leaf

1. The benefits of Follow certification are that by joining the public repositories subscribed to Follow, you can better share your blog with other readers through subscribers.

2. How to get Follow certification? First, you need to be a Follow user. Currently, Follow is in a beta testing phase and requires logging in with a GitHub or Gmail account, along with an invitation code for activation. Secondly, you need a blog, a channel, or even an X account, and then subscribe to your own blog, channel, or X account content through your Follow account. Thirdly, the specific steps for certification, taking my example of subscribing to a blog with Follow. Subscribe to your own blog in Follow, and after setting it up, right-click on your blog's subscription source to apply for certification. At this point, Follow will provide you with a set of certification codes; take these codes to your blog, publish something, and then repeat the previous steps to obtain certification.

This message is used to verify that this feed (feedId:55635568601364480) belongs to me (userId:61993243487380480). Join me in enjoying the next generation information browser https://follow.is.

Internet Ecology?#

In simple terms, there are two ecosystems that need to be built: one is the internal ecosystem of enterprises. This ecosystem mainly refers to the need for enterprises to incubate a soft environment for new business entities, shape new teams, provide resources, enhance management awareness, and offer technical platforms. This is essentially a new platform for secondary entrepreneurship within the enterprise.

In the past, the internal management ecosystem of enterprises was hierarchical and followed a closed process control model; under internet thinking, management organizations should be flat, open, and human-centered, capable of stimulating the initiative of employees. The relationship between enterprises and employees will change; previously it was an employment relationship, but now it is a relationship of sharing and cooperation, creating and sharing value together, which is a form of socialized collaboration.

The second is the external ecosystem of enterprises. Traditional enterprises do not have the capability to completely reshape and construct a new business entity in areas such as data services, financial services, warehousing, and logistics. The feasible approach today is to find partners and ecosystems that align with their business model planning.

Under the internet ecosystem, the relationship between enterprises and users will change; previously, the focus was on producing products and pushing them to users, but now users need to participate in the creation of products, making them an important strategic resource within the enterprise. The relationship between enterprises will also change; previously it was a competitive relationship, but now it is a relationship of collaborative cooperation to build an ecosystem.

Product Ecology#

In the context of the internet, the production of products and the creation of value are increasingly moving towards socialization and public participation, with the relationship between enterprises and users tending towards equality, interaction, and mutual influence.

AHHHA: Socialized Product Crowdsourcing Platform

The socialized creative crowdsourcing fundraising platform AHHHA, how can it turn a product's idea into reality in a shared ecological environment, where participants are interdependent?

The founding purpose of AHHHA is to help users realize their ideas. Here, you can upload any idea in the form of video or text, interact with other users on the site, provide suggestions, help improve, and vote for ideas that have commercial value. Those ideas that receive more votes have the opportunity to receive funding support, ultimately transforming into actual products, achieving commercialization, and generating profits.

AHHHA has successfully launched multiple products and achieved commercialization. Those who provide ideas, designs, production, and funding on the AHHHA platform all have the right to share profits. The platform has also revealed the specific profit-sharing ratios for successful products: the original creator can extract 10% of the profits, the platform charges a fee of 10% to 25%, and the remaining amount is shared among other participants based on their contributions.

In the mobile internet era, the trend of product ecology is to integrate the capital, intelligence, and resources of product consumers and sellers, designers and manufacturers into a crowdsourced innovation model, or a shared ecology.

Content producers on YouTube, artisans on Etsy (an online marketplace for handmade goods in the U.S.), and runners on TaskRabbit are examples of how sharing participates in product production and service value creation. When the number of participants in production is sufficient, these platforms generate powerful forces. For example, Airbnb (a service that connects travelers with homeowners who have spare rooms) matches tourists in need of accommodation with homeowners who have extra rooms to rent. In 2014, approximately 350,000 families provided accommodation for 15 million people through this website. This number is enough to put pressure on the traditional hotel industry.

Content Ecology#

It is generally believed that the successive popularity of Web 2.0 (represented by forums and blogs) and Web 3.0 (represented by social platforms and microblogs) owes much to UGC (User Generated Content). With the development of mobile internet, content creation has further subdivided into Professional Generated Content (PGC) and Organizational Generated Content (OGC), leading to debates about which is mainstream among UGC, PGC, and OGC.

User-oriented content production must establish a healthy ecosystem involving content producers, content consumers, and content dissemination channels. By using big data mining technology and refined data operations to analyze users' real-time content needs, content producers can curate corresponding content based on this supply-demand relationship, achieving completely user-oriented content creation, rather than excessively producing popular and shallow content. This way, high-quality, valuable, and in-depth content can be systematically produced to meet users' personalized interests.

YouTube is the world's largest original UGC video site, with one billion users. However, YouTube is facing pressure from both sides: on one hand, copyright video sites like Netflix and Amazon are expanding original series production, diverting users; on the other hand, emerging video sites represented by Facebook are poaching well-known producers or "YouTube stars." In April 2015, YouTube announced new measures to fully fund well-known YouTube creators, encouraging them to produce new video programs and series. This indicates that the largest UGC video site is also beginning to transition from UGC to PGC and self-produced programs.

In 2015, the competition among major domestic video sites has also extended to the PGC field, even elevating it to a core business level. Compared to the UGC model, PGC is more professional, ensuring higher quality and standards of content. Additionally, due to the adoption of traffic and advertising revenue-sharing models, the operational costs of PGC are on par with UGC, but revenues will far exceed those of UGC. While UGC business cannot be abandoned as a traffic tool, the task of increasing advertising revenue for video platforms can only be entrusted to high-quality PGC.

Previously, domestic internet video sites that encouraged UGC models have all shifted to PGC, even starting to seize the upstream of the film and television industry ecosystem by establishing film companies, such as iQIYI's Huace iQIYI Film Company, Youku Tudou's He Yi Film, and LeTV's Flower Film and LeTV Film. They have signed contracts with many well-known directors, with Youku Tudou initially attracting Wong Kar-wai, while LeTV has signed Zhang Yimou and Lu Chuan, and iQIYI has brought in Wong Jing.

UGC's commercial value realization is difficult, and online video sites are transforming to PGC.

In response to the arrival of the PGC self-media era, Sohu Video proposed a new platform strategy to create knowledge-based videos. In the new video resource era of online content, large dramas and variety shows can no longer meet users' needs, and video content has even reached a stage that transcends entertainment. In the era of knowledge visualization, the fields covered by video programs are vast, ranging from complex higher mathematics to cooking, beauty, astrology, and more.

After Sohu Video integrated 56.com to strengthen its self-media video field in 2014, the number of self-media producers on Sohu Video has seen explosive growth. Sohu 56 has welcomed 1,800 self-media producers, creating nearly 10,000 columns, with videos reaching 350,000. Meanwhile, the entire platform has a monthly viewership of 600 million and 1.8 billion monthly views. In 2016, Sohu Video plans to allocate 200 million yuan to directly support producers, and over the next three years, it is expected to provide 3 billion yuan worth of advertising resources to producers, with the total value of all utilized resources reaching the hundred billion level. The collaboration among Sohu Video, brand owners, and producers aims to form a mature commercial industrial chain.

In the fragmented scene of the mobile internet, deep and valuable content becomes increasingly precious. Unlike UGC, PGC has certain advantages; it fundamentally filters content creators, ensuring high-quality content.

The transition from self-organized UGC to commercially operated PGC is also the growth path of new media and self-media brands in the mobile internet era, such as Logic Thinking, Wu Xiaobo, Socket Academy, and Hunter's Door.

Logic Thinking has always been regarded as a model of self-media, but in fact, the Logic Thinking team has been a highly professional PGC production team from the very beginning. Although everyone wears multiple hats, their roles are clearly defined, comparable to an ordinary magazine or program team. Many public accounts and Weibo accounts that originally belonged to individuals are now also starting to accept submissions, managed by dedicated teams. More self-media are accelerating their transformation into professional content producers. The transition from UGC to PGC appears to be the entire development history of self-media, but it also reveals the development laws of the internet content ecology.

Two Major Characteristics of Ecology

A highly evolved ecosystem should exhibit two major characteristics: symbiosis and co-evolution; individuality and diversity.

Symbiosis and co-evolution are the foundation of commercial ecosystems. The pursuit of interests is the original driving force behind human social development, especially in the relationships between enterprises. Additionally, under the goal of co-evolution, is it possible for competitive relationships to exist within the same ecosystem? Generally, it should be possible, meaning that any individual or organization in an ecological chain has the potential to be replaced. In fact, in natural ecosystems, symbiosis and competition are also eternal themes.

There are two forms of symbiosis in commercial systems: one is horizontal relationships (i.e., relationships within the same industry) forming industrial clusters within a geographical area. In this cluster, related enterprises form a larger population, where individuals within the population both leverage each other and compete, thus achieving co-evolution.

The other form of symbiosis refers to vertical relationships (i.e., upstream and downstream industry relationships) forming an industrial chain. This industrial chain changes its structure and the related enterprises within it according to market changes, creating a relationship of both cooperation and competition among the enterprises in the chain. Cooperation is aimed at forming complementary advantages in core businesses to jointly respond to the final product market and produce one or several similar products; competition is aimed at dividing interests along the industrial value chain.

Enterprises in the industrial chain must cooperate to form advantages in the final product market, while upstream and downstream enterprises in the chain will inevitably compete due to conflicting interests. This cooperation leads to the coexistence of enterprises in the industrial chain, while competition leads to the optimization of the industrial chain structure. The cooperation and competition among enterprises in the industrial chain lead to symbiosis or common development. For example, the supply chain formed by IBM and its suppliers, original equipment manufacturers, and distribution service providers is a typical co-production industrial chain commercial ecosystem.

Individuality and diversity are the abilities that maintain the continuous evolution of the ecosystem. Each enterprise and product in the ecosystem has its unique position and competitiveness; not only does the ecosystem help individuals grow, but individuals also contribute to the entire ecosystem. The lower the ecological level, the weaker the ability of enterprises to control their own destiny, thus their development increasingly relies on the evolution of the ecosystem.

Under the layout of ecological strategy, the future test is not the ability of enterprises to fight alone, but their ability to collaborate with the entire ecosystem. Future market competition will resemble competition between different commercial ecosystems.

Ecology is divided into three levels: the simplest is the ecological circle, the complex is the ecological chain, and the ultimate ecological system is the ecological chain + ecological circle.

In traditional industries, the core of manufacturing is to create a flexible, stable, and resilient supply chain; as long as the supply chain is functioning properly, enterprises can produce products normally; the retail industry needs to focus on sales channels, the stronger the sales channels, the more guaranteed the sales; the financial industry relies on a stable capital chain to achieve snowball-like development.

The internet industry ecosystem is also composed of ecological chains and ecological circles. For example, LeTV's ecosystem is a complete ecosystem formed by a vertically integrated closed-loop ecological chain and a horizontally expanded open ecological circle. LeTV integrates a closed-loop ecological chain through "platform + content + application + terminal," while the horizontally expanded open ecological circle refers to each link of the vertical closed-loop ecological chain opening up to introduce external resources that are strongly related to the ecosystem. Currently, LeTV has formed five major ecological circles: internet ("platform + application"), content, smart terminals, automobiles, and sports, continuously creating new product experiences and higher user value through strong ecological chemical reactions.

Ecological Circle

The ecological circle is based on the mutual creation of value among enterprises during their operations, often connected through market relationships. The enterprises and other organizations within the ecological circle have relatively few or minimal connections in resource sharing and business activities, while the market connections formed through collaboration in the market are the main structure of this type of commercial system.

WeChat "Consumption + Social" Ecological Circle

During the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2015, WeChat coupons joined forces with the "Golden Room Card" hotel WeChat alliance and 600 hotels from 24 large hotel groups nationwide to launch the "WeChat Mooncake Consumption Month" campaign. In the WeChat public accounts of hotels like Country Garden and White Swan, mooncakes were transformed into WeChat coupons, allowing consumers to purchase gift vouchers for personal use or to give to friends, with the entire process of receiving and sending also completed through the aforementioned public accounts. Buying mooncakes for friends also allowed users to personally record a blessing to be sent along with the mooncake voucher. Users could even form interest groups, send voice messages, and mass send mooncakes, gathering users who truly have needs and common interests.

By turning mooncakes into a social tool through WeChat coupons, many people may not eat the mooncakes themselves but may give them to others. The convenience of transferring WeChat coupons facilitates secondary transfers, achieving a viral marketing effect. WeChat has changed the traditional "search + e-commerce" model, operating through hotels, using buying and gifting mooncakes as the consumption scenario, and creating a "consumption + social" ecological circle based on WeChat's social, payment, and coupon functions.

Uber "Travel + Social" Ecological Circle

Uber has turned travel into a social experience. Uber provides a platform that offers real-time information about private car drivers and passengers, matching them together. The benefits of the Uber model are not limited to users; it brings idle private car owners into the market, allowing them to have flexible working hours.

Many high-level white-collar workers and wealthy second-generation individuals are keen to lower their status and become Uber drivers, driving luxury cars without worrying about costs. Many female college students and white-collar workers are also willing to try riding in high-end cars on Uber, meeting "rich and handsome" individuals and expanding their social circles. Uber makes travel a pretext, while socializing becomes the core, forming a "travel + social" ecological circle through the intersection of lifestyle and transportation.

The rules of commercial ecology have many similarities with those in natural ecological systems. For example, an apple tree absorbs water and inorganic salts from the soil through its roots, while its leaves absorb carbon dioxide from the air to perform photosynthesis, synthesizing organic matter and storing energy to meet its own needs. Through respiration, it decomposes organic matter within itself, releasing energy to meet its life activity needs.

The apple tree rule in commercial ecosystems is: fruits—upstream of the ecology, including the production of products and content; trunk and branches—midstream of the ecology, including the aggregation and distribution of platforms; roots—downstream of the ecology, including terminal entry points, user communities, and brand building.

The development of the internet and big data is a process of shifting from people searching for information to information searching for people.#

The birth of recommendation engines is a trend from people searching for information to information searching for people. Recommendation engines can understand people's potential needs based on user behavior, attributes, object attributes, content, categories, and social relationships among users, proactively recommending objects that users are interested in or need.

Recommendation engine technology has been applied in various industries such as e-commerce, news, and social media. The reason recommendation engines can make recommendations based on social relationship networks is that by analyzing the social relationship networks users belong to, they can find the users who can most influence them or the users who are most influenced by them, and then make recommendations based on each user's personalized preferences.

The ecological balance in biology refers to a state where, over a certain period, the organisms and the environment within an ecosystem, as well as various populations of organisms, achieve mutual adaptation, coordination, and unity through the transfer of energy flow, material flow, and information flow, maintaining a dynamic balance, known as ecological balance.

Mutual dependence and mutual restriction reflect the coordinated balance relationship among organisms, which is the foundation of biological systems. The same is true in commercial ecosystems. Each member in the system has its specific role, executing a certain function, and members within the same subsystem are mutually dependent and mutually restrictive, while different system members also have relationships of dependence and restriction. The absence of any individual member can cause varying degrees of damage to the entire system, and the co-evolution among members can maintain a certain dynamic balance in the entire commercial ecosystem.

Like species in natural ecosystems, members of commercial ecosystems ultimately share a common fate with the entire commercial ecosystem. However, unlike ecological systems, commercial ecosystems are carefully planned artificial systems with future goals and visions.

Just like human evolution, commercial ecology also undergoes an evolutionary process from simple to complex, from low-level to high-level, and from inefficient to efficient. Its hierarchy is illustrated in the following diagram.

(1) Products: The most basic ecological elements, products in the mobile internet era emphasize high frequency, interaction, and content, such as WeChat and mobile QQ in Tencent's ecosystem.

(2) Applications: Applications derived around products make product usage more efficient. For example, WeChat's instant messaging, scanning, shaking, and Moments features, as well as Baidu's voice recognition and facial recognition technologies.

(3) Platforms: When the accumulated applications are sufficient, the demand for interaction and connection among applications arises, leading to the emergence of platforms that carry application interactions. For example, WeChat's public platform, open platform, enterprise platform, and gaming platform. When a product's market share reaches 30% in the industry or 50% in a segmented market, it meets the conditions for evolving into a platform. Platforms set rules to regulate applications to better realize product functions, allowing more product-based companies to earn money on the platform.

(4) Systems: When the functions accumulated on the platform are sufficient, the demand for communication among functions arises, leading to the need for trading products, services, and information. Platforms give rise to various complex commercial forms such as search, social, e-commerce, and finance.

(5) Ecology: The simplest ecology includes applications + content + terminals (or channels) + (cloud) platforms. In the WeChat ecosystem, applications are provided by numerous developers, content is generated by UGC, distributed to each user, and the entire ecology is supported by the platform + system. The core of the ecology is big data, dynamically tracking user data and behavior, as well as user metrics, allowing for the prediction of user consumption trends, and based on these trends, providing optimal products and services.

From products to applications, to platforms, to systems, and finally to ecology, each level of upgrade acts as an accelerator for the transformation of the entire ecological value.

The speed of product evolution determines the speed of ecological evolution, while the continuous evolution of the ecology fosters the emergence of more efficient products.

From a human-centered perspective, the governance model of the past economic society was a process of objectifying human communities. This objectification process brought about the deconstruction and reconstruction of social economy, leading to modern society, where everything is structured, data-driven, and manageable. Communities represent a return to human-centeredness, a reconstruction and reorganization of modern industrial communities, allowing technology, data, and management to serve people. Innovative models such as the sharing economy (Airbnb, Uber, etc.), fan economy (Xiaomi, roseonly, etc.), and C2B (group buying, crowdfunding, etc.) have emerged under the community ecology.

The community and product operation of the Xiaomi brand has transformed Xiaomi's supply chain into a dynamic supply chain, and its marketing has become community word-of-mouth marketing, resulting in historic changes at both the front and back ends. Xiaomi promotes productivity transformation based on the innovation of production relations through the community economic model, which represents the ecological play in the mobile internet era.

Value Principles#

The first layer of value in a community is called the channel, which includes three types: communication channels, dissemination channels, and sales channels. This means treating the community as a channel and realizing the monetization of traffic.

The second layer of value in a community is called the platform. By collecting product usage data and content through the community, rapid optimization and iteration of products can be achieved, leading to multi-center fission. The next level is the ecological value of the community, which is the integration of resources, the unblocking and layout of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and even the emergence of new business models through community interactions.

Communities have two core values: one is based on individual social innovation orientation, where one-way supply and demand satisfaction generates short-circuit value in individual social interactions; the other is based on group social conformity orientation, where value alignment generates precise projection of segmented value. In simple terms, "segmentation creates markets, and cross-border achieves value."

The core of the community is people; the community is the connection of people. People form a multi-centered and rapidly iterating network structure on the internet, where individuals gathered around each center constitute the community, and individuals within the community are interconnected, forming "microclimates." In the internet era, communities only form due to value alignment. The success of community operation depends on the connection and interaction among internal members. Therefore, communities should allow members to connect and gather fully, as connections generate greater value.

Interesting Principles#

Pine and Gilmore predicted in "The Experience Economy": "In the future, economic outcomes will consist of approximately 4% products, 16% services, and 80% experiences." Because products are easily exchangeable or replaceable, services and experiences are where true differentiation and competitiveness lie.

Community economy is a further deepening and extension of the experience economy, forming a new business ecology and operational rules centered around experiences. In the community economy, aesthetic awareness and emotional factors dominate. Human nature inherently has emotional needs for communities, and community interactions generate significant identity recognition and emotional satisfaction.

With the development of mobile internet technology and the popularity of mobile terminals, ongoing community interactions greatly stimulate users' initiative and creativity, allowing emotions to be released significantly. Fans gather because they identify with the brand and human brilliance of the community creator, participating in community interactions, exercising autonomy, and contributing creativity. Meeting the emotional experiences of community members becomes the core of community operation. Only by closely grasping users' psychological experiences and emotional demands can extraordinary communities be formed, which is the significance of the "charming personality" of communities. From Apple to Xiaomi, from Steve Jobs to Lei Jun, from Logic Thinking to Smartisan, they all have unique personal assertions and rich emotional expressions.

Operational Principles#

Communities arise from connections but exist through operations, and they can never exist independently. There are three core principles of community operation.

The first is to clarify value orientation. What value does the community provide? Set simple and clear goals and achieve them step by step. For many communities, especially large ones, maintaining long-term user engagement and activity will face challenges. Is it to provide a communication platform for community members, offer opportunities for growth, or create scenarios for value multiplication? Clarifying the value is key to the community's success.

The second is to achieve value output. Demand creates value; a community lacking value output will inevitably lose its foundation for long-term existence. If each community member cannot obtain the value they need within the community, they will inevitably leave. Therefore, emphasizing value output is core to the community.

The third is to establish rules of engagement. The individual social innovation orientation and group social conformity orientation coexist in the community. Effectively balancing these two needs and maintaining stable community operations is the essence of the rules. Recognized and firmly enforced rules are fundamental to maintaining consensus in the community while meeting individual value needs.

From the team mechanism of operational management to daily community operations, and to reward and punishment, incentive mechanisms, etc., everything needs to be clear and reach a self-operating state. Only then can decentralization occur, activating everyone's energy and maximizing value potential.

The survival of the fittest in biological ecology is a passive result of natural selection, relatively stable; while the ecological niche of enterprises is determined by proactive choices and competitive behaviors, often undergoing changes. The position of member enterprises in the commercial ecosystem signifies their competitive strength within the system.

As a commercial ecosystem composed of numerous enterprise collectives, it is not a rabble; its composition adheres to the law of aggregation. Like natural ecosystems, every enterprise must distinguish itself from others in a certain space, time, customer base, technology, and management methods to survive, thus avoiding excessive competition.

Accurate positioning of member enterprises in the system not only reduces competition among enterprises but also provides conditions for functional coupling among member enterprises, forming self-circulation and achieving co-evolution.

In the commercial ecosystem, leading enterprises and other collaborators form a system centered around the value chain of production, supply, and sales, with network members forming dynamic strategic alliances across industries under cooperative competition.

The system integrates resources, coordinates capabilities, shares information, and continuously optimizes overall performance and functional levels across broader fields.

Whether in product internet or ecological internet, they are interrelated, symbiotic relationships, rather than competitive or evolutionary processes of upgrading. The two represent different stages and positions of ecology.

The essence of the mobile internet ecology is monopoly, not competition.#

The types of monopolies are not singular; Google's search engine and Android system represent a high level of technological monopoly, while Apple represents a monopoly on brand momentum in the mobile phone industry. The root of any monopoly lies in the irreplicability of products in specific fields. Uniqueness inevitably generates value, and the enormous sales profits obtained by monopolistic enterprises are rewards for such unique innovations.

The emergence and existence of monopolies require four essential conditions:

1. A sufficiently large market share with no challengers;
2. Low collusion costs and penalties, making it worthwhile to take risks;
3. Demand is less affected by price fluctuations;
4. Each member of the alliance can resist deception, reject temptation, and never cheat.

From the perspective of internet enterprises, monopolies no longer require alliances. From a channel perspective, the range of software deployment is broader, and the speed of expansion grows exponentially; the marginal cost of products is nearly zero. This makes it easier for internet products to form monopolies. Every day, searches, chats, entertainment sources, and work management in life have already formed monopolies or are gradually moving towards monopolies. The normalization of monopolistic enterprises in the mobile internet ecology will become a landscape in the future internet industry.

The core of internet ecological thinking is sharing and collaboration.#

From the internet to the mobile internet economy, and then to the IoT's O2O, future giants like BAT are breaking deadlocks and building commercial connections and value realization channels between internet enterprises and traditional enterprises.

The reconstruction of value transmission from the internet to traditional business ecology#

There are three elements in the value transmission process: information flow, capital flow, and logistics. Connection is the essence of the internet. By providing information and life services, the internet has changed the relationships of connection between people and between people and the world. The internet connects people with information communication technology and connects people with business through network technology, shortening or reconstructing the commercial value chain of value transmission through the efficiency of connection.

The success of internet giants BAT is based on restructured commercial value through connection, such as Baidu's search (connecting people with information and services), Alibaba's e-commerce (connecting people with goods), and Tencent's social (connecting people with people).

Follow Media#

Follow's impact on the disruption of traditional business formats is first reflected in the information intermediary industry, such as traditional print media, and industries relying on traditional media, such as traditional advertising and public relations. When information can be obtained anytime and anywhere through the internet and mobile internet, the centralized and time-delayed intermediary value of traditional media rapidly depreciates. As the information intermediary industry is also restructured, the advertising and media industry will have to change its business model.

Essentially, the internet solves the problems of information asymmetry and connection and communication. In other words, the emergence and popularization of the internet have completely changed the previously isolated state of traditional industries that could not connect and communicate across regions, time, and industries. This has greatly released the efficiency of enterprises at various stages of the industrial chain, with the changes brought by the internet being a rapid enhancement of communication efficiency. This enhancement reconstructs the commercial value chain by eliminating intermediate links.

Renowned German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies pointed out in his book "Community and Society" that a community is a group built on natural foundations, constrained by human instincts or habits. Blood-related communities, regional communities, and religious communities are the basic forms of communities. However, a community is not merely the sum of its parts; it is an organically integrated whole.

Society, on the other hand, is a purposeful united community. Modern society is composed of various organizations or groups, where individuals are connected by interests and live together in a symbiotic and shared manner. However, due to geographical and technological limitations, the connections between individuals are generally intermittent.

Entering the internet, especially the mobile internet era, the connection between people anytime and anywhere through network information technology has become possible, leading to the gradual formation of online communities and groups. People gather around a common topic or interest, seeking like-minded individuals and a sense of identity and belonging.

With the rise of mobile socializing, we can pay attention to social relationships between people anytime and anywhere, and the construction of these social relationships is also creating unexpected commercial value. The essence of socializing is sharing (personal value) and sharing information (value exchange), which is also the essence of socializing in the mobile internet era.

From the perspective of the entire human historical development process, in primitive society, the survival of people relied on a social mechanism based on full sharing and barter. In the second stage of human evolution, the social mechanism emerged based on private property rights, which is a social and economic system based on exclusivity.

Now, in the current mobile internet stage, the spirit of openness and sharing is reviving. People are increasingly willing to share, displaying emotions, personal skills, and connections to others. People gradually connect through their social relationships to establish a common social obligation and code of conduct. In this sense, people express their living conditions and showcase their value through sharing themselves, and the social relationships in the mobile internet era are built on this social psychological foundation.

Personal relationship chains and communities are the two most common forms in social networks. If we recall these two forms as two typical scenarios in social networks, they are friends and groups/tribes. Reflected in social products, one type is products like WeChat and Weibo that unfold various social behaviors centered around individual users; the other type is products like Douban and Tieba that focus on circles and topics, based on topics and circles to obtain information and find people or things of interest, thereby better expanding their social circles, also known as vertical social products.

Based on strong and weak relationships and virtual and real dimensions, four types of social relationships can be distinguished. The first type is socializing among acquaintances in virtual network spaces; the second type is socializing among strangers in virtual network spaces; the third type is socializing among strangers in reality; the fourth type is socializing among acquaintances in reality.

In the first type, which is based on acquaintances' relationship chains in virtual network spaces, many mature models can already be seen. For example, through social websites and apps like Facebook, Renren, QQ, and WeChat, we constantly update our current status while sharing social information about friends, colleagues, and family. This is a typical way of interaction in the acquaintance relationship chain in internet social products.

Moreover, many internet products or applications help us further strengthen relationships among acquaintances, such as the once-popular QQ Space games like "抢车位" (抢车位) and "偷菜" (stealing vegetables), and WeChat's "打飞机" (shooting planes) game, which are all typical interest-sharing internet applications based on enhancing acquaintance networks and relationship chains.

Looking ahead, the commercial value development based on the strong relationship chain of acquaintances in virtual spaces still holds very promising prospects. For example, acquaintances can almost instantly share their experiential content with good friends. Additionally, the development of H5 games based on acquaintances' social circles will also be a very important direction. People can satisfy their entertainment needs through games while enhancing their acquaintance networks, expressing their care for friends and family through the strength of relationships in strong relationship chains.

From the perspective of social relationship development, the evolution of weak relationship chains in virtual spaces differs significantly from that of strong relationship chains. This is because people are less likely to pay attention to the emotional changes of strangers; what they truly need is the expansion of interpersonal scope brought by weak relationship chains and the value exchange facilitated by weak relationship chains.

After segmenting needs and focusing on interests, people can often further realize exchanges in terms of value. For instance, people can recommend products to each other or engage in second-hand transactions within a weak relationship chain, and although this transaction is based on a weak relationship chain, it still has a certain relationship as a foundation, being stronger in relationship strength than two completely unfamiliar individuals.

Therefore, on one hand, some weak relationship chains in virtual spaces will gradually develop transactional demands in e-commerce, while on the other hand, e-commerce enterprises will further strengthen their layout in social relationships within virtual spaces.

It can be seen that the foundation of the RSS social ecology includes three elements: values, value, and interests. That is, what you recognize, what you need, and what you care about. The means of realization is data.#

How to present information

Information does not necessarily have to be released through advertisements or news; activities, surveys, and games can also be good ways to publish.

If it is just information push, then it is advertising; if comments can be left, then it is interaction. After interaction, a new content dissemination circle can be formed with other users, allowing users to participate in the content.

Scene selection: Does the user have the usage scenario corresponding to the pushed information?

Dissemination methods: How to integrate resources to maximize dissemination value.

Regarding comments, socializing will no longer be limited by time and space; socializing will develop in two directions: one is open socializing based on demand; the other is private socializing based on relationships.

Does socializing form communities? In short, it is the mutual exchange and sharing of a particular interest or hobby in a similar geographical or virtual area, moving from unfamiliarity to familiarity, gathering members to participate together through various meaningful activities, and gradually establishing interpersonal relationships and a sense of belonging and mutual recognition within the area, thus forming a social group.

The main functional categories of communities include communication and learning, social networking, business promotion, investment and financing, education and training, and public welfare. In the future, communities will gradually transition from interest and relationship aggregation to user development and industry resource integration, while vertical industries will achieve value extension through community formation, and the dividends of community economy will gradually permeate across all industries.

The community ecological circle has three basic characteristics:

1. It has common interests, benefits, values, or goals and programs. In simple terms, it is the tone and quality; community members have effectively differentiated themselves through programs and tones, allowing people with similar attributes to come together, which is the foundation of the community.

2. It has highly efficient collaborative tools. This is also the reason why communities were relatively difficult to establish in the PC era. In the mobile internet era, real-time interactive tools like WeChat make collaboration very easy.

3. It has consistent actions. Due to the previous two reasons, consistent actions become relatively easy, and this consistency also promotes the stability of the community (which is why exams are conducted to obtain invitation codes).

Interest aggregation, communication collaboration, and commercial realization are the three core functions of community ecology. Based on interest aggregation of users and content sedimentation of users, through innovations in communication and collaboration models, continuously enhancing user participation, connection, and trust, activating fan economy and sharing economy, is the basic model of community value realization.

Community value realization can be divided into two major aspects: platform channels and industrial ecological value chains. Channel value is mainly reflected in dissemination, traffic guidance, public relations, interaction, etc.; from the perspective of the industrial ecological value chain, communities can achieve low-cost and high-efficiency integration of industry resources, unblocking the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, realizing multi-level integration from resource suppliers, channel parties, competitive cooperation parties to user markets.

Communities will continue to achieve explosive growth, penetrating into more fields and more fragmented markets; strong communities led by the elite class will continue to expand their influence, while decentralized grassroots communities will become the backbone; communities targeting niche users will become breakthrough points for innovative development.

Social stratification is a sociological concept that refers to the classification of people into different groups based on common socio-economic wealth status, involving a series of relational social inequalities, including ideological, political, economic, and social aspects. When differences arise among people, and such differences lead to some individuals holding superior status, power, and privileges over others, this is referred to as social class (or social stratification). Society classifies various people into hierarchical or ranked classes (hierarchical system).

Social class has four important basic principles: first, social class not only reflects individual differences among people but also the characteristics of the entire society. Second, social class can be transmitted through generations. Third, social class is universal but can change. Fourth, social class involves not only social inequality but also people's beliefs. In contemporary Western society, social stratification is evident.

New platforms and models of communities are continuously emerging and spreading, with community organizational structures and distributions exhibiting various new characteristics; coordination and linkage among communities will become closer, forming large community alliances in vertical fields; the flexible, personalized, and dynamic distribution characteristics of communities will become prominent, gradually penetrating into various aspects of social livelihood and industrial chains.

In the process of information dissemination, individuals are playing an increasingly important role, with each person possessing multiple attributes as information receivers, disseminators, and producers. As the basic unit of social relationships and production activities, people not only connect individuals with information, services, and each other but also begin to become information dissemination centers and resource connection nodes.

The functional relationship of internet media is one of complete replacement for traditional media, rather than a complementary relationship. Internet media can carry all forms of news production, including text, video, and audio, and the dissemination effect is better, more convenient, timely, and rapid.

When people with similar interests and conditions gather on social platforms to form communities, the communities themselves possess strong capabilities for content generation and dissemination. Communities can be formed based on interests, behaviors, relationships, regions, products, etc., playing important roles in information dissemination across different dimensions.

Many internet users join communities to obtain the information they need and are interested in. As the number of internet communities gradually increases, communities with different levels and attributes have become important mediums for public information and opinions, and communities have also become the main way for individuals to participate in information production.

The internet is built on attention (traffic) and reputation (connection); only internet products that possess both have value and can achieve commercial success.

As the advertisement says, "No matter how small the individual, there is a brand that belongs to them." Self-media must establish its own media brand, build its own credibility, and establish its own dissemination power.

Ultimately, media serves the public. After building a personal brand through self-media, some media professionals can gain monetization opportunities, such as going out to give lectures, becoming company consultants, endorsing products, or even establishing communities to form their own business models.

Information decisions are more about adhering to the concept of nurturing communities and value recognition to pay membership fees; the group is a community based on values.

User behavior and consumption patterns are also evolving. The original AIDMA and AISAS models can no longer adapt to the realities of marketing communication in the mobile internet era. In the mobile internet era, the user behavior consumption model is shifting towards the SICAS model. Future marketing models should fully utilize data and technology to achieve real-time perception, responsive actions, multi-point bidirectional connections, and emotional marketing.

That is, attracting attention (attention) → generating interest (interest) → actively searching (search) → prompting action (action) → sharing information (share).

The SCIAS theory is active search (search) → peer comparison (compare) → generating interest (interest) → prompting action (action) → showcasing treasures (show).

The combination of the internet and emotional marketing seems to have become the successful formula of the mobile internet era. Traditional enterprises typically undergo a long process of building brand awareness, reputation, and loyalty; however, in the mobile internet era, product awareness is not the most important factor. What matters more is psychological affinity, identity recognition, product topics, and word-of-mouth dissemination. In the internet era, it is not the product's flaws that are feared, but the lack of highlights that fail to spark discussions; enterprises that cannot generate discussions online find it difficult to succeed.

Sexual marketing naturally attracts the audience's attention. However, using sexual marketing strategies must adhere to two basic premises: first, sexiness is merely a means, not an end; second, the product being promoted must have a certain relevance to sexiness; otherwise, it will only promote sexiness without promoting the brand. In terms of using sexual marketing strategies, Durex is undoubtedly a master. The right balance, moderate depth, speed in chasing trends, and lasting impact make Durex a typical representative of social media sexual marketing.

Interest marketing
The understanding of the term "interest" should have two layers of meaning: emotion and fun. Emotion refers to feelings and moods, while fun refers to interest and enjoyment. Emotions are multifaceted, encompassing joy, sadness, love, and dislike. Interest refers to the more positive aspects of emotions, just as a person possesses a humorous and witty character.

Discovering Product Needs from Human Nature#

In the 13th century, Dominican priest St. Thomas Aquinas listed the most primitive desires of humanity, or what could be called original sins, including vanity, laziness, greed, lust, anger, voyeurism, and jealousy. These primitive desires are deeply engraved in everyone's heart from birth.

Now, the internet has become as essential to our lives as water and air, with a plethora of products available. However, almost all successful products leverage weakness marketing, targeting human weaknesses to stimulate desires.

Human nature possesses both innate goodness and acquired evil; we do not intend to delve deeply into human nature here. However, from the perspective of product development, enterprises should fully recognize and utilize human weaknesses to design product functions.

The reflection of human nature in internet products manifests as: (1) Lust: Combining LBS (Location-Based Services) with social behaviors based on common preferences is a fundamental need for users to make friends, such as adult websites, YY, Momo, Dance Party, Douban groups, etc. (2) Vanity: Helping users realize their love for beauty and show off, using user level stratification strategies, such as QQ membership and game character levels. (3) Greed: Providing users with more than expected, making them feel they got a great deal, such as e-commerce and group buying websites. (4) Laziness: Laziness in products is reflected in not having to think, lowering barriers, allowing users to experience convenient, lightweight, and simple operations, such as Weibo and online shopping. (5) Jealousy: Jealousy, like greed, arises from unfulfilled desires. Greed is often related to material possessions, while jealousy is associated with others' successes and other spiritual aspects, and social networks connect the world's jealousy.

Of course, aside from the relatively darker aspects, human nature also encompasses many beautiful aspects, such as justice, compassion, gratitude, and love. By deeply exploring and providing corresponding functions and services for products to meet users' spiritual and material needs, is the foundational element for the success of internet products.

A successful product must include five elements: common interests, structure, operation, output, and replication.#

Gathering Common Interests

The essence of community formation lies in the relationship connections formed by common interest tags among its members. For example, similar products, similar interests, similar tags, similar professions, similar emotional groups, similar values, etc.

Effectively Planning Structure

The second element of community composition is structure, which determines the survival of the community.

Many communities quickly fall silent because they initially did not effectively plan the community structure, which includes member composition, communication platforms, rules and regulations, and content topics. The better these four structural components are managed, the longer the community will thrive.

(1) Members: The most core element in the community structure is its members. A community needs not only a central figure but also opinion leaders and active participants.

(2) Platform: The platform is the carrier that allows the community to exist; all members must and can only communicate and interact through the platform. The platform can be further divided into online platforms and offline gathering and communication platforms. Offline activities are meant to increase contact points and frequencies between fans and between fans and the company.

(3) Rules: A community is composed of diverse members, and different people will naturally have different opinions and ideas. Therefore, if a community wishes to operate normally and healthily, it must establish corresponding rules and regulations, set entry barriers, and filter out individuals who do not belong to the group.

(4) Content: The initial intention of establishing a community may simply be to facilitate communication and interaction among members with similar interests and hobbies. However, as the number of members in the community increases, commercial activities will inevitably arise. The success of these commercial activities is due to planning topics that can generate widespread interest among members. In this sense, the essence of community marketing is scenarization, and the only thing that can create scenarios in the group is the topic.

Good Operation#

Good community operation is the basic premise for commercial activities to intervene. In the process of community operation, the following four basic elements should be grasped:

(1) Sense of Honor. This refers to granting honors to members who contribute to the community's growth or are willing to share their personal resources with the community, including expert/loyal fan symbols, group initiation ceremonies, etc.

(2) Sense of Participation. The sense of participation has two aspects: one is participation in products, i.e., interacting with users to improve products; an example of a product-based community is the Xiaomi community. The second aspect is participation in marketing, relying on users' word-of-mouth to enhance dissemination and marketing, allowing users to feel a sense of participation, which is almost a necessary path for users to convert into fans. Users also need this sense of achievement from participation. Whether it's a heated debate on Weibo or a post on a forum, these are effective forms of participation, and the premise is to design open nodes, i.e., which links to open up for user participation.

(3) Sense of Organization. All activities conducted by the community online and offline must have clear purposes and detailed norms, especially in commercial activities, where it is essential to promptly digitize the operational process of activities and provide feedback.

(4) Sense of Belonging. If the above three points are well executed, a sense of belonging will naturally arise.

Stability must provide members with stable service output, which is the value for members to join and stay in the group. For example, Luo Pang insists on delivering a voice message every day, Da Xiong regularly shares valuable content, Qiu Ye offers courses and hands-on practice, and certain industry groups can regularly take orders.

Product output and user benefit returns. Product output includes products, crowdfunding, etc., while user benefit returns include distribution, product trials, etc.

Easily Replicable

Since the core of the community is emotional belonging and value recognition, the larger the community, the greater the possibility of emotional fragmentation. If a community can successfully replicate multiple parallel communities, it will form a massive scale, inevitably achieving a balance between emotional belonging and value recognition.

The replication of products must be prepared on three levels.

(1) Creation of the Core Layer. Has a self-organization been established? Are there sufficient human, financial, and material resources? It cannot revolve too much around the center, but it also cannot lack organization entirely.

(2) Formation of Subculture. Is the value orientation of the product clear? Is there a consistent attitude towards the product? Are there relatively fixed community rules? Has a subculture of group communication formed, such as whether the tone and style of expressions in conversations are consistent? These are all core elements of community vitality.

(3) Cultivation of Multi-Centers. Has a core group been formed? There should be a certain number of core members who can join as seed users of the community, guiding the product towards a positive direction.

The world of information aggregation on the internet is akin to a cocktail party. The cocktail party metaphor applies not only to internet social media but also to all enterprises and our daily lives. Yes, it has been proven that internet social media, enterprises, and daily life are not much more complex than a cocktail party.

Listening, telling great stories, responding actively, being sincere, passionate, and grateful will repeatedly make one the star of the gathering and gain the most value from it. Those who are direct, transparent, know how to keep things simple, and always bring surprises are the people worth engaging with. Those who can go with the flow (adapt) and know how to act within a group are the ones you want to develop into your circle. Such individuals can also succeed in the vast cocktail party known as the business world. When faced with quick decisions, whether the decision is big or small, it is worth asking yourself: "Would this be a winning decision at a cocktail party?" If the answer is a resounding "yes," then you might be onto something. If you are unsure, perhaps you need to rethink your decision. Yes, it really is that simple.

1. The market is a dialogue.
2. The market is composed of specific individuals, not abstract groups derived from market statistics.
3. Dialogues between people sound humanistic, and such dialogues are conveyed in a humanistic voice.
4. Whether conveying information, opinions, views, dissent, or humorous asides, the characteristics of a humanistic voice are: frank, simple, and unpretentious.
5. People establish recognition through this humanistic voice.
6. The internet allows free communication between people, something that was impossible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks have disrupted rigid hierarchies.
8. Customers on the internet and employees within corporate intranets are communicating in a powerful new way.
9. This online communication fosters the emergence of strong new social organizations and new forms of knowledge exchange.
10. As a result, customers are becoming increasingly savvy, well-informed, and organized. Participation in online markets has fundamentally transformed people.
11. Participants in online markets have realized that the information and help they receive from each other far exceed what businesses provide. The sweet talk of enterprises is merely to inflate the price of goods.
12. There are no secrets. Online customers know more about a company's products than the company itself. Regardless of whether the news is good or bad, online customers will disclose it to the world.
13. The change in customers also occurs among employees; "the company" is merely an abstract concept between customers and employees.
14. The tone of a company's statements differs from these new forms of online communication. When companies speak to potential online audiences, they sound hollow, superficial, and cold.
15. In a few years, the current prevalent business tone—those corporate mission statements and marketing manuals—will sound as contrived as the language of the 18th-century French court.
16. Companies that use bombastic, circus-like language will find no audience.
17. If companies believe that online customers are no different from those accustomed to watching product TV ads, they are deceiving themselves.
18. If companies fail to realize that their customers have become internet individuals, learning to engage deeply in communication, they will miss opportunities.
19. Nowadays, companies can communicate directly with customers. If they mess up this opportunity, there will be no second chance.
20. Companies need to understand that their customers often mock them, and the target of their mockery is the company itself.
21. Companies need to loosen up and not always maintain a serious facade; they should have a sense of humor.
22. Having a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the company website; it should focus on important values, humility, frankness, and sincere opinions.
23. Companies trying to position themselves need to choose a stance that aligns with what their customers truly value.
24. Overblown self-promotion—"Our positioning is to become an excellent supplier in a certain field"—does not indicate a clear stance.
25. Companies should step out of their ivory towers and engage with those they wish to establish business relationships with.
26. Public relations have nothing to do with the public; companies feel intimidated when facing customers.
27. By using bland, self-righteous language, companies erect barriers that keep customers at bay.
28. Most marketing plans are based on a fear: companies are afraid customers will discover the true state of affairs within the company.
29. The most accurate statement is: "If we harbor suspicion, we cannot coexist."
30. Customer loyalty to a company means stable performance, but the relationship is bound to break, and this outcome can happen at any time. Because customers are now connected to the internet, savvy customers can quickly renegotiate business relationships.
31. Online customers can switch suppliers overnight, and employees may quit their bosses over a meal. Your layoff measures raise the question: "Loyalty? What is that?"
32. Savvy customers will find suppliers with whom they share a common language.
33. Learn to speak in a humanistic tone; you cannot learn this in some high-level meetings.
34. To speak in a humanistic tone, companies must genuinely consider their customer base.
35. But first, companies should join the customer base.
36. Companies must ask themselves: Where are the boundaries of our corporate culture?
37. If their corporate culture does not resonate with the customer base, they will have no customers.
38. The foundation for people to recognize each other and form groups is dialogue—humanistic statements addressing issues that concern people.
39. This exchange group is the transaction object.
40. Companies that do not belong to any exchange group will not survive.
41. Companies are keen on secrecy, but to a large extent, this is unnecessary. Most companies are less vigilant against their competitors than they are against their own customers and employees.
42. Employees within companies also communicate directly through the internet, discussing topics beyond rules, directives, and profit margins.
43. Nowadays, such conversations only happen within the company's internal network, provided everything is normal.
44. Companies often tightly control their intranets to disseminate human resources policies and other company information, while employees tend to ignore these as much as possible.
45. Corporate intranets can become dull and tedious, which is natural. The best corporate intranets are built collaboratively by busy employees who want to create something more valuable: internal communication dialogue.
46. A well-functioning corporate intranet can organize employees in various ways, achieving results far more significant than any organizational program.
47. Although this worries clueless companies, they also rely on corporate intranets to generate and share important information. They always want to "improve" or control such network dialogues, but they should abandon this urgent need.
48. When a company's intranet is free from fear and rules, the way employees communicate will resemble conversations occurring in online markets.
49. The hierarchical structure of companies that worked in the past economic system can no longer function; various plans can be fully understood, and detailed work instructions are transmitted from top to bottom.
50. Nowadays, corporate organizational structures are organized by hyperlinks, rather than vertically; respect for practical knowledge outweighs respect for abstract authority.
51. The management style of domination and control stems from and reinforces bureaucratic tendencies, power desires, and paranoid cultures.
52. Paranoia stifles communication dialogue. Without open communication, companies will not survive.
53. Two types of dialogues are taking place: one is internal to the company, and the other is among customers.
54. In most cases, both dialogues are not proceeding smoothly, and the reasons for failure can almost always be traced back to outdated concepts of domination and control.
55. As policies, these concepts are quite harmful; as means, they have also lost their effectiveness. Domination and control will be met with hostility among knowledge workers on corporate intranets and will arouse suspicion among customers on the internet.
56. These two dialogues are willing to communicate with each other; they speak the same language and recognize each other's tones.
57. Savvy companies will proactively make way and help inevitable events happen sooner.
58. If a company's willingness to make way is used as a measure of intelligence, then very few companies possess such intelligence.
59. Although companies have not yet clearly realized this, internet users view companies as quirky virtual entities that actively prevent these two dialogues from intersecting.
60. This is tantamount to suicide. Because customers want to communicate with companies.
61. Sadly, the role that companies play in the communication customers desire often hides behind aggressive marketing and falsehoods.
62. Customers do not wish to communicate with salespeople; they want to engage in dialogue behind the company's firewall.
63. Stop hiding; stand up like a normal person: We are customers, and we want to talk to you.
64. We want to know your company's information, your plans and strategies, your best ideas, and your real information. We will not settle for glossy brochures or superficial websites lacking substance.
65. We are also the employees who ensure your company operates well, and we want to speak directly with consumers, not recite clichés.
66. Whether as customers or employees, we are tired of obtaining information remotely. Why should we introduce ourselves through anonymous annual reports and third-party market surveys?
67. As customers and employees, we want to know why you are unwilling to listen; what you say sounds like another language.
68. What you trumpet in the media and at conferences—those self-aggrandizing platitudes—what do they have to do with us?
69. Perhaps you impress investors and Wall Street, but you do not impress us.
70. If you cannot impress us, your investors will lose their money; don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t allow you to speak like that.
71. Your stale market concepts fail to capture our attention. In your plans, we see no place for ourselves—perhaps because we have found better alternatives.
72. We prefer this new market; in fact, we are already creating it.
73. Welcome to join us, but this is our territory; please take off your shoes before entering. If you want to do business, put away your lofty attitude!
74. We are not swayed by advertising; stop thinking about advertising.
75. If you want us to communicate with you, then tell us something. To facilitate communication, share something interesting.
76. We have some thoughts for you. We need new tools, better services—basically, things we are willing to pay for. Can we talk sometime?
77. You are too busy doing business to reply to our emails? That’s unfortunate; we’ll come back later. Hopefully, we will return.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
79. We want you to shed illusions, escape neurotic narcissism, and join our party.
80. Don’t worry; you can still make money. That is, provided you don’t only think about making money.
81. Have you noticed that money, in itself, is a bit dull? Can we talk about something else?
82. Your product is broken; why? We want to ask the person who made it. Your company’s business strategy is unreasonable. We want to talk to your president; what do you mean he is not available?
83. We hope you value us, the 50 million customers, as much as you value a reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
84. We know some people in your company who perform excellently online. How many more talents like this do you have hidden? Can they come out to play with us?
85. Whenever we encounter problems, we seek help from each other. If you manage your people less tightly, perhaps they will also be within our reach for help.
86. When we are no longer busy being your target customers, many of us are your employees. We prefer to chat online with friends rather than stare at the clock waiting for work to end. This will spread your reputation more widely than spending millions of dollars on a website. But you tell us that talking to customers is the marketing department's job.
87. If you can recognize this situation, we would be pleased; that would be really good. But if you think we are holding our breath waiting, you are making a big mistake.
88. We have better things to do. Whether you can timely shift your mindset to do business is not our concern. Business is just a part of our lives. It seems that business is everything to you. Think about it: who really cannot do without whom?
89. We hold the real power, and we know it. If you cannot see this point, there will be others who are more attentive and pleasant to deal with.
90. Even if it is not the best, our newly established communication will be more interesting than most business performances and more entertaining than any TV drama, and certainly more realistic than any corporate website we have seen.
91. We are loyal to ourselves, our new allies, acquaintances, and even our adversaries. Companies that cannot play such roles have no future.
92. Many companies have spent billions of dollars on the millennium crisis; why do they not hear the "customer" time bomb ticking? This time, the danger is even greater.
93. We exist both inside and outside the company. The various boundaries that isolate our dialogues look like the Berlin Wall; these boundaries are annoying and useless, and we know they will collapse. We will push from both sides to facilitate their collapse.
94. For traditional enterprises, online communication may seem confusing and sound annoying, but we establish order faster than traditional enterprises. We have better tools and more new ideas, with no outdated practices holding us back.
95. We are awakening and connecting with each other. We are observing, but we will not wait.

Decentralization#

1. Provide individuals with means to manage their relationships with various organizations. These means are private, meaning they belong to individuals and are under their control. They can also be socialized, meaning individuals can use these means to connect with others and support collective organization and activities, but they must first be privatized.

2. Make individuals the collection center of their own data, so that transaction history, health records, membership details, labor contracts, and other types of personal data do not become scattered across numerous basements.

3. Empower individuals with the ability to selectively share data without disclosing personal information they do not wish to reveal.

4. Empower individuals to control how their data is used by others and for how long. This control includes reaching agreements with users: once the relationship ends, the user should delete that individual's data.

5. Empower individuals to set their own service terms, reducing or eliminating the need for unreadable, coercive service terms set by various organizations.

6. Provide individuals with means to express personal needs openly in the market, free from disclosing personal information.

7. Use open standards, open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), and open source code as the foundation for relationship management. Countless new enterprises and commodified social tools will emerge as a result.

The so-called privacy, confidentiality, and security measures are mostly artificially created scarcities destined to fail. There is only one way to keep secrets: tell no one. The internet is completely contrary to this; it is like a giant copying machine, as Kevin Kelly reminds us. What happens when you connect something to the internet? It becomes easier for people to copy it. People have discovered this issue and have tried to intervene to make copying increasingly difficult. Where there are artificially created scarcities, there will always be those who boldly create abundance, so artificially creating scarcity is destined to fail.#

This is precisely the work that social media is doing, breaking down artificially created scarcities. The artificially scarce situation has harmed many organizations. Exclusive reporting was once the core concept of traditional journalism, and this is a typical example of artificially created scarcity. Soon, this will become history.

The operational costs of social software are often very low. Costs and value exist in how people use the software and in the content they contribute and share. We once introduced communication software within the company, and not long after, I received a very representative email: write a blog.

The first force is the consumer demand for simplicity and convenience, as people increasingly value their time. This has led to the demand for self-service, which in turn gives consumers control. Self-service examples are crucial to "internetism." Over the years, through conversations with several authors, I have increasingly realized this. For consumers, DIY (Do It Yourself) is undoubtedly a good thing. DIY contains no artificially created scarcity.

The second force is the development of open multi-sided platforms in business, based on a profound understanding of what Doc Searls calls the "Because Effect." If something is scarce, you can make money off it; scarcity has market value. If something is abundant, you earn money because of it, but not by using it. Google and Amazon have made money from the Linux operating system, but they are not making money by utilizing the Linux system.

In short: barriers are collapsing. As goods become increasingly commonplace, and as the "Because Effect" gains more influence in the industry, consumers are reclaiming their voices. The new generation of youth is participating in work under these circumstances, and they have tools that are more conducive to collaboration, making everything ready for "internetism" to enter people's offices soon.