January 02, 2007
Happy New Year!
It is 2007. Time flies...
What intrigued me to write this is the series of activities organized by paowang in celebrating the new year around the globe. Paowang is meant to be a virtual community; that is, participants meet online. A few years ago, we did "hold" a virtual party to celebrate the Chinese New Year online. It was the first ever that paowang officially called on to organize such celebration parties in the real world.
I can't help but wonder (I feel like Carrie Bradshaw when wrote down this) whether such events do good or bad to paowang as a virtual community. In other words, will paowang's traffic, measured by meaningful posts, pageviews and unique participants, increase or decrease?
I can argue for both ways but one really stands out in my mind. If people get to know each other well enough in the real world and develop personal friendship, what is the point to get online? Can't they get together to have a cup of coffee or a dinner occasionally? In that case, people tend to float away from the virtual community of paowang because it does not add much value anymore. A virtual community adds the most value when maximum amounts of asymmetric information exist among participants. This is my proposition and I can’t prove it.
Just a random thought in a not-slept-well morning. In any case, I sense something big is going to happen about paowang. I may be wrong or delusional. But whatever happens, it is about time.
Happy New Year again to you all!
