Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
Facebook has been famous for a really long time, and I know that name for quite some time. But I never even thought of registering myself there. Why? No incentives! According to the principle of economics, incentive can change people's behaviours. Since signing up in facebook doesn't benefits me in any sense, I didn't. But today, some person told me that they are going to creating a networking group on Facebook. Now the incentive appears. As a result, I signed myself up and spent some time to edit my profile and invite more friends to Facebook.
When I first log on to Facebook, I'm astonished that it's nearly the English version of xiaonei! Of cource Facebook comes first in the world. I began to think how xiaonei makes money. Of course advertisement is one of the major sources. The websites also provides virtual gifts for one to send to a friend. The gifts can be bought using virtual money. But we need actual money to exchange for virtual money. I'm proud that I never trade any actual money for virtual money on xiaonei. And whenever there are free gifts, I takes advantage of it - -
xiaonei: http://www.xiaonei.com/
Facebook has been famous for a really long time, and I know that name for quite some time. But I never even thought of registering myself there. Why? No incentives! According to the principle of economics, incentive can change people's behaviours. Since signing up in facebook doesn't benefits me in any sense, I didn't. But today, some person told me that they are going to creating a networking group on Facebook. Now the incentive appears. As a result, I signed myself up and spent some time to edit my profile and invite more friends to Facebook. Let me drop Facebook for a little while and talk about xiaonei. 
I'm sure many of you are not familiar with it. It's a website similar to Facebook. If I remembered correctly, it appeared around the year 2006, when I was still a university student. It first opened to few universities, then it expanded into more, but still restricted to university students. That's where the name "xiaonei", which means 'on campus', comes from. It has been a time when I was quite addicted to the website and logged on for several times every day. Then I began to think why I was there, what I was there for. It turned out that I just was just customed to it. It doesn't add much value to my life. I'm not so keen on it from then on.
But, what do Facebook and xiaonei do? It's a virtual community where people express and exibit themselves and keep a close relationship with their friends. And people share pictures, videos, events, etc. About how much value it can add to one's social network and whether it is worth the effort and time to maintain a personal profile, I dare say it will depend on how you treat it. Networking is a complicated science and requires skill, I may shot another posting in the near future.
Let me show you some snap shots. Home page for xiaonei (left) and Facebook (right) respectively:
When I first log on to Facebook, I'm astonished that it's nearly the English version of xiaonei! Of cource Facebook comes first in the world. I began to think how xiaonei makes money. Of course advertisement is one of the major sources. The websites also provides virtual gifts for one to send to a friend. The gifts can be bought using virtual money. But we need actual money to exchange for virtual money. I'm proud that I never trade any actual money for virtual money on xiaonei. And whenever there are free gifts, I takes advantage of it - -
