Internet makes 159-year-old World Expo more appealing
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In the country with the world's largest number of netizens, the Shanghai World Expo organizer has high awareness to amplify the Expo's influence through the Internet.
The organizing committee is trying to provide a 3-D Shanghai World Expo garden in the virtual world, so as to make the Expo access to every netizen around the world.
"The 3-D website is unprecedented in the World Expo history," said Wang Liping, who is in charge of the 3-D Shanghai World Expo website program, in an exclusive Xinhua interview.
There are around 500 staff working around the clock to make the last-minute preparation for the website' s official opening, he added.
The website (www.expo.cn) will be officially open on May 1.
The website consists of several parts, including "site tour", "interactive community" and "future city". Clicking the "site tour",more than 150 3-D pavilions will be shown on the map.
Netizens can click any pavilions they like, then mascot "Haibao" will bring netizens to the chosen pavilion and give a brief introduction on the pavilion's major characters. Netizens can see the pavilion from different angles and in both day scene and night scene.
There's an interactive community area for netizens to share their experience of the virtual trips.
The "future city" is the most interesting and innovative part of the website.
It is similar to a computer game. After downloading a software, netizens can become one character in the game, with the World Expo garden as background. They need to cooperate with others to fulfill 207 tasks in the game.
"The 3-D pavilions are expected to be stay online even after the conclusion of the expo," said Wang.
"World Expo Strategy"
When the Expo's organizer is busy in developing the 3-D website, the ordinary citizens are seeking their own ways to promote the Shanghai World Expo.
Ni Wenhao, the Expo's staff in his 20's, wrote a "three-day strategy for visiting the World Expo garden" several months ago, in which he recommended the trip routes for netizens, as well as which pavilions deserve more attention and which ones can be ignored.
His "strategy", though complained by many netizens as "subjective", was getting popular very soon on the Internet. And he revised and updated his "strategy" constantly to refine it and make it more useful for netizens.
The newest edition of his strategy includes some tips which he got during the Expo garden's trial operation, such as "it's better to bring lunch yourself" to avoid the long queues in front of restaurant and "Don' t forget to get a free map from the information center" .
Except Ni's three-day strategy, a variety of "World Expo Strategies" written voluntarily by the Expo staff, volunteer or visitors, are being shown on the Internet, such as "one-day strategy" and "seven-day strategy" to meet netizen's different needs.
"I searched 'one-day strategy for visiting the World Expo garden' before I came here. The posting suggested me to visit the China pavilion, theme pavilions, pavilion of urban planet first," said visitor Wu Na, who brought her parent from Xi'an, north China's Shaanxi Province to the Expo garden.
"The online strategy is quite feasible. My father just underwent an operation and is still weak,the strategy provides some shortcuts for us. They are really helpful," she said.
The World Expo garden is expected to receive 70 million trips from May 1 to October 31.
"For those who have opportunity to visit the Expo garden in person, or for those who cannot come, the Internet has made the World Expo much closer to everyone," said Ni.
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