Turnover is a problem that plagues companies in all industries, a revolving workforce leads to increased training costs, inconsistencies in work and low morale – this all affects the company’s culture and profits. It is one of China’s leading issues in the workplace, at 19% their employee retention rate is among the worst in Asia.

The most common reasons given by Chinese professionals for leaving, were: limited career progression, and unsatisfactory salaries. Unfortunately companies decided to combat this by engaging in a salary war. The result was that workers would switch jobs as soon as they got a better offer. The most effective way to combat high turnover rates is not simply an increase in salary, it is understanding where Chinese professionals conduct their job searches and what they look for in a job?

Where do young professionals in China look for jobs?

Attracting talented employees that fit in with the company culture is the most effective way to reduce employee turnover rates, the simplest way to do this is to know where people search for jobs.

According to We Are Social’s 2016 Digital report, there are 3,419 billion internet users and of these 2,307 billion people are active social media users. The number of reported social media users is up from last year by 10%, an increase of 219 million and this trend is expected to continue on an upward trajectory. In East Asia it is reported that 48% of people have active accounts on the top social networks in each country. More importantly, 81% of job-seekers in China are applying by phone. The next question is: What networks are they using? LinkedIn, is gaining popularity in China but headhunters should not rely exclusively on this site. Instead, they should use it in conjunction with the two most popular Chinese social networks: Sina Weibo and WeChat.

LinkedIn, their Chinese platform is growing

LinkedIn only launched its local Chinese language website in 2014, due to concerns on how best to approach the market. LinkedIn’s English site had attracted 4 million Chinese users but they wanted to access the other 140 million Chinese professionals and hoped that a Chinese language version of the site would facilitate this. A little over a year later, the site has more than tripled its user count, due to its willingness to play by Chinese rules of expression, and its partnership with two local well-connected Chinese firms. LinkedIn naturally attracts people with multinational corporations and to target young professionals in China LinkedIn is also launching Red Rabbit. Dual brand strategies are a great way for foreign brands to adapt to local culture without losing its brand image. Red rabbit results from the LinkedIn China team research on Chinese young professionals’ communication habits and social media usage; consequently the app has many features similar to Weibo and WeChat.

Sina Weibo, a way to easily get access to all kinds of professionals

This year, Sina Weibo has gained 80 million users worldwide, bringing its total user count to 300 million. Weibo is a microblog that has strong dissemination power for product promotion and job listings. Weibo users can go to an enterprise’s page and click “paying attention”. This means that job-hunters see job updates from their ideal employers. Many users are also posting “micro-resumes”- If you think limiting a resume to one page is difficult, imagine cramming your entire career’s worth of experience into 140 characters. Thousands are posted daily, and many say it is one of the most efficient ways for job seekers to find employment. These short introductions allow headhunters to quickly screen candidates. Weibo had so many people post “micro resumes” and “micro-recruiting” pitches that they have now created an online micro-recruiting service, which provides a much needed space where job-seekers and recruiters can meet.

WeChat, the social media giant you cannot overlook

Anyone who lives in China will assure you that it is almost impossible to conduct business here without first creating a WeChat profile. WeChat is a popular messaging app where users can do just about anything, including now find jobs. Headhunters who are planning on using this app, must have a wide network that includes all sectors because they will rely on this WeChat network to get introduced to talented and reliable candidates.

The job search is simple, there are WeChat groups that vary by sector (Finance, Automotive, Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage, etc.). Headhunters and job-seekers need only join these groups to connect with each other. Many agree that these groups are more effective than job listings, HR websites, or even LinkedIn. Companies have also established official career accounts where they post employee stories, videos on company culture and job openings.

Additionally, WeChat bots are popular and Jobots (Job Bots) are now being developed. These Job Bots would partner with headhunters and seek the best candidates for the position. The Bot asks questions to get an idea of what the candidate values, personality type and how well they would fit the position.

What do young professionals prioritize when searching for jobs?

Young professionals in China have overwhelmingly listed salary as the most important characteristic for accepting a job offer, but to avoid engaging in a salary war companies should also take candidate’s wants into consideration. Young professionals place a lot of importance on work-life balance, the availability of training programs and opportunities for promotion. The company culture and the relationship with the closest supervisor play a central role in workforce retention. Companies should ensure that they are offering fair compensation in addition to fostering an environment where self-development and relationships are a priority. Recruiters should be able to accurately describe not only the position they are filling but also the company and its cultural offering.

The rise of digital in China has really changed recruitment practices. However, don’t forget that a recruitment strategy is based not only on the internet and social networking websites for professionals. The most effective methods for sourcing talents in china are: the recruitment agency specializing in a particular area, access to a great talent pool; the headhunter’s personal network and referrals: direct contact with applicants through a reliable intermediate; LinkedIn, users in china have a profile and are most active on the site, the page offers the website of the company; WeChat groups.

An efficient recruitment strategy is the combination of all these elements.

This article was written by Wei Hsu founder and CEO of INS Global Consulting, leader in Labor Dispatch and Headhunting in China since 2006.

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Microsoft claims that Tay fell victim of a deliberate attack by trolls who were determined to sabotage the experiment. Tay was designed to learn from the users and model her (its?) responses based on the context of conversations and using typical millennials’ slang and speech patterns which it was supposed to pick up. Apparently, Microsoft didn’t anticipate how malicious some of those users could be and, as a result, Tay wasn’t prepared to simply identify and ignore the abuse. In fact, she seemed to pretty much agree with anything being said to her – key vulnerability that was exploited by trolls. Such a major flaw in A.I. design only underscores the challenges we are going to see in the future with similar approach.

In sharp contrast to Tay, Chinese bot Xiaoice is considerably nicer. Like Tay, it is also designed to learn from users, as well as from  real conversations that it is constantly mining on the internet. Xiaoice already has over 20 million registered users, 2.6 million followers on Weibo where it is already ranked as the top KOL (key opinion leader) and is used by 40 million smartphone owners across China and Japan (where it goes by Rinna).

As a digital assistant, Xiaoice can be accessed from multiple platforms: Weibo, WeChat, as a shopping assistant on JD.com  and other ecommerce platforms or used as a standalone app with Microsoft smartphones. It has become a cultural phenomenon of sorts with people chatting with her for hours on end, especially when feeling depressed.

Why Xiaoice, after well over a year online, didn’t turn into a monster like Tay after mere 24 hours of being live in Twitter?

After Tay fiasco, Microsoft specifically mentioned Xiaoice in their apology letter:

“In China, our Xiaolce chatbot is being used by some 40 million people, delighting with its stories and conversations. The great experience with XiaoIce led us to wonder: Would an AI like this be just as captivating in a radically different cultural environment? Tay – a chatbot created for 18- to 24- year-olds in the U.S. for entertainment purposes – is our first attempt to answer this question.”

Some say that the nature of censored Chinese internet has something to do with Xiaoice pleasant personality, although the real reason is, probably, a combination of factors. First of all, other experiments with A.I. chatbots didn’t reveal similar problems: Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook’s M, Google Now, and Microsoft’s own Cortana didn’t turn ugly. So, probably, better design has something to do with it.

Second of all, Xiaoice was designed as a virtual assistant, a chatbot with a useful function, as opposed to Tay which was more of an experiment on millennials psyche. Naturally, people tended to treat Xiaoce with more care and as a sort of a virtual friend with real emotions. At the 2015 GeekWire Summit, New York Times reporter John Markoff noted that 25 percent of users had told Xiaoice “I love you.”

The experiment with Tay and Xiaoice reminds me of two recent movies that explore A.I. from new angles. Xiaice is somewhat reminiscent of Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie “Her” where the main character eventually falls in love with Samantha, super intelligent computer operating system.

On the other hand, Tay has been more like 2015 film “Ex Machina” which is about (spoiler alert!) a somewhat more sinister and unpredictable aspect of human-like A.I.

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Didi-Kuaidi, valued at $15 billion, boasts more than one million drivers in 360 cities, compared to Uber’s roughly 100,000 drivers in 20 cities. It has also recently invested $100 million in Uber’s main rival Lyft. Two companies agreed to offer services to each other’s users in the countries where each isn’t currently present.

What are the reasons for Uber in China being unable to become the market leader despite having an early mover advantage?

The claim that a foreign service provider being squeezed out by the government in favor the local competitor doesn’t really hold water. Beijing’s recently published draft law on regulating private car-hailing services is going to affect both rivals equally. In fact, Uber China is already structured as a local company in the eyes of Chinese law. Uber Global is listed as an investor of Uber China, among several others mostly local companies.

There are, however, three main reasons why Didi-Kuaidi has managed to capture commanding market share and all of them have to do with Chinese rival’s better understanding of the market.

First reason is the fact that Didi-Kuaidi, unlike Uber, doesn’t see traditional taxi industry as the enemy. In fact, it treats it as a partner and cooperated with taxi drivers by distributing their mobile apps among them to be used as an additional channel to attract more passengers. This allowed Didi-Kuadi to quickly gain more drivers, enabling the company to scale much faster and in more cities than Uber in China.

The second reason is strategic partnership with the right internet conglomerates: Alibaba and Tencent. On the opposite side, Uber has managed to secure strong backing of another internet giant Baidu, the third member of the infamous Chinese BAT (the collective term used to describe three companies that practically run Chinese internet).

Unfortunately to Uber, Tencent and Alibaba are much better positioned to add value to a car sharing service. Tencent is behind WeChat, most popular mobile social media app that has now integrated private cab hailing capability within the app itself. Uber has already complained that WeChat is shutting them out of the app but there is little they can do about it.

Alibaba, the largest ecommerce company in the world, has been integrating similar capability into its Alipay mobile wallet used by hundreds of millions of Chinese on daily basis.

On the other hand, Baidu does have a potential to help Uber getting more clients through its mobile navigation app, although it is still not as popular as WeChat or Alipay Wallet and has many rivals in this market. Recently, Baidu started to add Uber pickup points to its map – a new service that Uber has been introducing in some cities.

The third reason of why Uber in China couldn’t catch the lead is the fact that it was too slow to introduce features that Chinese users seem to like. Didi-Kuaidi has been much more innovative in this regard by offering more ride options to its users. For example, it has a popular group ride-sharing service along defined routes called “Hitch.” The company even tapped into busy travel market by offering bus services to tour groups and transportation to events. In addition, in an effort to help with drunk driving problem, the company has also launched a new “chauffeur service” that enables customers to hire a designated driver to take them back home in their own car.

So far, it hasn’t been easy for Uber in China but it certainly isn’t going anywhere. Even a tenth of China’s lucrative market of 800 million city dwellers represents a much larger business than in many of other Uber’s locations where it dominates the market.

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In the last 3 years, online advertising revenues in China have been growing at the rate of about 40% on year to year basis and show no signs of slowing down in 2015. According to iResearch, it is projected that this year, the total market will reach 216 billion yuan (almost $40 billion), up from 154 billion yuan in 2014.

Advertising with search engines is still the most popular choice (36.6% of the market), followed by ecommerce ads and brand graphic ads (banner advertising) at 24.1% and 17.2% respectively.

In those two categories, the leading providers are Baidu which holds about 60% of search engine market and Taobao, one of the ecommerce properties of Alibaba.

The infographic also features the results of surveys which were intended to find out what type of improvements users would expect in China digital advertising market in the future. One third of the respondents would like see more correlation between the ads and their interests. This further underscores the need for marketers to learn more about their target audience in order to improve their advertising ROI.

Here is the full infographic:

China Digital Advertising Market

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The service can be traced back to classified print edition popular in early 90th in Beijing. Since then, it has evolved into a primary destination for job seekers, employers and recruiters.

It is also growing at the rate of about 11% every year, boosting healthy profits of around 30% for the last 3 years. Although 51jobs still has a print version, online recruitment service accounts for 65% of the sales.

Services for job seekers are free but employers are charged on ads basis as well per each resume download. The site also offers E-hire system for employers which is an applicant tracking system.

Although, the service can be used for all types of job listings, hiring online in China has been most active with sourcing IT, finance and management talents. These are also the most active areas of 51jobs.com.

For job seekers, the site also provides a social media platform to communicate with others as well as recruiters.

Hiring online in China with 51Jobs.com for employers

Paid job listing

One way to find candidates is to place an ad and wait for potential candidates to contact you directly. The ads can be either simple text ones or more complex and attractive graphic banner types which are priced on weekly basis. Unfortunately, 51jobs.com doesn’t offer bidding-based CPM or CPC model, so the price is only based on display period (usually 1 week with discounts for longer periods).

Featuring your ad on the front page can be quite expensive with prices ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 RMB per week. Smaller banners and text links on home page can go for 9,000-45,000 RMB per week. The least expensive option to be featured on home page is with the text link at the bottom of “hot companies” area for 8,200 RMB per week.

The price is also determined by target location with top tier cities being the most expensive. For the second tier city, placing a simple text ad can go for as low as 500 RMB per week.

Searching for candidates

Another way to use 51Jobs.com is by actively searching for candidates going through job seekers’ resumes that they publish on site. However, downloading a single resumes costs somewhere in the range of 30-50 RMB. Usually, employers purchase a bundle download package for 400-600 RMB which allows 20 downloads per months.

Searching for candidates is done based on location and with filters for skills, education, experience etc. Once the promising candidate is located, his/her resume and contacts can be downloaded for a fee as described above.

Company advertising

Employers often purchase advertising packages to promote their companies to potential candidates or even recruiters – the concept that is, perhaps, unfamiliar in the West. High turn over can be a real problem in the job market from employer’s perspective and projecting a better image to potential recruits can go a long way in securing their interest and desire to work in a stable environment.

Working for a prestigious company can also be a matter of a social status for potential employees and this is another reason that many employers choose to advertise themselves as a brand targeting high quality candidates.

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Although, it has some formidable local competitors like QiHu and Sogou, Baidu still holds the largest markets share in search engines. Baidu also dominates the increasingly important mobile search market.

Although advertising on Baidu is similar to Google in concept, there are some major differences. Here is the first part of our Baidu PPC account tutorial.

Once you have your Baidu account application processed, approved and verified, you will be granted access to the back-end. This will enable you to start setting up campaigns, design ads, research keywords and use other Baidu tools that are available.

The process of opening Baidu account will be covered in another post, here we will focus on how Baidu PPC works from the back-end.

Baidu PPC main account settings

Here is how Baidu PPC account would look like upon login:

It is, so called, Baidu quick management panel which gives  a quick overview of the ongoing campaigns, the account details and the balance. It also gives s quick access to Baidu PPC tools. Now, we are going to review one of those tools – Baidu keyword planner.

Keyword research is the foundation of any PPC campaign and Baidu provides a keyword research tool which is similar in concept to Google adwords planner.

It can be accessed from the tools menu of the quick management panel:

While searching for keywords, the tool would make some relevant suggestions as you type:

Just like with Google adwords planner, Baidu PPC keyword tool displays various data on the selected keywords and allows sorting them out by criteria:

Clicking on the plus sign in the right column will add the keyword to user’s list:

For each of the keywords in the list, Baidu PPC keyword tool would separately display the number of daily searches on desktop and mobile. It also shows the recommended bid and competitiveness ranking:

Once the initial list is generated, next step is to review it by various performance criteria. Click on the right button at the bottom of the list:

This will open up the a detailed view of the Baidu PPC keywords data and projected campaign performance and cost:

Baidu keyword review panel also provides a convenient way to see each keyword’s performance on either desktop or mobile separately:

From this point, it is easy make adjustments to various parameters and see how they would affect the performance in terms of impressions, click-through rate (CTR) and projected cost.

For example, here is how to change the bid across all of the keywords to see the effect:

This menu allows adjusting keyword matching criteria from broad, narrow and exact match:

For example, setting up keyword matching method to “broad” would immediately increase number of impressions and consequently the CTR. The graph will be recalculated to reflect the new PPC campaign cost projection:

Stay tuned to the next part of Baidu PPC tutorial where we will show how to setup a campaign based on specific keyword set.

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According to the most recent data, three quarters of B2C market belong to just two platforms – Tmall and JD, while Taobao enjoys complete dominance of C2C market with 95% market share.

None of the foreign e-commerce players were successful in gaining any meaningful market share: this year Amazon has finally decided to open its branded store on Tmall and Macys and Neiman Marcus decided to shutdown their China online ventures.

With such high market saturation of China’s e-commerce, there seem to be hardly any opportunities left for smaller competitors, especially foreign one. However, one segment in particular still shows promise and this is cross-border online shopping. China’s traditional and online markets have been plagued by series of scandals in recent years – from contaminated baby milk powder to fake cosmetics and medicine. Despite the efforts of online marketplaces, such as Tmall, to ensure that only genuine products are sold there, the public trust has been damaged.

This situation makes large number of Chinese online shoppers turn to foreign markets that are perceived as more trustworthy. One of the companies that is trying to capitalize on this trend is Yihaodian which is partly owned by Wallmart.

According to the company, from 2012 to the end of 2013, the number of registered users grew from 29 million to 57 million. The company has doubled the inventory from 2012 to 2013 during the height of health scare in China and it has sold 250 million imported food items that year. In 2013, approximately one in every three imported baby milk formula cans was sold on Yihaodian.

The site prominently features baby products and brands itself as a primary source for concerned parents who may mistrust goods found in retail or other online stores.

Yihaodian also serves as an online supermarket and claims to offer better quality produce delivered quickly. However, Tmall and JD have also opened their versions of supermarkets leveraging their much larger user base.

It is still not clear whether Yihaodian can be successful in holding up to its niche, especially considering the fact that food safety situation seems to be gradually improving in China – there were no major scandals this year yet.

Another interesting ecommerce opportunity that was gaining momentum outside of Tmall and JD universe was online shopping for alcohol. In 2013, 99% of booze was still sold offline which leaves plenty of room to shift to online sales.

Chinese are increasingly acquiring taste for fine wine, although traditional beverages and beer still dominate alcohol sales. One such e-tailer, WineNice,  has recently raises over $15M in funding and was rumored to involve Rothschild support.

The site initially grew slowly after launching in 2008. WineNice mostly sells foreign wines, but also has a selection of Chinese rice wines and overseas liquors. Most of its stock is in the pretty affordable sub-200 RMB ($32) category, though I spot a 1988 Pétrus for a cool 30,000 RMB ($4,740).

WineNice is also planning to open 100 brick and mortar stores in China and already has its own branded stores on TMall and JD.

There are definitely some e-commerce opportunities left that can be exploited outside of dominant players or pursued in combination with traditional strategies. Mobile segment may further change the ways people search and shop for products online as well as offer new marketing possibilities. We will explore those in the upcoming posts.

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I this post, I’d like to share infographic by Edufraction.com that illustrates this trend with some solid data.

In online education, new Chinese start-ups like GenShuiXue.com, which literally means a question “Study With Whom?”, has been offering numerous online courses since only last year. Another company called 17zuoye.com (numbers 1 and 7 sound like the word “together” and “zuo ye” means “homework”) claims to serve more than 7 million students. It has recently raised $100M in series D round reaching reported total valuation of $600M.

In exams-obsessed society like Chinese, no wonder that test prep start-ups have been growing fast as well.

Children early education is another area where the impact of new and particularly mobile-based technology has been even more visible. When it comes to paying for quality apps that promise quick results, Chinese parents are much less price sensitive and wouldn’t be willing to spend more on such tools.

Here is the full infographic from Edufraction.com:

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Although the digital landscape in China continues changing, it is safe to assume that the main elements, such as current dominant platforms and leading services, will remain more or less the same for the next 2-3 years. In any case, the following infographic by Sampi Marketing, reflects the present state as of mid 2015.

Primary online platforms, such as Baidu for  SEO and SEM, Youku for video, WeChat for mobile and Sina Weibo for social media, are still the main elements in digital marketing in China. Additional platforms as well as other various ways of reaching people online are also covered in this infographic which is presented in a form of sequential process.

Depending on the nature of your business and marketing objectives in China, not all of the elements may be applicable or equally effective. So, the readers should take the information as an ideal and most complete set of tools to choose from:

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I’m often having a hard time remembering how I was getting by before discovering those amazing tools that increased my productivity by at least ten fold, if not by more.

Here is the list of six online productivity tools that I simply can’t live without:

Evernote (https://evernote.com/)

For those who haven’t discovered this amazing tool yet, Evernote is a cloud note taking app that synchronizes your notes across multiple devices via cloud. Evernote has also greatly expanded the very definition of a “note”, which can be quite anything, from a regular text memo or a photo to a voice record or any file as an attachment to a note.

Notes can be tagged and saved in different Notebooks, such as one for business, one for personal records, one for name cards, one for travel info etc. Notes can also be shared with others, even with those who don’t use Evernote. You can set reminders to specific notes, like a “to do” task for example.

Notes taken with a mobile device will automatically store the location and you could even access them through a map.

Evernote is free but the paid subscription allows for more storage space and more sharing options. In addition, there are 3rd party plugins for Evernote enhancing its original functionality, such as name card OCR app, a note taking app geared for foodies etc.

Join.me (https://www.join.me/)

Join.me is the online tool for sharing your screen for the purposes of remote presentation or collaboration on a document. If you are familiar with Cisco’s Webex, than Join.me does basically the same but without the Webex’s chunkiness and complexity. 

There are no programs that you need to install and no extensions to browsers. All you need is to sign up for a free account and send a link to people you want to share your screen with. The link could be as simple as join.me/myName and it stays associated with your account as long as it remains active.

Join.me is mainly geared for desktop sharing but there are also mobile apps. If you want to share audio as well, a small program has to be installed on your computer.

The basic version is free but the paid subscription enables a few more options. For the moment, I find the free one quite enough but I wouldn’t mind to pay a bit extra for more functionality. Then I’ll be ready to bid my final farewell to Webex.

WeTransfer (https://www.wetransfer.com/)

Ever scratched you head about emailing a large file without having to upload it to an online storage to get a shareable link? WeTransfer is a hassle-free answer to that dilemma!

Besides the fact that it’s free, what I really love about WeTransfer is the simplicity – go to WeTransfer.com, attach your file via a widget that shows up in your browser, enter the recipient’s email address, type in a message to go along and hit “transfer”!

WeTransfer will upload the file (which can be up to 10GB in size in the latest version!) to a cloud server and send a link to your recipient/s. Once your message is received, the recipient simply clicks the link and is taken to browser window to start the download.

Another amazing aspect of WeTransfer is their revenue model which is based on both advertising and paid account subscription. If you use a free account, your recipient will have to see a full screen ad in their browser for as long as it takes to download the file. If you subscribe to WeTransfer Plus (the paid subscription), you can choose to display your own corporate graphics to whoever downloads the file – great idea for branding!

Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/)

Dropbox, along with Box.net, is a cloud storage solution that enables keeping your important files on the cloud, synchronize them across different machines and mobile devices, combined with the ability to share files with others via secure or public links. 

One of the great advantages of using cloud storage is the ability of have access to all of your files on the go, such as from a smartphone, and from anywhere with the internet connection.

I personally find Dropbox slightly more user friendly than Box.net but have experienced some problems running it on Mac. A free version gives you 2GB of storage space that can be further increased to up to 8GB by having your friends signing up for the service.

Paid subscription of only $9 a month provides a whopping 1TB of storage, enough for most users to store the content of an entire computer safely online.

Unfortunately, in China where I’m based, access to Dropbox and Box.net is currently blocked, so I have to run my VPN service (by Astrill) in order to sync the files.

Asana (https://asana.com/)

Asana is essentially a task management tool geared towards project management by teams. Although, it doesn’t have a complex functionality of MS Project or other advanced dedicated project management software, Asana excels at keeping track on tasks and tie them up to a project, a team and an individual member.

As a team project management tool, Asana wouldn’t be able to analyze project trade-offs, calculate budget variables or compute project’s critical path. Instead, it focuses on having all of your project tasks in one place for all the team members to see and collaborate on, tracking the progress and having reminders and notifications sent to all the relevant people.
There is a single aspect of every project, big or small, that ultimately determines its success of failure and it is communication. Asana makes it ridiculously easy to accomplish: every project member, who is plugged to Asana, will instantly see his or her tasks, their progress, deadlines and statuses.

Running Asana apps on mobile devices ensures that everyone on your team is up to date on the latest project development and is reminded when a new task is assigned, changed or completed.

Although there is no limit on the type of projects that can be managed with Asana, I find it most efficient for running relatively small projects in teams of 5-10 people for a duration of 1-2 months.

Asana basic account provides most features but premium membership allows more functionality and collaboration options.

MultiSkype Launcher + Skype (http://multi-skype-launcher.com/)

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last 10 years, you probably have a pretty good idea about what Skype is what it does. However, one of its limitations is the fact that you can only keep one Skype account open at the same time on a single machine. If you are like me, and would like to be able to have multiple accounts running simultaneously, than MultiSkype Launcher allows to do just that. 

There is no limit of how many Skype applications you can have running at the same time. I personally use three different accounts and managing them with the Launcher is a breeze.

This little know gem is also absolutely free but is, unfortunately, only available for Windows at the moment.

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