A panel discussion encouraged Chinese students and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the marketing power of social media at the 2014 New York China Forum on the Columbia University campus in New York City.

Organized by the Committee of the New York China Forum, the event aims to strengthen the business exchange between China and the US, encourage talents in the US to find commercial opportunities in China and promote the unity among Chinese who reside in the US.

Topics for the forum were chosen after research by volunteers with the New York China Forum.

The Committee of the New York China Forum is composed of members from top educational institutions in both China and the US.

On Sunday, Jing Huang, the Vice President of Renren SNS; Gang Wu, the deputy editor in chief of New Media Department of China National Radio; Mi Li, the marketing manager of the Financial Times, and Sha Huang, New York-based independent filmmaker and new media artist, joined the panel to discuss one of the most popular topics - social media and mobile trends in China.

Wu said as China becomes a country that has the largest number of Internet users, Chinese people are more connected to the rest of the world. The Internet provides Chinese people with unprecedented opportunities, he added.

Jing Huang, the Vice-President of Renren SNS, which is a social media platform known as the Chinese version of Facebook, shared his business insight concerning social media and mobile trends in contemporary Chinese society. “Nowadays, every industry needs to apply social media to their business to achieve success” he said.

He pointed to Xiaomi Inc., a privately owned Chinese electronics company to prove his point. Xiaomi Inc. is known for its online sales on social media platform, which brings huge revenue to the company.

Mi Li, the marketing manager for the Financial Times, said that many of her foreign friends use Wechat, which is a mobile text and voice messaging communication app developed by Tencent, an Internet service company in China. It was first launched in 2011 and is known as the Chinese version of WhatsApp - a well known US cross-platform mobile messaging application which allows users to exchange messages without having to pay certain fees.

While technologies are important, said Jing Huang, great ideas combined with great technologies are also important. He told the audience about Wechat's popular "Red Envelope" promotion earlier this year.

Sending red envelopes to family and friends is a tradition during the Chinese New Year. Wechat encouraged people to send electronic red envelopes on social media by a single click on their smartphone. In this way, Wechat linked its user bank accounts to their Wechat accounts, and in the process created a versatile app.

At the end of the discussion, Gang Wu encouraged the audience, most of whom were Chinese college students and Chinese entrepreneurs, to seize the opportunity and develop the huge market that comes along with Big Data.

Panelists discuss social media in China at NY China Forum 2014 on Sunday at Columbia University. From Left: Moderator Gloria; Jing Huang, vice-president of Renren SNS; Gang Wu, deputy editor-in-chief of New Media Department of China National Radio; Mi Li, marketing manager of the Financial Times; New York-based independent filmmaker and new media artist Sha Huang. NY China Forum is a business exchange forum organized by the Committee of the New York China Forum. LI ANG For China Daily