SubscribeInterview With Zheng On Linkist New Beta
In March, we had an interview with Zheng Xiaoyun when he joined Linkist as COO. Now four months later, a new beta version is online as limited public beta. If you have an account registered before June 27, you can login to have a look at the new beta.
My first impression of the new version, in one sentence, is that Linkist is doing Facebook. They have a new tagline: Connect People Around You. They are now focused on managing relationship with people you can interact in real life.
Among the various new changes, the most noticeable one is that Linkist has enriched its online contact book. You can include any contact whether they are Linkist user or not. The service also simplifies users to sharing any type of information with their contacts, especially multimedia information.
Not all features are available now. Some of the tabs and buttons are grayed out. Zheng said they are going to be available by the end of the month, including organization, which is one of the most important features in the new version.
We have made an interview with Zheng on the new beta as follows:
1. Does the transition of Linkist mean it has withdrawn from Business social network market and is joining Facebook, Myspace, and 51.com in general social network market?
Yes, exactly. But we are not entering general social network market. There’re big differences among Facebook, Myspace and 51.com. Our focus is also different from theirs.
When we grow up from a child, we get to know the world and gain experience and resources through connections with people surrounding us. After we enter the society, connection is still important to our jobs and everyday life.
In early days (1.0 age), the Internet provides a virtual public space as a complement to the one in reality. People can get more social interaction though this virtual public space. Now, in the social web age, because of the Internet/web, the interaction between people and their contacts/social relations become more efficient, thus social relations have become the main way to get all kinds of resources.
Linkist has seen this trend, so our product is trying to remove the gap between people’s real social interaction and web service. It’s a huge network.
Above all are our theoretic principles. From uses’ point of view, now they can share different content with different types of connections, including plain text, photos, videos and all kinds of documents.
We have made rules to insure the interactions though Linkist platform close to those in reality.
2. In Linkist 4.0, there’s no concept of degree, while it used to be a typical concept in introduction to social network. Does this mean that six degree of separation is just a theory without much practical use?
Six degree of separation is a phenomenon, statistical discovery. There’s no practical use to tell an individual about this.
In our new version, we don’t talk about degree, but it doesn’t mean we have discarded it. In fact, we have taken the value of the theory into our product design. We even hope that our platform can make the number six smaller, so that this network can become more efficient, including the routing of internal messages and accumulation of social resources.
In this angle, Linkist is set to leverage web technology and service to make the information, which people rely on to establish connections, flow faster and more accurate.
Going forward, we will use our algorithm to help people interact in a better way, such as looking for information and people they need. We will still need the concept of degree, but it’s just in our backend.
3. We know there’s such kind of SNS users: they only go to the website to confirm connection request, but they almost never visit the website in the rest of the time, to say nothing of spending time to decorate their profile. Are there many users like this in Linkist? How are you going to raise their activeness?
This is very common, especially in business SNS. In our new version, we don’t have an action called “invite”. Every interaction between users must have real meaning, such as sharing a photo, organizing an event, raising a discussion, etc.
Linkist new version is focusing on social interaction between users and their existing contacts. When users find people around them and their messages on Linkist, they will be attracted to the platform gradually. The interactions will promote the activeness.
4. Which will be your main revenue model in the future, advertisement or premium services? Originally you have a premium service to search people, what new premium services are you going to introduce in near future?
They both will probably become our revenue model. But in the current stage, basic services are provided for free. The service for searching people has been shut down, as we move to the new platform. We have explained to our existing paid users and have made necessary treatments.
5. After Facebook opened its platform, open social network has raised more attentions. Myspace and Linkedin are both going to open their platform. How do you see this trend? Do you have any plan to open your platform? Is it suitable for the domestic social network environment?
Before came to Shanghai, I have been preparing for the chances to test open social network. After I joined Linkist, I have put this on our todo list in my future plan since March. Of course, Facebook did earlier and better. We can observe and learn from its practice. To our followers, Facebook is a good trial space.
To this point, open social network isn’t going to gain momentum in our country. But our objective is bigger than the cross-Straits Internet Market. We will keep observing and put forward the open policy in a suitable time.
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