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The Chinese Just Do It

Piet Written on 20th April 2009                                                                                                              1 COMMENT some text
Pieter-Paul,

A few weeks ago Youkubuzz, a blog from one of the biggest Chinese video-sharing sites Youku.com that regularly posts funny/interesting items, tweeted:The Chinese Just Do It

It reminded me of some videos and news-items that have all experienced their 15 minutes of viral-fame in China. They are about home-made vehicles. Sounds boring? How about a gyro copter for 2, an ultra-light airplane with a rudder made of hemp-rope, or a one-person helicopter that maneuvers through the streets of GuangZhou? I think the vehicles in the videos are a metaphor for the Chinese way of doing things: people here have a very different mindset than in developed economies. Rather than safety-first it is all about pragmatism. As the videos show, despite the dusty-and dirtiness, the pragmatic and auto didactic approach definitely pays off . Here’s a small list:

A home-made helicopter (nearly slicing up the power cables):

(more…)

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Edopter.com: the next everything, now!

Ernst-Jan Written on 14th April 2008                                                                                                              5 COMMENTS some text
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

So you’ve came here to read what’s influencing the future of the Web and I really appreciate that! Yet I do have tell you that there’s a service out there that predicts the future of…. well, everything! It’s New York-based service Edopter.com, a creation of one blue brick.

On Edopter.com, there’s some serious social trendcasting going on. This means that consumers can predict what or who will be the big next thing by launching or joining a trend. Well, not all the consumers, only the so-called early adopters. This is a term from the technology adoption lifecycle, a sociological model originally developed by Joe M. Bohlen and George M. Beal (1957) and broadened by Everett Rogers in 1963. Rogers came up with the bell curve:

Bell Curve

The early adopters are the younger and more educated folks, who tend to be community leaders. So they would be involved with trends that are still somewhat obscure. Yet when I browse through the 195 trends, I notice trends like American Apparel, Barack Obama, Apple, Gmail and Family Guy. That seems like stuff for early majority, if not the late majority.

Trends on Edopter.com

Anyway, without getting too negative here: it’s a well-developed and fancy service that uses the wisdom of crowds in a trendy way. The ways people can promote a trend are almost countless and when the user base grows Edopter could provide some interesting data for marketeers. However, the guys from Edopter.com do have to find a way to prevent those very same marketeers from promoting their own products. If that all works out, the early majority got itself a place to spot the next big brand, person, product or blog.

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