Possibility

My word is “possibility”.

For the word “possibility”, I could immediately associate a recent popular word “self-media”. The development of technology gives unlimited possibilities for modern people to take advantage of the convenience of Internet. “Self-media” is one of the reflections of the possibilities the information age provides.

Jun Lei, a representative figure in the field of self-media, creates three of the most successful self-media websites in China. I watched an interview of him and I found some interesting thoughts from him.

“Xiao Ka Xiu” is a typical product from his company. Users could perform any famous movie scenes or TV series scene under the background voice of the original actor. The contrast between the original voice background and the various unprofessional performances from the users gives the mixed videos unexpected funny effect.

At first, Jun Lei wanted to make “Xiao Ka Xiu” into a tool product and its frequency of use was quite low. He decided to change “Xiao Ka Xiu” into a community-based website. Users became more active after the transition, since the hits of their videos are counted and they could attract new fans by their videos. The performances of the users became more and more interesting under the impetus of the community-based structure. Thus, the website has many updates of fresh videos every day.

Jun Lei mentions a keyword in the interview - “adhesiveness of users”. After the transition of community-based structure, users could make friends and “like” one another’s videos, which add the “adhesiveness of users”. Users’ frequency of use and enthusiasm of creating videos are largely increased.

He also concludes a factor from all the popular self-media products he has created – user needs. In his words, the more needs of the users are satisfied from the self-media product, the more energy the users will create for the self-media product. Since people are preferring the idea of being followed or following interesting accounts, the idea of community-based websites is born at the right moment. Nowadays, almost every field of websites could be developed into community-based websites. This method may be a trend for future websites.