I am happy to announce the release of our IWOM whitepaper on notebook computers. You can download it by going here. You can find previous whitepapers on health, auto and mobile phone here. The social media press release for the paper is here, and is full of bite size data points and comments. You can read more about why we are using a social media press release for English media here. The more traditional Chinese press release is here. We were fortunate that our release comes on the heels of CNNIC’s release of the latest Internet stats finding that there are now 210 million Internet users. For more on this study, see China Web2.0 Review here and NYTimes article here. For a deeper understanding on BBS culture (especially relevant for understanding our whitepapers, see ReadWriteWeb here. I will be sharing more thoughts on the whitepaper in coming posts. Two points I think are worthy of exploration. First, is that Lenovo dominates the buzz:

Lenovo dominates manufacturer buzz with 33.9% of all brand/product mentions (vs. HP with 18.9% and Dell with 14.4%). Lenovo’s buzz is fueled by ThinkPad which is mentioned in 17.2% of all brand/product mentions (vs. Dell Inspiron with 3.4%). However, clearly some ThinkPad fans see Lenovo’s recent change in ThinkPad design as a threat to the brand.

The second point centers on Dell’s blogging efforts in China. A couple of bullet points from the press release here which I will look to further develop:

CIC’s study found 1,204,117 messages written by netzens talking ABOUT brands; however, the brands themselves are not part of this massive and passionate discussion. The exception is Dell, which utilizes its Chinese blog to address complaints like those that occurred in August about the highly buzzed, colorful but out of stock Inspiron 1420. Interestingly, Dell was previously the object of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) centered ire via “Dell Hell” in the US and “Processor Gate” in China. Now, its blogging efforts in China closely follow those in the US which are receiving praises. Dell demonstrates that in the Web 2.0 world, having an authentic voice is more important than crafting and disseminating a message. Other brands which have blogs in the US like Lenovo and HP, might do well to follow suit and extend their efforts to China.