Where did ubuyibuy’s 130,000 Facebook fans go?
Update: they didn’t go anywhere. And in fact they are already up to 140k (nov 10). ubuyibuy’s CEO explains more in the comments http://blog.think27.com/2010/11/where-did-ubuyibuys-130000-facebook-fans-go/comment-page-1/#comment-12145
It’s always blown my mind that http://ubuyibuy.com could have so many Facebook fans. For those of you who are techy, that’s more than http://techcrunch.com.
Today I noticed their fan page is missing from their site and from Facebook. I personally know it takes a lot for Facebook to delete your fan page. So does this mean ubuyibuy has been doing something sketchy to get fans? hmm
Update: it looks like they have started a new page! With only 19 fans.
Also, it looks like this Singapore fan page is gone too. Taiwan is still up.
Bono, 
Danny Yeung 1:15 am on November 7, 2010 Permalink |
Dear John,
This is Danny Yeung with uBuyiBuy, I had previously written on your blog. Yes, it is a fact that we do have over 130,000 fans on facebook. There was nothing sketchy we did on facebook. As group buying has taken off quite fast in Hong Kong and we have been offering great deals to Hong Kong citizens, it became viral very fast in which friends of friends just kept adding us. Certainly, we also promoted ourselves via facebook ads along with our two ambassadors of Van Ness Wu and MC Jin which promoted us early on as well.
We have been trying to get in contact with facebook so that our page is back up and the new page which you mentioned is NOT our company fan page. I suspect it is one of our competitors which hired a bunch of people to report our original page as spam, and have it know another one of our page just happened to pop up. We are also reporting the new page as not ours and hopefully that can be taken down very shortly. It is a shame when one company has to go to these depths to try to gain an advantage as in the long run, these tactics will never prove to be worthwhile. Thank you
Danny
Jorne Digweed 3:01 am on November 10, 2010 Permalink |
Honestly I think you’re lying considering that even GROUPON itself, combining all the big cities on the first page when you search Groupon including NY and LA + Groupon’s main fanpage of 64,000 doesn’t even equal to as many likes as your company’s facebook page in just Hong Kong.
John Erik 3:09 am on November 10, 2010 Permalink |
Haha, that’s was my thinking too and why I originally posted this stuff. Also I knew other people faking their numbers. I don’t know though. People in Hong Kong seem to Like things much more that other places (like America). … I think I read somewhere that more people per capita in HK use Facebook than anywhere else.
Danny Yeung 5:21 am on November 10, 2010 Permalink |
I’m glad we can all have a good conversation here on this topic and rather provide facts and figures on this topic so we can all make a decision. Yes, Groupon if you look at even their biggest cities does not reach the numbers we have. This is due to a variety of reasons, Groupon’s main delivery message to it’s database is not through facebook but rather through their EDM database. They put a very strong emphasis on email and analyzing email bahavior. Another reason is that you have to remember the USA is so spread out that it is hard to have a huge concentration of fans in one particular city. The advantage in Hong Kong is that it is so dense and everyone seems to know everyone else. Once a product or anything is popular, it really spreads like wildfire. Additionally, as John had mentioned, Facebook is extremely popular in Hong Kong with almost 3 million facebook users in which you have a total HK population of over 7 million. Due to this staggering fact of almost 43% of population on facebook, facebook in Hong Kong is a much more widely used medium even instead of email. Now this is just my personal take on facebook versus email for Hong Kong. I believe it is opposite in the USA in which I have spent a quite deal of time as well. Below is the link which shows the # of Hong Kong facebook users.
http://www.hongkongwebanalytics.com/2010/04/bubble-facebook-trend-in-hong-kong/
If you look at our current 140k fans on facebook, it is very small compared to actual facebook users in Hong Kong. We have studied and tried to best maximize our marketing and brand awareness on Facebook, it is not overnight but through a series of trial and error and discussing with some top experts on facebook. Facebook is also very strict on their TOS so we would never do anything not adhering to meeting the standards as why risk getting your page shut down when we know it is one of our main communication channels to our valued fans. I also do believe in the most fair practice in business for everyone, not just us. It is never right to bad mouth anyone, including any competitors just for the sake of the opportunity. As long as everyone is focused on the core business, good outcomes will occur.
Thank You
Danny
Jorne Digweed 10:18 pm on November 11, 2010 Permalink |
I don’t doubt the that Hong Kong has alot of facebook users in a dense area. However, the other fact is that it is also very true many companies in Hong Kong and China tend to cheat in business. I’ve talked to many people who work in even the biggest companies in Hong Kong about inside activity that isn’t fair practice like fixing their accounting numbers. I won’t name names of course, but this isn’t anything new in Hong Kong. China is known to copy others and Hong Kong is no exception. If you were the originator of this group buy idea, I would shut up, but it’s hard to believe what you’re saying from a person who took the complete layout of livingsocial.com, changed a few things and called it UBuyIBuy. Then you have babybamboo.net (another HK company) which looks exactly the same except it’s flipped. It’s hard to believe for instance like mycutepons.com to have 74,000 fans and barely have any advertising. So what makes your company the exception? Besides giving very general statistics of HK and saying Groupon doesn’t concentrates more on emails doesn’t say enough for such a staggering fanbase difference. UBuyIBuy is popular, but Groupon is the most popular worldwide they’ve been out for 2 years and you’ve been out…4 months? So what solid proof do you have that can show that you didn’t buy your fans?
Jorne Digweed 10:20 pm on November 11, 2010 Permalink |
sorry i meant concentrates more on emails*
Danny Yeung 4:02 am on November 12, 2010 Permalink |
Dear Jorne,
Thanks for your response. I’m not going to comment on the practices of other companies in this space as even if I did know any unfair practices, I would not comment on it. I’m focused on making our company grow and by providing the best deals to our fans. Social Media will not happen overnight, it takes lots of trials and errors and I do believe our staff has done everything to maximize our Social Media online. In fact, Paypal and our company had a e-Commerce seminar in which we talked about these exact same subjects and one of the key things is that we would not look for short term gains and would not risk our company future to engage in anything which is deemed not appropriate. Certainly, not all companies think this way but it is the way we and our staff believe in. One thing that you can look at is how our voucher sales have been increasing over the past few months, if these fans were not real fans, our numbers would not have increased so drastically. Additionally, as I previously mentioned, we do spend money on facebook advertising which I’m sure all of the group buying websites including Groupon and Livingsocial do, this is one of the most effective ways of gaining facebook fans. It just depends on the budgets of different companies on what each company can spend on a monthly basis. Thanks!
-Danny
Bono 1:14 am on December 13, 2010 Permalink |
all these sites miraculously pop up out of nowhere with 30,000 fans… ubuyibuy included…
John Erik 3:08 am on December 13, 2010 Permalink |
I think they are real. People in HK are just crazy about Liking things. I heard Gobuya ran a contest giving away an a couple iPads to people who Liked their page, they posted about it in a forum and then someone from a radion channel read about it and gave them so airtime to call in and announce the offer. In two days they had 10,000 new fans. ubuyibuy has used http://wildfireapp.com/ for creating sweepstakes on facebook.