An Electronics Mall and Internet Messaging in China and Skype Prime
Last week I was in Akihabara - the gadget mecca of Tokyo.
This week I am in the gadget mecca of southern China, in Shenzhen. There are few of these blocks full of electronics stores.
Inside there are rows and rows of gadget shops.
These OEM guys sell you the latest gadget that factories in the region have come up with. You can order these according to your specifications and they even give you your choice of language on the menu.
“Ipod nano and shuffle”.
Discussions and bargaining everywhere.
ipod speakers galore
Most of the stores are like cubicles with one or two young people manning them. Almost everyone has a screen in front of them and from time to time they look up the screen.
Almost all the screens have some internet messaging software on. In this picture it is QQ. QQ is the most popular internet messaging platform in China.
Sales people think that I am one of foreign buyer coming here to order some electronics. they pass me their business cards and tell me what they have on offer.
Most cards have the person’s MSN or QQ id.
This girl was packing some things and again she has her chat window open.
There two kids are busy with Nintendo DS and the boy at the back is busy on QQ.
Here this guy is playing a QQ game. These games can be played along with your QQ contacts. Sometimes when you ask them for a product, if they don’t have a product, they will message their contacts to find the stuff you are looking for.
Often in my talks I recommend that companies and schools not block internet messaging. They often say that IM is very distracting. I argue that IM is better than a phone call as on most IM clients you can specify if you are busy or free. Often my friends in China and Vietnam message me to ask for suggestions and ideas on something they are working on. I am used to getting a random phrase on my IM window and a question below if the grammar in the phrase is correct or not.
I bet the bosses of these companies are glad that their staff have access to IM.
This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn. I just activated Skype’s new prime service. This service works over Skype. You specify can specify what you are good at and offer to answer questions on that topic for a fee.
You can advertise your expertise and the service on your blog.
As I have many posts about travelling in China, people searching for some info might land up my blog and if they like the content I have they might call me for a quick answer.
May 13th, 2007 at 10:08 am
[...] I found out about this via a post on Preetam’s blog, which has other interesting snippets. For example he finds that the Chinese he meets usually put their chat address on their business cards. I wondered about this when I printed my own personal cards: should I include MSN and Skype information? In the end, I didn’t - I already go through periods of being invited to join the friends list of Chinese people I’ve never met, and I usually refuse. Perhaps I should set up accounts that I only advertise on my cards, though. Not sure, I’ll have to think about that: Preetam is right when he says “This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn”. I need to think a bit more about my positioning first, though. [...]
May 14th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Skype is becoming more popular these days. Unfortunately, Skype is banned in some of the gulf countries including UAE (Dubai), as it is afraid to pose threat to the the local Telecom operators.
Ramesh