The Web 2.0 Revolution (2) the Emergence of New Media
The so-called new media carry second-hand content though.
[+] The Achilles' heel of search engines
Ten years ago when search engines first appear in front of the world, there were only directory search, like those of a yellow pages directory, on their home pages. Search engine operators had their people hooked on the Internet collecting websites and categorizing them; users rely on the stratified categorization to look for websites.
However, there are so many websites that the classification process can go on and on; in addition, people may have different ideas about the classification method. So there is an additional search box to allow keyword search. The design of the home pages were very simple, and even Yahoo! in those days was no different.
Today, we find that the homepage of Google is even more simplified. Compared to those very colorful home pages of major portals, we cannot but wonder if we have returned to the starting point of Internet development after 10 years. As to why the size of search engines keeps growing, there is a simple formula which provides a good answer:
As most people would leave the search engine once they find what they are looking for, the Average Pageview Per Visitor is naturally low. The statistic was around 1.2 at that time as I can remember. This is very serious for those search engine operators attempting to develop themselves into new media.
For media, the most critical thing is the circulation (for newspapers) or viewership (for TV); for websites it would be the Pageview, as to the web pages operators can attach advertisements. If every visitor views only 1.2 pages and then move off, then how are they going to run the advertising business?
[+] Make users stay longer or target at a smaller but quality user group.
From the formula below we can see that to lift the Average Pageview Per Visitor, the search engines operators have to make users stay longer on their websites, or to increase the overall pageviews of the websites. So it is natural to
come up with the idea that "operators need to prepare more content for users".
Yet there seems to be an alternative. We can also interpret the formula as "the Average Pageview Per Visitor" may be lifted by "reducing the total number of website visitors"?! Whenever I raise this point, the audience always burst out laughing: who in the world would do such a thing as to reduce the number of visitors?
Well this does make some sense. From the perspective of marketing, operators can always choose to do business with a limited amount of people, as long as they are of high quality. In other words, it is likely to target at a certain market segment by focusing on a small group of heavy users of search engine service.
It is just that market segmentation can only happen when the market is close to saturation. Ten years ago the commercial conditions of the Internet were at a rough stage. Everyone was thinking about big business. Niche business was something out of the radar screen of the site operators.
However, content production necessary for increasing the "overall pageviews of the website" was not something that the engineers at Silicon Valley were good at. So search engine operators then had to think about where to find the content.
[+] Low cost online publishing
The first solution was to compile "online magazines". In the case of traditional magazines, there are reporters and
editors. After the themes of the current issue are determined in the editors' meeting, the content will be produced
though various brainstorming processes. Then the magazines are printed, published, and sold through channels.
Yet in the case of "online magazines", the content was complied by search engine employees who gathered
interesting websites, classified them into special reports, and put the editorial on the search engine for users. There were no reporters and no new content. There was only editing work involved; no distribution and printing cost.
The "online magazines" did help make users browse and stay longer on the search engine, though they would leave at the end. Here we heard the overture of the changes of the publishing industry triggered by the lowered cost of
bandwidth and storage, which was made possible by the Internet.
Contrary to the relatively high barriers to entry into traditional publishing business, it was very easy for many people or companies to publish their content on the Internet. No printing and no distribution cost. As the amount of online content continued to explode, search engine editors could easily find all sorts of materials to compile.
Nowadays we can hardly see such online magazines, but the huge amount of online content together with powerful search engines have made a large number of people stop buying magazines. The circulation of a popular magazine has reduced more than 50% in ten years.
[+] The so-called new media carry second-hand content though.
To move a step forward, "the borrowing of content" could involve traditional content providers like newspapers and magazines by putting their quality content on search engine websites. In 1998, the diversity of this kind of content led to the conceptualization of "content channels" on search engine websites.
Also, free online service could generate pageviews without involving content production. Therefore, in 1998 we saw free email and online calendar services became popular. Major search engines were eager to provide such services. Advertisements were embedded in the webpages viewed by users.
One more step forward, what about letting users produce the content? In 1999, we saw a lot of chat rooms, forums and even services like Yahoo!Groups which all tried to lead users to form small groups or communities and to produce content through their exchanges. The purpose of search engine operators was to increase pageviews without
bothering making content on their own.
Step by step, search engines turned themselves into general portals by borrowing content and pageviews from the Internet, the partners, and the users. They made their first stride towards becoming new media, though by using second hand content.
Yet these operators expecting to profit from media and advertising business were not aware that there was a cruel fact waiting for them. These portals provided a lot of services to boost their pageviews, without knowing that they could not survive on advertising revenue only.
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