I-WOM

I-WOM, you might think it's a new term that was come out by some expert. Yes exactly. It is short for the Internet Word of Mouth (互联网口碑), which is initiated by Sam Flamming, the boss of CIC Data. In his podcast done by Danwei, he outlined that Chinese WoM has larger effects in BBS than blogs, because in BBS, there are groups of specific and focused topics that people are welcomed and gathered to discuss. There are some 1.5 to 2 million new messages every month, which is amazing and much more than the West. He also mentioned that because the Chinese traditional media are largely controlled by the government, people place less trust on them and, when something or a big issue happened, most of people prefer to approach their friends or relatives who close to the situation for truth.

I wonder if I can further simplified iWoM to WoN, that is, Word of Net (网碑), or WiN, i.e., Word of the InterNet. They can be pronounced as "win" or "won". Would they sound better?
Enjoy the podcast here.