The Next Step for Web 2.0 (1) The Dawn of Emotion Economics

Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Next Step for Web 2.0 (1) The Dawn of Emotion Economics

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

[+] Emotional products in the physical world

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

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

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

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

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

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

[+] Internet from physical to spiritual

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- ...

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

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