Society moves online in brave new world

A few years ago, if someone said Microsoft's popular MSN Messenger would shut down, that a smartphone could be used like a walkie-talkie or praised a 140-character online text called a micro blog, you would have thought they were out of their mind.

These are all part of the magic of social media, which is always confronted with challenges as well as opportunities. It's hard to overemphasize the influence of these new media on people, and the year 2012 witnessed a series of milestones in the industry.

Zhao Zizhong, head of the New Media Institute, Communication University of China, said social media reflects aspects of social life and the segmentation of these media is increasingly obvious.

"Social media vividly reflects social phenomena. For example, celebrities, always the favorites of newspapers and TV, have found a new stage in social media and compete with each other in the virtual world," he said.

Zhao said society's thinking is increasingly reflected in social media, such as anti-corruption campaigns online and government officials opening micro blog accounts to make their work more transparent.

According to Zhao, major social and business activities are interconnected in online media. For example, e-commerce providers communicate with consumers and run promotions online.

"Social media have special phenomena, such as virtual online celebrities and WeChat, which will keep popping up," he said.

Social media must be commercialized, he said, and the providers, such as micro blog platforms, should figure out a proper profit pattern.

"Social media may face big changes in the future. Their market is absolutely fierce and technology support is very important. Also, the attitudes of mainstream social media corporations play vital roles."

Fang Zhouzi vs Han Han

In the beginning of 2012, the hot topic was not Spring Festival, but the fierce online clash between writer and racecar driver Han Han and fraud fighter Fang Zhouzi.

The dispute was triggered by a popular blogger, Mai Tian (his online name), who wrote on Jan 15 that Han's works may have been written by his father, the writer Han Renjun, and his publisher Lu Jinbo, and suggested there was a team of ghostwriters behind Han.

Han Han responded the next day, offering 20 million yuan ($3.21 million) to anyone who could prove his works were ghostwritten. Mai apologized to Han on Jan 18, admitting he didn't have sufficient evidence.

Fang, however, started to post a series of blogs analyzing Han's articles sentence by sentence, and suggested Han Renjun was the ghostwriter.

Han Han responded on his blog and said he would publish the manuscript of his early work Triple Door, which brought him to fame in 2000. The manuscript came out in April.

In May, Fang said on Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging platform, that Han was only 164 cm in sneakers and had lied about his height. Fang's calculation was based on a photo of Han and the famous pool player Pan Xiaoting in which Han held a vertical pool cue in his hand.

Online attention shifted to Han's height, with some Internet celebrities taking bets on his height — the highest wager was 10 million yuan. Writer Liu Liu later posted a photo of Han standing against the wall and said he was 171.5 cm barefooted. Some netizens still have doubts.

Interest gradually faded and Han stopped responding to Fang's continuous attacks.