6 posts tagged “spam”
"To grow bigger" is an inevitable pressure rising from within.
[+] The Internet was born to be open.
The Internet was born to be open and free. Since the time when people established the underlying architecture of communications network, the Internet was endowed with the attributes of a decentralized architecture like its genes. Some negative impacts have come along, such as issues of online security and spams. Yet as such things are the consequences of the working of the Internet's genes, they are meant to subsist. For those Internet businesses that go against the Internet's innate characteristics, they would inevitably face tremendous pressure from competition.
Ten years ago, the Internet had posed a severe challenge to the conventional logic of business world – monopoly - , especially of the capital-intensive media industry. The Internet broke the structure and created an opening. An open Internet enabled more content partners to join. Free Internet services quickly drew in a large number of users. People running Internet companies were aware that only through opening up themselves could they continue to grow.
As the Internet follows the pattern of scale economy, inevitably, there is always an innate pressure for Internet businesses "to grow bigger." They need to quickly increase their user base and traffic to achieve a comparatively low marginal cost. One way to grow big fast is to offer free services; to open and embrace more partners is another. During the first decade of the Internet, these two methods seemed to work well.
Now we've seen a third method emerges with Web 2.0 - social network. The way social network works is similar to multi-level marketing. Spreading from one user's social network to another's and then many others', social network services quickly accumulate a huge amount of users. However, the pressure to grow bigger never wanes. Following the innate nature of the Internet - open and free - , renowned social network services providers have come up with solutions: an open platform and opening up users' profiles.
[+] No opening up, no monopoly
Doesn't it sound paradoxical? The only way to achieve a monopolistic position on the Internet is through opening up. In the conventional business world, businesses that survive fierce competition would build bulwarks to enclose its empire within and erect competition barriers. This is why we've seen the first-generation Internet companies, such as Yahoo!, developing into new monopolies. It seems that they have followed the same trajectory of history.
If its monopolistic advantage can last out, why would Yahoo! have Yahoo! Open Strategy? Why would a monopoly need to open itself up? The reason is new players keep coming on the stage, first Google, and later MySpace and Facebook. They have come with a new revolutionary power to rewrite the old business rules, and on the Internet, the revolution can happen at an astonishingly fast speed.
Openness is embedded in the genes of the Internet. It is difficult to monopolize the Internet marked with a decentralized architecture. Internet companies are constantly under pressure for growth, and putting up walls is not good for growing big because no Internet company, however powerful it may be, can monopolize the traffic on the Internet with its own websites - the majority of the traffic is always fall outside its own websites.
Moreover, new comers will exercise the power of openness to challenge the success of existing players. One of the most successful products of Google is the omnipresent Adsense, but Google has been threatened first by Facebook, which took the lead to open its platform, and later by MySpace, which was the first to open up users' profiles. They have unsettled both Yahoo! and Google. More openness leads to greater competition.
[+] Technological innovation is a key catalyst.
The first-generation Internet aggregates and opens up "content;" typical examples are portals like Yahoo!, and issues concerned around copyrights, trading of content and the transformation of patterns of mass communications. The second-generation Internet aggregates and opens up personal relationships; typical examples are social network websites like MySpace, and issues concerned around privacy, property rights of personal data and the transformation of patterns of interpersonal communications.
A key catalyst of all the changes is technological innovation, such as standardization of data exchange and standardization of applications interoperability. The former refers to the prevalence of document (e.g. XML) exchange standards and the later the sophistication of Web Service. The former enables users to insert content of one website to other websites; the latter allows users to embed a function module of one website to other websites.
10 years ago, when a portal wanted to use the content of a certain media company, both parties would need to go through a lengthy process of program development and docking. Now, website operators share their content in standard RSS format freely. When this becomes a common practice, the barriers to content exchange are instantly pulled down, and content may flow more rapidly on the Internet.
The concept of open platform, first raised by Facebook, is to allow applications of other websites to be embedded on Facebook. On the other hand, the idea to open users' profiles, first brought up by MySpace, is to enable users to embed their personal profiles onto other websites. The mode of the former is like "one-stop shopping"; the latter is more like "take out" - portable personal profile.
Furthermore, the idea, initiated long ago, to integrate various login ID's for different websites into a universal one, has been back to the talk again. The Internet world is sure to become more transparent with data flowing faster and content and functions among websites more integrated. It will affect the closer integration of industry chains, the decline of old business giants and the emergence of new ones, disputes over privacy issues and so on.
Openness is a path of no return, but where is it going to take us?
- Read More
Prev : New Landscape in China's Telecom Market (8) WAP Sector Is Slowing Down
Next : Openness, where is it going to take us? (2)
- Today in History
Openness, where is it going to take us? (1) - 2008/11/09
The Web 2.0 Revolution (10) the Big Future of Web 3.0 - 2006/11/05
I see the light of hope: this could be used to have people subscribe to newsletter.
[+] 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.
- Read More
Prev : The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (2) RSS Tracking Next : The Mist of 3G in China (1) 3G Makes No Profit
- Today in History
The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (3) IM Marketing - 2007/01/07
"The personalized RSS Feed subscription URL" is the ultimate solution to the issue of user tracking.
[+] The preciseness challenge for RSS subscription marketing
As a matter of fact, RSS subscription marketing is not able to track users' activities because of its open feature. Currently, most of website operators provide open RSS Feed URLs that could be obtained and added to the reader software by everyone.
The idea of one-to-one marketing, the most advocated personalized marketing in the Internet age, thus collapses because website operators are not able to identify subscribers, not mention to track and analyze their post-subscription behavior. That is the preciseness challenge for RSS subscription marketing.
Before we find solutions to that problem, let's look back at how previous Internet marketing tracks subscribers. First of all, newsletter subscribers have to leave their email addresses or register to become members. Therefore we have the basis to identify users: user name or email address.
When a website operator sends out newsletters or marketing emails, the typical way is to insert a transparent image in the email in order to track whether the user has opened this email. When the image is displayed on the user's screen, the server on the operator's end will create an access record.
The image is imperceptible since it's transparent. Actually, the user's email address or user name has already been sent back to the server at the moment when the image is displayed. Therefore, the website operator knows which user has opened this email.
After identifying who has opened this email and comparing with the user's registration information, it is not a problem at all for the website operator to obtain information such as the gender ratio of the user group, its age distribution, even previous website shopping records of the user, etc.
[+] The tracking method of traditional email marketing
In addition, the email sent out may have many links in it, which in fact may carry the reader's personal identification information such as the user's name or email address. When the reader clicks on these links, the operator will know which member has clicked on which link.
Therefore, it is completely possible to analyze which members open the marketing emails after they receive them, which links they click on and what they do on the website. The similar system can even track how many times the reader forwards the email to others.
For a user of the Internet, the above sounds horrible, doesn't it? Such things are taking place in your daily life but you are just not aware of them. However, current anti-spam mail systems are becoming smarter. They start to help you filter those images that contain tracking technologies.
At the beginning, the anti-spam mail technology is used to get rid of spam mails. But nowadays, even the most honest website operators are severely impacted. Sometimes, even the registration confirmation email or inquiry email for recovering the user's forgotten password could not be delivered, not mention those marketing emails.
RSS is an emerging way to keep in touch with users. But its anonymity bothers operators a lot. However, operators are still able to track users' reading behavior as long as they make some changes to the RSS subscription method.
The key point, which I believe, is called "personalized RSS Feed URL".
[+] Introducing "personalized RSS Feed"
You can find the typical open RSS Feed on many websites, such as:
Digital Wall (English version): http://english.digitalwall.com/rss20/rss_eng.xml
Obviously, this kind of RSS subscription website doesn't have personal identification information. When 30,000 users subscribe to the above websites through their RSS reader software, the operator cannot tell who they are.
If the URL of RSS Feed is changed to:
http://english.digitalwall.com/rss20/rss_eng.may@yahoo.com.xml
Do you notice that I added a personal identification information - email address in the RSS Feed URL? In other words, "personalized RSS Feed URL" is the ultimate solution to the issue of user tracking, that is, to issue each person a different RSS Feed.
Website operators should use the personalized RSS Feed URL instead of the open one. Those who want to become subscribers have to register as a member or leave email addresses in order to obtain the unique RSS Feed. It is up to the user to choose from email subscription or personalized RSS Feed.
Website operators might be afraid. Will that establish an obstacle to subscription? I have to point out that operators used to ask users to register membership or leave their email addresses to become subscribers. What is the difference from the personalized RSS Feed?
It's easier for the website operators who already have newsletter subscribers or members to transit from email subscription to RSS subscription. By creating a unique RSS subscription URL for each user, the operator can inform the user of this option every time when he logs in.
The subsequent analysis of users' reading behavior is similar to that of email marketing. As long as the user is identified, it is easy to perform any analysis. So far, a RSS advertising market is emerging: to insert advertisement in RSS Feed according to the user's identification information.
[+] The privacy issue
The above proposal might be rejected by fundamentalists who think that it violates the idea of RSS open message publishing. Years ago, when emails were used as spam mails for the first time, fundamentalists reacted drastically, but spam mails became part of our daily life at last.
In fact, most things prevail out of commercial demand. It has been at least seven years since website operators started to do user analysis through their email reading behavior, not mention that Amazon started very early to analyze users' shopping habits through their website surfing behavior long time ago.
Will that violate the right of users' privacy? It is the same to ask whether the email tracking technology violates the right of privacy. Now that the former has existed for such a long time, probably the latter will develop rapidly as long as there is strong commercial demand.
The difference is that basically the control is retained in readers' hand with RSS subscription. As long as readers find out that the content is not good or the advertisement is too much or even the update is too frequent, they can keep themselves from disturbance by simply unsubscribing from the reader software. This feature will constrain operators who use RSS marketing not to abuse it.
- Read More
Prev : The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (1) RSS Marketing Next : The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (3) IM Marketing
- Today in History
The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (2) RSS Tracking - 2006/12/24
Dream of "Digital Furniture" Store - 2003/12/28
Is there still any reliable way to distribute information in the disordered world of Internet?
[+] Emails are not reliable
In a busy office, Chen is confirming with the client on the phone whether the price list has been received which is just sent by fax. Fax as an outdated technology is not so reliable. Loss of documents happens from time to time. Telephone follow-up is therefore necessary.
Meanwhile, Li, who sits next to Chen, is apologizing on the phone to the client, because he had thought the client had received the email he sent out, but obviously the client does not. The client is outraged. Li ensures that the email has already been sent out. Although feeling aggrieved, Li has to make apology.
Ms. Zheng, who sits behind, has just purchased a purse from the net. The browser shows the transaction is successfully completed, but she still has not received the confirmation email from the online shopping site. She calls the customer service, they send the email again, but she still fails to receive it.
Secretary Tao wants to subscribe to several newsletters to learn more industry knowledge. The website indicates that the registration won't be successful until she clicks the link in the confirmation email. But she does not receive it even after waiting for the entire afternoon. So, she wants to change the email address, but is not allowed to login to do so because she has not obtained the membership yet.
The company's IT manager has just sent out an email, stating that the anti-spam mail system he recently brought in performs extremely well, and saves a lot of money for the company to process spam mails. The others are going to an uproar at that, because bunches of their emails have been filtered by the system.
[+] Worries of website operators
Ironically, people who purchase anti-spam software to get rid of the increasing spam mails often find friends' emails in the spam mail box. The software is useless if the user reduces its sensitivity, because by doing so, he has to filter hundreds of spam mails by hand every day.
From the perspective of the website operator, the traditional website design is based on the principle of 'emails are going to be received'. However, now they have to reconsider the website design and additional service costs under the assumption that emails could not be received.
I used to see an shopping website teaching users how to set up the white list function in their Yahoo! email box to receive member newsletters and marketing messages from the website. The power and effect of marketing has been largely reduced by doing so, because few people will bother to set up that function.
Realizing that email as a way of Internet marketing is doomed to fade away, I have studied the ranking methodology of search engines since early 2005, and wrote three articles entitled "The Third Generation of Internet marketing: Search Engine Marketing" in April of the same year, and used the skills in those articles till now.
Improving the ranking on search engines will help websites to constantly attract visits. But that is only helpful to obtain new clients. For the old ones, email is still an important tool, but becoming increasingly ineffective. It is really worrying to see the reach rate of the newsletter keeps going down.
[+] Microsoft IE 7.0 paves the way for the prevalence of RSS
The first generation of Internet marketing is the purchase of the website banner advertisement starting from 1998. The second generation refers to the email marketing coming afterward, while the third generation is called search engine marketing. Then what else to do after all of the three approaches have been used up?
Or I should ask in this way: in such a disordered Internet, is there still any reliable way to distribute information? I used to count on the newly emerging dissemination method - RSS. My website - Digital Wall - started to provide RSS subscription in 2004. Currently, the pageview of RSS almost accounts for half of that of the website.
In spite of that, RSS is still a subscription method difficult to explain, and needs to install special reader software. It sounds difficult to expect ordinary readers or consumers to download and install certain software in order to subscribe to newsletter.
In addition, I think that the user interface of RSS is a big issue. In the instant when the visitor clicks the 'RSS' or 'XML' icon, the XML markup language pops up, and that is too overwhelming to make the subscription intuitive.
The good news is that Microsoft IE 7.0 has embedded RSS subscription function and provides more user-friendly interface and gets rid of the long strings of XML. With the gradual update of the browser version, users will no longer need to download and learn how to use additional readers.
[+] Those who can analyze RSS users will grasp business opportunities
Although the subscription procedure of RSS is not so intuitive, website operators at least do not need to write user instructions for different RSS readers, instead they can only provide the illustration for IE 7.0. Therefore, operators should be prepared with the advent of IE 7.0 as soon as possible.
It can be seen that, for website operators, RSS subscription will gradually replace email. While for users, RSS is a way to regain the right of use, because they can receive the latest messages without leaving any information on the website.
However, that brings a new problem for website operators. Before, receivers' activities could be traced by the hyperlinks embedded in the email, such as whether they kept shopping on the website, whether they were male or female, how old they were, etc.
Since RSS is based on open subscription, registered members do not need to leave any information. Therefore, operators are not able to know who the subscribers are, not mention to analyze their activities after receiving new messages. Operators are nearly uninformed, because they can only measure the result of the marketing on the basis of RSS pageview.
If any website operator could solve the issue of RSS subscriber behavior analysis regarding to Internet marketing and website operation, they will grasp huge business opportunities, because the email marketing has faded away. In a user-as-king era prompted by browsers, RSS will become the new mainstream.
- Read More
Prev : Great Future of Wireless Broadband (4) WiMax, 3G and 4G Next : The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (2) RSS Tracking
- Today in History
The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (1) RSS Marketing - 2006/12/17
Internet and Books (2) the Supply for Content Exceeds the Demand - 2005/12/11
VoIP (4) Dual-network Handsets Will Die of Subsidies - 2004/12/19
VoIP (3) Phone Number Is Vital - 2004/12/12
We can treat Blog as a "personal publishing system."
[+] Blog is about keeping a diary online.
"Blog" can be translated to Chinese as "Wang Zhi" (literally "online journal") semantically, or "Bu Lo Ge" phonetically. In China it is also known as "Bo Ke". If we follow the semantic translation, we can know that Blog is actually about writing journals via the Internet. You can keep your diary on a website that offers Blog functions.
What to write about then? Well, you can write whatever you feel like, from petty things in daily life, thoughts about work, gourmet's reviews, to dating experience and a great many. If you feel it's a bit unorganized this way, Blog websites also provide categorization facilities to help you arrange your articles. Some of them allow you to upload photos or to choose your favorite layout.
We can treat Blog as a "personal publishing system". All major news websites have a publishing system at the backend to allow editors to publish their news articles to the webpages of the websites. Blog websites provide such function to ordinary users so that they can publish their articles on the websites too.
Once you register an account on the website providing Blog service and select the layout your desire, you can start writing your own diary. This kind of free Blog website will usually attract a lot of people to write journals on it. These many journals will then be grouped into different categories, giving a sense of tribal units, which makes "Bu Lo Ge", meaning tribes in Chinese literally, a vivid translation.
There are also paying Blog services offering sophisticated facilities, huge capacity and personalized URL's. You can have functions originally designed for large-scale news websites with affordable monthly subscription. Seeing this, I cannot but sigh with envy: I could have spared a lot of efforts should Blog have been available at the time when I was writing the program of my personal website Digitalwall.com.
In fact, Digitalwall is a kind of Blog. Although there is no such term as Blog when my websites first appeared, if you put aside the technical issue, you'll find that they are absolutely a Blog whether in terms of practice or substance.
[+] The Blog spirit echoes to the calling of the me generation
This is a time of the "me generation", and "We the Media" is very much the embodiment of the time. Yet there is a difference about Blog. With Blog, people are not only free to speak whatever their want, but their words and ideas can be "published" onto the Internet, which has become a sort of mass media, in a very inexpensive way.
In the past, without being reported by the media, there is no way that your words and thought can be known to the world. The mass media even have the right to "interpret your words" and to "garble your statement". Now you don't need to cope with these reporters and intermediaries any more. You can write whatever you want to the world.
Blog also stands for a belief about life, the essence of which "I think, I write, and I reflect upon myself". This is the purpose of keeping a diary, and there is nothing extraordinary in it. Regular writing on the Net naturally prompts one to review and introspect oneself.
The beauty of Blog is that it allows users to give responses and to create links. Readers can voice their thoughts about your articles; links can be set up to connect two different Blogs. If you refer to someone's article in yours, you can build up links between these two through standardized procedures.
Are there other forms of Blogs in addition to diaries? The answer is definitely positive. Blog is a "personal publishing system" for individuals. Some Blog websites are operated as if they are news media. They release news articles regularly through the efforts of "volunteer reporters".
Usually Blogs offer RSS subscription. Once you have RSS reader installed and the RSS feeds of your favorite Blogs configured, the reader will capture the most updated articles for you. It is very much like email newsletter subscription, except that you don't need to leave your personal information even email address.
[+] Blog meets the criterion of Quality Content
The difference between a Blog and a traditional online forum is that the latter is similar to a "public hall" where anyone can come and talk. On the other hand, a Blog is more like "a private room"; you are welcome to pay a visit, and maybe give some opinions on the decor.
Compared with the casual chatting, small talking or even spamming in online char rooms or forums, the content on Blogs is at least the efforts of Bloggers, no matter they are good in style or not. The subjects of Blogs are of a wide variety; so that readers can easily find some things that they have feeling for. As it is "a private room" of the Blogger, s/he will surely pay more attention to writing.
Maybe we can say that the development of the Internet during these years has led to the maturation of standardization of technology and the decrease in bandwidth and storage cost, which has enabled individuals to create their own Internet media. These small websites may not be as fancy as big Internet media run by deep pockets, yet they are complete in every sense.
For Blog service providers, the whole websites were made possible by joint efforts, the content is finally qualified as attractive in some way. Yet there are still obstacles lying ahead. There are still costs of bandwidth, machines and equipment. Are they to be covered by selling advertisements or by subscriptions? These problems remain to be solved.
- Read More
Prev : Media, Community, and Blog (2) The Dream of New Media Next : Media, Community, and Blog (4) Production-Marketing Relations
- Today in History
Predictions on China Internet Market (5) Search Engines - 2006/03/26
Media, Community, and Blog (4) Production-Marketing Relations - 2005/03/27
Media, Community, and Blog (3) Deconstruct Blog - 2005/03/20
Stop Internet Marketing (3) All Determination; No Distribution - 2004/03/21
3G Time Comes (3) SMS, Email and MMS - 2003/03/23
Instead of replacing one another, the three emerge on the stage sequentially.
Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, it is nothing strange today for everyone to have more than one email address. The biggest headache for the mass emails we receive everyday is the fact that they are ridden with so many spam mails that those from our friends or business partners are often overwhelmed.
Now that many of us cannot live without email, it seems very natural to be able to receive and send emails through mobile phones. When mobile operators introduced the WAP-based mobile Internet service many years ago, the mobile email service was one of the intended functions.
Yet ironically, few people actually use that function. Of course, the user group of the WAP-based mobile Internet is really a small one - small enough to be ignored when compared with the total population of computer netizens. And even with such a small number of WAP-based mobile Internet users, not all of them use the WAP-based email service.
Some people blame the complicated operating interface of the handset for such a situation, saying it has added difficulty to receiving and sending emails. However, in terms of the "input interface", it is not a sound reason.
Yes, Chinese character input is troublesome. However, when using it to send SMS, many youngsters are able to move their fingers so dexterously that it seems as easy as having lunch. Why, then, are these youngsters reluctant to use their handsets to receive and send emails?
The answer is there as soon as the question is asked. That is, SMS itself is a kind of email or, in a more exaggerated term, SMS is the email service on a mobile phone.
Technical specialists might disagree with that argument, as technical standards for the email service at both the handset end and server end are completely different from those of SMS.
When we leave aside those technical details, we can see that SMS and email are both communication forms carrying texts. They do not require both parties of the communication to be online simultaneously (as with the case of making a telephone call). For handset users, they are highly substitutable to each other. Whichever gets popular first will be the mainstream service.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), SMS gets the upper hand and becomes the mainstream service, which, inevitably, has squeezed the market room for the handset-based email service. As I have mentioned, consumers do not care about technical issues. While about 2/3 of handset users in Taiwan have never accessed the Internet through the mobile phone, and the threshold for handset-based SMS is extremely low, the answer for which application will mature first is immediately clear.
Now that SMS is in the mainstream, it would be both stupid and difficult in terms of marketing practice to urge consumers to replace SMS with the handset-based email service. The question left is: how to achieve the interoperability between the mobile communication network (SMS) and the Internet (email) without changing the way that consumers have got used to?
Thus, consumers would be able to send emails to a handset, which would be converted to SMS. Likewise, a handset user would be able to send SMS to an Internet email address. As a matter of fact, some operators have already introduced such service, which allows the conversion from email to SMS, and sending them to a handset, and vice versa, SMS into email.
The bottleneck, however, is the billing model. A piece of SMS, which contains up to 70 Chinese characters, would cost NTD 3. Who would be willing to pay such an expensive price? Besides, the operation is more complicated than just receiving and sending emails. This is not a problem that can be addressed by means of discounting or promotion. The nature of the billing model of SMS is incompatible with that of the Internet, which has a different cost structure.
To address that issue, there should be a set of new communication standards that integrate both networks on a single platform to enable the interoperability between both services, and allow users to switch their applications painlessly and use the messaging service across both networks (the mobile communication network and the Internet) without caring about whether the receiving end is a mobile phone number or an email address.
The enabler is MMS, which is a hot topic at the present market. It is not an SMS service, because it sends and receives contents through the Internet. It is neither an email service, because, like SMS, its contents can be sent from one handset directly to another.
For consumers without Internet experiences, it works like an SMS service, as it is used in the same way as SMS. The only difference is, in addition to texts, it also allows the transmission of images and music. For consumers with Internet experiences, it is an email service, as the receiver of the recipient could be an email address.
In fact, when receiving or sending MMS, the handset involved is actually connected to the Internet. But is does not matter to consumers. In other words, smart telecom operators do not intend to tell consumers that they are actually accessing the Internet with their mobile phone.
Operators have realized that, to most consumers, the mobile Internet is something too difficult to understand and also a service they hardly feel they need. The messaging service, however, is not.
Throughout the history of the Internet, the email service has been the largest application, indicating that there is a huge demand for the "asynchronous communication" (one that does not require both parties to be present simultaneously).
Interestingly, in Japan, where the mobile Internet is a highly developed service, SMS has only a small group of users. In some operators' price plan, it is a service that charges additional payment and requires the submission of applications to telecom operators. The reason is simple: as born first, the handset-based email service in Japan is more mature than SMS, and therefore has squeezed the market room of the latter.
It seems that the messaging service is the largest application of 3G mobile communication. Or is it?
If you are aware that the SMS income accounts for less than 5% of the total revenue of mobile operators, you might not draw that conclusion. In the next article, I will talk about the real killer application of 3G: the video phone service.
- Read More
Prev : 3G Time Comes (2) Mobile Internet Is Not the Killer Application Next : 3G Time Comes (4) Video Phone - the Killer Application
- Today in History
Predictions on China Internet Market (5) Search Engines - 2006/03/26
Media, Community, and Blog (4) Production-Marketing Relations - 2005/03/27
Media, Community, and Blog (3) Deconstruct Blog - 2005/03/20
Stop Internet Marketing (3) All Determination; No Distribution - 2004/03/21
3G Time Comes (3) SMS, Email and MMS - 2003/03/23
