WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili on Tuesday asked users with at least 500,000 followers to disclose their actual names in their profile page They followed Weibo's initiative last month, making it mandatory for influencers with a large number of followers to reveal their real identities  Efforts by mainland China's largest social media operators to get popular influencers to display their true identities online are expected to benefit these platforms' operations,

Chinese social media platforms Weibo, WeChat and Douyin’s real-name authentication rule for influencers to benefit operations amid tightened online regulation, analysts say

China is tightening its grip on its social media landscape as it moves to unmask the real identities behind its most influential online personas. This stringent policy shift has been implemented by the country's largest social media platforms including Tencent Holdings Ltd.

China Tightens Grip on Social Media, Requires Influencers to Reveal Identity

The British Library is suffering a major technology outage as a result of an unknown cyber incident. The website, online systems and services of the London institution are all affected, along with some onsite services including public Wi-Fi.

British Library 'experiencing major technology outage due to cyber incident'

CHINA’S largest social media players from Tencent Holdings to ByteDance have asked their most popular influencers to display their actual identities, a major shift that tightens Beijing’s grip over the world’s largest Internet arena.

China social media players demand real names in China Internet tightening

China’s largest social media players from Tencent Holdings Ltd. to ByteDance Ltd. have asked their most popular influencers to display their actual identities, a major shift that tightens Beijing’s grip over the world’s largest internet arena.

Tencent, Kuaishou Demand Real Names in China Internet Tightening

Mainland AI company Baichuan Intelligent Technology announced that it has completed a US$300 million Series A1 strategic financing round, with participation from BABA-SW (09988.HK)... Baichuan Intelligence was founded on 10 April this year by Wang Xiaochuan,

BABA, TENCENT & XIAOMI Join US$300M Financing Round of Baichuan Intelligent Technology

The Caohejing High-tech Park has gathered many Chinese tech and gaming giants, including Tencent Holdings, NetEase, ByteDance, SenseTime Group, Kuaishou Technology, and Lilith Games. Mihoyo’s main office is not far from there. The annual sales revenue of ...

Chinese Game Firm MiHoYo Buys USD150 Million Land in Shanghai to Build HQ

Kuaishou turned profitable for the first time under Cheng as CEO. The firm logged adjusted net profit of CNY42 million (USD5.9 million) in the first quarter and CNY2.7 billion (USD76.5 million) in the first half. Revenue soared 23.9 percent in the first six months from a year earlier to CNY53 billion (USD7.2 billion).

Chinese Short Video Giant Kuaishou Names CEO as New Chairman

S u Hua, a co-founder of China video-sharing and live-streaming platform Kuaishou Technology, will step down as chairman effective Oct. 29 “due to his other business commitments,” the company said in a statement on Friday evening.

Chinese Billionaire To Step Down As Chairman At Video Platform Kuaishou

Su Hua, a co-founder of China video-sharing and live-streaming platform Kuaishou Technology, will step down as chairman effective Oct. 29 “due to his other business commitments,” the company said in a statement on Friday evening.

Kuaishou Technology

kuaishou

Photo by on Михаил Секацкий Unsplash TikTok became popular during the global pandemic and has not stopped growing ever since: In September 2021, it surpassed the mark of 1 billion active users in a month. The increasing popularity of this application haunted other developers, and therefore many so-called clone apps appeared on the mobile market. In the spirit of experimentation, the team tried to find out if there are any chances for them to steal at least part of the TikTok audience. Apptica Three Categories of TikTok Clones Total Copycats Apps like and (the last one is a TikTok alternative for Android users) bear an uncanny resemblance to TikTok. Clash, Byte, Dubsmash Likee Some total doppelgangers may replace the app in a specific country. For example, Indian , Chinese and Russian were purposely created to become a TikTok alternative. Chingari Kuaishou Yappy Apps That Created Something Unique Instead of creating completely different video apps, TikTok clones are trying to bribe users. For example, users of some applications can earn rewards for getting likes, shares and comments. app allows users to receive rewards that can be converted into real spendable money even by watching or commenting on videos that other creators made. Cheez Also users can participate in its unique online battles like DanceOff, which became the first mobile dancing game. and applications also give users an opportunity to earn rewards, but the last app also has Instagram-like stories that last for up to 48 hours. Vigo Video Kwai app that also looks like TikTok from first sight has more emphasis on creating more high-quality content rather than gaining more followers. Firework Meaning that even if you don’t have a large audience, a great video can really make you blow up this application. Firework also offers weekly challenges with cash prizes. Also this summer a kids-friendly TikTok look-alike called was launched. This so-called Social Media for Kids is a short-form video platform that has a mission to develop healthy social media habits for children. Zigazoo It allows them to scroll the feed or participate in various challenges or activities created by different organizations that work with kids – for example, the zoos, museums and TV studios – or by professionals like teachers and musicians. TikTok Lookalikes That Have Been Banned From Stores Certain applications that almost completely copied TikTok were removed from stores. For example, an app called that was funded by Kuaishou (which is a rival of , a version of TikTok for Chinese users), was banned shortly after its release. Zynn Doyin Besides being an identical TikTok twin, Zynn was accused of stealing user content from other apps. Another app that shamelessly copied TikTok – and because of this, had a pretty short life – was Indian . By the end of the spring 2020, this app had more than 5 million downloads and a rating of 4,7 in Google Play. Mitron Despite this, It was taken down from stores in summer of the same year for alleged violation of privacy policies. Why do Such Applications Appear? The simplest reason why lots of TikTok lookalikes have been storming the mobile market for past years is a banal desire to earn – popularity, users and large sums of money. However, some applications come out as TikTok alternatives in countries where the original music app is banned – for instance, India, Uzbekistan – and other places where this social network could be potentially blocked: Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh have tried to impose a ban on TikTok earlier. There were also cases when companies developed TikTok clones to interfere with its growth. For example, Zynn project received support from Chinese company that wanted to prevent an increase in the number of subscribers. Tencent Also, many developers hoped to become TikTok alternatives if this social network was banned. And there have already been such cases: for instance, on 6th August 2020, former US President Donald Trump signed an order which stated the ban of this application in 45 days, unless it is sold by company. In June 2021, New President Joe Biden signed an executive order lifting Trump's ban on TikTok. ByteDance And recent restrictions that TikTok imposed on Russian content creators might also stimulate the outflow of users from this app to its analogs. On March 6, TikTok temporarily banned all new posts and prohibited live-streaming for users based in this country, in light of a new law on ‘fake news’ which was passed by the Russian authorities. Logically, due to this, (Russian TikTok clone) should have been gaining popularity dramatically — but for some reason this did not happen. Yappy According to , the number of downloads has increased since March 6, but decreased two days later: Apptica Can These Apps Beat TikTok in Popularity? Although some of these applications are well-made and provide functions that TikTok doesn’t have and have similar structure, there is no chance they can replace this social network – unless it is completely banned, of course. It is hard to disagree that TikTok, a true content-feeding machine, became a world phenomenon. The format of an infinite feed with tons of easily digestible personalized content created by ordinary users like you is probably the simplest concept that could possibly appear in a developer's mind. However, this simplicity makes it extremely hard to create similar applications that could be at least a little different from TikTok and bring something of their own into the mobile world. Besides this, TikTok has made itself a name that has become firmly established in our heads: we associate short looped videos only with this platform – and we even call them TikToks. This app became a non-beatable leader in shining armor made of uniqueness and worldwide fame, so its lookalikes have to put up with it.

What is the Deal With Applications That Copy TikTok?

Earlier this month, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported . That is an incredulous number, and even more alarming is the frequency of hacks. In August, the reported: $376 million was lost in crypto hacks in merely 5 days BBC “Incidents involving tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, of dollars are happening almost ” every few months It seems “few months” has transitioned to “few weeks” or even “few days”, even as . crypto activity reaches record-breaking highs Yet fighting against crypto hacks, thefts and fraud is fundamentally hard. Crypto exchanges and custodians need to defend against assault, whereas assailants only need to prevail . every once “We only have to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always” -The words of the Irish Republican Army when they narrowly failed to assassinate then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 Furthermore, unlike traditional financial institutions that are regulated and insured (e.g. by in the US and in Singapore), much of the crypto world remain unregulated or in the ‘gray’ zone, where options for recourse are limited at best. FDIC SDIC As a result of these challenges, I believe that we will see the increasing prominence of several industry verticals, from regtech to trust & safety. These industries have already existed for decades, mostly to serve environments prone to fraud and attacks: financial services, peer-to-peer marketplaces, etc. The explosion of crypto and blockchain in 2021 creates not just another complex environment to manage but also carries implications across existing non-blockchain-native environments. To better understand how this looks like, I decided to ask a few trust & safety professionals: How will trust & safety evolve in 2022, especially with the rise of blockchain & crypto? Here’s what some of the trust & safety professionals have shared , Trust & Safety Specialist, Wikimedia Zxane Maddox Soo Zhang Hong Trust & safety will see their function expand from not just only creating a safe and inclusive environment for end users but into a focus where trust have to be actively built within the community in terms of NFT Products. This will be especially important for customer retention. , Assistant Vice President — Strategy and Practice — Trust and Safety, Genpact Vejeps Ephi Kingsly While various regulations are being drafted for web 2.0, we are at the cusp of web 3.0. With evolving user behavior and technological adoptions (eg. -AR/VR/XR), the role of trust and safety would be significant to deliver trusted experiences while managing context and nuance. 2022 would demand huge AI/Tech strides and people skills in Trust and Safety to solve every nuance of content abuse to NFT frauds. There is a tussle between centralized and decentralized systems of safety, privacy, and decision-making. The next phase of the internet would need a better understanding, structures, and implementation of solutions. , Global Head of Risk and Response, Trust and Safety, Kuaishou Technology Christopher Lin In 2022, we’ll see pioneering companies start thinking about the user’s role in managing personal safety in the metaverse where the effects of harmful behaviours treble. As countries compete, the proliferation of cross-jurisdiction legislation on data localisation, privacy, and market access will present trade-offs between privacy and safety. , Vice President Of Product Management, Nium Chakshu Raina Trust is first in the new world. An early investment in user trust will be a moat for crypto companies as regulators get more vigilant. , Trust & Safety Lead, BukuWarung Vanessa Sutandar The blockchain does not generate or get rid of trust. It purely converts trust from one form to another: From financial institutions to the technology itself. , Trust & Safety Ops Lead, Accenture Mahmoud Laajimi Trust and safety needs to keep up with the technological developments of financial services, and therefore must extend coverage to crypto transactions , Driver Fraud, Trust and Safety, Shopee Andreas Yudhistira Trust & safety are mindsets. See how we believe that cryptocurrency is a ‘trustworthy’ instrument, as an alternative to existing currency that is prone to failure management by financial institution Why 2022 will be the year for blockchain compliance, regtech, trust and safety As many of the risks, frauds, and attacks in the blockchain and crypto space became increasingly known in recent, I believe 2022 will be the year where we see the rise of many promising companies in blockchain compliance, regtech, and trust and safety addressing these challenges. Like in Web2.0 cyber security, there can be no end - as long as there are aggressors, there will always be a need for defenders. Yet what we can all take heart and encouragement in is many of the “unknown unknowns” are finally becoming “known unknowns” (e.g. how to travel rule will impact the ‘trustless’ promise of crypto exchanges) and “known knowns” (e.g. AML/KYC for on- and off-ramps). If you’re thinking of, or currently are building solutions in blockchain and crypto compliance, regtech or trust & safety, do connect with me on LinkedIn , or qinen@saisoncapital.com. Let’s continue the conversations, and keep up the fight! here Disclaimer: All opinions and views are views of their own and do not represent the views of their employer and affiliates.

"Hackers Need To Get Lucky Only Once" - Excerpts on Fighting Crypto Hacks, Theft and Fraud

At the 2013 Hannover Industrial Fair, Germany officially launched the concept of “Industry 4.0”, the core purpose of which is to improve the competitiveness of German industry, leading the way in the new industrial revolution. Subsequently, the German government put it into the “Germany 2020 High Technology Strategy" project. The project, jointly funded by the German Federal Education Authority and the Ministry of Research and the Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology, is expected to invest 200 million euros to improve the intelligence of the manufacturing industry, build intelligent factories with adaptability, resource efficiency, and genetic engineering, and integrate customers and business partners in business processes and value processes. In May 2015, the State Council of China officially issued “Made in China 2025", which will comprehensively promote the implementation of the manufacturing power strategy and promote the intelligence of the industrial industry. At the same time, countries around the world are rapidly pushing ahead with their own industrial upgrade plans, such as the us' idea of an “Industrial Internet", which they are eager to dominate in the next industrial revolution. Although specific policies vary from country to country, they are generally concentrated in the following areas: 01 Interconnected In addition to the connectivity between production equipment, equipment and products at the basic level, deeper concepts such as the interconnection between virtual and reality will also be realized to some extent. 02 Integration This includes both end-to-end integration in the traditional sense and vertical and horizontal integration of an industrial chain and its related industries. 03 Big Data The development of big data and other related technologies will enable the industrial sector to achieve a series of products, operations, value chains and a series of internal and external data more scientific management and control. 04 Innovation A series of products, models and industry innovations led by technological innovation will form a large-scale virtuous cycle of innovation, driving the technology improvement within the relevant industrial chains. 05 Transformation Building on the above-mentioned changes, there will also be a number of transformations in the industrial sector, such as the transition from mass production to personalization, from production-based manufacturing to service-oriented manufacturing. At the same time, Industry 4.0 faces major challenges, including the need to increase data transfers, increase security, transparency and credibility. There are two major problems in information interconnection: data Transmission rate and data storage efficiency, fifth-generation mobile networks (5G) and blockchain are good to mitigate and solve these problems, 5G will enable great channel capacity and reduce data latency, and blockchain data sharing operation mode and distributed storage technology will improve the security, transparency and credibility of stored data. Rate of Data Transmission - 5G Industry 4.0 is the general equipment into self-perception and self-learning equipment to improve the process of the entire industry, improve inter-industry efficiency, improve industrial intelligence, maintain environmental interaction, real-time data monitoring, product status tracking, product business positioning, product process management and so on ,there are the main industry needs of Industry 4.0. The concept of Industry 4.0 uses more information technology in the manufacturing process, its industrial infrastructure is mainly composed of information networks, so the amount of data generated in the process will be an order of magnitude growth, the speed of data transmission has a very high demand, the current network transmission rate is not enough to support the development of the entire industrial Internet. 5G (5th generation mobile network or 5th wireless system, 5th-Generation) is the latest generation of cellular mobile communication technology and is an extension of the 4G (LTE-A, WiMax), 3G (UMTS, LTE) and 2G (GSM) systems. The performance goals of 5G are high data rates, reduced latency, energy savings, lower costs, increased system capacity, and large-scale device connectivity. 5G is not only the evolution of broadband network, but also a unique network with new features. These features will provide users with reliability and security in terms of network capacity, network latency, network security, network efficiency. So the huge network that forms the Internet of Things is what we now call IoT, the Internet of Things. However, the IOT concept is still facing problems with its implementation, such as security, privacy, trust, and limited network capacity. One of the most important features of 5G networks compared to previous generations of mobile networks is the ability to transmit large amounts of data and reduce latency, which is especially important for IOT devices that constantly require real-time information. In industry, the digitization of job processes and workflows is creating low latency, real-time, mobility, security, and reliability and availability, and 5G networks will greatly improve channel capacity, reduce network latency and improve network efficiency compared to previous generations of mobile networks. The full implementation of Industry 4.0 will be achieved by starting a 5G mobile network, as real-time communication between machines is critical, requiring a reduction in latency of less than 1ms, allowing the machine to run smoothly in all branches of the industry. The rates of data transmission on 5G networks are much higher than cellular networks, up to 10Gbit/s, faster than current wired Internet and 100 times faster than 4G LTE cellular networks. In addition, 5G greatly reduces network latency, with response times of less than 1 millisecond, compared with 30-70 milliseconds for 4G. Thanks to faster data transmission , 5G networks provide a solid network foundation for the Internet , making IOT become a reality. Efficiency of Data Storage - Distributed Storage Data storage market size With the development of information interconnection, more and more data is generated. The cloud storage market is  $46.12 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $107.4 billion by 2023 and $222.25 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 27.19% August 20, 2019 According to a new report released by Grand View Research, the global next-generation data storage market is expected to reach $118.22 billion by 2025. Market growth is driven primarily by increasing consumer demand for reliable, secure and cost-effective information storage and management. The demand for data storage services will be unprecedented in a market for data incrementals of this magnitude. Amazon's AWS, which has accounted for about 33 percent of the storage market, has revenues of $17 billion in 2017 and $254 in 2018, and is now one of Amazon's three pillar industries. The storage market is undoubtedly huge, here due to space reasons do not dissect the pros and cons of central storage and distributed storage, interested friends can view the previous public articles, here focus on analyzing the future of decentralized storage. Decentralized storage and distributed storage are fundamentally different, because the blockchain market now describes "decentralized storage" as "distributed storage" more, in order to facilitate everyone to understand, here the author calls it distributed storage. Distributed storage Distributed storage comes into being with the concept of blockchain, which stores, extracts and retrieves data in a decentralized way. There is a large amount of unused storage space around the world, mainly owned by a variety of entities, large enterprises, small family businesses, individuals with huge hard drive racks, and small hard drives in everyone's laptop, all of which can be used for storage. However, these storage spaces are difficult to use and share due to various barriers. By decentralizing and distributed storage, we can fully tap the idle storage market and improve the application efficiency of the entire storage network. The resilience of the data We often encounter our own photos or videos in our lives that have been deleted by mistake, and then we can't find them back, but distributed storage can avoid this. First your data is cut into small pieces, then distributed to a distributed network, stored in a distributed node storage disk, if you accidentally lose the data, then you can request data from the network, download the data. The convenience of data With the outbreak of short video, there will be more and more video upload to the network in the future. In the distributed storage network, people can download video from the people around them, rather than through the central server and through the DSN network, which undoubtedly increases the efficiency of transmission, increased the convenience and efficiency of user download. The longevity of the data In recent years, a more hot concept in the field of data storage is Long Data, it mainly refers to those who need us to save long-term data, such as bank-related transaction data, the internal regulations of the banks, ordinary data materials stored for 5 years, business data 10 years, credit business-related core data permanent preservation, the stock of "raw flow data" are mainly used tape backup methods, this tape storage disadvantage is obvious. In this scenario, if the backup of a bank's transaction is converted from the most traditional tape technology to distributed storage, it will permanently preserve important data, and we can check the availability of Long Data anytime. The privacy of data Distributed storage data protects privacy better than existing cloud systems. Today's cloud storage providers store users' data entirely in unencrypted spaces, even if some encryption systems that add encryption so by controlling the user's encryption key, rather than creating a true "zero-knowledge proof" system. This is a dangerous arrangement because it means that customer data can be stolen, disclosed or sold by hackers.A distributed storage system encrypts the data between end-to-end, even if an attacker who has access to decrypted text, but still cannot understand the contents. At the same time, by storing a file into blocks of data on different storage service nodes, all data content is encrypted, only the user access key, and the failure of a single data storage provider can not damage the recovery of data, this is a more secure and efficient than the centralized storage. The value of data Distributed storage networks supply an alternative, whereby participants who create network value compensate for cryptocurrency in the network. Miners who store, distribute, retrieve, and manage data on a distributed network can earn web-based cryptocurrency, which they can choose to hold or make it into cash. This consensus mechanism and positive feedback loop encourage collaboration participants to actively participate in network building, and they will also reap substantial rewards for the success of the network. In addition, as the owner of personal data, you can selectively authorize the enterprise to use it, ofcourse they should pay money for the data owner. In essence, a distributed cloud storage network works in a similar way to central storage. But instead of storing data on a single company's servers, it is encrypted and distributed over a decentralized network. This means that no party has access to the data except the data owner. Distributed storage networks can use millions of server devices instead of hundreds or thousands. This means that storage is typically much more available and the cost of storing data is much lower. With a distributed cloud storage network, parties that need additional storage capacity can store data more securely and transparently for lower prices. Similarly, owners who provide storage capacity can be rewarded. BMJ Distributed Storage BMJ is a high-speed, secure and scalable blockchain infrastructure project. It is deeply developed and optimized, and the P2P transmission of nodes through slicing technology enables the second transmission of hundreds of megabits of files based on ipfs. From a new perspective, BMJ based on blockchain distributed cloud storage system  propose  a new scheme which through exchanging second transfer mechanism to improve data transmission speed and storage data efficiently. With the full launch of the BMJ distributed node, the effective link of millions of devices around the world, what BMJ should do is   to lay a solid foundation for the global enterprises and individuals to provide the cheapest and most efficient CDN for the development of social technology,like the network acceleration, edge computing and other services, so as to build a complete application ecosystem. BMJ has officially launched A- Personal-Based Smart Cloud Storage, FileCloud Cloud Drive, which provides users around the world with a fast, convenient, efficient, decentralized way to share storage across platforms and devices anytime and anywhere. FileCloud Cloud has mobile storage, file encryption, video playback, short video interaction, wallet modules, public spaces, and more function. BMJ transforms idle capacity space into storage services through miners around the world, enabling unlimited distributed storage as miners become more users. As a leader in distributed storage, BMJ is now rapidly laying out an industrial cluster that includes cloud storage, cloud computing, and big data, which can better lead the transformation of traditional enterprises and promote the development of the new economy. BMJ is quietly changing the world, changing your life. BMJ Official Website http://www.bmjcoin.com English Community Facebook： https://www.facebook.com/100053503604487/videos/107789157681204/ Medium： https://medium.com/@bmj20200716 Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/QcZP-BhEA-3MAs1vWdUbVg Youtube: https://youtu.be/-37CIAH6As8 Twitter: https://twitter.com/BMJ67466085/status/1283634837820076032?s=20 Chinese Community 百度： https://rk.mbd.baidu.com/r/4XZkNrtkPK?f=cp&u=b58428e71ebb53e4 币乎： https://bihu.com/people/1734577192 今日头条： https://www.toutiao.com/i6826643969242300941/ 金色财经： https://www.jinse.com/news/blockchain/757247.html 火星财经： https://news.huoxing24.com/20200515141536556360.html 腾讯视频： https://v.qq.com/x/bu/h5_user_center?vuid=2276416895&url_from=share&second_share=0&share_from=copy&pgid=page_personal 优酷视频： http://m.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDY3NzI1MTA3Mg==.html ？ 哔哩哔哩： https://b23.tv/ueiLXv 抖音： https://v.douyin.com/JFgPjDq/ 快手： https://v.kuaishou.com/4O4Xzb

Big Data under Industry 4.0: 5G and Distributed Storage

3 weeks back, I posted this on Facebook: Facebook post As you can see, within 14 hours, there were 47 comments and I received 12 personal messages from people who were interested in reading the article. Eventually the post settled with 63 comments and 20 personal messages. What do you think drove this behaviour in people that convinced them to comment on a post catering to a niche? one’s judgement of what is important in life Value — Someone once told me, by far everyone in this world falls into the category of good people and this world functions by providing or extracting value from an individual. Conclusion 1 : There’s always an audience seeking for real value. Background Akshay Pruthi I’m a B.E. graduate from NSIT, University of Delhi. At the age of , I started my on a couple of B-Plan competitions, generated $10,000 in revenue, eventually figured — won’t be able to scale this up. Therefore, dropped the idea and on another interesting Project — . Reach was a content discovery platform that let you discover content available on your friends mobile phones. We about and finally I then led the Special Project Team at ixigo, owning the product of cabs, and AI travel bots. After working there for a while, I decided to exit ixigo to start something again with . 17 first entrepreneurial journey with Lost Beat , w started working Reach raised $500k from the top VCs and angel investors . got acquired by ixigo Durgesh Kaushik Okay, so you really thought there is a “Guaranteed” way to grow a start-up by 10x? If there was, and I knew the way — I’d have been a billionaire, as I would have known the formula behind elixir. Conclusion 2: There are no shortcuts in life Don’t start making judgements yet, I’ll try and do justice to what I committed and help you understand what growth really is, why most of the start-ups get stuck at ~10,000 downloads and end up using some shady methods to justify the growth they wish to achieve and eventually fooling themselves. Let’s start with some data points Airbnb Growth Curve 2010–2011, hardly any growth. The important point to notice here is that for one entire year, they were struggling to find the right product market fit, experimenting with a lot of things and simultaneously failing at a lot of things. Conclusion 3: Patience is super important (key) for growth The result is sweet :) What’s growth? Paul Graham scientifically claimed, a business viability is determined if growth of a business is 5 to 7 percent per week, while an exceptional growth rate is 10 percent per week. In the startup world, it’s super important to realise growth is as essential to life as oxygen. It’s very important to set the right growth goals and equally important to meet those growth goals — a metric for you to determine the life period of your company. Falling under the viscous circle of numbers Now that you have set your company growth goals, have the right team to execute it, and everything is set, you just need to execute the plan and BOOM! Does it work like that? In a lot of companies, I’ve witnessed mammoth mismatch in management where leaders themselves fell under the trap of golden numbers (top-line metrics) $2xxxxx $1xx2xx $xxxx Discounts & offers (incurring a total loss to the company) Happy manager ; Happy ceo ; Happy employees Business Goal for the months: 20th day of the month status: Marketing budget left: Campaign: False truth: The worst part is, this becomes a habit for every other month. To achieve those business goals, you end up incurring huge losses for the company accounting it in “Marketing budget” Conclusion 4: Transparency & Honesty to your business are the true North Star Metrics Setting the Objectives Right **Current Process**1. Open excel sheet2. Check the market standard for the mom/wow growth for your type of company 4. Little tweaking of numbers with the understanding of your market conditions —not much but good enough for you to get another round of funding3. Copy paste Current method of proposing/assuming growth Hurray! **Proposed process**Growth shouldn’t be carved by assuming growth. Oh, you knew that already? But how about we actually implement it? Identify your one metric that is the most crucial for your number. You must have read this statement many times, in many blogs but the fact is, we get easily deviated and keep on changing our most important metric, falling into the trap of numbers again. Be intellectually honest to yourself and assume your company growth around that metric. Try reverse engineering to achieve that. While I was running my start-up -Reach, we faced multiple issues in the beginning in setting the right metric we wanted to focus on. We couldn’t say no to the metrics that were increasing. Reach growth Curves Eventually, we brought it down to: Number of friends a user has= 5 This in a way took care of all our other metrics, the engagement, the content etc. 4. Never underestimate a channel: While laying out your growth channels to achieve that magical number, you might get pessimistic around executing some channels because of the painful effort it requires daily to execute that. For instance, while working on my new start-up Wishfie, we initially thought posting something daily on Facebook, creating new graphics everyday might result in a lot of effort but no result. Nevertheless, we thought of trying. 61 comments, 7000 people reached Surprise! Surprise! A simple and neat design, hardly took a minute and an amazing content piece — Boom! All it takes is a little effort for you to try out different channels, keep experimenting you will never know — One channel might just give you that hockey stick. Conclusion 5: Set the north star metric right. FOLLOW THAT! Conclusion 6: Never underestimate any channel. List all of them down. Keep experimenting Case Studies Facebook Case Making small changes and measuring the result is the key to moving fast. A lot of companies fail miserably even after scaling to 50 mn+ users just because they never established a right testing environment. Not many people are aware, but the major reason why Facebook scaled and is still growing, is because they have thousands of different versions of Facebook running over different user sets, continuously testing what works for which audience, closely analysing the data and then rolling out the changes. Below is a very interesting post from a Facebook employee on how they test: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/building-and-testing-at-facebook/10151004157328920/ Conclusion 5: Set the right testing environment for your company. 2. Muscial.ly Musical.ly never approached things in the most traditional way. They believed in forming a very strong community of people whom they call as Musers and have constant meet-ups with them. Instead of taking follows and followers, Musical.ly came up with BFFs or “Best Fans Forever”. Musicaly.ly then devised some special features arund BFFs which only they could do, for eg; doing things like a duet. “Especially in the social media area, it’s usually the winner who takes all. You have to come up with something radically new. You shouldn’t be a me-too product,” Zhu said. A lot of these ideas were thrown by people from the community who are using the app almost daily and pushing ideas to the team. Mysical.ly has various chatting groups with these community members, having vigorous discussions around different ideas. The impact of this is huge: Musers feel a sense of importance within the company Musical.ly get to know how their TG thinks Never underestimate the power of content. Many of us don’t give much preference to the copy (text) we use on the app/small design changes that we think might not impact the growth. See the below graph which clearly depicts how a small change in their design drastically increased their numbers. Source: Business Insider Similarly for Instagram, a small change in the approach of posting good looking photos increased their growth numbers by thousand. Conclusion 6: Give more importance to “what you think is dirty work” Never underestimate the power of small changes Empathy is key! Try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Know your customers the way they want you to. How? Make user stories around their daily routines. Clueless? Talk to your target audience, 20 calls a day. Ask them what’s their daily routine looks like, at what instances they open which all apps? Try to identify when will they open your app. Sitting inside someone’s phone is a huge asset. See how your product can achieve that. Start drawing patterns and observing trends. Once you call 100 odd people, you will start observing some patterns. That is when you start drawing conclusions and take some decisions on what you should execute next. Sharing some resources and cheat sheets that might help :) Creating Personas Growth Hacking Tools How to write to top tier publications Behind the success of Kuaishou, the biggest social video sharing app in China List of top Publications Growth Playbooks Growth Hacks for 2017 — Free eBook The Ultimate Facebook Ads Cheat Sheet Do hit the like button if you appreciate the post. Next I’m writing “The orgasm theory”. Stay tuned.

Guaranteed way to grow your start-up user-base by 10x

In my previous articles, I shared insights about that's shaping today's infrastructure, known from the making of China's Firewall to supporting the domestic rise of start-ups (some of which already have become unicorns). Across various mediums, a lot has been said about China's rise, scaling consumption, and growing number of middle class. China's digital powerhouse When I say middle class, I mean the 500+ million Chinese citizens that have in their household at least one vehicle and in most cases, citizenship or an entire family from English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as most of their offspring educated overseas and proficient in English, French, or even Spanish. The list goes on. The following quote from an by CNBC is a good example of the globally-rising interest in the Chinese market: article Yet, very few articles have been written on strategy for start-ups with a checklist on how to access one of the biggest, if not the biggest, internet markets — China. There are, of course, scores of articles that touch upon a tactical or specific aspect of business, such as retail, e-commerce, and emerging trends reports. However, I could not find one easy to use, understand, or with sources that could give me a glimpse of the "must knows" about the Chinese market. Thus, the analysis, years of experience in China, research, and collective intelligence, inspired my team and me to put together this guide to help people navigate the Chinese digital infrastructure before entering the market. The following piece is the result of 30 days of research and thorough discussions, based on our personal as well as professional experience in China; 20 days of developing, sourcing, structuring, and localizing content; and 10days of developing a visual positioning and A/B testing. Today, we are proudly releasing easy to follow and understand findings that will be further elaborated in our blog . here So, what makes up our Top 10 China Strategy Checklist? 1. Global context with Chinese characteristics When expanding in China, you need to remember that your PR campaigns should be aligned within the framework of Chinese laws and regulations. You should also have a deep understanding of China’s cultural values and principles. You won’t be able to successfully market your brand and offerings if you lack the proper understanding of how the Chinese market and culture works. 2. China's digital and legal infrastructure PR in China should be developed within the framework of Chinese laws and regulations, with a deep understanding of sensitive cultural values and principles, and yet Start-ups should be able to keep the global relevance of their products and services along with benefits that it can offer in the local market. That is in China. 3. The rise of Chinese social media Chinese Social media outlets may have copied its counterparts. Instead of importing overseas made products, Chinese Social media integrated Chinese characteristics within their functionalities and exported its products via Chinese netizens.WeChat, TikTok, Weibo, Zhihuand scores of others are being used by Chinese netizens that are true and loyal advocates that inviting the rest of the world to either accept new rules of the game or stay behind. And, the game is just the beginning. 4.  Baidu is not Google If you were to expand to China, you need to know that the Chinese don’t use Google and any of its products and services in their daily lives. Instead, they have Baidu—the dominant search engine in mainland China that indexes all types of content in the Chinese language only. With this in mind, if you want to increase your exposure on the Chinese search engine, you need to consider not only the language, but the cultural resonance in everything as well. For technical matters, you also need to learn about Baidu’s infrastructure and functionalities so that you can strategize how your Start-up can come up in search results. 5. WeChat: the super-app Since its inception in 2011, WeChat has turned into a must-have app for both consumers and businesses in China. It has almost a billion monthly active users in mainland China, all of which benefit from functionalities the app has that are unique compared to other apps worldwide.WeChat is one of the most valuable assets for PR campaigns to engage with your target audience, build rapport with your fans and followers, develop mining-programs for your projects, ideate cross-promotional strategic activities and most importantly, make use of Online to Offline campaigns that have the highest ROI. In China, WeChat is considered the super app that does everything, be sure to include in must explore/research items in your strategy. 6. KOL culture takes off The influencer marketing industry in China is worth almost US$10 billion. It creates such a huge impact in the Chinese community that it has transformed the purchasing, decision making and even thinking habits of Chinese as well as chinese speaking netizens. Because of this phenomenon, more and more organizations are turning away from typical marketing efforts such as billboards and online ads and opting to partner with KOLs or key opinion leaders to increase their engagement with their target audience.KOLs have been instrumental to businesses in making a long lasting impression online and offline. If you want to gain more attention in China, you better check which influencers you can possibly work with. 7. Live streaming is the way of life China's Digital Infrastructure opened many doors for local players to go global and live streaming apps are no exception. Live streaming has become one of the most effective ways for brands to reach out to more customers every day. From 2015 to 2017, over 700 platforms offering live streaming content competed for consumers’ attention. According to Deloitte, the live streaming market in China reached US$4.4 billion in 2018, an increase of 37% from the previous year. It reached such a high value even with tighter government regulations in place. Today, China’s live streaming scene is dominated by some of the top tech firms in the country. To mention some: Weixin (WeChat), Douyin(the Chinese version of TikTok), Kauishou, Yizhibo(Weibo’s native streaming app), Bilibili, Inkeand many more others. 8. Guanxi meets social validation It's not about what you know, but who you know, and Guanxi, which literally means "networks" or "connections" provides businesses with opportunities to grow. Sometimes, creating Guanxi comes in the form of banquets, giving gifts, or networking. China is a Guanxi-rooted society. Utilizing digital strategy to build Guanxi with potential followers, fans, and even business partners in the long run can help brands gain a strong social validation essential in making a PR campaign successful. 9. Community amplifies the importance of brands If Guanxi opens doors for social validation, continuously supporting communities on top of creating and launching PR campaigns is a great way to expand your reach in China, tapping into communities is a better and faster way to reach more customers, partners, and even perhaps potential investors. 10. Localization matters One of things that most startups tend to overlook is the value of localizing their work. Contrary to popular belief, going global is actually impossible without going local first. While translation only deals with linguistic aspects, localization helps companies adapt to a specific market. And in order to localize your products and services, you need to look beyond the surface of what it all means. When HSBC expanded in China, it lost US$10 million when it mistranslated its message in its rebranding campaign. You might experience unrecoverable damages to your reputation when you mistranslate any of your messages, so you better be careful. Understanding what these points mean is only just the beginning. If you want to learn more about the Chinese market and its multifaceted digital infrastructure, you are welcome to explore our blog for more articles. This is not it, we have easy to download E-Book that you can download for free here.

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