The Influences of Social Media on Chinese Start-up Stage Entrepreneurship

In today’s digital era, information is increasingly shared and distributed through online social networks. Online social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube in the west and Sina Weibo, Wechat in China have not only greatly extended the reach of traditional social networks but also facilitated the information distribution process within the networks. With the rising popularity of such social media platforms, the channel where people obtain information has dramatically compared to traditional print media. Acknowledging the differences in social, culture and economic conditions and the uniqueness of Chinese economy, we argue there is a need to look at the influence of online social networks for Chinese start-up companies specifically. Therefore, in this research, we aim to investigate the influences of online social networks on Chinese young people’s perception on entrepreneurship and its impact on entrepreneurial activities for start-up companies. We collected survey data from 100 Chinese participants and carried out 25 interviews. The results revealed current status quo, opportunities and challenges on using online social networks. For instance, Weibo and Wechat are the most popular choices for business activities in China. The main entrepreneurial activities on social networks include information collection and analysis as part of the decision making process or facilitate the sales and promotion activities. Challenges include such as the overly populated false news and information distributed through the online social networks.