Luring young people without much social experience to use cash loans, Weibo borrowing money is being promoted under the banner of Weibo.
Editor’s note: This article comes from “Interface Technology” , Reporter | Xiao Fang Sun Wenhao, editor | Wen Yanqi.
After Cai Xukun and Jay Chou fans caused public opinion because of super talks, Weibo once again caused controversy because of fans.
On November 21, Douban and other platforms circulated posts showing that Weibo ’s lending product Weibo borrowed money to launch an “online shopping power list” activity, bundling loans with fans. If the amount of Weibo borrowing is more than 1,000 yuan, the number of likes will be doubled; if the amount of borrowing is more than 5,000, the number of likes will be 5 times; if the amount of borrowing is more than 8,000, the number of likes will be 8 times.
Remind in the post, “Little girl in pink circle must never borrow Weibo loan because of chasing stars. The interest rate is too high to pay for it.”
Responding to this, Weibo borrowed money and said that Weibo borrowed money strictly in accordance with national legal requirements, and any user’s loan interest rate was within the requirements of national law. According to the user’s credit rating, Weibo borrowing money will be priced at different rates for different users, ranging from a minimum of 14.2% per annum and a maximum of 36%.
In fact, the focus of accusations on Weibo is that it induces younger fans to use lending products. Previously, many students used loan products such as campus loans with high interest rates, and were caught in the debt because they were unable to pay off within the prescribed time. They encountered violent debt collection, and some students went to the extreme of jumping off the building and taking drugs to commit suicide because of huge mental pressure.
A Weibo insider told Interface News that Weibo borrowing money was led by Sina Finance, and Weibo only provided operations and advertising support. Why did Weibo borrow money to do this kind of operation? The risk reminder is that we do n’t know if we have Weibo, and Weibo is helpless.
A survey by interface journalists found that Weibo borrowed money to promote it to young groups such as school students and fan groups under the banner of Sina Weibo, and induced young people to register and upload ID cards without warning of risks. If the user’s awareness of lending products is not strong, it is likely to fall into the usury trap.
Zhang Shan, a college student, was a bit frightened recently after seeing the online accusation that microblogging borrowed money was a usury. He had received a call from Weibo in August to borrow money to induce him to register, “I was a little shy at the time, and I didn’t care about not being short of money. Now I think it’s a bit scary.”
Fan support will participate in promotion
Interview reporters found out that Weibo borrowed money to launch the “Online Shopping Power List” campaign under the banner of traffic stars, but in fact, it is only the star fan support clubs to participate and call for fans to play the marketing activities.
As of the evening of November 25th, in the online shopping red and black list, the top three of the good thing red list are “Year of the Year”, “April Flower” and “Xiaoran 007-“. The first place is Meng Members of the Meiqi Fan Supertalk, the other two are Yang Chaochao ’s fan supertalk members; the top 3 singles are “Love Charlie”, “Very Beautiful and Beautiful”, and “Guardian Electric Light Purple”. The first and third are Meng Fanqi members of Meiqi, the second member is Yang Chaochao.
In a fan group of Rocket Girl 101, the interface news reporter found that the owner named “xx 网 宣 组” is mainly responsible for the online data of the traffic star, and has been reposting in the group from morning to night. The link to vote on the list includes both the voting on the popular list of Idou and the voting link of the “Online Shopping Power List” event. The owner has designated the product number to let fans search and like.
A member of the Fan Support Association, Xiao Taro, told Interface News that most fans on the list are currently participating in Fan Support Association, calling on fans to like their fans, so the fans on the list can get ranking rewards (top 3 Can receive 10,000 yuan, 4-50 people can receive 500 yuan), rewarded to the support society for daily consumption, the list activities do have the behavior of enticing participating users to borrow money.
At present, on the online shopping red and black list, the top spot in the Good Red List is “Yanian 殇 yeah”, which has more than 210,000 likes, but the second place “April Flower” has only likes 26,000. There is also a large gap in the amount of likes between the first and second places on the list of Tucao products.
On the evening of November 21, Weibo borrowed money and issued a statement stating that the source of information dissemination for Weibo to induce fans to borrow money to make the list was that some users were hindering competitors from making the list.
Even though the inducement caused a lot of controversy, borrowing money from Weibo did not stop the activity. On the day of the controversy on November 21, the Weibo hot search list also featured the promotion of “Weibo draws 10 people to send 3888 cash”, and a number of big V in the entertainment film industry also participated in the promotion of the event.
Interview journalist experience found that the intention of borrowing money on Weibo to induce users to borrow money is obvious. Applying for Weibo reserve funds, submitting credit certification, and borrowing money to withdraw more than 1,000 yuan can get a lottery code.
Usury traps behind induction
Taro told Interface News that after carefully understanding the interest rate of Weibo borrowing and the rules that cannot be repaid in advance, it felt that this would not only hurt fans, affect their credit history, but also affect the reputation of their own fan club. She is also constantly reminding fans to only like 3 times a day to ensure that her account can be ranked in the top 50.
At the beginning of the event, many members of the fan club did not understand what Weibo borrowing was. On the one hand, they were eager to make a list to earn bonuses. On the other hand, under the endorsement of Weibo ’s reputation, everyone was not alert. high.
Although Weibo tried to clarify its relationship with Weibo lending, Interface News learned that Weibo lending is indeed pushing the banner of Sina Weibo.wide.
Zhang Shan, a college student who received a loan promotion call from Weibo, said that in August this year, when he swipe Weibo, he saw a soiled advertisement in which a blogger reposted Weibo borrowed money. Hua paid attention to borrowing money on Weibo. Two or three days later, he received a self-proclaimed Sina Weibo staff member, who had a strong accent in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, said that he saw his phone number in the background and recommended that he register for Weibo loan.
The other party highly recommends the benefits of Weibo lending on the phone. There is no threshold. You can borrow money by registering with your mobile phone number and uploading your ID photo. In the following days, Zhang Shan received several sales calls from the self-proclaimed Weibo staff.
Zhang Shanqing was lucky that he didn’t try it at the time, but Weibo borrowing became a pain that 19-year-old Xiaowei didn’t want to remember. In August of this year, he paid back Alipay Hualuo a bit, and Alipay borrowed money was not open to him. He found that the threshold for Weibo borrowing was very low, so he borrowed 1,500 yuan to spend Hualuo.
Wei Wei borrowed on Weibo in 6 installments and repaid 295 yuan each. But in October, he was overdue for one day and paid 30 yuan more interest. He received hundreds of calls. In addition, he also received a lot of text messages recommending borrowing from other platforms. He chose a small platform to borrow a loan to support the loan, and the loopholes became larger and larger.
In just three months, Serena ’s arrears on the lending platform have exceeded 6,000 yuan. He is under great pressure and dare not tell his parents. Not long ago, a few of his friends collected money to help him fill the loophole.
Xiaowei lamented to the interface news that the interest on borrowing money from Weibo was too high. Based on 1500 yuan and 295 yuan repayment in 6 instalments, Serena ’s total repayment amount is 1770 yuan and interest is 270 yuan. Based on this calculation, Weibo lent money to Serena with an annualized interest rate of 36%. It happened to be on the benchmark line that national law requires the lending rate to be no more than 36%.
But because Serena ’s repayment method is equal principal and interest, the actual interest rate is much higher than 36%. The interface news is calculated by the mortgage loan calculator, and the actual interest rate is 59.2%. Another Weibo user borrowed 2,000 yuan from Weibo to borrow 2,000 yuan in six installments, with each repayment of 393 yuan, and the borrowing rate was basically the same as Serena ’s. Moreover, borrowing money from Weibo cannot be repaid in advance.
According to a number of users who have used Weibo to borrow money, Weibo borrowing money will continue to harass borrowers and address book friends by violent collection of users who do not pay overdue, like small lending platforms.
Weibo was abducted
Tianyan’s data shows that as of April 2019, Weibo’s borrowed money has accumulated more than 18 billion yuan, and the amount to be received is 3.64 billion yuan. In the first four months of 2019, Weibo borrowed money to achieve an average monthly loan of about 1.1 billion yuan, the amount of loans in April 2019 reached 1.438 billion yuan.
Beijing Weiju Future Technology Co., Ltd., the operating entity to which Weibo borrows money, has become the main driving force for Sina Finance and Sina’s revenue growth.
Sina Finance OfficerAccording to data released by Fang, in 2017, Weiju contributed 70% of its revenue to Sina’s financial sector. Weiju’s future revenue in 2018 was US $ 47.9 million, accounting for 65% of Sina’s financial revenue.
Sina’s latest financial report shows that its non-advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2019 was US $ 104 million, an increase of 37% from US $ 73.4 million in the same period last year, mainly due to the revenue generated by Sina’s financial technology business and Weibo live broadcast business. Income increase.
In 2015, Sina started to engage in consumer finance business, trying to monetize through traffic. Among them, there are 216 million daily live Weibo. Whether it is in Las Vegas or brand endorsement, Weibo plays a very important role in borrowing money from Weibo.
Zhang Shan told the interface news that he and his classmates brush Weibo every day, and he will not feel strange when he hears Weibo borrowing money. But what confuses him very much is that he just accidentally paid attention, why the other party can get his mobile phone number. “If it was only because he paid attention to Weibo borrowing money, would the promoter of Weibo borrowing money be able to obtain the mobile phone number used by the account user to register for Weibo, wouldn’t it be terrible?”
Interface News asked Weibo about the matter. As of press time, no reply has been received.
In addition to borrowing money on Weibo, in addition to doing fan rankings and drawing red envelopes in the name of Weibo, the brand introduction also stated that “with Weibo brand guarantee, convenient application, fast loan, transparent information, and strong security Features”. These are easy for users to associate Weibo borrowing money with Weibo.
Since the launch of Weibo Borrowing Money, Sina Finance has successively launched the installment mall and card loan service in Weibo wallet. Interface news found that Weibo’s information flow page appeared very frequently with loan products for quick loans, and many users were accused of usury for quick loans.
The high interest rates and violent collection of these lending products have also caused negative problems for Weibo. In this online shopping power list campaign initiated by Weibo borrowing money, the most accused by the outside world is that Weibo borrowed money to tie fans to the list and lend money-to entice young people without much social experience to use cash loans. The fan economy is on the wrong track.
(All names in the text are pseudonyms at the request of the interviewee)
The cover image is from pexels