Research On The Development Of Douban’s Social Reading Platform

With the arrival of mobile Internet era, reading has gradually become a social behavior for gaining knowledge and exchanging ideas, while people’s reading modes are increasingly emerging a trend of mobilization, fragmentization and socialization. Nowadays most of the digital reading applications have developed social functions including online endorsing, commenting, and text-sharing through social medias. Meanwhile, the internet companies, represented by BAT, have also developed digital reading platform with social attributes, based on their social media platforms. Social reading has become one of people’s dominating reading modes.The study targeted at two social reading platforms "Douban Books" and "Douban Reading", which is subordinate to the famous social platform Douban. Douban is a social network site based on mutual interest. During Douban’s 11-year development, people’s reading modes has gradually changed from paper reading to digital reading. And now with the penetration of mobile Internet, more social attributes have been added. The research purpose of this dissertation is to review the process that Douban has gone through, from a reading and commenting promotion platform to a social reading platform with both digital reading and self-publishing functions. Besides, the study aims to analyze the advantages and obstructions during its developing process, and conclude how Douban managed to comply with the change of technology and cultural context and cater to users.The main research methods of this study include three types. The first is Literature Research Method. An extensive literature related to social reading is reviewed during the study, making the connotation and developing situation of social reading clear, laying a foundation to this dissertation. The second method is Investigation Method, a large number of media reports about social reading platform, especially Douban, have been collected and reviewed. Some of the report results have also been applied on the product and service of Douban social reading application, so as to gain extensive first-hand statistic source. The third method is Comparative Research. Based on the systematic study on the product and service of Douban, other social reading platforms like Wechat Reading were investigated and analyzed, giving a conclusion on the strengths and weaknesses of Douban Social Reading Application.Through the reviewing of the developing process of Douban Social Platform, main conclusions have been drawn as follows:1. "Douban Reading" remedied for the flaw of "Douban Book-Reading" that it can’t provide the books’contents, offering a reading context for the communication among users, making social reading come true.2. During the developing process of "Douban Reading" from "Douban Book-Reading", an evolution route of social media’s commercialization, combined by socializing community, socializing release, socializing entertainment, and socializing business has been gone through. Now "Douban Reading" has become the one of the main revenue streams of Douban.3. The marketing and promoting methods of "Douban Reading" are implemented according to the interaction among readers and authors, during which the contents gain wider propaganda, the value of social reading is maximized due to the effective interaction among readers and authors.