【Original #4】Dealmoon: Shopping, Saving and Sharing

Almost everyone loves shopping, and there may be nothing happier than shopping while saving money at the same time. That is also why you should enter to the Dealmoon, a website designed for sharing discount information. On the Dealmoon, users can get information not only from its officials but also from each other.

Dealmoon,which was founded on September 2009, is an online shopping deal site providing products' discount information on clothes, cosmetics, perfumes, travel, electronic devices, healthy food and household appliances. It has two visions in both Chinese and English, which make it more convenient to use for international users. As of 2012, Dealmoon received over five million visitors every month. It was also described as "the biggest shopping advisory site for Chinese-Americans living in the United States". What made Dealmoon so popular and attractive? There are mainly two reasons. On the one hand, Dealmoon tries different ways to create an online community for its users. On the other hand, it also uses social networking sites in order to attract potential users.

First of all, Dealmoon encourages its users to share information in order to help each other. On the homepage of Dealmoon, there are several discount information including coupons, gift cards, and credit card applications.

Users are able to leave comments for every discount information post on Dealmoon, such as whether the product is worth to buy, which may be helpful for other viewers.

There isalso a section called “App Show” on Dealmoon’s homepage, which allows users to post pictures and short reviews of the products they brought through Dealmoon. Hashtags can also be added to these posts, which made it easier for users to find the specific products they are concerned about. Just like Instagram, by clicking different buttons, users can like, share or leave comments to these posts as well. All these functions can help Dealmoon users to get more detailed information directly from each other.

What is more, Dealmoon users can also share other things beyond discount information but related to shopping on this website, which also made it unique. Different from normal shopping websites, there is a section called “Original Guides” on Dealmoon’s homepage.

In this section, users are allowed to post their using experience or recommendations of particular products as many details as they want. Traveling tips and relative experience are also available in this section. By viewing this information, users can quickly find specific products or particular brands they are interested in, which may help them to focus on relative discount information better.

Besides, Dealmoon also used social networking sites to both attract potential users and better improve itself. For a website who wants to get popular among Chinese in the United States, Dealmoon knows the importance of social media usage. Dealmoon has its official account on Sina Weibo and WeChat, which are the most popular social media networking sites in China. Until now, the homepage of Dealmoon Sina Weibo account achieved over 693 million followers and its posts update every day.

To communicate with international users, Dealmoon also had its Facebook and Twitter account. The Facebook homepage of Dealmoon had over 3 million followers and had very high response frequency as well.

All of these accounts share the same thing such as latest discount information, product recommendations and reviews sharing from users every day, which may not only keep Dealmoon active on these social networking sites but also attract more potential users. Users can ask questions and give suggestions through these social accounts, which may also help Dealmoon to make a better improvement.

For users, Dealmoon is not only a website offering discount information but also an online community which allows them to share detailed information with each other. With the help of using several social networking sites, Dealmoon tends to become more popular and attractive. If you are the person who enjoys products that offer the most at the best price, then Dealmoon is the place that you definitely should go.

【Final Presentation】The Power Of Danmu on Bilibili

Welcome to the Danmu World on Bilibili~(￣▽￣)~*

https://prezi.com/tjadugplyjdq/present/?auth_key=7wczxng&follow=5sh9lih7lrjc

【Original #3】NetEase Cloud Music, a Player and a Music Community

       Tired of looking for your favorite music in the vast ocean of information? Want to share your personal feelings with other music lovers? Going to create your own playlists? Then NetEase Cloud Music is the place you should go. At that place, the music will find you.

NetEase Cloud Music, which was released in2013, is a Chinese platform which offers on-demand music-streaming service. Different from general music player apps, NetEase Cloud Music not only has main functions such as music playing, searching and downloading services, but also provides social services to its users. UntilJuly 2016, NetEase Cloud Music had more than 200 million users, with more than10 million songs, 1,500 signed singers, and more than 100 million playlistscreated by users. It also was selected as one of the "Rising StarBrands" by China's widely-read economic journal CBN Weekly in October,2016, because of its excellent performance of music service. And it is the onlymusic application which won that glory.

 Unlike other Chinese music applications, NetEase Cloud Music tries it best to create a music community where users can communicate with each other, rather than only provides general music services. By using NetEase Could Music, users can not only searching, listening, and downloading their favorite music, but also leaving comments, uploading lyric, adding tags, and sharing them to third-party social networking sites. By clicking different buttons, users can reply or “like” other people's comments, and comments which got most “like”s will be stay on the top of the comments area. By using this function, it is convenient for users to share detailed information and their personal feelings of certain music. Netease Cloud Music official holds regularly online thematic activities about music as well, such as interviews of bands and music creators, or introductions of different theme music. All of these features can guarantee the user's activity in Netease Cloud Music.

Personalization is also a major highlight of Netease Cloud Music. Every NetEase Cloud Music user can create multiple “personal playlists”, and was able to add his or her favorite songs to these playlists at any time. Users can also choose to share their personal playlists to the public. Once these personal playlists were shared, other users can also leave comments, share these playlists to third-party social media, or collect these playlists in their “Playlists Collection”, and was able to listen to these playlists at any time. 

By using a technology tool called acoustic fingerprint, which can bedefined as a condensed digital summary that used to identify an audio sampleor quickly locate similar items in an audio database, NetEase cloud music can analyze user's historical play records, then recommend similar music and playlists that they would like to them. Every day you log in NetEase cloud music, you will see “Daily Music Recommendation For You” and “Playlists You May Like” on your front page, which allows you to discover music that fit your taste more easily. Broadcast service is also offered by NetEase Cloud Music, which allows users to upload their personal broadcasts and share them to the public. Users can subscribe broadcasts they in favor of, and receive notifications as soon as these broadcasts updates. By using these functions, users of NetEase cloud music would not be worried about any problems of discovering music. On NetEase cloud music, you are not only searching for the music. Actually, the music comes to you.

As what Zhu Yiwen, the NetEase Cloud Music CEO, said in hisinterview, on NetEase Cloud Music, “userexperience should always come first”. NetEase Cloud Music is both a player and a music community, and users are the one who take control there. For the person who not only wants to find their favorite music, but also prefers to communicate with others, NetEase Cloud Music is the place to be.

【Reading Reaction #2】Zhihu, A Community for Helping Each Other

        Nowadays, people online prefer to get information from each other rather than gain them from traditional institutions. For online communities, sharing and communication are becoming more and more important than before. To pursue this groundswell, companies should try their best to understand and support their users. Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer website which may have similar functions as Quora, has already made it.

     Zhihu, which means “Do you know?” in Classical Chinese, was released to the public on January 26, 2011. Five years later, Zhihu already had 50 million registered users and the average daily active users amounted to 13 million. It had produced a total of 10 million questions, 34 million replies and 35 million approvals until May, 2016. In order to become attractive and successful, Zhihu pursues the groundswell by listening, energizing and supporting its users.

First of all, Zhihu uses different ways to get suggestions from its users for improvement. As what Liand Bernoff mentioned in their book about groundswell, companies should use the groundswell in order to better understand their customers. That was what Zhihu did. As a question-and-answer website, Zhihu has a function called “Personal Mail”, which allows users to send messages to each other on Zhihu.

And there is an official account called “Zhihu little steward” on its website. By sending personal mails to this official account, every user can ask questions and give suggestions to Zhihu officials. Zhihu also has its official account on Sina Weibo, a third party social networking site, which means it can get advises and reviews from third parties’ users as well. Zhihu also uses these official accounts to distribute questionnaires yearly in order to get comments from users. By getting feedback in different ways, Zhihu can seek customer insights and improve itself on time.
        What’s more, Zhihu also encourages users to participate more actively in community activities. According to Li and Bernoff’s book, companies should find their most enthusiastic customers and use the groundswell to supercharge them. Zhihu holds a monthly event called “Zhihu Round Table” which invites multiple experts to write answers to a carefully selected question. It also releases a weekly e-magazine called “Zhihu Weekly” to all the users.

Each issue of the magazine will have a special theme, which contains all the popular questions of the particular subject. And the answers which got most approvals will be edited and included in this magazine. By joining in these activities, users can not only get more information, but also show themselves and become well-known in this community.  Users whose answers have been edited to Zhihu Weekly will also get certain payments.

         Besides, as a question-and-answer website, Zhihu pays much attention to methods which can help users to support each other. All the questions in Zhihu are created, answered, edited and organized by the community of its users. If a user feels that there is something wrong with the description of a question, he or she can change it at any time, while other users can view the historical edition of this question.

Zhihu also has a voting mechanism as same as Quora. Users can vote for the answers which they think to be useful, and answers which got most approvals would stay at the top above all the answers.

By using the function called “Focus”, users can follow questions and other users they are interested in. The “Discover” function allows users to find the most popular questions containing the trending answers on the website. Users can also use the “Topic” function to collect recent contents from the topics that they follow.

Zhihu also designed a mobile app called “DuDu Daily” to allow users to personalize and recommend their favorite contents on Zhihu. By using this app, users can design a personalized magazine for themselves. All the methods Zhihu uses will help users to communicate and support with each other better.

     With the development of information technology, compared to the past, online users tend to get things they need from each other now. As a website aims to let users share, communicate and support each other, Zhihu understands the importance of listening, energizing and supporting users. By using different strategies, Zhihu knows how to pursue the groundswell and fit users’ needs. That is also why Zhihu became attractive and successful.

Hitchhikers' Guide To Zhihu (Chinese Ver.)

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