

Email Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Chinese - prakash
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120664392076969261.html?mod=OATE

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ilamont
Raises some interesting points about differences in business cultures. One
thing that would get lost in the Chinese approach is having access to records
of conversations -- I use email search every day to check the status of
projects in various stages of development.

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notauser
Logging IM isn't that difficult. If you use something like Pidgin then you get
all of your logs neatly organized in one place regardless of protocol.

Equally most corporate IM servers support logging. I expect that with a very
small amount of hacking eJabberd could be persuaded to store good data even if
it can't already do so.

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ilamont
I was actually making a reference to the cellphone conversations mentioned in
the article.

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caudicus
I wonder how much of this is sort of self-feeding behavior: e.g. in America we
use email a lot at work, so emails are answered quickly, which reinforces its
use. But in China, they don't use email so much, so email isn't answered
quickly, which discourages its use. Maybe it's more initial conditions and
less culture.

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tx
I think it has a lot to do with culture. Russians are very much like Chinese
in this regard: voice mail has never gained any traction there, and email is
considered somewhat 2nd grade.

Email is for things that weren't important enough to deserve a phone call.
Phone calls are getting replaced by SMS messages, especially among younger
crowd, but email/voicemail are nowhere close to importance they have among
Americans.

A typical example: my neighbours sent me an evite for a party next weekend, in
Russia that would be a bit insulting: my parents would think _"nah, it's not a
real invitation, otherwise they would have called"_

Americans value their "personal space" too much, and email/voicemail allows
you to do just that: communicate with people without getting out of this
bubble of comfort. Eastern cultures reject that: if you want to talk to me, -
then TALK to me. That's the attitude. (exaggerated a bit, but delivers the
message)

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attack
Well that's no fun. With IM or email you can talk to 50 people at once.

Or are you referring to business communications? I'm sure that no one in the
US undervalues the effectiveness and persuasiveness of voice communication for
critical negotiations.

On second reading, I think you're just referring to the resistance of old
people to new technology?

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tx
This is not about technology at all, it's about ways to communicate. As I
said, differences are larger than most people realize.

Here is another example not related to tech or "old people". A co-worker had a
birthday party few weeks ago. The next Monday I had a "Thank you" card on my
desk, even though he's sitting next door. You see, a card like this will only
freak a Russian out: _a card? why? couldn't he have said something instead?_

This is why IM and SMS picked off _very_ quickly over there. I've met people
with ICQ numbers on their business cards as early as mid 90s: these media fit
their culture better. Email is just like a birthday card: too detached, too
impersonal, not real-time, etc. The only email I ever get from my parents
always contains short and usual "Call us", everything else is too important to
be shared "indirectly".

It's all changing, of course. And my views and memories may be getting a
little rusty (haven't been there since '02), but culture does play a major
role in everything we do, including preferences for technologies.

~~~
qaexl
My parents are Taiwanese. I was raised in America for most of my childhood. I
got to see how my Americans friends hanged out both as a teenager and as a
professional. I got to see how my parents friends interact with each other.

As tx wrote, this isn't a technology thing, it is a cultural thing.

Back in 1992, the author Neal Stephenson went over to China to do research for
his book, _Diamond Age_. He wrote a whole essay on that trip in Wired
Magazine. One story he shared was about the cell phones. Powerful, influential
men had were early adopters of those cell phones -- big, huge, klunky, mildly
phallic. These men would go to restaurants with their entourage and would
stand The Cell Phone in the middle of the table to show off the depth and
breadth of their social network.

Stephenson had talked to one such guy about it, who complained that it was
hard to lug this around. So Stephenson told him how people in Hong Kong and
the southern portions were handling it -- by getting a flunky in their
entourage to carry it.

If that sounds absurd, there are lots of technologies that have a decidedly
American cultural slant to them. Back in George Washington's time, the lawn of
the White House was kept short with grazing sheep. In those days, if you had a
huge lawn that was not for grazing animals, that was a sign of wealth. Look at
this huge lawn! I'm so wealthy, I can afford not to put the animals out there
to pasture!

After WWII, with rising population, massive increases in manufacturing
capabilities, and financing, owning a house in the suburbs became a
foundational symbol of the American Dream.

And guess what? Each of those houses have a lawn. Which a whole set of
technologies were invented for the caring and feeding of the lawn: lawnmowers,
leaf-blowers, high-tech fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. People didn't
have sheep anymore, and it isn't as if the kids went out there to play (not
with video games beckoning in the house). So why do you keep seeing people
watering their lawns, fertilizing it until it becomes absurdly green, all just
to trim it to the perfect height? If you kept it unkempt, your neighbors start
snubbing you, because they are angry at you for lowering their property value.

You can take any technology and you can see uses that are always tied to some
cultural context. As a culture with a lot of gadgets, we'd like to think that
we're using technology in an objective, rational, _optimized_ way. But we're
not. People are people.

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ALee
E-mail isn't the only thing. If you look at the way advertising works on
Chinese sites, it looks more like a street bazaar in terms of the experience.

It still amazes me that Chinese sites sell ads on a monthly/daily basis rather
than CPM or hours spent on site.

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yawl
May I say: Text Messaging Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Americans?

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tokipin
email never seemed elegant to me. mailing lists in particular are atrocious. i
think a good communication medium for a business would be forums (eg
vBullitin) which allow topical conversation in an organized, non-retarded way
as well as one-on-one private exchanges

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kingkongrevenge
Email is very inefficient compared to voice communication. All the time you
see email threads that tallied up used half an hour plus the mental energy of
people subconsciously polling for the reply, but a two minute phone
conversation could have wrapped the thing up.

