There is a new wave of social networking in China. It’s a phenomenon called tuangou, or team buying, where a group of shoppers joined together through social networks such as online BBS (bulletin board systems), chat rooms and other web forums to purchase the product they are interested. Once they gathered around 40 or more bargain hunters, they would appoint a captain to approach the retailers for an in-store haggling session. This may sound crazy here in US, but haggling is actually very popular in China.

So far, this tactic has proved to be very effective in forcing the retailers to drop their prices. “The final price was beyond my expectations,” said Ellen Liu who recently bought a purple Toyota Yaris after her team called “Shanghai Yaris” negotiated a 30,000 yuan discount with a local dealer for each of its 40 members wanting to purchase the car. “We were very surprised.”

A number of retailers have started to deal directly with group buyers while dozens of professional web sites have emerged. Retailers say they often feel they have no choice but join the bartering or lose business. Some retailers waits months just for an invitation to take part in an event.

Qeeka.com, one of the most influential web sites in China, negotiate prices on behalf of shoppers while guaranteeing quality products and customer service. They also offer companies valuable market research based upon the conversations consumers are having about products on their online forums. Often companies are forced to monitor websites like Qeeka.com if they wish to stay competitive with other retailers. “This is crucial to our company’s success,” said one business owner. “We don’t want to be left behind by this trend.”

Social networking has also been vital to the phenomenon’s success. According to 2008 figures from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), nearly 100 million Chinese netizens regularly visit online bulletin boards to share opinions, ask for help or socialize with friends.

Somehow this phenomenon has yet carried over to here in US. Several companies have tried to start group buying sites in America and Europe yet most of them failed due to a sheer lack of interest from consumers. Part of the reasons is that bargaining has been ingrained in the psyche of Chinese society for centuries. While in US, most shoppers are too polite or simply unheard of bargaining in stores. However with the exploding popularity of social networking and the backdrop of the financial downturn, some companies are starting to test whether Western consumers are ready to team up and bargain like the Chinese.

One work in progress is a Facebook application called Twangu, which allows buyers to build teams across friend networks for products they want to purchase. The company then recruits retailers to bid against each other to offer the groups the lowest price.

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One month after launching their MySpace Music streaming service, the company has announced a new deal that will double the amount of indie music available through the service.

The deal, with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), will add more than 1 million tracks from over 3000 indie labels to MySpace Music.

IODA founder and Chief Executive Kevin Arnold added that the songs will be added to the service in December.

MySpace music currently has several million tracks available to its 120 million users from the Big 4 labels as well as independent music distributor, The Orchard, whose catalog is over 1.3 million tracks.

Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, noted that it was looking to add as much content as possible, as efficiently as possible.

“Many, many services that have been launched, they build their content catalogs out over time. If you wait indefinitely, you’ll never launch,” he added.

Hadju also noted that it was still in talks with the largest independent distributor, Merlin, who is in charge of digital distribution for over 15,000 labels.

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Where did everybody go? Recent Nielsen Online statistics reveal that the social-networking congregating online may not be hanging out where you think they are.

Nielsen’s September numbers for thirteen sites with a significant social-networking aspect provide stirring testimony to the ability of many of us to do anything but work on our computers — and, obliquely, a look at how the hype still outstrips reality in many cases.

The year 2008’s most popular social-networking site was also 2007’s — that would be MySpace, boasting a unique-audience-members count of 59,352,000 (sampling-derived numbers provided to Techachino were rounded to the nearest thousand in the customary fashion). MySpace users also spend the most time per person per session on the site, at 1:47:55.

But MySpace isn’t where the growth has been in 2008; the service grew its audience year-over-year by just 1.3%. Instead, second-ranked Facebook is coming up strong, with 115.6% year-over-year growth (18,090,000 audience member sin ‘07, 39,003,000 in ‘08). The time spent on the service is comparable to MySpace at 1:38:27 per session, presumably not all of which was spent playing Scrabulous, blogging about Scrabulous, or whining because Scrabulous is offline.

LinkedIn, with its emphasis on professional networking (no pokes, no Scrabulous, no problem) showed 192.6% growth, taking the service up to 11,924,000 unique members from just over 4 million in 2007. But believe it or not, LinkedIn’s not the third-largest social networking site; depending on your point of view, they fall to fourth behind stalwart Classmates.com or fifth behind Classmates and Yahoo photo-share site Flickr, with 16,215,000 audience members in September.

Classmates, despite a pretty absolute lack of hype, grew its audience by a respectable 28.3% over the year to 17,075,000 — not bad for a service that’s been online since 1995. Things went less well for fellow veteran Friendster, still a powerhouse elsewhere in the world but fading from the US scene. Friendster actually saw a 16.3% drop year-to-year, and for September drew in about 849,000 unique visitors. (Nielsen notes that because traffic’s low, Friendster’s numbers are prone to comparatively wide variation.) The only other site in our inquiry to display a usage drop was Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces, losing about 11.3% of its audience year-over-year but still big enough to hold down sixth place.

Once upon a time, Friendster’s hype was a mighty thing. In 2008, surely the hype crown would go to micro-blogging service Twitter, which displayed growth of whale-like proportions — 342.6% year over year, from an estimated 533,000 members in 2007 to 2,359,000 now. Multimedia site tagged.com showed comparable growth (325.5%) and audience size (3,857,000), but with less media uproar. Though tagged’s not averse to a little hype on its own, trumpeting 70+ million registered users — true perhaps, but a good reminder that registrations on these services don’t always translate to regular usage.

Elsewhere on the scene, roll-your-own networking site Ning displayed muscular growth (251%) on its way to 2,955,000 audience members. UK-based, young-skewing Bebo.com picked up around 119,000 uniques, raising its September ‘08 total to 2,418,000, and last.fm — not precisely a social site, but a site around which a great deal of music-related socializing revolves — grew 121.1% to reach 1,879,000 unique audience members.

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It seems like Twitter is always acknowledging its shortcomings and apologizing for them. Some might take this as a weakness, but I tend to look at it admirably. Not many companies would be so straightforward when it comes to taking responsibility for their missteps. Twitter is all about communication though, so it only makes sense that when they’re having problems, they talk about them openly.

The latest such issue is with Twitter instant message functionality, which is being removed completely. After dealing with problem after problem with various aspects of this, Twitter has decided to just pull the plug on it (at least temporarily). In other words, they’ve moved it off of the “Things That are Broken list” and onto the “Things We Want to Build list,” as Twitter Co-founder and CPO Evan Williams puts it. On the Twitter Status blog, he writes:

We first killed AIM support after struggling for months to make it reliable (which was a side-project to trying to keep the service as a whole reliable). And our Jabber support has been up and down until about four-and-a-half months ago when it’s just been…down.

We’ve been unclear about its status and what to expect; I want to clarify that now.

First: I know a lot of people love this feature. I’ve heard personally from many folks who say it’s critical for their enjoyment of Twitter. So it kills me that we haven’t been able to deliver on this consistently. And the bad news is, we don’t have a quick fix.

Rather than continuing to deliver a flawed product, they’re not going to deliver the product at all until it’s flawless, from my understanding. In the meantime, Williams suggests using excia.im, a third-party application built using the Twitter API, that describes itself as “a jabber bot that allows you to update your twitter status very simply.”

Corvida at Read Write Web notes, however that “Excla.im does not allow you to see your friends updates (yet).” Twitter is welcoming other third parties to roll out IM solutions, so I would imagine we’ll see more popping up before long.

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Whether you love the device or hate it, stories about the iPhone are going to be hard to escape for a few weeks. Google and Facebook appear to fall into that first category, and have added to the hubbub by releasing iPhone-specific applications.

iPhones are able to browse the Web, of course, so at first glance, these apps look a little bit redundant. Their existence speaks to the popularity of the iPhone, though, along with corporate desires to please the device’s user base. And the apps do offer a few new tricks.

A post on the Official Google Blog Announces, “Google Mobile App starts working as soon as you type. Smart features mean you’ll get what you’re looking for in fewer key presses than before. For instance, we’ve added the power of suggest (type ‘lost in’ and one touch completes ‘lost in translation’) and My Location (type ‘coffee’ and one touch shows cafes right where you are on a map) to help you search.” There’s a search offering for the address book, as well.

Then, on the Facebook side of things, “The bottom line is that applications built for the iPhone have access to more technology than websites,” according to a blog post. “For example, with the native application you can take photos with the iPhone’s camera and upload them instantly to your Mobile Uploads album on Facebook. You’ll also find the native application is much faster than the website, giving you more reliable access to your Friends, Photos, and Inbox.”

So it’s more a matter of “icing on the cake” than “revolutionary creations.” Yet since it’s a rare person who doesn’t like icing, we don’t expect to hear many complaints.

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Though many were disappointed yesterday in Representative John Culberson’s (R-TX) partisan scapegoating via Twitter, he did sort of fall backwards over an important issue. The issue wasn’t that Democrats were seeking to abridge Congressional freedom of speech as it related to Web 2.0 applications, but that Congressional freedom of speech had already been abridged via previously established draconian gag rules.

Culberson’s outburst had good timing though. That same day (yesterday), The Sunlight Foundation registered LetOurCongressTweet.org. They launched a Twitter petition immediately.

How’s that for lightening-fast activism?

The people behind the Sunlight Foundation, though, are what you might call “Internet savvy.” See if you recognize these names: board members Craig Newmark and Esther Dyson; advisors Lawrence Lessig, Kim Scott, and Jimmy Wales; funding in part by the Omidyar Network.

In case you don’t recognize their names, here are some others they’re associated with: craigslist, CNET, Stanford, Google, Wikipedia, eBay. Sort of a who’s-who of successful Web ventures.

They appear to believe Culberson was right about his outrage against what were later revealed to be existing regulations, even if he sort of shot the wrong dog (or donkey, if you will). LetOurCongressTweet thinks the rules should be changed, too, and have launched what could be the first ever petition via Twitter.

Twitterers passionate about the subject are asked to tweet this message:

Congress, change the rules. Talk to us on our social networks. http://LetOurCongressTweet.org Let our Congress Tweet! #LOCT08

It does seem rather un-American that US legislators are supposed to have their messages to the masses approved by some higher content authority, and those messages are to be posted on officially approved channels. One can imagine there must be some national security argument, or at least the rationale that some pre-publishing consultation will prevent Congressmen from tweeting their false alarms.

But still. . .

I doubt my own sentiments yesterday (though I haven’t yet thrown them out), that a person cannot simultaneously be a legislator and a member of the press/citizen media. 1.) Legislators should be too busy for that. 2.) How does a dog watch itself?

But the idea of governmental transparency, a direct pipeline to remote Congressmen, two-way open conversations, and virtual town hall discussions are all beautiful concepts dripping with American idealism—you know, that dream (that myth) of power and voice residing with the people, how Congress works for you and not against you.

Robin Sloan nearly convinces me it’s possible in this piece about former House member Matthew Smoot’s pioneering of an online forum for his district to chat about what was important to them. This passage was choice:

Tad Clawson emerged from the codebase to write a signature post that articulated what we’d all been thinking:

“Direct democracy or representative republic? It’s a false dichotomy. With these new tools, we can harness the best of both: Matt is as much a communicator as he is a legislator. Maybe that’s what representatives should become: Nodes where the collective intelligence of their district comes together, coalesces, and finds expression.

This is a smart country.”

Of course, like forums often do, Smoot’s Forum 12 became an unwieldy battleground he wouldn’t have had time for anyway once he reached the Senate side of the Capitol. (Apparently, Senators are busier than Representatives, not having time to run forums or watch “Lost” in their pajamas—you should read Robin’s essay; it’s a revealing one.)

But still. . .

It’s a good idea, right?

And hey, it just might work. Four hours ago, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) tweeted his first message, and once he was finished with an energy policy discussion (what? you think all he has time for is Twitter?), he signed (tweeted) the petition statement to change the rules. Not bad for the first day.

Update: Looks like the Speaker of the House is on board, too, via her blog.

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Google yesterday launched Lively — its own version of the 3D, Avatar-based virtual world — as an embeddable gadget. But social data barriers remain between Google and Facebook, which is granted separate but equal access to Lively rooms.

A Lively browser plug-in must first be downloaded for either Internet Explorer or Firefox, and Windows XP or Vista is required. Once running, the service asks for a Google ID or Gmail username and password to begin. From there, the user can create his own avatars and Lively Rooms (think of them as more of a series of graphically-enhanced chat windows than a cohesive metaverse.) which can then be embedded in other sites, such as Facebook.
However, due to current disagreements between Google and Facebook regarding privacy and the sharing of social data, a large kink remains apparent in Lively.

As Google’s help section for Lively reads, “Your Facebook Lively access is separate and cannot be linked to your Google Account.” This means that if a user accesses Lively through Facebook, and already has a Google Lively ID, his Google account and related settings will not be attributed to the session. One of the top questions in the FAQ is, “How do I merge my Google and Facebook Lively access?” and the answer boils down to this: You can’t.

Compatibility aside, the beta itself runs smoothly when creating and customizing a new avatar and room. Google even has given these virtual spaces the same gadgets that can be used in other Google Apps. Videos from YouTube, for example, can be rendered on little television screens or in virtual movie houses, or user pictures can be placed into virtual frames.

The only time Techachino tests were sluggish was when attempting to sign into rooms crowded with more than several dozen users. Some of the public rooms had over 2,000 users and took upwards of 10 minutes to join.

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A cynical person (and/or someone who’s tired of zombies and sheep) might argue that Facebook should ban all applications. The social network hasn’t gone that far, but for the sake of users’ privacy, it has at least shown an encouraging willingness to restrict the things.

First Top Friends disappeared, and Social Me suffered the same fate. Now there are reports that some of Super Wall’s features have been suspended, and as a result, the app’s number of daily active users decreased by about 75 percent.

Supposed problems range from security holes to spammy invitations. Michael Arrington writes, “One thing is clear in all this: Facebook is serious about slapping down app developers who go too far in their efforts to grab new users.”

Facebook’s not trying to put app companies like Slide and RockYou out of business, however. Top Friends was allowed to return after a quick fix and a voluntary third-party audit, according to Nicholas Carlson.

So it seems that Facebook’s trying to protect users without unfairly punishing developers. Hitting a popular balance may be difficult (or impossible), but this is at least a sign that everyone’s views are being considered. Since both advertisers and a few individuals backed away after Beacon launched, that’s an important step.

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Night of mayhem cancelled
A beach party organized on Facebook that was expected to attract as many as 10,000 revelers has been canceled after police warned that it was illegal.

More than 7,000 people had confirmed on the social networking site that they would attend the party billed as “a night of mayhem,” in the coastal town of Torbay, England.

An entry on Facebook notifies would be partygoers of the change in plans. “Due to an unexpected high number of people registered to attend this event a license is required for it to go ahead legally and safely. An application for such a license is a lengthy process and cannot be completed within the given time constraints.”

Police had warned they would prevent the party and that they would enforce a 2003 law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol for up to 24 hours.

Besides the threat of the police stopping the party, the post on Facebook also gave other reasons why the event was being canceled. “Such factors as traffic management, waste disposal, and sanitary conditions, have to be carefully planned. This planning cannot be satisfactorily done within time constraints.”

The post also warns, “people attending beaches in Torbay on the weekend will be asked to leave or be arrested. Do not travel to Torbay. There will be a high police presence around the coast.”

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Senior Facebook executive Matt Cohler will be leaving the social networking company to join Benchmark Capital this fall as a general partner, the venture capital firm announced today.

Cohler, 31 joined Facebook in early 2005 and was one of the first five people hired by the company’s founders. He currently is the vice president of product management at Facebook.

Cohler will still have ties with Facebook, acting as a special advisor to Facebook’s founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and to its senior management team.

“Matt is a valuable member of our team and one of our earliest executives. He has been an important contributor to Facebook’s growth and success and we are pleased he will continue working in a formal role as a special advisor to me and the Facebook management team,” Zuckerberg said.

At Facebook, Cohler helped drive the company’s strategy, organizational growth and product direction. Previously he was vice president and general manager at the business social networking site LinkedIN, which he helped to found.

“It is difficult to leave my full-time role at Facebook, but Benchmark provides an extraordinary opportunity to build on my experience helping great entrepreneurs and to work side-by-side with some of the best investors, technologists and strategists I have ever known,” said Cohler. “The values, investment philosophy and unique team structure at Benchmark are an ideal fit for me.

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