People in Taiwan use MSN very often. 40% Internet users use MSN, which means 5 million users in Taiwan. We use MSN to communicate with friends, colleagues and even bosses!! (sounds terrible, right?) Just Image that, Americans ask friends’ for Facebook accounts, but Taiwanese ask for MSN accounts. That’s what happens in Taiwan.
A web developing company “Wamsn” launched a service this March which attracted 140 thousand users in 3 month rapidly. Users can invite a goddess, “Matsu” to your MSN list. You can type in questions and get feedback for her.
How dose it work? It’s a MSN robot system which isn’t a new technology. Users key in specific instructions in the message window to interactive with the service. The service is similar to the auto-voice service of customer service by phone.
What can we do with a goddess? For example, key in “1” for a Chinese fortune stick, “2“ for text fortune-telling, “3” for a mental test, “4” for making a wish. If you would like to ask for a Chinese fortune sticks, you need to choose a “Matsu” from your preferred temple. Decide your question and speak it in your mind, key in “1” again then you’ll get a number of Chinese fortune sticks. It also provides you an answer paper which you can read a kind of poem on it.
The company built the database of answer papers from all the famous temples in Taiwan. The content of answer papers online as real as what you get from a temple. Then you can go to the temple for the interpretation.<
Step1:
Step2:
Step3:
Step4:
The MSN goddess works because of the following features:
1. Goddess “Matsu” is the most common goddess in Taiwanese culture.
People go to the temples to worship her and ask for solutions. The creative idea for adding the goddess to your MSN list made a new image for the goddess. Young adults are willing to access to her through the Internet.
2. An easy method of fortune-telling. There are many ways of fortune-telling. The MSN robot provides the most convenient one since most people spend their time on MSN. All you need to do is keying instructions and get a answer from it. You don’t need to make a call or go out to the temples. The process of asking for a Chinese fortune sticks online is as same as the actions in the temple.
Of course the goddess on your MSN list is not a real god. What the MSN robot said may not be reliable. The truth is, it brings fun. The more important Is that, the idea brings more marketing strategy, you can reserve a room, ask for traveling or weather information through a hotel MSN robot. Maybe iTunes could recommend me songs that I’m interested in downloading through MSN. The technology could be widely used with creative ideas in the future.
