节选写作an excerpt of graduate thesis

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PROJECT YL BY Y ANG LIN SRPING 2015 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the Masters of Science Media Management Program THE NEW SCHOOL DATE OF SUBMISSION: MAY 1 st 2015

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Page 1: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

     

PROJECT  YL  BY  

YANG LIN

SRPING  2015  

 

 

 

A  thesis  submitted  in  partial  fulfillment  

Of  the  requirements  for  the  

Masters  of  Science  Media  Management  Program  

THE  NEW  SCHOOL  

 

 

 

 

DATE OF SUBMISSION: MAY 1st 2015

 

Page 2: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

Contents  

I.  About  “Project  YL”  ...........................................................................................................................  3  

1.  Name  and  Logo  ....................................................................................................................  4  2.  Vision  and  Mission  .............................................................................................................  5  

II.  Research  .............................................................................................................................................  6  

1.  General  Market  ....................................................................................................................  6  2.  Weibo  and  WeChat  .............................................................................................................  8  3.  Trending  Content?  ...........................................................................................................  10  4.  Outcomes  and  Guidance  ...............................................................................................  12  

III.  Operating  ......................................................................................................................................  12  

1.  SWOT  Analysis  ..................................................................................................................  12  2.  Soft  Launch  Operational  Overview  ..........................................................................  13  3.  New  Insights  ......................................................................................................  14  4.  Censorship  Factor  ............................................................................................  18  

IV.  Future  Phases  ..............................................................................................................................  20  

1.  From  Online  to  Offline  ...................................................................................................  20  2.  Advertising  .........................................................................................................................  21  3.  Career  advantage  .............................................................................................................  22  

V.  Conclusion  ......................................................................................................................................  22  

 

Page 3: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

3.  New  Insights  

Page  view  (PV)  was  the  most  important  measurement  for  my  project.  On  my  

Weibo  blog,  most  of  the  articles  got  300  to  500  page  views.  Considering  my  

previous  job  as  a  TV  presenter  provided  many  followers  on  Weibo,  this  was  quite  

a  satisfied  result.  The  top  five  most  viewed  articles  are:  

Top  5  Page  Views  

1   Do  You  Know  the  Director  of  Furious  7  Is  Chinese?  (23k  PV)  

2   Game  of  Throne  And  Ed  Sheeran  (6310  PV)  

3   2015  Corgi  Beach  Party  (3724  PV)  

4   A  Marriage  Proposal  in  Boston  Marathon  (1423  PV)  

5   GIFs  From  the  New  Avengers  2  Trailer  (1210  PV)  

Exhibit  3.  Top  5  Page  Views  

By  classified  the  Top  5,  I  also  confirmed  the  outcome  from  research:  

entertainment  and  emotional  content  were  more  appealing  to  readers.  

My  WeChat  blog  was  newly  established,  which  means  unlike  my  Weibo  blog,  

it  had  zero  followers  at  the  beginning.  I  was  not  sure  how  this  would  influence  

page  views,  so  I  did  two  experiments  to  explore  1)  whether  the  number  of  

followers  would  impact  PV,  and  2)  whether  the  promotion  would  impact  PV.      

On  March  3rd,  I  posted  an  article  called  “13  Pun  Names  From  House  of  Cards”  

on  my  WeChat  blog.  Then  I  contributed  the  same  article  to  another  WeChat  blog  

called  Digger.  The  major  topic  on  Digger  was  related  to  politics  and  news;  though  

my  article  about  House  of  Cards  did  not  fit  its  topic  completely,  it  was  relevant.  A  

few  days  later  on  March  12th,  Digger  posted  my  article  with  minor  changes.  

Page 4: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

Since  WeChat  provided  a  measurement  tool  for  blogs,  I  asked  Digger  to  send  

me  the  information  of  my  article,  and  then  compared  it  with  the  information  I  

acquired  from  my  blog.  The  contrast  was  startling.  

On  my  WeChat  blog,  my  article  was  only  successfully  pushed  to  thirteen  

readers  (readers  could  decide  whether  to  accept  the  pushed  content).  In  the  first  

seven  days,  only  26  people  read  and  three  people  shared.  

 

Push to users 13

Page views 26

Reposts 3

   Chart  5.  My  article  on  my  WeChat  blog  

Meanwhile  on  Digger,  my  article  was  successfully  pushed  to  5,477  people,  

got  1,809  page  views  and  was  shared  141  times.  

 

Push to users 5447

Page views 1809

Reposts 141

   

Chart  6.  My  article  on  Digger’s  WeChat  blog  

Apparently,  my  article  had  more  influence  on  Digger  instead  of  on  my  blog.  

Digger’s  abundant  reader  base  helped  a  lot  with  the  page  views.  However,  it  is  

worth  noticing  that  out  of  5447  users,  only  1809  users  clicked  the  page  after  saw  

20

40

03/03/2015 03/05/2015 03/07/2015 03/09/2015

1000

2000

03/12/2015 03/14/2015 03/16/2015 03/18/2015

Page 5: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

the  title.  The  ratio  is  about  one  third.  The  reason  for  that  is  either  the  title  was  

not  appealing,  or  the  topic  was  not  readers’  preferences—in  another  word,  

readers  on  digger  are  not  my  targeting  audience.  

  Although  that  ratio  on  my  blog  seems  better  than  on  Digger,  it  cannot  

conclude  that  I  successfully  reach  my  audience,  because  the  sampling  numbers  

were  too  few  to  make  a  judgment.  The  probability  is  uncertain,  so  the  ratio  is  

meaningless.  

A  few  days  later,  I  did  the  second  experiment.  On  March  16th,  I  posted  an  

article  called  “Meet  Your  Ancestors  (All  of  Them)1”.  It  was  a  science-­‐topic  article  

translated  and  edited  from  the  same  title  content.  I  kept  the  writer’s  name,  Tim  

Urban,  under  the  title,  and  put  a  link  to  original  website  in  the  end.    

Not  surprisingly,  it  also  had  a  bad  performance  on  the  first  day.  But  on  

second  day,  I  started  to  promote  it.  I  sent  it  directly  to  people,  asked  them  to  

repost  it  if  they  liked  the  article.  I  shared  it  on  my  WeChat  Moment  so  all  my  

friends  could  see  it.  Then  I  checked  the  statistics  tool—the  result  was  amazing.  

                                                                                                               1   Meet  Your  Ancestors  (All  of  Them),  Tim  Urban,  Wait  But  Why,  Dec.  2013,  http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/12/your-­‐ancestor-­‐is-­‐jellyfish.html    2   Travels  With  My  Censors,  Peter  Hassler,  the  New  Yorker,  Mar.  2015,  

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Push to users 14

Page views 664

Reposts 50

   

Chart  7.  Another  article  on  my  WeChat  blog  with  promotion  

Like  last  time,  only  fourteen  users  decided  to  receive  my  pushed  article,  

which  means  my  followers  were  few.  But  when  I  started  promotion,  page  views  

increased  rapidly.  Eventually,  664  people  read  my  article—47.4  times  the  

number  of  my  followers.  

These  two  experiments  have  provided  illustrative  examples  to  my  

presumption.  First,  the  quantity  of  followers  is  the  basis  for  spreading  the  

content.  More  followers  a  blog  has,  the  more  exposure  the  content  will  get.  

Second,  the  promotion  is  the  catalyst.  A  good  promotion  will  impact  spreading  

process  dramatically,  and  vice  versa.  Most  importantly,  the  content  is  the  king.  

People  want  to  be  informed,  touched  or  entertained  not  by  the  promotion,  but  by  

the  content.  If  operating  a  blog  is  like  driving  a  car,  followers  and  promotion  may  

lead  to  a  fast  lane,  yet  the  content  decides  how  far  the  car  will  get.  These  insights  

not  only  apply  to  my  Weibo  blog,  but  to  other  social  business  models  as  well.  

4.  Censorship  Factor  

When  talking  about  Chinese  media,  the  censorship  factor  is  inevitable.  In  

fact  many  my  friends’  expectations  about  my  project  were  my  point  of  view  and  

250

500

03/16/2015 03/18/2015 03/20/2015 03/22/2015

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solution  dealing  with  censorship,  either  in  clever  ways,  or  in  not  clever  but  

fearless  ways.  But  my  preference  and  advantages  were  inclining  to  produce  

entertainment  content.  The  research  also  supported  that  entertainment  topics  

are  more  popular  on  social  media.  So  I  knew  censorship  would  probably  not  be  a  

tricky  issue  for  my  project.  

Unexpectedly,  I  did  encounter  a  related  situation.  

On  March  5th,  I  saw  a  post  on  Weibo  recommending  Peter  Hassler’s  new  

article,  Travels  With  My  Censors2.  I  clicked  the  link  in  the  post,  which  lead  me  to  

the  New  Yorker’s  website  to  read  the  original  one.  It  was  quite  long,  almost  

seven  thousands  words,  but  I  didn’t  stop  reading  until  finished  it.  It  was  a  very  

insightful  article.  I  really  liked  it.  Then  I  decided  to  translate  it  literally  to  let  

more  Chinese  readers  read.  I  spent  three  days  to  finish  the  work.  In  order  to  

accurately  translate  the  article,  I  did  research  and  added  annotations.  In  the  end,  

the  translated  article  was  more  than  ten  thousands  Chinese  characters.  Because  

it  was  much  longer  than  I  expected,  I  was  not  sure  if  there  were  any  errors.  

Instead  of  putting  it  on  my  blogs,  I  posted  it  on  a  translating  BBS  in  order  to  ask  

for  revisions.  To  my  surprise,  a  half  day  later,  someone  took  my  translation  and  

posted  on  his  WeChat  blog.  

I  didn’t  expect  it  happen,  yet  I  was  not  angry  at  all.  Peter  Hassler  was  the  

author  and  the  New  Yorker  posted  it  online  for  free  reading,  while  I  only  

removed  the  language  barrier  for  those  Chinese  readers.  If  Mr.  Hassler  and  the  

                                                                                                               2   Travels  With  My  Censors,  Peter  Hassler,  the  New  Yorker,  Mar.  2015,  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/travels-­‐with-­‐my-­‐censor    

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New  Yorker  would  not  oppose  this  behavior,  what  right  did  I  have  to  be  jealous  

and  upset?  Besides  Peter’s  name,  the  New  Yorker,  my  name  and  the  source  links  

were  all  completely  showing  on  that  blog.  In  fact,  all  reposts  kept  those  credits  

too.  Moreover,  my  purpose  was  letting  more  Chinese  people  be  able  to  read  it,  

and  now  more  people  were  reading  it,  so  it  did  help  me.  

The  page  views  increased  exponentially.  Within  one  day,  it  got  more  than  

10,000  page  views.  Like  I  said  before,  it  was  the  content,  Peter’s  writing,  that  

made  it  so  popular.  Before  I  had  a  chance  to  screenshot  the  PV  number,  that  

article  was  gone.  After  one  day,  the  BBS  where  I  posted  the  translation  delete  

related  page  as  well.  The  page  views  on  BBS  stopped  at  6,562.  

An  article  about  China’s  censorship,  got  censored  after  translated  into  

Chinese—that  was  not  surprising  at  all.  Only  Peter’s  article  was  focusing  more  

on  book  editors  and  readers,  not  the  system,  and  the  tone  of  the  article  was  to  

show  misunderstood  facts,  rather  than  to  criticize.  That’s  also  why  I  want  to  

translate.  

I  had  some  revelations  after  this.  First  of  all,  Chinese  people  are  eager  for  

good  English  content  with  translation.  Comparing  with  ten  thousand  PVs  on  

WeChat  and  six  thousand  PVs  on  BBS,  the  original  post  on  Weibo  only  has  about  

50  reposts,  roughly  equal  to  five  hundreds  PVs.  Ironically,  it  didn’t  even  get  

censored  till  this  day,  so  didn’t  the  New  Yorker’s  webpage.  

Moreover,  political  content  is  a  two-­‐edged  sword.  A  political  content  can  be  

fast  spread  under  certain  circumstance.  For  example,  scandals  are  always  

Page 9: 节选写作An Excerpt of Graduate Thesis

eye-­‐catching,  not  only  in  China,  but  all  over  the  world.  For  content  providers,  this  

would  be  a  good  chance  to  attract  more  audience.  Yet  political  content  is  also  

risky,  especially  in  China.  When  my  translation  got  censored,  I  only  wasted  

several  days’  working.  But  if  a  business,  a  marketing  campaign  or  publishing  a  

foreign  book  got  influenced  by  censorship,  the  loss  would  be  much  more  severe.  

Running  a  business  needs  to  consider  the  risks  and  consequences.  It  is  always  

like  a  dilemma,  and  there  won’t  be  a  perfect,  easy  answer.  I  agree  with  what  

Peter  Hassler  wrote  in  his  article,  quoting  from  his  Chinese  editor  Zhang—“it's  

not  about  the  things  you  can't  do  but  concentrating  on  the  things  you  can.”3  

 

                                                                                                               3   Travels  With  My  Censors,  Peter  Hassler,  the  New  Yorker,  Mar.  2015,  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/travels-­‐with-­‐my-­‐censor