Comments on: “When scarcity is the norm, complexity seems valuable.”

By: Scarlatti » Blog Archive » Chilling at Bookworm

Scarlatti » Blog Archive » Chilling at Bookworm — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:58:15 +0000

[…] finished my work at midnight to join an agitated conversation about world history between an American and two Brits […]

By: Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer

Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:24:23 +0000

@Fons Tuinstra: Of course, I know that chinese Internet users are very young. But that nearly equally applied or still applies to western users, especially of most big portals. Again, we don’t have a really distinguishing feature.

After looking again at the Sohu homepage, another idea came to my mind, from a former web editor’s perspective: chinese characters allow for a much better scaling of headline length. This way it is possible to fit a lot of headlines very precisely into these boxes and thus provide the special, homogeneous visual appeal of the portal’s homepage. Trying to achieve the same effect with western writing would simply be a nightmare. Maybe the chinese way of writing plays a certain role, after all.

@ann: Apart from the cultural part of your first argument which simply restates the phenomenon instead of explaining it, all other reasons are valid for western portals as well: homepage views are the most important, you want to squeeze in as much ads as possible, there are many inexperienced users.

So, looking at the FT experience, maybe the consequence is that in the end western content providers should simply try to follow the chinese model and win a bunch of new users that way.

By: ann

ann — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:59:48 +0000

1. Give me any example in the world that can be comparable to the portal websites in China? Yes, it is very unique. Front pages visits counts for the most significant part of all the visits. This is cultural habit: everybody does it, I have to do it, too. Chinese love for intensity and density. Simplicity means deprivation to them, which is not favorable.
2. portal website need to squeeze in more advertisement.
3. Many Chinese users are still low-level users. They don’t even know, or don’t like pressing “back” button. FT Chinese tried the simple rule, and now they have to adopt pop-up windows for each link, too. Any effort to reduce the links on the front page simply means you will lose a bunch of users.

By: Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer

Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:13:00 +0000

No, Yike, it’s meant to be encouraging more than intimidating. You see that there is a lot to do on this subject. So far we have mostly guesses (I have yet to read the study in the last link). Would be great if young scholars like you follow up on that. I would just widen the scope of inquiry a little. BTW, can you contribute some chinese perspective? Your own view, or that of other experts?

By: Yike

Yike — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:36:06 +0000

speaks to my heart. Start to feel intimidating to write this topic.

By: Fons Tuinstra

Fons Tuinstra — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:35:15 +0000

O yes, the Chinese internet users are very young and for a while (not followed it the past few years that closely) the average age has been dropping as middle school students moved into the internet.

By: Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer

Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:12:54 +0000

Thanks, David, for your comment. As to your criticism: Actually, I mention both points. The “abundance” principle in the context of Bucher’s study, where it belongs, and the ad price model where it is firstly used in an argument with respect to the density phenomenon, namely in Melcher’s article. Sorry if my summary of your posting sounded a little snappy, it was not intended to be. I am mostly impressed by the basic perplexity that I sense in the whole discussion - which I share, actually. My attempt for an explanation is as much a guess as anybody’s.

By: David Churbuck

David Churbuck — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:21:39 +0000

As the former IDG employee you cite, I also pointed out, as echoed by Kaiser, the notion of “abundance” versus the western/Japanese ideal of “less is more” (ipod, Google home page). As Kaiser and others have noted — white space is “dead space” to Chinese culture. Westerners prize spare, unadorned designs — but in the end, there is not accounting for taste and, you neglect to mention the very different ad model in China which is time based and closely resembles the way radio is bought and sold in the US.