Peking University, Nov. 13, 2012: Professor Kuang Wenbo from Renmin University of China (RUC) addressed the panel on social media at the spot of Beijing Forum 2012.

“It is the first time that I have attended the Forum.” Professor Kuang told the reporter on November 3, “Thanks to the excellent organization work of PKU, the forum is high-specification and running well.”

In the panel entitled “Innovation and Change in the Age of Social Media”, most of the scholars spoke highly of the current “victory of the new media”, according to its positive effects on the society.

However, Professor Kuang started his speech “On the Innovation of Social Media Business Model” with a sharp remark.

“Almost all social media operators, including Twitter, Facebook and Sina Weibo, are more or less facing deficits,” Kuang illustrated with the latest annual reports from related sources, pointing out the essence of analyzing their business models for solutions. Compared with the free-advertising model and the charge model, the electronic commerce model, as he highlighted among all the three, possesses far more potential, if it has not been universally recognized most successful yet.

“It is apparently too early now to outline [the electronic commerce model] correctly enough, but the fact is that the trend itself is evitable. The industrial circle, along with us media researches and practitioners, is supposed to embrace such a change,” Kuang made the appeal.

In Kuang’s eyes, this age of electronic commerce requires media experts themselves to get “electronized”, “I received the bachelor degree of arts and the postgraduate certificate in science. In my opinion, if you want to do in-depth researches in the field of social media, the knowledge of information technology is no doubt a prerequisite.”

“I started using the Internet in 1994, when everything thereon was in English,” he recalled, “After typing in a snippet of imperative application via the hardware, I received nothing but a tiny piece of information. Even so, I realized how revolutionary the Internet was.”

Professor Kuang is not only the youngest professor and doctoral supervisor at the RUS School of Journalism and Communication, but also a vanguard in the realm of new media.

Reported by: Gao Hongfei

Edited by: Arthars