Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'
Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
Barbie Spa: For the cosmopolitan plastic beauty in you
Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Week Around the Ists
Okay, okay, we promise we will STOP talking about Facebook right after this post for the next week, but seriously, people, it is such a great way to not just entertain ourselves, but also to find out about what's going on in our city [1] . Through Facebook, we've not only seen how people in our town are organising themselves for good, we find that it also can be a great source of GOSSIP. And if you haven't realised by now, Shanghaiist is a great lover of gossip *licks lips*.
So, as it turns out, our friend Olaf Hessing, previously Park 97’s PR and marketing director, has decided to strike it out on his own and set up his own marketing and events company, Urban Blast, with his (and our) good friend, Hervin Koen (good luck, guys!). One of their upcoming parties, Face2Face, to be held at Attica next Wednesday (December 12, 2007 at 10:00pm) is being planned as a monthly Facebook event for all you Facebook junkies out there. Their description of the party is as follows:
Admit it….you’re addicted to facebook too! Why not poke your friends in real life, give your crush a small gift from our gift shop or better yet buy someone a booze token. For all you facebook junkies out there, Urban Blast & Attica are joining forces to bring you Face2Face, an interactive, creative, fun, non-serious monthly facebook event with plenty of surprises.
As it turns out, other people in town are not so happy, and there is talk that the concept was stolen. In a wall post by Attica Shanghai, we find the following:
Friends,Not wanting to bother you with details, we – Urban Blast & Attica – just wanted to take the opportunity to set the record straight!
There are people claiming that our face2face concept party was stolen. However as all of you know, the phenomenon of facebook is taking the world by storm and facebook parties have popped up all around the world…either under face2face or different names. Just try googling face2face or search groups under this name on facebook.
After the some initial talks – well before any other parties approached either of us - we decided to partner up. We believe if you have a fun concept in your hands, you need to act fast before someone else beats you to it…welcome to China .
We are not claiming the concept of a facebook party since other Shanghai-based facebook groups are also starting to host facebook parties. We just claim that our face2face facebook party will be different from the others out there.
Look forward to seeing you on 12th!
Since we are the biggest Facebook whore in town (that we personally know of), we tried to do a bit of sleuthing around. Turns out there's this group called Shanghai Facebook Get Connected (with 1,135 members and growing fast) that's also started to host monthly events (their first event was at Zapata's). The group was started by young, up-and-coming event organiser Ruben Gomes, with whom we are also acquainted [2]. Gomes is the most prolific Facebook group starter that we know of: He's also the founder of The Shanghai Business Club and China Models (and more to come, we think).
Our thoughts? Shanghai is a big, big town — twenty million, the last time we counted — certainly, there's enough room for everyone to be doing his/her own thing? Having said that though, we think this idea of having free-for-all Facebook events where anybody and everybody is welcome to come and meet other Facebook junkies is a passing fad that will die down very soon. After all, wasn't Facebook meant to help people keep in touch with their REAL friends online? In our humble opinion, massive Facebook meets-for-strangers are not going to work out long-term, but smaller, local and really specific ones will, and we're talking about groups like Real Arab Slaves and Mistresses and Lesbians in UAE , jordaian girls who like the boys to be their dog to humiliate them, and closer to home, Female Domination Femdom in Shanghai - Servant for High Class Ladies. But what do we know? We are just a lowly blogger, not a party organiser. Hessing and Gomes should know better, so let's leave them to work out the details. Till then, party on Shanghai!
[1] Note to the Facebook executives reading this: You owe us a million dollars for all the free publicity we've given you on this blog
[2] Seriously, at this rate, we will have no friends left but our cat.
And last but not least, a really shameless plug for Shanghaiist's own Facebook group, if you haven't already joined!
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I like facebook so much. My screen name on facebook is Yang An. I gained a lot of friends as well as useful information from facebook. Now I can not live without it. It became one part of my life.