Chinese people better suited to the "semi-closed" internet social environment?

I see a lot of people talking about why Facebook doesn't appear in China? Why Apple did not appear in China? Why didn't China have an entrepreneurial park like Silicon Valley ?

That's what I wrote in front of you.

A few years ago I saw Internet followers start discussing such issues, and at the time I heard a very popular answer, that is, China's education system has led to this problem, but I think this is actually a rather irresponsible answer.

Because it seems to me that we should not just let the education industry take responsibility for this problem, we should think about what we can do.

Have we ever analyzed China's industry environment?

When we do the Internet, in addition to copying, in addition to shouting "user experience" of the slogan, there is no real mind to spend on the feelings of users netizens?

We will not calm down to really understand our own culture, we will not go to ask ourselves and friends around the internet for us to what effect?

What do we want in our hearts as netizens?

If we do not think about these issues, we will never create products that are helpful and popular for netizens. In the long run, the cup has happened: always follow others to go, the irony is that every time when the last person's model in China is difficult to implement, we will go back to say: "Ah, in fact, the model is still good, this is actually their own national education problems." "People in the education industry are also very sad, lying also shot."

Two days ago and friends away from the hustle and bustle of the city, run to the countryside to rest for a few days, a friend joked to teach me a Japanese: "Where to dig potatoes, the suburbs to dig, a sack dug." "At first I really thought it was Japanese, and then I understood it." This story is because I chatted with friends in the suburbs of a lot of internet things, and finally dug a lot of nutritious ideas, although did not eat potatoes, but did dig up a lot of spiritual potatoes. From the current relatively hot new media microblogging chat, we later found a more suitable for the Chinese Internet social environment, called the semi-closed Internet social environment, of course, this is only for our culture inferred that the corresponding product has not. Today I wrote it as a blog, but also to everyone's "potato" bar!

Why is Facebook such a model so difficult to get into the country?

Why the transformation of Renren is not immediate?

Why China micro Bo fire?

What is the Internet social environment in China that will benefit more Chinese netizens?

We'll talk about these issues in this blog post today. In this article, we would like to put forward the argument that the semi-enclosed Internet social environment is more suitable for Chinese people. The internet itself is to allow people to communicate more freely, transmission of information, the idea is to build a more open world, why this side and said to be half closed?

This topic is already very large, which involves the value of information, delivery platform, audience groups and their culture and other factors, so I will be detailed in these steps to explore:

#1 start with China's hottest social media-Weibo to discuss what Chinese people are doing with the Internet?

#2 discuss what information we use to communicate on the Internet?

Where is the most valuable information #3 in China?

#4 from the point of view of information value, what types of information do most of us need? Where do I find this information?

#5 finally mentions a "funnel" model that leads to the concept and analysis of a semi-enclosed Internet social environment, the last of which is extremely academic, and it is recommended to look at the picture I have drawn before reading the text.

Custom

Define some of the concepts mentioned below: "Semi-closed Internet social environment", "open Environment", "work" concept:

1. "Semi-closed Internet social environment":

The picture at the beginning of the article belongs to this environment. Specifically refers to the Internet in the minority (such as 100 people) as a whole, gathered in a virtual space, these 100 relationships are usually very close, often the corresponding relationship is the relationship between the real life, such as: unofficial public welfare organizations, enterprises in a sector, a small business team, a laboratory member, similar to the band of amateur organizations and so on.

We call it "the team." They can share the valuable information in the virtual space, whether or not to spread this part of the information out of their own, can be transmitted outside the message called "News." People in the team can also focus on the "news" of other "teams", but don't see what the other "team" is talking about.

2. "Full Open environment"

Like Twitter and other social networking sites, anyone who is concerned with you can see what you're sending. Also such as search engines, ordinary portals, this information is open to all people's platform is open to the environment.

3. "Work"

Here is a broad concept, it's not just the kind of work we do at nine to five, but it's also like: a bunch of familiar music lovers working together to develop a music Blu-ray cd; spare time to do a website with your friends, and regularly attend activities similar to those organized by the charitable organizations that start the weekend. This valuable thing is work.

4. "Work" Information:

All the information that is helpful to work.

The definition of this part may be difficult to understand, it doesn't matter, these concepts in the following we mentioned the time I will explain his meaning.

What is China's hottest social media at the moment?

"Weibo is more covered in China than SNS social networking sites," said Nielsen's 2012 report on users of social media in China. "Weibo touches up to 97% of the mainstream social media users, while SNS has only 70% of the REACH," the report said. ”

This data is basically the same as we do in our daily life: We are now in public to attend events, meetings, and the first words of strangers will not say "how much do you call?" but often ask "how much do you tweet?", "Back to Weibo letters me". Everyone has a micro blog, even now I have a habit of running to a party will open the microblogging, to find someone nearby, and then put these people first "attention", so the first meeting of friends meet Me will say: "It is you ah, I saw you add me." "This kind of feeling is more real than the old trick," Alas, I seem to have seen you somewhere.

Although Weibo started in China later than SNS, but since 2011, microblogging users have grown significantly faster than SNS. The 29 Internet survey published by CNNIC showed that in 2011, Weibo users grew 296%,sns users grew slower than the overall number of Internet users.

At present, China's internet new media is the most popular microblogging rather than SNS, Renren's transformation is not significant, the indifference of happy net is a certain reason. The Chinese Internet has not carried on the Facebook model, but it has made the Twitter model bigger, which is the opposite of the United States. Many foreign internet models in China are not acclimatized to what is the reason behind it?

Why is Weibo so popular with Chinese people?

We may wish to consider from the user's cultural characteristics.

China is a collective spectator society, we generally like onlookers, followed by Daniel Spit Groove, booing. This phenomenon is not something strange, read the works of Lu Xun people are very aware of Ah Q in the story of the spectators: once people hear something happen in a place, even if it is a big thing, as long as the first few onlookers, will be in a short time to attract more people, and sometimes even cause traffic jams, Everyone enjoys the "see" process. This is what we call the spectator culture, there is nothing right or wrong, this is just a phenomenon.

In today's micro-blog to see, is the same, we like "attention", but also look forward to "be concerned about", the most attention is the object of celebrities and institutions. "Focus" on this action, from Twitter's "Follow". In fact, a one-way movement, in psychology to meet the needs of human peeping.

Is the Chinese people's peeping habits on the internet really common? To answer this question, think about what people around us are doing with Twitter.

Many users use micro Bo the biggest role or "see", see what? There are three main contents:

See what's going on around here? (such as the story of the poor little boy reported by the Angel Mother Fund);

See what other people are arguing about? (such as NVC Lighting founder and investor this time due to internal contradictions caused by two people on the Micro-blog debate);

What happened to the entertainment circle? (for example, every time Edison Chen in the online "So-and-so, I really like you, who can help me tell her" similar words, always attracted onlookers)

This shows that in the use of micro-blogging, People's "peeping" mentality was greatly satisfied.

So it makes sense that Weibo is called a gossip platform. More interesting is that people in their "peeping" after the good, but also to "talk", talk about such topics are probably in the following three purposes:

First meet the topic: Usually when the first meeting of strangers, there is no understanding of each other, first talk about the content of micro-blog;

Greetings: When talking about business, you will not come directly to the topic;

Friends chat: Friends, often as a micro bo gossip gossip.

Spectators are the inherent culture of the Chinese people, precisely because of the existence of the Internet "spectator" protection, before people are to run to the site, craned the neck to see, and now is hiding in a place holding a high-powered telescope there to see, eventually became a "peeping". How can a microblog that caters to popular cultural habits not fire?

is the content of micro-blogging very nutritious?

But my friends and I have this feeling when we talk about microblogs: When we talk about the content of Weibo, it starts to get boring, perhaps because the content of the tweets actually talked about is not directly related to our own life:

Who does Chen like to have anything to do with me?

NVC Lighting Why should I pay attention to, our household are Philips LED lights;

Many social dark news can only make me more angry, I can do in addition to click on the Angel Mother Fund donation a little gold fee, there is no. Similar news has been swept away.

So the content of Weibo is like a FMCG, read the chat and then just throw it away, we don't stop to think about the content of Weibo. Weibo starts with a limit of 140 words, which means that the purpose of Weibo is not to allow you to think, but to satisfy your visual impact. To make a metaphor, to take a movie, the information on Weibo is American blockbuster, the impact is strong, but it was fresh. So it was normal to say that it was boring for a long time.

Of course, there are pure "peeping" do not talk about users, most of these users are otaku curtilage female. For them, Weibo is the food of the mind. These people bored to a certain level began to brush Weibo, to see what funny, fun, exciting. Boredom is a disease that needs to be treated with mental stimulation. On the way to work on the road to see the Twitter comics, the relief of the mood is very interesting, but can you imagine a person spends more than 5 hours a day wandering on Weibo is what?

Look back on the value of Weibo information.

If you are a conscientious person, you may take some user groups not so big site and microblogging comparison, to compare the information architecture, information value differences. For example, the information is mainly from a number of questions and answers, the information is relatively micro-bo more specific, professional many, more targeted.

Information, there is a very interesting feature: once it is specific, and practical, not empty words, value came out.

For example, I have just logged on to know, to enumerate some questions for everyone to see:

"2001-2003 years bear Film and television literature forum mass production quality discussion of the reason is?"

"What is punk rock?"

"Why take a photo with the viewfinder for a while?"

These are very specific problems, some have been involved with the things around, is indeed a very nutritious problem, why know that these problems can occur, and micro-blog can only find a very general, broad information? Two important reasons:

The first is the content form: Know that only text can be sent.

The computer screen stimulates our optic nerve every day, so do you know what our optic nerve is most sensitive to? As the following picture says, the most attractive visual is the color, then the graphics, and finally the text. In addition, more attractive than visual attention is auditory, more appealing than hearing is the form of visual and auditory combination, called video.

Video, pictures, graphics, color These factors flooded the network, for Chinese netizens, the result is: To make people pay more attention to the content of the surface of things, rather than the value and connotation of the inside, so lead to interesting pictures I will go to see, the most exciting creative video I will go to see; Like blogs I only read when I'm quiet.

And the text of things can make people can only focus on the content, focus on the value behind the text, so know the question and answer content, will be more oriented to people to think, and then to ask questions, to answer, thereby creating value.

Of course, the "text form mainly" This is not enough, because the Baidu individual bar is also the main text form, many forums are, but why finally became people watering the Holy Land?

The second reason is the characteristics of the user base.

This is actually the most important reason to know that the overall value of the information is higher now, the founding team is the ideal of a group of young people, really worthy of the "ambitious team" title (teambition name of the source). When they first introduced the problem in the network is a very nutritious problem, to entrepreneurship, the Internet, design such topics. People flock together, birds of a feather flock together, and the users who come to know each other gradually develop the habit of proposing advanced and practical questions.

Two days ago also saw an article summed up very well, said that the United States Internet entrepreneurship relies on products, China is operating. Although our team has focused on products early on, it does not deny that. After all, in our country, the technical personnel is too much, to make a product is not particularly difficult things, but the product is finished after who to use is a big problem. If the army is to smash the site, the user experience of the design of a good product will be "people" to destroy.

Therefore, in China, the concept of products should not only be a website, but more should be a system, the system is very important to the user, success or failure in the end often depend on these people. If a website gradually has no audience, in the end it must be turned off.

Know that it is because of these two reasons out of a completely different style and Weibo, its information more practical than micro-bo, and the people work and life more appropriate, on this point to judge, the information is worth knowing.

But the information that the microblog carries is more popular, the universal value is not very high, but it is not because of this to deny the power of micro-blogging is now the people to comment on, share information the most popular place, micro-blog can be said to have completely played the Internet "to send information to more people, to cover the wider world," the role.

Why is China's most valuable information not on the Internet?

Of course, the more information explosion of the era, the more difficult the value of data mining, whether this information hidden in the Internet or real life in the vast sea of humanity. We might as well think about the most valuable information around China.

Say a sentence to be peer-spurned words, in China, if the most valuable words, at present, certainly not in the Internet. Because in Chinese culture, there is no concept of universal public sharing, and this concept is the soul of the Internet. Zuckerberg says Facebook wants to connect people in the world and is happy to share information, but the "world" he speaks of is not China.

Not because the Chinese do not want to share, the Chinese can be said to be the most willing to share information of the people. But the Chinese people in the sharing of valuable information is a very large premise, I have to be more familiar with you, a little emotional factors in it, speak more explicit point is "good relationship", or "We are brothers." This feeling can be set up in many ways, according to the Internet industry's division is a line, a line. Online is a variety of portals, and then to Web2.0 's website, new media, the line is catering and entertainment industry-oriented traditional industries.

The Chinese culture on the tip of the tongue determines that the relationship between people and people in the soil of China must be built in the latter way. It can be said that one day China's catering industry fell, China will appear Facebook.

Catering is only a form of communication between people, this industry can be long-term development in China, in addition to the Chinese people pay attention to eating, behind another reason is that people prefer small gatherings, and familiar people together.

There are many ways to party, such as private clubs, industry-line parties, golf clubs, the information generated in this gathering is worth more than the sum of tens of thousands of information on the net.

Why do you say that? In this way, it can be judged that when these offline messages are spread over the internet, they directly affect the capital markets and cause stock market volatility. Take NVC example: 10,000 jokes on Weibo will not affect NVC's stock. From the point of view of information influence, even the previously mentioned knowledge is only an ordinary classroom, and Weibo is more like a ticket-free open-air theater.

In a group gathering, people share information that could shake the entire industry, and the value of this information can be staggering when exchanged for money.

Where is the "work" information that most people need?

#1 New concept: "Work" information

The information that spreads among the minority groups is called "The minority information"; they and micro-bo, everyone, know all the open (what the user said is likely to be known by all, the full public) of the site passed "ordinary information" between, in fact, there is a large group of people are ignored, is the daily life of "work" The information involved is what we call "work" information.

What is "work" information, as the opening definition mentions, the information related to "work" is "work" information.

The "job" here is not just about working nine to five, but about doing something worthwhile, and it often takes a team to do it. An example in the opening definition is "a Blu-ray CD with a couple of partners", which may be done in peacetime, but it is a more serious matter, so it is also considered "work". Here the "work" concept is more relative to the entertainment, and not limited to the occurrence of time, more broadly.

In "work," team members often need to get some professional information, operational information from a variety of sources: how to solve a task-related problem quickly? How to find the answer? The answer to these questions is "work" information.

"Work" information is closely related to most people, usually we spend most of the day dealing with "work", even after class, we will occasionally think of the day "work" thing, at the weekend there are many people will be for their own "work" recharge, or outside to know more industry people, to obtain more resources. Most of the time we are still in contact with "work" information. Because this information is more valuable, we would like to contact them more.

Unlike "ordinary Information", "work" information is not only discussed in the gossip, they can be applied to the actual "work".

Easy to understand is: "Work" information can "see", but also can "talk", but also "use."

To put it formally: "Work" information can promote our production and social value creation, but also to bring ourselves into a well-off society.

#2 Where do we usually look for these "job" messages?

These "work" messages tend not to appear on open networks because they are private and not needed by everyone.

For example, I'm going to write a website, all the language tutorials, the simple framework of things such as Google,github, BitBucket, koders these places may be able to find the answer, but once involved in the site's internal logic, interfaces, algorithms, such as the details of the situation, At this point you will suddenly find that the information on the network directly help you very little, because the problem has been involved in the specific business, these content is too targeted, private, not how to be put in a completely public place.

Fortunately, in real life, we are usually able to consult our colleagues, colleagues will analyze to you how they have solved these problems before, and even tell you some secrets (and these secrets are colleagues through long-term practice to find out).

When working at ordinary times, if a team is close, sharing such information is a normal thing, but also a small secret between team members, but usually people will be very tacit understanding will not open.

For example, in the early days of our team, we built a website called a round crayon, an interactive web site that was open only to people within our team, and we discussed most of the UI design issues and code issues on this site. We basically rarely use mail, we build this site on a topic for a discussion of the functional area, designed a bit like Renren, we can also common reply.

A lot of information about a round crayon like Evernote is according to each person's label, topic, work task (we sometimes discuss the task, so import a task management system) organized, we will see each other's label, for example, I am doing a mobile phone icon, then a colleague's label is " Icon@ios ", so I went to see his usual discussion of the problem, so I found his many" secret ". Most of us feel more accustomed to storing our "work" information in terms of tasks, tags, and topic classifications.

Gmail users can use tag to tag, but most of us use the company's private mailbox, there is no such function. Most members resent the fact that email is arranged in chronological order, because many people are not very sensitive to time (I mean when something happens that people don't remember clearly, not that they don't have time ideas, they like to be late). The issues we discuss on this platform are relatively private and will not be disturbed by people you don't know, and feel safer.

In short, for most people, what is needed is "work" information, and these valuable "work" messages are most often passed through the internal channel when the team works together.

At the end of this section, I summarize the categories, content, characteristics, values, and sources of the three-tier information mentioned above to help readers better understand the classification of information mentioned in the article, which is important:

What kind of Internet social environment can create more "work" information?

Looking closely at the table above, and finding that the more common information is easier to find on the Internet, does that mean there is no way to deliver and create the last two messages in the Chinese Internet, especially the "work" messages that most people need?

Not so quick to jump to conclusions, do you remember when we compared to know and Weibo? An important phenomenon found is that the information is more valuable, the information points that the difference in the site model can enhance the value of information.

Over the past few years to know this type of user-oriented web site to a large number of emerging: watercress has a lot of people like to read, light Bo Point of friends like to share some of the ordinary life of the dots and drops of photos, as well as the Internet entrepreneurial Community 42qu and so on. This kind of website content value is big, as mentioned before, the big reason is the website user's group characteristic.

In China, from the most information search engine-Baidu, to the number of users in China accounted for an absolute amount of micro-blog, and then to Renren this SNS site, and then to the specific user site mentioned above. We can clearly find that when the user groups are more and more specific and targeted together, the value of transmitting information between them is more and more great.

We use a model called "funnel" to abstract the above discovery. This model is applicable to both the world and the real world. We drew a graph to present the model. If you can read this diagram directly, skip the following key information, which is just a textual description of the model diagram.

Looking at this model diagram above, there are a few key pieces of information:

There is a funnel in the middle, from top to bottom there are five layers, representing different categories of information of the audience groups, the largest group, representing the majority of netizens, the lowest scale of the smallest, representing the family and friends of this small circle;

The left side of the funnel is the way of conveying information between each layer of social groups, most of the Internet users, although not necessarily aware of each other, but they surf the internet, the role is to pass information (sharing, comment these actions are inadvertently transmission of information); The most common way of conveying information between them is still through real life.

Funnel middle tier: the team, within the organization passing this platform is the "work" information mentioned in the previous section. The Internet platform that transmits this information is relatively few, not even;

The information value of the orange background on the right side of the funnel has two axes, and the longitudinal axis is a different social group from the mass group to the minority group; The horizontal axis is the value of the information passed between them. The orange dotted line indicates that the more small the crowd, the higher the quality of the message being delivered.

The green horizontal line is the demarcation line of the real life and the virtual network world, which appears in the minority group.

The value of information will start to increase at some point, and the starting point of this increase varies with culture. In the West, there may be a surge in the second part of the social circle, because foreigners are more willing to share it; because of the existence of a particular culture (which is more willing to share valuable information with the familiar), the point of increase will appear in the third part.

From the top of the funnel to the low-end, people's communication world gradually from virtual to reality, the network social environment open less and less. For example: In the first to second part, almost everyone can easily see this information through network channels, we mentioned at the beginning of the article that this is a fully open mode of social environment, and in the fourth part of the small community experience of the Internet tools are likely to be QQ Group, MSN Group, Skype group, such a closed network social environment, Even began to use the internal LAN (such as only for the company's Open OA Office System).

and "work" information as most people need information, passing it may use the Internet social environment or model, based on this model inferred will be between the full open and closed-closed-semi-open.

What would this social environment look like?

Will there be such an Internet social environment in the future?

Will it help deliver "work" information?

What's it going to look like? We have a compromise between open and closed social environments, and it's easy to imagine what the semi-closed environment is:

In the middle of the Internet, each team (or organization) has its own virtual space, the team of people are aware of each other then long-term collaboration, member mobility is small. The identity of the user in the virtual space and the identity of the real life are almost identical. In this virtual space, you can share the "work" information that is closely related to your team, and you can't see what's in there. But at the same time team members can publish public information, called "News". The news is all public, and if a person is concerned about a team, the news of the team can be seen, and even you can discuss the "news" to get in touch with the team.

The above picture describes the environment: Team 1 and Team 2 topics are not seen outside, but they can release their own information into the news, the News Center is open, and all the people on the network can focus on the groups and organizations they are interested in.

What are the key features of this model? I've summed up some:

#1 encourage users to real-name, so that online relations and offline relations as far as possible to maintain consistency;

#2 the "team" as the Unit Division area, the area is closed, but with an open news center, the information flow is not completely blocked;

#3 let the "team" decide on the issue of "whether to disclose information".

The new Internet social environment inferred from the "funnel" model is not suitable for the Chinese people, the most important thing is to see whether this environment can cater to a certain Chinese trait, a certain culture, like Weibo.

In terms of Chinese culture and human character:

#1 line under the lines of the relationship between the same can make people feel that although they are in the Internet virtual world, but because the surrounding is known and familiar people, so more sense of security, not a strange environment, so that the value of information sharing will increase;

#2 team "cut into a virtual clubhouse where people like to share high quality information in private situations.

#3 the right to release information to the "team" users, respect for the team's internal culture and spirit. This is more human, and everyone has the right to dictate whether their information is made public and the same for each team.

From the above analysis, we predict that the semi-enclosed Internet social environment may be the next Chinese Internet should strive to develop a branch direction, its total number of users may not be as much as Weibo, but the growth of this social environment in the site covered by the value of the information will be very high, And this kind of environment because caters to the Chinese special sharing habit, therefore will lead the user to create the value more. If Twitter were to deliver more information, the semi-closed model would deliver more valuable information.

Some teams are actually starting to develop similar platforms, and the most famous foreign yammer, although more of a closed-end collaboration platform, can also allow users to build external networks (External receptacle) to share information, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1.2 billion dollars, This shows that there is still a degree of recognition of the market. The Teambition team may also be able to launch a platform similar to this model in the future to serve the team.

We also look forward to the emergence of a platform in China based on such a new model to allow users to share information while also getting better quality, more nutritious information, so that the internet can really improve people's quality of life and people's work efficiency.

Written in the last words

We should rejoice that our nation is a nation that is willing to share the responsibility. Why is it responsible? and Westerners in the network very open character is different, our sharing process is to find my friends and then selfless to share, and will not get a big horn on the road casually talk.

This is not a backwater, nor is it undemocratic, but our culture determines that we are more responsible than the West. To friends, relatives, brothers, we sometimes selfless "dedication" is the Internet is very developed in the western countries, in order to benefit-oriented, the so-called "spirit of cooperation" can not be compared.

The introduction of the Internet to China, to choose the right model, but also to inject our culture into the world, not to say change the culture of other countries, but at least we have to let our own country's netizens to gain more from the Internet.