Interaction, how to form interaction between users through content.
Many functions of Hurry are provided to meet the needs of users, including “comment”, users can comment on each sentence of the novel separately; Co-writing function of friends in real time; , Users can perform lines through video; then to the current video. We continue to iterate through products to meet the needs of more users, make products more interesting and more usable, and thus achieve growth.
Zhong Li: In addition, “mindset” is also very important. The company was relatively quiet in 2018, but this silence is that our year was relatively stable. Because Ray had a career before and experienced ups and downs, he was calm and patient. When the market is developing rapidly, as a product you may have to face many strategic choices, but what you insist on and how to set a direction is very important.
Ray adheres to the bottom line of building an early high-quality content ecosystem. Therefore, a very stable content chassis can be built, and the subsequent growth can be more solid. Otherwise, in the end, there will be problems with user retention because the content ecology is not good enough, the product content is rich or the quality is not high enough. Therefore, we will also find that many products on the market have made various attempts, but only him today.
GGV: Conversational novels only started to emerge in 2017. How did you perceive this opportunity? Why are young people willing to pay for this form of interaction?
Zhang Zhang: The content of the entire Internet is now becoming fragmented, or shortened. On the video is the rise of short video, the page begins to flow towards the barIt’s the same in the field of writing. It can be said that nowadays young people have been exposed to explosive content since birth, and there are too many contents for them to choose from, so the current content needs to be short enough and stimulating enough to allow them to quickly substitute and then consume.
Another impression from this generation is diversity. As can be seen from the content created by our users, they are involved in various fields and are very subdivided. Our products can be divided into works through tags, and some very unpopular tags have people creating and consuming content. The living environment of our generation is not very different. It feels that everyone is consuming the same content, which is completely different from this generation.
Dialogue novels fit their needs well. Our basic chapter will have a few stalks or so-called refreshing points that can be quickly substituted by users. Through other interactive functions, users and authors can quickly form feedback and interaction. Many people discovered the opportunity of “dialogue novel” three years ago, but we have done better in later interactions, so we have a firm foothold in the market.
General Li: We are more concerned about the lifestyle changes of younger generations, the changes in behaviors and interactions, and the possibility of migrating to new platforms. Including online and offline lifestyles, offline brings some new consumption opportunities, and online may be opportunities for new platforms.
In the past, the contribution of user content was relatively low, generally 90% were silent users and consumer users, and only 10% were content contributors and participants. But today’s younger generation has a higher likelihood and willingness to speak, and even 50%-60% of users are willing to contribute content,Whether it is text, video, or live broadcast Everyone is more willing to speak and express.
In addition, everyone’s consumption is more diversified. More personalized demand is a good thing for the platform, because the content of the platform will be greater and the scalability will be higher, but at the same time, the requirements for thousands of people will be higher, so that we can make it A relatively strong growth platform. In the past, we were deeply influenced by mainstream values. Everyone’s preferences were more similar and consistent, but now the preferences of young people are very diverse. For example, the content of some niche skateboards and Hanfu in the past may not be small today. This diversity will create something different.
GGV: When did the two meet for the first time?
General Li: I first met Ray in 2017. At that time, we saw an app for conversational novels in the United States was very hot, and we thought that this product form was very interesting, and it was more suitable for young people’s demand for fragmented content consumption. So we looked for it in China. At that time, we saw three Four, hurry up is one of them. Ray is not the first time to start a business, so at that time, he thought a little further when doing this.
Besides interaction, as a content platform, the most important thing is a large amount of high-quality content. Because users come from content, if the quality of the content is not high enough, or the amount of content is not enough, it will have an impact on the user’s frequency of opening, duration of use, and stickiness.
Ray thinks very clearly about this matter, but at that point in time the entire product is still in a particularly early stage. At the time, we thought this was a very interesting and worth exploring direction, so after comparing several teams, we thought that Ray was the best person to do this thing. He has a background in socializing and the entire content platform. And understanding of content ecology. In the future, this product has strong extensibility in interaction and community. Ray’s background is suitable for these things, so I felt it was worth a gamble.
Zhang Zhang: Yes, probably in August 2017, GGV will find us shortly after going online. GGV is one of the first few VCs to find us, which also shows that GGV is very sensitive to new products and new directions, and invested very decisively. We are very grateful to GGV, because it was very early at that time, only three or four months after the product was launched, we felt the potential was recognized.
GGV: Is there any other incentive and management method to encourage creators to continue to create high-quality content?
Zhang Zhang: First of all, we will look at the flow of the work. If the flow is good enough, we will directly sign the contract with the author, and the signed author will have a fixed remuneration or salary. Secondly, we have advertising placement, and the authors have a corresponding share in advertising. Third, hurry up and support rewards, this is the author’s third income. Finally, if the work is made into a short play, whether it is an official PGC production or a UGC user’s own production, the short play income is also shared by the author. Therefore, the monthly income of the authors on our platform can reach 780,000 or 890,000.
GGV: Hurry up, has a set of running cash flow been formed?
Zhang Zhang: At present, we are in the mode of “interactive reading + reward + multi-media content”. After users create content, they can get revenue share through our advertising system, interactive system, rewards, including multimedia. In addition, we are also about to launch the live broadcast function. Our live broadcast is different from other platforms. We will make the live broadcast of the characters in the play and let the actors interact with the users according to the character’s personality. This will also form part of the income in the future. In short, we will form a variety of interaction methods on the basis of content, and then make different commercializations from ittry.
Zhong Li: Hurry up and develop the direction and the way of the traditional novel App is not the same. For hurry up, the free reading of novels is to give everyone a lower threshold of participation possibility, encourage everyone to participate in content creation, and ultimately we hope to achieve the accumulation of high-quality content and the IP of good content.
Hurry up is not a free novel reading platform, it is finally a new type of content consumption platform, they also have their own designed products. I think that in the future, some high-quality novels and video content will be charged, and there may be a membership system. Now when users are chasing changes, in fact, they need to pay for some updates. This has always existed, but the hurry to charge is relatively low, so our purpose is not to receive much money, but to let everyone recognize this content. Value is not always free content.
GGV: When communicating with Ray, he mentioned that hurry up will develop the live broadcast business in the future. Do you think it will be a bit late to enter the field of live broadcast at this time?
General Li: Whether it is text, audio content, or video, live broadcast, the point is to make good use of new content carriers and forms. Today’s live broadcast has become a mainstream carrier. Quick hands and vibrato have cultivated everyone’s habits very well, so it is nothing more than to think about what we can do with the carrier of live broadcast. For hurry up, the live broadcast will not be like Douyin or Taobao live broadcast, its live broadcast must be related to the content.
I understand that the live broadcast it wants to do is related to the plot and performance, and then it is displayed in the form of live broadcast. So even for the same content, everyone has different entry points, and the audience is very different. The audience will be a younger groupFor example, for young people aged 16-20, the content will be more scripted, so that everyone can participate and do some plot performances in the form of live broadcasts.
GGV: Hurry up and start the layout of film and television dramas in 2019. Will our next development focus be on film and television dramas?
Zhang Zhang: We used to do text and audio content. At the beginning of 2019, many film and television companies took the initiative to contact us and wanted to buy the copyright of our scripts and make them into film and television dramas. At the beginning we thought this might be a way to monetize, we do IP and let them do film and television. But then think again, why don’t we do this ourselves?
We are capable of doing this. Strictly speaking, we have unlimited output of IP resources, because tens of thousands of novels come online every day, we can select some of them for video, this is our biggest advantage, and our script is also very suitable for doing A short play in a vertical screen. So in the end we decided to do it ourselves.
Of course, this does not prevent us from incubating IP into horizontal screen dramas or even movies in the future. The audience of the video is larger than the text. We now hope that we will try more in the field of short drama, so this should also be a direction of the company’s focus in the future.
GGV: I would also like to hear Hao Jun’s views on this topic. From the creative side, conversational novels have lowered the threshold for literary creation, and emoticons and emojis have also been used for emotional expression. This creation model is very different from the creation of long-form web articles in the past. There are a large number of narration rendering plots in long-form articles. It is not only good for adaptation, but also convenient for IP precipitation. Do you think that the “conversation body” rapid creation mode is beneficial or disadvantageous to the precipitation of high-quality IP in the future?
General Li: We also had concerns in the early days. It is true that a 100,000-word or one-million-word novel has a stronger bearing capacity, but at the same time, the threshold for creation is also higher. Not everyone can write such a one-million-word novel. The advantage of the dialogue novel is that it has a low threshold for creation and everyone can get started quickly, but it is indeed difficult to create high-quality long-form content.
Ray also thought about this issue, so we did our own content ecology support early on. We also hope to use our power to help these creative people, so that they are willing to create on such a platform. Of course, this is definitely a two-eighth division, not everyone has this ability, but there are some very creative creators. So it still depends on the support for the creators’ ecology. There are many capable creators on the platform who can produce high-quality long-form content on the platform.
GGV: What do you think are the necessary elements of a good content community?
Zhang Zhang: A good community needs to inspire users’ creative desire. Especially as a UGC community, the core of the content community is good content, and good content must come from users, which is the most important. In addition to all interactions, we need to have a good mechanism that allows users to generate good content, discover good content, and allows more people to consume good content. This is a positive cycle.
General Li: A good community needs to understand the needs of users and the evolution of user behavior. Even today, compared with the amount of BAT products, we are not a particularly large community. Therefore, in the early days, everyone did not pay special attention to this vertical field, and it was often that they could run to a certain size in some race tracks that they could not see or still not see. This was an opportunity for entrepreneurship.
Ray is good at observing the evolution and evolution of user needs. Interactive novels are a very new category, and the American product just mentioned didn’t go well. Today, hurry up, there is no similar product for reference. This way is his own trip, so after having a starting point, it is to observe how users use this product, and then use the better tools as users use it. And more abundant forms to meet user needs.
For example, he first worked on interactive novels. Later found that many novels are written in the form of dialogues, and it is a co-authoring mode, which can be understood as a chat with ten people. The content of the final chat is the so-called dialogue. The content of the novel. After discovering this requirement, he has been thinking about what tools to use to meet the needs of users’ co-writing, so hurry up and make the co-writing more thorough. Another example is “Comment”, which is similar to the barrage of station B, through the user’s comments in the dialogue, to enhance interactivity. He designed some very innovative functions and gameplay to meet the needs of users. And the dialogue novel is a script without processing, because it was originally presented in the form of character dialogue, so he tried video drama again, and the effect is not bad.
This demand is evolving. Hurry up and find a new direction by observing the evolution of user demand. No one has traveled along this route. BAT can do it, but because they haven’t walked this way, so even if they want to do it today, they might do it the way we do. To this day we are still groping slowly, how to go in the future, everything depends on the needs of users and the evolution of user behavior, this is the key.
GGV: If there are young entrepreneurs who want to continue to cultivate in the field of youth cultural communities in the future, what opportunities do you think there are?
Zhong Li: The community social content platform is difficult to analyze from top to bottom, mainly to see if you have really captured the needs of the core audience. If we count how many people there are in a generation, 16 million were born that year, and even in a five-year generation, there are nearly 100 million people. Among the 100 million people, you have to grasp a certain demand of this group. For example, the second yuan in the first two years is a vertical field. At first, everyone thought that the second yuan of station B was also very small, but in the end it was made into a pan. Culture, the circle is very successful.
So Any vertical subdivision that seems to be small today may have strong extensibility in the future, and the vertical demand with the possibility of making a circle is worth doing. Mainly depends on everyone’s understanding and observation of the needs of friends or young people around them, even including street fashion brands. In the early years, we have seen many street fashion brands. It is a platform opportunity with billions or even billions of dollars. Therefore, everyone’s social power and needs are changing, and they can fully carry more subdivided platforms.
“Hurry up” to complete nearly C$100 million in Series C financing, GGV Jiyuan Capital continued to raise
Recently, the young people interactive entertainment platform “Hurry Up” announced the completion of the collective investment led by Sequoia Capital China Fund, GGV Jiyuan Capital, Morningside Capital and other old shareholders collectives Over-investment of nearly C$100 million in Series C financing. This round of financing will be used for platform content ecological construction, IP building, product function optimization, team building, and Yiqiu Capital serves as a long-term exclusive financial advisor.
The official version of “Quick Reading” was launched in May 2017. It initially positioned itself as a “conversational fiction platform”. It entered the reading market with conversational reading that has a strong sense of substitution and is easy to spread. It has established a content ecology for young readers. Hurry up and read the first to start UGC, and through the collaborative creation (co-authoring) function, further lower the user’s threshold for creation. Quick reading of UGC has proved to be a successful attempt: 20% of users participate in creation every month, and 50% of users participate in interaction.
In 2018, “Hurry Up Reading” opened rich media interaction and further socialization attempts. Launched voice-over functions and full-speech dialogue novels; launched a tag tag system for personalized recommendation, and each tag tag is a small theme “post it”; users can also post dynamic news to make friends.
2019, “Hurry upAs a generation who has grown up with rich social media platforms, creation and sharing have become a part of their lives. With the characteristics of happy sharing and collaborative creation, with the outbreak of short videos, users consume content from professionally produced PGC Long video gradually evolves towards UGC. Compared with the video segment of the short video platform, the faster short drama is the video “story”, and the production capacity of the video short drama is far more than that of the long video platform.
What Hurry Up is doing is the online and UGC of the film and television industry. Through the IP+UGC community model, the script creation, grouping, casting, shooting, editing and distribution are completed online. Filling the gaps of vibrato and quick means with short video dramas with plots, and at the same time creating a YouTube-based NFLX platform through industrialization and data methods, compared with foreign financing of more than 1.8 billion US dollars, burning money The “short video version of Netflix” “Quibi”, which produces short plays, “hurry up” can give lower production costs and stronger interactive content.
During this process, “Quicker” is also actively seeking to “out the circle”: On the one hand, “Quicker” is actively expanding the user market, from graphics, voice, to video, The content format of the live broadcast is upgraded, trying to expand users from traditional reading enthusiasts to podcasters and film and television drama lovers in the all-media field; on the other hand, Hurry Up is also actively improving the quality of homemade film and television dramas, sitting on a huge IP Library, screening high-quality novel adaptations, so that the output of film and television from the short drama to boutique drama and long drama, the main drama, and cooperation with film and television companies and domestic mainstream video platforms. “Hurry up” is expected to launch 20-30 exclusive self-made dramas over 10 episodes this year.