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12 articlesWhat Are Western Marketers Learning from Their Chinese Peers?
The marketing landscapes of the West and China are vastly different. If Western marketers want to adapt, they need to learn to: build good relationships with major companies like BAT; prioritize mobile; value KOL marketing; focus on content marketing; manage multiple channels in the West while navigating large companies' multi-platforms in China; and balance "thoughtful planning" with "plans not keeping up with changes."
How does a company prepare for an economic recession?
Back in 2008, resilient companies prepared for the economic recession by reducing operating costs, introducing more flexibility into investment-planing, preparing far more cash than peers for acquiring assets and maintaining high-value customers’ loyalty.
Mark Zuckerberg is Building a Western Version of WeChat
With a profit margin of 42%, Facebook aims to create a Western version of WeChat, facing several challenges: how to integrate apps like WhatsApp and Instagram; capturing the Western market dominated by Apple and Google app stores; targeting privacy-conscious users for segmented advertising; and monopoly controversies.
Mark Zuckerberg is building WeChat for the West
Facebook is a very profitable company with operating margins at 42%. While transiting into a privacy-centric super app, it has to face three challenges in three aspects: technology, economy and privacy & competition.
The Problem with Tech Unicorns
Over the past 25 years, unicorns have grown fast. Nevertheless, tech stars still do not have a path to high profits. Superstar firms have proved that wealth is made by huge markets, high profits and natural monopolies.
Toutiao Recommendation System: P2 Content Analysis
Content analysis and data mining of user tags are the cornerstones of the recommendation system. The content analysis derives intermedia data from raw articles and user behaviors. With content analysis, we are able to tag users, recommend and prepare content.
How to Motivate Employees?
Motivation and incentives are at the core of performance management. Employee motivation primarily comes from two aspects: extrinsic and intrinsic incentives. Extrinsic rewards (monetary rewards) have a short-term effect and may not necessarily improve performance; fairness and consistency are also essential. Intrinsic rewards vary by individual and can be achieved through the following three methods: recognizing employees' work, providing decision-making authority, and offering challenges.
Dongxu Huang: Building a Database Startup in China
Notes from Dongxu Huang on building TiDB, a distributed database startup in China: the open-source strategy, community building, and key database principles.
Stream and Batch Processing Frameworks
An overview of stream and batch processing frameworks and why they matter for handling large-scale data with fault tolerance and unified task abstractions.
Toutiao Recommendation System: P1 Overview
An overview of Toutiao's recommendation system: how it maximizes user satisfaction by modeling content features, user profiles, and contextual signals.
Designing Uber Ride-Hailing Service
Requirements for designing Uber ride-hailing: providing services for the global transportation market; large-scale real-time scheduling; backend design; Uber ride-hailing design process: architecture; microservices; scheduling services; payment services; user profile services and trip record services, notification push services.
Task-Related Maturity
There is no good or bad management style; there is only effective and ineffective. The most important responsibility of a manager is to inspire subordinates to perform at their best. A person's task-related maturity depends on the specific work project, and its improvement takes time. When the maturity of the task and the individual's knowledge level and motivation reach a certain height, the manager can successfully delegate work to them.
About Tian Pan
I'm Tian Pan, an engineer-founder focused on agentic engineering — building autonomous AI systems and scaling engineering teams. I write practical guides on system design, technical leadership, and shipping with AI agents. Previously an early engineer at Uber, Brex, and IoTeX.
