E-magazine: a chance? Chance

In response to a few days ago that the electronic magazine has not finished, on the internet came a lot of voices holding the same view. Also once heard some of the site to do this thing is not a legend. But the picture on the left shows another world.

This picture is actually a screenshot of an email. The email comes from ftchinese.com, the FT's web site, in the context of the Financial Times. This email should be counted as an extremely simple "electronic newspaper". I'm a subscriber to it. The simple truth is that it doesn't have any "rich media" features, no pictures, no background music, no video. All articles, all except the title and hyperlink (not even the summary), if you want to see, have to click to crawl to its online. (Compare the output of the RSS feed only Digest, how many people to arouse resentment!) ）

There are 600,000 subscribers in China, and advertisers lining up behind the FT are said to be in a stream. In a word, life is better.

Let's think about such a simple and ugly electronic newspaper, who is its target audience?

A group of 40-year-old people, quite a number of industries, they will use the Internet, but only for the needs of the job. This kind of work needs to lead to their most skilled internet skills is to send and receive e-mail. This is the first key.

This group of people is submerged in today's ocean of information, but they still need information. Usually, they are too busy to read newspapers and magazines closely, so they need something to "push" some of the more important "financial" information to help them continue their business activities. This is the second key.

The information is still authoritative, the people are not interested in the grapevine. The Financial Times is a hot-stamping sign that attracts them, which is the third key.

The three keys are combined to make up 600,000 subscribers; Similarly, three key combinations combine to include cars, real estate, bank cards, and so on, and advertisers who need the rich as their target.

As I have always emphasized, the idea is to do the internet in China without worrying about users. Because the most abundant in China, is people. It's not a problem to get a little bit of a gadget and a user. The key is, where is the customer? If there is no customer, each more user, it means that the destruction of more than a second. Value can not accomplish that thrilling leap, then, the value will not be able to exist for a long time.

Electronic magazine (newspaper), is not the important form, but the user segmentation. If you can tell your customers: It is a group of 40-year-old people, they have the industry (are small bosses), their geographical area I have a clear map, ask, why should customers refuse such accurate information?

As for these subscribers, what does it matter if RSS is used? So, Ftchinese is very bold in each section of the layout of the RSS icon: Come on, you come to subscribe to RSS, but I only provide a summary here.