media

Conclusions

• Social media in New Zealand is mainstream.
• Businesses are active in social media and consumers are welcoming their presence.
• The best engagement is done on the customer’s terms

Many thanks to Jessica from Perceptive for her help putting this post together!

P.S: there’s also some great information from Social Media Club Auckland’s August session on measurement and analytics.

It’s a mixture of set speakers and unconference-style bits, with lots of creative people sharing their secrets, and sparking discussion. That’s what I love about BarCamps and the like; they actually put into practice the promise of social media – dialogue, not just speeches.

There are the speakers I know – people like Courtney Lambert (who’s talking about markcomms), Rachel Cunliffe (who’s talking about design and, hopefully, community), Michael Brandon (who’s been on iJumpTV, talking about SEO), Jayson Bryant from The Wine Vault (talking about online video), Suzanne Kendrick (who’s also been on iJumpTV) talking about community management, Bill Bennett (who’s talking about online writing – a topic dear to my heart!) and of course Jason Kemp, who’s one of the key organisers and advocates of WordCamp.

There are of course other people who I know through social media and will have to meet in real life another time – I could list them all but check them out on the speakers page.

In a phone conversation earlier, Jason told me WordCamp has become about more than just WordPress. It’s attracting an ever more diverse and creative group of people, who are all using WordPress as part of what they do. The “part” part is important – although it’s a cliche to many, social media really is all about having an ecosystem, where the whole is more powerful than the sum of the parts.

If you do head along to WordCamp NZ, please write a blog post about it for me – it’ll be almost as good as being there. Register here.

From the press release:

The rankings do not show which websites have the actual highest traffic numbers (ie total number of unique browsers) of this demographic, but instead show which websites have the highest percentage of their traffic consisting of people who have contributed to a message board, online forum or blog for the month of February. For example, publicaddress.net is the number one ranking because 54.6 percent of its unique browsers meet the demographic requirement, but their total number of matched unique browsers equals 8,556. gameplanet.co.nz on the other hand, in second place, has 50.9 percent of its unique browsers that meet the demographic requirement, but their total number of matched unique browsers equals 28,273.

To put these numbers into perspective, the proportion of overall New Zealand Internet users who say they have contributed to a message board, online forum or blog for the month of February is 30.8 percent.

These are fairly helpful stats, but they also miss out on the interaction going on off the site, using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Without getting into jargon (too much) it’s the difference between web 1.0 (all about the website) and web 2.0 (all about the connections between … well, everything).

On a related note, these stats show the intriguing, kind of symbiotic relationship between blogs and social media.

Now we have a wealth of conversations covering social media in New Zealand on multiple levels. Here are the ones we know about:

Social Talk NZ features contributions from a wide range of social media types exploring questions and issues from a business perspective. Includes yours truly as a contributor, although I haven’t yet contributed since the #sy launch.Watch this space! Even better, comment on some of the posts already there.

Social Media NZ features more of the tech side of social media, and has an international team including contributors from Canada and Spain.

What’s interesting about these two efforts is their use of Posterous. Posterous sits somewhere between Twitter and blogging, and makes it very easy for people to create and comment on content. That’s an exciting space to watch, and may even deserve it’s own blog post.

And NZ’s arts community The Big Idea has some great discussions about social media from the perspective of arts organisations, with special guest Vicki Allpress Hill from The Edge venue in Auckland (we interviewed Vicki’s colleague Josie earlier this year). Although the conversation centres around arts, the issues (control of the message, authenticity, return on investment) are pretty universal.

There’s a weekly internet radio show called NZTalk, which features more conversation about social media in New Zealand.

And then we also have the NZ Social Media Network, which is not as lively as the conversations above, but is a great place to find others in New Zealand with an interest in social media. I’ll be posting this here and hoping to get some crossover between the network and these other exciting conversations.

If you’re in Auckland and want some real-life, face to face conversations about social media, come along to the NZ National Tweetup (yes I know, typical Aucklanders, we think we are New Zealand!

What are the new rules of marketing and PR? What does lead generation look like in a social media world?

Those were some of the questions covered today with two of the world’s top social media teachers, speakers and doers.

David Meerman Scott’s New Rules

David Meerman Scott kicked off the day with the new rules of marketing and PR. One of those rules is to give things away, and David backs his theory up with solid practice: download his free ebook here .

After a morning break he got onto his latest book, World Wide Rave , a study of why things ‘go viral’.

Towards the end of his session, David shared his own experience of what hasn’t worked – as well as what has – in promoting World Wide Rave. Not an easy thing for any marketer to do, but a really heartening thing for any other marketer to see – that any experimentation will have its share of mistakes.

That’s why you need to think like a venture capitalist or film producer. It’s not about the success of a single campaign, it’s about launching a portfolio of efforts, and measuring the success of each one.

Chris Brogan’s Lead Gen 2.0

Chris Brogan took the stage in the afternoon, and beguiled us all with stories about people he knew, experiences he’d had and … us! I wondered why he’d been taking photos all morning instead of listening to David. He’d been gathering material for his presentation-on-the-fly, a brilliant way of keeping our attention and helping us see things differently, by seeing ourselves!

I’m not going to try and summarise everything David and Chris said – that’s what live tweets are for . But I will note what stood out to me:

• The more you release control, the more you stand to gain. For example, the old way to generate leads is to give something in exchange for an email address. But that limits the number of people who will make that effort, and it reduces your ability to spread your message. Give it away, don’t just half-heartedly give it away.
• You are as valuable as your content. That’s a direct quote from David, and it was a chilling reminder for me to get back into blogging! Particularly since I was nodding in recognition of many things they were saying, and yet realising, I haven’t expressed this information! So I apologise, iJump readers. It’ll never happen again!
• Marketers love rules. At iJump one of our sayings is, there are no rules, only relationships. I strongly believe this but I marvel at the outstanding success of David’s book (which we all got a free copy of, by the way!). It shows me that marketers hunger for boundaries, for the rules of the game, and it means there’s a lot of opportunity (and responsibility) for those who seek to delineate this new world. David has done an admirable job, giving clear guidelines while avoiding strict black-and-white rules.
• Marketers are impatient. And rightly so. It’s your hunger for action that has got you where you are. The culture of social media, on the other hand, is discovered over time, like finding your way around a new neighbourhood. You could get a Lonely Planet guide, or you could take a gift to your new neighbours and get to know them up close.
• Marketers find Twitter hard to understand. This isn’t from Chris or David, it’s from my continued observations. As a rule (remember, though, there are none!) people who communicate well in person struggle with twitter, while more introverted people like me take to the medium naturally. Of course, just as I have learnt to turn my personality up for face-to-face meetings (and I love presenting to a crowd), an extrovert can learn to navigate the body-language-free world of Twitter (and social media) with a willingness to explore, and some friends to help them.

That’s all from day one. More soon!

We’re making a few changes this year in how we communicate, realising some people want more information than others.

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Hear about Geekzone grew from an idea to a community to a thriving business and advertising platform.

Mauricio also gives us a hint about what he’ll be sharing at the Interactive Marketing Summit – a case study of how companies can harness the power of community to provide credible, grassroots marketing.

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