Publishing @ MindSay

I am so glad there is such a thing as  "proof copy" in the self-publishing, print-on-demand industry.

Out of my 92,000 + words, I had many corrections.  Less than 50, but more than 25, I'm guessing. <smile>  Enough for me to wince loudly and be thankful for the opportunity.

After proofing in the book, I returned to my document file and made the changes. No problem.

It gets scary after that. Because, I had the idiotic notion to change formatting. Just a tad.


When I saw the text in the book, I could see that the paragraph indentations I had were far too big (.5 inch) and I wanted them smaller (.25 inch).  AND I wished to separate the title of the book from the page number. 

All of which sounds easy, but it wasn't. I had to scan the book page by page and make these changes. Sometimes, I was able to use a cool tool in my word processing software, but sometimes, I had to place the cursor, delete, return and tab.  OR, a few times, I had to use the space bar.  And count. 

To make this really super fun, I had to keep it all at the same page length as the former copy, because the cover art was geared for a book of exactly 244 pages.  If I changed it, then the art might need changing, too. And I did not want to bug Reneé again! Poor woman. lol

So I proofed, corrected, reformatted, checked all the problem areas over again and resubmitted.  I am exhausted. <smile>

I think I'm going to watch Iron Man, now. I deserve a break! :)

The Internet in the future will become a place for group therapy.

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[+] Emotional products in the physical world

 

There are many ways to sell "happiness." One is to write a book on "happiness" (hedonics), turn it into some kind of study and sell it in bookstores. Or, you can package it in a mineral water advertisement and represent the bottle of water as an indispensable thing when families and friends get together happily.

 

In a fiercely competitive car market, a car dealer seeks to boost sales by presenting its car as "the only car that equipped happiness." In a trendy sitcom, the leading actor would win the heart of thousands of female audience by calling," I swear I'll bring you happiness."

 

This is the power of "emotional products," Marketing experts in the traditional business world have long noticed that the key to a consumer's purchasing decision, sometimes, is not the function or price of the product, but something that can trigger certain memory or emotion deep inside the mind of a consumer.

 

For those who buy the book/mineral water/car/trendy sitcom DVD, do they then live happily ever after? No. More precisely, their feeling of happiness reaches completion right at the moment of consumption. Emotional products that cannot achieve such effect would definitely fail.

 

Certainly you can say that emotions are added value to the above mentioned products; they are not the products themselves. Yet after ten years of development of the Internet, we begin to see that "emotion" per se can become a product and has the potential to change the look of the business world.

 

Yes, the dawn of emotion economics is upon us. In the past, "It" is the added value of some products; now "It" will become a product and will revel "Its" value through the form of Web 2.0. Strong emotions will become a kind of belief, so the reference for emotion economics will be religion.

 

[+] Internet from physical to spiritual

 

I sort out the characteristics of traditional Internet, Web 2.0, and Web 2.0 Next in the following chart. Simply put, the mission of the Internet will evolve from "carrying information" to "carrying emotion."

 

 

From eCommerce to emotion-centric websites, ordered from left to right of the chart above, we can see that during these 10 years, the Internet has evolved from more physical to more virtual and from material to spiritual.

 

Though eCommerce is an important business of the Internet, 70% of the operation, such as warehousing, logistics and payment processing, is done in the offline world in a way similar to that of mail order or brick-and-mortar retail stores.

 

Information processing is a critical issue in Web 1.0. The lessening of the problem of product information asymmetry has led to the emergence of eCommerce. Users can compare prices online with just a click, and they can easily find product information or even other people's experience of the product before making purchasing decisions.

 

Web 1.0 media have moved a lot of content online and even produce their own in order to reduce the cost of acquiring information. Too much information however creates the problem of overload. Then there is the search engine that provides precision to help filter undesired information.

 

In this phase, the trait of the Internet as a "tool" is very obvious. People use the Internet to make their life more convenient, with a focus on how to "improve efficiency." As a result, many traditional business models are gradually replaced by the Internet for better efficiency.

 

[+] Web 2.0 Next: the emergence of "emotion centric websites"

 

Blog ushers in the era of Web 2.0, empowered people to publish their own work - the so-called "individual publishing" - for the first time. There is no problem for us to download information anymore; now it's time for us to upload and express our voice.

 

Such characteristic then starts to push Blog to the way of Social Networking. People of similar interests and tastes are gathered and get to know each other through well-designed guidance. Content on Blogs only provide an excuse for people to start a talk.

 

Well, the kind of blogs mentioned above are only those that are focused on content sharing. The number of bloggers is increasing, and it is impossible that every one of them is good at writing or photography. As a result, a lot of bloggers are just letting off their feelings of these days. Normally there are only a few words on the Blogs.

 

Yes it's about emotions. So what to do next is to lead the people who have similar or opposite emotions to get gather and allow their emotions to vent and thus reach completion through some kinds of rituals or activities.

 

Just like the one who buys "the only car that equipped happiness" - his desire for a happy family reaches completion at the moment when he pays for it. It is easier for us on the Internet than in the physical world.

 

What kinds of (good and bad) emotions and desires do people have? They may include:

 

- Hope. (It's said that among all living beings, only humans will have hopes.)

 

- Happiness. (Longing and expectation for happiness that one lacks or desires.)

 

- Hatred. (To smooth it away through some kind of ritual.)

 

- To be loved, cared and blessed (and thus gain strength).

 

- To know if there are other people in the world who have similar weird thoughts or particular experience or so on.

 

- To enjoy solitude (while keep in touch with the world!)

 

- To fulfill the desire and enjoy the excitement to peep and to be peeped.

 

- To satisfy the sense of vanity or accomplishment (or to find motivation to catch up) through comparing with others.

 

- To do good and help others (everyone wants to do a little good as long as s/he has a chance.)

 

- A secret whim to "kuso" or to do non-sense reckless doings (and enjoy the pleasant sensation to break the rules and customs of the society).

 

- Greed (and jealousy and desire to monopolize that comes along.)

 

- Innocence and the desire to be like a kid. (This is why Little Prince is so popular.)

 

- The hobby to collect things (We are all more or less obsessed with collecting some things.) and fetishism.

 

- Hesitation when faced with choices and desire to pry into the future. (This is why fortune telling is so popular.)

 

- ...

 

The more subtleness of human nature you observe, the more you can grasp the essence and spirit of emotion economics. What will people get gather for, and what kind of emotion will they pay for its completion? Through creative packaging, the items listed above can be developed into interesting and colorful "emotion centric websites."

 

Simply put, the Internet in the future will become a place for group therapy. ( 2007/08/26 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to China Internet/Telecom )

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- Read More

Prev : The Spirit of Web 2.0 New Media Lies in "Inter-personal Communication"
Next : The Next Step for Web 2.0 (2) The Fourth Flow: Emotion Flow

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- Today in History

The Next Step for Web 2.0 (1) The Dawn of Emotion Economics - 2007/08/26

The Web 2.0 Revolution (2) the Emergence of New Media - 2006/08/27

The Web 2.0 Revolution (1) the Root Cause is Cost - 2006/08/20

Envisioning China's 3G Market (1) 3G Will Not Increase ARPU - 2005/08/28

PDA in Siege (2) Bottlenecks of the Smart Phone - 2004/08/22

People are the only thing that Web 2.0 is trying to sell.

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[+] Web 2.0 is not about either media or content publishing business

 

Many Web 2.0 operators have wishful thinking about what the Web 2.0 spirit stands for. For early players starting as Blog service providers, they are still stuck with the Web 1.0 mindset. As to the new entrants to the market, they may be too obsessed with the idea of user generated content.

 

First of all, Web 2.0 is not media, yet many Blog service providers are doing "content publishing" business. Traditional news websites have editors do publishing; Blog service providers leave the work of content generation to bloggers.

 

Take Blogchina, one of the earliest Blogs in China. It has been stick to the pattern of inviting columnists to generate content for users for all these years. The website stills see content as the core of its business, which is nothing different from Web 1.0.

 

Isn't Web 2.0 the so-called grassroots media that should encourage users to participate in content generation? How can it be irrelevant to content? My point is, in Web 1.0, content is for browsing, while in Web 2.0, content is a tool for building relations.

 

In other words, in Web 1.0 era, the product is information. Whether for a news website or search engine, everything is centered on "how to cope with information explosion." Whereas in Web 2.0, the product is "relations" and the question is "how to cope with weak relations" and "how to deal with relations explosion."

 

To put it simpler, what Web 2.0 is trying to sell is people. In Web 1.0 era, we need content experts to help us run our websites; in Web 2.0, we need sociologists to enlighten us on how people interact in the virtual society.

 

[+] Anyone has the desire "to be recognized"

 

In 1999, the Internet company, I worked for hired a guy majoring in library science to handle search engine classification and an editor (who used to work in the press) to take care of content channels. At that time, Internet companies needed such specialists to process information, which was the main concern then.

 

In Web 2.0 era, the ultimate purpose of website service is centered on "how to represent an individual." Speaking of individual human beings, we cannot but talk about their needs. In his theory of "Hierarchy of Needs," Maslow, a famous psychologist, contended that people have five layers of needs: physiological need, the need for safety, for love/belonging, for esteem, and for self-actualization, from the lowest to the highest in the hierarchy. The first two can be seen as basic needs (for survival) and the last two are social needs.

 

If we apply this idea to the Internet world, we'll find that services such as Blogs or even online photo albums are to satisfy basic needs only. That is, Blogging and uploading photos are more like some kind of announcements saying, "Hey, I'm here," rather than "individual publishing."

 

 

Web users need a place on the Net to announce her existence, a place of her own, and a peaceful haven of her soul. This is a place where she can save her everything, every record she has produced including photo albums, diaries, and messages, everything that proves her existence to the world.

 

Here comes the problem. Most bloggers are lonely bloggers with very few visitors to their Blogs. They keep sending out messages, "hey, I am here," but rarely get attention. They just linger on and on in solitude.

 

[+] The next stage of Web 2.0: building and managing relations

 

Many Blog service providers have noticed such problem and moved on to the next stage - social needs. All of us wish to be recognized and accepted. How operators should guide their users to know each other? Users need a cue to start a talk, and all the content can be the cue to start the talk.

 

In the US, there is service like MyBlogLog to allow bloggers to see who have visited their Blogs. In China, Blog service providers have turned such service into a basic function so that every bloggers can know who their visitors are.

 

By consciously guiding people to establish relations, Blogs have gone beyond the extent of individual media. Bloggers may go visit their visitors' Blogs, and by this way the bonds between users start to build. Good Blog service providers should try every way to allow such bond to form.

 

Some Blog service providers push good Blog articles to the homepages through referencing by other users or editors. Such doing is nothing different from content publishing in Web 1.0 and can create only at most 5% famous bloggers.

 

It is the responsibility of Blog service providers to "give everyone the chance to be noticed naturally," which is the secret why Mixi in Japan and 51.com in China can come to where they are today. They have realized that Blogs have little to do with content publishing since long ago. Blogs are the basic layer, on top of which social networking takes place.

 

What Sina Blog (blog.sina.com) does is create few famous stars by taking advantage of bandwagon effects. But at the end of the day, only very few become stars, and most bloggers remain unnoticed. Stars are tools to generate content and traffic, so such websites are not Web 2.0; they are Web 1.0 content websites.

 

[+] "Pure sharing" never exists

 

It may be a bit abstract to apply Maslow's theory, but it does provide a good framework to review different types of Web 2.0 websites and gauge their potential. Simply put, the hierarchical layers of needs must be satisfied according to their order. Shortcuts are not allowed or it will lead to bottlenecks.

 

There are a lot of Web 2.0 websites designed to build a mechanism for users to "share." The content to share include bookmarks, news, events, gourmets' comments and shopping discount, etc. Yet there are only few people come out to share.

 

It might not occur to these operators before that sharing does not happen naturally. People tend to think of themselves prior to others. So, website operators must first seek to fulfill users' basic needs to sustain themselves, and think about the issue of sharing later.

 

Take the function of social bookmark (like del.icio.us in the US) for example. It has to be a tool for organizing information first, then for sharing information with others, and lastly, for guiding people to interact.

 

Online bookmarks are not about enabling everyone to dig a URL so it can be the headline on the homepage, but a tool for building connections among people. Bookmarks, along with the tags, collected by users attached are very much "description about themselves." The point is not about what the content is, but who they are as represented via the content.

 

It would be less difficult for users to build relations once the description about these "people" is available. Web 2.0 website operators can create more opportunities for people with similar or different attributes to get to know each other by making use of Tags and the method of Data Mining. Therefore, as we can see, social bookmarks are yet to enter the next phase.

 

[+] Next-phase issue for search engine

 

The business methods mentioned above are to cope with the problem of "weak relations." However, another problem - "relations explosion" - also deserves our attention. When you join more Web 2.0 websites, the management of the relation chain will also become more difficult.

 

I once said that in Web 2.0, the interpersonal communication cost would decline. Yet as more Web 2.0 websites introduce the idea of relation chain, the cost to find out a certain type of people or even a certain person has become very high.

 

For example, if you want to find someone in the U.S., you may need to go to social networking websites like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, and thousands of other Web 2.0 websites. Even finding a certain type of people, such as enthusiasts about the Chinese Ming dynasty, can be difficult.

 

The ability to search among relation chains is the challenge the next-generation search engine should address. The issue in Web 1.0 is the high cost to get precise information in a time of information explosion, which has been successfully resolved by search engine. And now, relations explosion is the next issue to be settled. ( 2007/05/20 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to China Internet/Telecom )

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- Read More

Prev : The Mist of 3G in China (4) The Way to Survival for SP
Next : Web 2.0 Think Again (2) Upper-class Society and Lower-class Society

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- Today in History

Web 2.0 Think Again (2) Upper-class Society and Lower-class Society - 2007/05/27

Web 2.0 Think Again (1) It's All about Relationships - 2007/05/20

Brief Study at Portable Multimedia Player (PMP) - 2005/05/29

I see the light of hope: this could be used to have people subscribe to newsletter.

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[+] Another way to replace email marketing

 

When email becomes a very unreliable communication tool, is there any effective way to distribute information besides RSS? Look into your daily life, are there any other common communication tools?

 

You may immediately think of Instant Messenger (IM). Yes, in this prospering Internet age, everyone has at least one IM open on his desktop. In some sense, the use of IM even has replaced email.

 

Just think, if you can inform your clients via MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger as soon as your website has new products or new services to be released. It could be much more efficient than email or RSS.

 

For emails and RSS, they have to wait for people to receive them. However, if you send information through IM, a message box will pop up directly on the user's desktop. Normally, people will take a glance at the IM message that pops up while leaving email unread for a while.

 

In August 2006, when I was thinking hard about the alternative solution to the newsletter marketing, MSN Messenger came up to his mind very soon. Almost every white collar was using it, and the user group was pretty much the same with that of Digital Wall. I then started to look for a feasible plan.

 

[+] The possibility to use MSN Bot

 

The most awkward way is to register an MSN Messenger account and ask the newsletter subscriber to add this account into his MSN Messenger contact list. Each time the website is updated, messages with the URL of new articles will be sent to those readers.

 

But that will bring about several problems: 1) Obviously, the messenger contact list is going to be extremely long. I have over 140,000 readers. But what is the maximum number of contacts Microsoft allows? It is not possible there is no such a limit, isn't it? 2) It's never going to happen to send IM messages to readers manually! How much time will that costs! 3) If I send out thousands of notification messages to subscribers within a certain period of time, how could it be possible that Microsoft's servers would not block me as a spam message publisher?

 

Many people may know that such kind of IM has robots, so does MSN Messenger, which is called 'MSN Bot'. MSN Bot is actually a program-controlled account. You may chat with it after you add such account into your own MSN Messenger contact list.

 

Some MSN Bots have rich functions. For example, if you ask it an English word, it will give the translation in other language. And some other MSN Bots can do map searching, etc.

 

Microsoft also encourages the development of Bot. If you are interested, you can take a look at this interesting MSN Bot developing contest:

 

https://www.robotinvaders.com/main/Default.aspx

 

I see the light of hope: this could be used to have people subscribe to newsletter.

 

[+] Limitations by using MSN Bot

 

Website operators can release MSN Messenger accounts which are actually MSN Bot programs. Subscribers then add that kind of account to their MSN Messengers. Message publishing is accomplished by sending messages to everyone's IM by the program.

 

However, that solution is not perfect. Microsoft still blocks large amount of message publishing. Sending messages separately in separate hours may be a way to get around. However, problems still exist when the number of readers is huge, because it might be a week later when the last reader receives the message.

 

It then comes to my mind that, would logon notification work instead of IM message publishing? As we all know that MSN Messenger will give out notification when contacts log on. Therefore, as long as operators set up logon and logoff time schedules for the MSN Bot, subscribers will be notified automatically.

 

The effect is much worse than sending messages directly. Since Microsoft still has maximum limit on the number of contacts, this method is not suitable for the case of large number of subscribers. If those limitations could not be solved, this method will be restricted.

 

It is still possible to get around the limitations posted on the amount of MSN message publishing and the number of contacts. In fact, Microsoft has special authorized enterprises across the globe. As long as operators pay them for sending large number of messages, those limitations could be overcome. However, small websites need cheaper solutions.

 

[+] The twilight for IM marketing

 

Either developing MSN Bot or paying for sending messages is beyond the capability of ordinary website operators. At least the cost is much higher than the relatively low-cost email marketing. However, the situation is changed with the advent of Microsoft Windows Live Alerts.

 

This service is for the content subscription service through Windows Live Messenger (the former MSN Messenger). For example, the user will be informed by the Messenger when MSNBC news is updated.

 

Windows Live Alerts：http://alerts.live.com

 

Subscribers can set up time slots to keep from beiing disturbed by messages during work. They can also set messages to be forwarded automatically to their email boxes when they're offline. Finally, the role of IM has been shifted from a communication tool to a content publishing tool.

 

If you are a content provider, you can apply to become a Microsoft content publisher in order to be assigned a unique subscription URL. By simply clicking the URL, users will get into the subscription process and receive messages from you.

 

The instructions for how to become a content publisher can be found at: http://signup.alerts.live.com

 

This service is still on test. Therefore, all applications are sent to the U.S. headquarters. Processing one application needs a little time. It's not known yet whether there is any limit for the number of subscribers allowed for individual content providers.

 

[+] The Fourth Generation of Internet marketing: Rights in the users' hands

 

We can imagine that content subscription through IM will increase rapidly. We are more excited to see that Internet companies have opened such platform for website or Blog operators. IM will become the channel for the new generation of content aggregation and publishing.

 

If you run an eCommerce site, as long as people are willing to subscribe to your Windows Live Alerts, why not sending out discount information through this channel? Of course, it will become more competitive because every website runner can send messages to Internet users through it.

 

Internet marketing has evolved to its fourth generation with RSS and IM subscription as the major tools. We should keep in mind that from the first to the fourth generation, the power of choice has been gradually transferred to Internet users' hands, and that is an everlasting marketing law in the Internet age. ( 2007/01/07 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to China Internet/Telecom )

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- Read More

Prev : The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (2) RSS Tracking
Next : The Mist of 3G in China (1) 3G Makes No Profit

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- Today in History

Web 2.0 Finale (3) Finally blended in Web 1.0 - 2008/01/06

The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (3) IM Marketing - 2007/01/07