On The Development Strategies Of Ningbo Quote's Mobile App

Due to the rapid development of Internet,together with the revolution of the media integration process,the media industry has gradually headed towards to the new media era that based on the network.Facing the arduous status,Chinese party newspapers at all levels creatively introduced mobile news app during the development transition times,aiming to realize upgrading and transforming and eventually survive the hard times of printed media by means different mobile apps.According to the statistics,there are three central-level party newspaper,twenty-eight provincial party newspaper and 70% of the municipal newspaper has furnished with mobile apps.In contrast to the widespread party newspaper mobile apps,the studies conducted by researchers in this filed are still rare.In addition,a majority of previous studies focus on the China Daily mobile app or provincial party newspaper mobile app,which largely overlooks municipal party newspaper mobile app.Therefore,this study focus on the Ningbo Quote's mobile app which is affiliated with Ningbo Daily Newspaper Group(hereinafter referred to as Ning Group).Since 8th July,2015,the number of online users who registered increased to 183.6 million with the daily activity remains at 36% to 45% and the reading volume of “Focus Page” remains at 1.2 million.Moreover,in 22 nd February,2017,Ningbo Quote's mobile app has won the first prize of fifth Zhejiang newspaper innovation award.In this sense,it is a classic example among many other municipal party newspapers that would definitely contributes to fulfil the research gap.At the same time,this study utilizes functionalism theory,which based on the Marxist journalism rather than the traditional model of previous studies that focus on the theory of marketing economics to explore the new function and orientation of municipal party newspaper app and to examine the problems existed in the process of operation as to propose the development strategies in the future.This study first investigates the function and orientation of municipal party newspaper.“Utilitarianism” emphasizes to use practical function as standard to measure media.Although municipal party newspaper app contributes to its successful transformation of Ningbo Daily,it is still a derivative product.Hence,in the process of operation,it should regress to “functionalism” that follows the previous function and orientation of Ningbo Daily.In order to help the newspaper successfully go through the rough times of printed media,the mobile app still has to take the needs of audiences into consideration to fully exploit the unique advantages of mobile apps.Throughout the closeness to the masses approach,the mobile app can provide readers popular news and further to change the stereotype of traditional media,to reduce the distance between civilian.Therefore,the municipal party newspaper should visualize the publicity of polices,broaden the channels of social supervision system,enhance the strength between the party and public and concretize the content of ideological and political education.As for the content,the newspaper should also attach importance to the popular news and in-depth reporting;the audience not only should contain main customers but also common users,such as young generation who frequently use mobile apps to get news sources in particular.The marketing orientation must effectively exert the social and economic benefits.After exploring the function and orientation of municipal party newspaper,this study combs the historical development of Ningbo Quote's mobile app.More specifically,Ningbo Quote's mobile app is not developed overnight but after a long process of text message,MMS and WAP website.During this process,the emergence of text message enables a mobile phone to spread information.MMS is regarded as a key step to accelerate the multimedia process;WAP website,on the other hand,is seen as a solid step forward,which makes mobile app has the function of mass communication.It is because of the three stages,together with the development of Internet,intelligent mobile terminal and audiences' reading habit that emerge the mushrooming municipal party newspapers.At last,in contrast to the function and orientation of municipal party newspaper,the current status of Ningbo Quote's mobile app,there are still some weakness existed as follows.Modeling interfacial design,fragmentation of the audience,roughen the integration of content and specialize the operation and operation.Therefore,based on the existing problem,the study puts forward four suggestions.First of all,we should introduce talents and seek for multiple interface(cultivate and introduce talents,focusing on humanized detail design and design new interaction approach).secondly,grasp main customers and take potential users into consideration(news combine with service to meet the need of different ages,shortening the distance from the perspective of civilian);third,properly integrate resources,focus on local reporting(reducing the reliance of the original media,focusing on local reporting,exploring the story behind the news).Fourth,we should optimize promotion and enhance influence(integrating online and offline resources,widening promotion channel,transformation from “artificial editing” to “intelligent editing).The above four suggestions could also provide some useful insights to other municipal party newspapers.