Every family has its cupboard.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Tech Planet” (ID: tech618), author Li Xiaolei. ^
How to solve the commercialization problem is the collective dilemma of the content community.
The content communities represented by Xiaohongshu, Hufu, and Zhihu often fall into a dilemma between maintaining the community’s ecology, atmosphere, and commercial realization.
Xiao Hongshu, who is good at planting grass, is determined to enter the online e-commerce live broadcast. Carrying the goods seems to be the key path for Xiao Hongshu to grow. Between focusing on paying for knowledge and finding users who sink the market, Zhihu has repeatedly wavered. ; Tiger flutter, which has repeatedly been listed, has not yet played with the “Straight Men Economy”, and the forum’s sports attributes have weakened, and it can only rely on incubating new platforms to achieve more commercialization.
They are in an embarrassing situation in terms of monetization mode, content choice, or choice of business ecology. This is a natural barrier to the content community. How to reconcile the various contradictions caused by commercialization, the platform has encountered no small challenges.
Tiger: Going on the market, or “Shangxin”
Hupu’s dream of going public has a long history.
In 2007, when Hupu obtained a round of financing from Chenxing Capital, it founded the company Hoop SportsBVI in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore investment center. At the time, this was interpreted as establishing a VIE structure for overseas listing.
Until 2016, Hupu did not actually submit a listing application in A shares. However, the road to listing was not smooth. Tiger ST, who had wanted to borrow the backdoor of * ST Yaxing, went on the initiative to withdraw the IPO application in the second year after the backdoor failed. The reason for this is that Tiger Flutter relies heavily on advertising, and a single revenue model directly leads to large fluctuations in performance for several consecutive years, and a large difference in net cash flow and net profit from operating activities.
These have become the key reasons that prevent Hupu from going public.
During this process, a large number of early “JRS (Tiger netizens claiming to be self-proclaimed)” witnessed adjustments and changes in community content.
A JRS who has been using Tiger Bash since 2010 told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618) that the community has changed dramatically. The three major sections of the early identification center, the second-hand trading area, and the buying area have been independently established, and have become Tiger’s incubation products “discovery” and “poison”. Earlier posts were also cleared to 0. Now in the Hupu community, the “Pedestrian Street Main Road” has become the most active sector, including entertainment topics and content such as “Cai Xukun Hupu Incident” are gradually increasing.
The 2016 prospectus showed that Hupu’s main source of profit was still advertising, which accounted for 61%, and the largest value-added business, which accounted for 20%. At the same time, according to the statistics of mUserTracker data, about 75% of tiger flapping users are male (most under 35 years old). This shows that Tiger Flutter relies heavily on traffic originating from male users. Therefore, whether Tiger Flutter can find a profit model other than advertising on existing traffic has become a key issue.
In fact, back in 2009, at the time of the e-commerce boom, Tiger Flutter launched the “calorie mall”, but under the model of crazy money burning at that time, the calorie mall died early. In 2012, Hupu independent of the “Appraisal Center” of the previous Hupu Forum, and hatched the “Identification App” with shopping guide and identification of sports equipment.
But at that time, “tide shoes” had not yet become popular and became a boom. Knowing the goods did not help Hufu reversibly, but according to the previously disclosed information, the transaction size in 2017 exceeded 2 billion yuan, and the revenue was between 120 million and 160 million, accounting for more than three percent of Hupu’s revenue. One-third. Hupu was optimistic about the prospect of e-commerce, then introduced Haitao business, and invested heavily in starting its own business.
Today, the “poisonous app” hatched by the company’s subsidiaries has taken the enthusiasm of “shoes fever” and has become the largest online sneaker identification trading platform in China. 1 billion US dollars, entered the ranks of unicorns.
This year, Tiger Flutter also went through a delisting event. For this 15-year-old content community, finding ways to leverage the straight male economy has become the core of this node. The chairman of Huaxing Capital Liu Jianing once commented that the value of the tiger flapping community behind the sneaker trading platform poisoning app and the communities in various vertical fields has not been fully realized.
The byte beating may have valued the “straight man economy” represented by Hu Pu. On June 6, ByteDance announced that it has invested RMB 1.26 billion in Tiger Sports, a vertical community in sports, and holds 30% of Tiger Sports. After becoming a member of the “byte system”, while Tiger Incubates new products to leverage male spending power, key targets have not yet been listed.
At the time of obtaining the beating financing, Hu Pu also said that the company was seeking an independent IPO, and the company led by CEO Cheng HangThe company’s management is still the actual controller of the company.
It also means that after three years of seeking to go public for the first time, Hupu will embark on the road of IPO. The “NBA Incident” in 2019 has once again cast a shadow on the prospect of Hufu’s listing. On the contrary, the matrix headed by “Knowledge of Goods” and “Poison App” has developed smoothly. At this time, will Tiger flap CEO Cheng Hang’s attention hesitate?
Little Red Book: Planting Grass or E-commerce
The commercialization of Xiaohongshu is accelerating with the naked eye.
On November 28th, on Xiaohongshu Creator Open Day, in addition to upgrading and iterating the previous brand cooperation platform and good product recommendation platform, Xiaohongshu also announced that it will launch a creator center serving Xiaohongshu experts. And interactive live broadcast platform.
The arrival of the interactive live broadcast platform means that Xiaohongshu has truly entered the field of e-commerce live broadcast and divided the dividends in this field. In the past, Xiaohongshu has always faced an embarrassing situation. As a lifestyle sharing community, Xiaohongshu has a strong “grass” attribute, and the aggregation of female users makes it a place for beauty and fashion content.
But for a long time, most of the users of Xiaohongshu use the same habits. They grow grass in Xiaohongshu and weed in other e-commerce platforms. Xiaohongshu has become a word-of-mouth community, but it cannot form a closed loop of direct realization of traffic and content. As a result, Xiaohongshu started to get involved in e-commerce and insisted on self-employment.
According to the data released by Xiaohongshu at that time, in the five months after starting the e-commerce model, Xiaohongshu’s sales have reached more than 200 million yuan. As of May 2017, Xiaohongshu’s revenue was nearly 10 billion . From being planted by content to buying, to publishing user experience, shopping to share content, and acting on purchasing in reverse, a new content consumption chain provides Xiaohongshu with a good consumption atmosphere.
For the content platform, Xiaohongshu also faces issues such as the authenticity of the content and the production of advertisements. It is undeniable that Xiaohongshu will never stop at content and grass, and ignore the field of e-commerce consumption. As a platform, Xiaohongshu’s strategy is to establish a closed loop of services for consumers (content producers), brands, MCN institutions and its own e-commerce business. In fact, the arrival of e-commerce business has given Xiaohongshu more infamy .
The completely self-supported Xiaohongshu is difficult to provide a sufficient and complete e-commerce service system, the problem of fake goods caused by an incomplete supply chain system, and the slow delivery and delivery caused by the incomplete logistics system, including the poor after-sales experience. E-commerce for books”Slots”.
Xiao Hongshu must promote strengths and avoid weaknesses. In addition to the fact that Xiaohongshu’s founder repeatedly emphasized that Xiaohongshu is a community rather than an e-commerce company, Xiaohongshu also always announced that the company tends to share products through social means. Business services and social networking in malls are just extensions of the community, not shopping. The main e-commerce platform.
The service was upgraded again in February this year. Xiaohongshu internally adjusted the structure and upgraded the original community e-commerce division to a “brand number” department. Focusing on the core product of “brand number”, the company integrates the resources of the company from community marketing to closed-loop transactions to provide the brand side with full-chain services.
Being a direct-operating e-commerce is not conducive to the development of the community’s ecology, but it has aroused the user’s antipathy to “refereeing and being an athlete.” E-commerce live broadcast may be more beneficial to the ecological players in the Xiaohongshu system.
Judging from the various actions of Xiaohongshu, it is almost a nail-biting thing to enter the e-commerce live broadcast and harvest this popular dividend. According to the introduction of Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu has live broadcast + note two-way planting, supports anchor PK connection, red envelope interaction and other gameplay. In the past, Xiaohongshu’s upgrade from graphics to short videos has also revolutionized the way in which community content is presented.
But there are also MCN institutions that are pessimistic about the entry of e-commerce live broadcasts. The founder of one MCN institution said, “Xiaohongshu launching e-commerce live broadcasts is a new round of bonuses and a new round of shuffling. For those who fail to adapt to the short video and live broadcast ecology on Weibo and earn small red books to do graphics, they still can’t catch up with this wave. But for both platforms and experts, e-commerce is the best and the most Fast monetization path. “
While the content ecology is gradually enriching, Xiaohongshu is also facing new challenges.
Affected by the previous delisting, Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users showed a significant decline. According to QuestMobile data, as of June this year, Xiaohongshu’s MAU was 93 million, which was close to 100 million, but the latest data in October showed that Xiaohongshu has 72.88 million monthly active users. The arrival of e-commerce live broadcast will bring new review problems for Xiaohongshu. After all, problems in content review have caused Xiaohongshu to fall several times.
For Xiaohongshu, it may be unexpected to be an e-commerce vendor, but it is naturally chosen by the community. In July 2019, Xiaohongshu announced that the number of users exceeded 300 million. Stimulating the production of content by creators and retaining users to purchase products in the platform will further help Xiaohongshu better commercialize through content and e-commerce.
Knowing: Users sink, still pay for knowledge
KOL’s collective exodus was originally a story belonging to Zhihu.
In 2017, the competition of information aggregation platforms was fierce. Hundreds of people who knew that Big V was exploded would sign the headlines to this day. The first mention of this matter is known to Da V. “Devil’s milk dad” mentioned, “It is also money, and the annual income is higher than that of ordinary white-collar workers. After signing, all the content cannot be sent to Zhihu, which is equivalent to exclusive Agreement. “
At that time, knowing the realization of knowledge was not easy. “Demon Demon” said in a follow-up reply, “Knowing the atmosphere of the entire community is absolutely opposed to any commercialization.” “Make money by writing. It ’s a particularly evil thing, it ’s marketing, it ’s the left, it ’s the evil devil. ”
I know that I have taken the upper-level route. At the beginning, I decided to use knowledge to pay for revenue. The form of scorned advertising is limited to side-screen advertising, and content advertising is regarded as a high-voltage line that must not be touched. For this reason, Zhihu even once blocked the “Zhuhu No. 1 V” Zhang Jiawei.
Zhihu has tested water knowledge payment for many times, leaving the knowledge payment product “Zhuhu Live”. At that time, I knew that the published data was that there were more than 2,000 Live speakers, and the average speaker’s hourly salary was over 10,000.
To this day, Zhihu’s commercialization model is still advertising + knowledge payment. With platforms such as Weibo and Today’s Headlines setting up MCN institutions in an attempt to institutionalize support and launch high-quality content, knowing the pace is still slow. In February this year, Zhihu also said in an interview with Hedgehog Commune that there is no traditional “MCN organization” in Zhihu, and everyone has knowledge that is worth sharing.
In the past few years, Zhihu, who is leaning towards Kochi atmosphere, has lost some professional content creators and content. When knowledge payment still fails to form a climate, broadening new user groups has become a channel to solve the user growth ceiling. one.
Knowing the natural community atmosphere is: sharing experiences is part of content consumption. A person in charge of content marketing told Tech Planet (WeChat ID:tech618), knowing the need to attract third- and fourth-tier cities and below, to seek a larger market, so that more users can share their experiences. However, this is not an easy task. From the perspective of content consumption, the third and fourth lines have already been saturated and have their own habits. Content consumption platforms such as Quoting Toutiao and Today Toutiao may not be able to integrate into the atmosphere of knowing.
Although Zhihu founder Zhou Yuan said in an interview, Zhihu does not agree with the concept of sinking, let alone sinking consciously.
But Zhihu also made temptations. Tech Planet learned that Zhihu had found a content marketing company and hoped that the other party would help him formulate a sinking plan and “do Low Content in exchange for traffic”. Works well. However, Zhou Yuan was reluctant to let Zhihu become more “smart” and suspended this plan. But many users have said that they have seen more and more gender-sensitive topics in their knowledge.
The person in charge of content marketing said that the topic of both sexes is more popular, which easily leads to natural discussions among users. He concluded that knowing that there are three types of content: story-type, share-type, and professional-type, so there are also professionals such as psychological counselors and emotional counselors on emotional issues. To a certain extent, “The sinking of knowing can also be regarded as the content consumption upgrade of users in third- and fourth-tier cities.”
Zhihu’s commercial hematopoietic ability has always been questioned. Is it necessary to monetize traffic through advertising or to maintain the elite elite in the community to pay for knowledge? The former violates Zhou Yuan’s inner ideal country, while the latter does not explore smoothly. Zhihu also told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618): At this stage, knowing that the source of profit is indeed two types of advertising and payment of knowledge, but it is not convenient to disclose the proportion of revenue.
As the largest Q & A community in the Chinese network, 9-year-old Zhihu has yet to find a solid profit path. However, it seems that Zhihu is also accelerating the pace and transforming the “slow gene” that has followed for many years.
Since this year, we know that commercialization and broadening of business lines have continued. In February, I knew that the male planting community “CHAO” was in beta. In March, the short video product “Instant Movie” was launched (in June). In August, the attitude towards MCN in the past has not been positive. , Began to recruit MCN institutions; in September, the internal test “good thing recommendation” function, you can add product link cards in the answer; in October, the live broadcast function and “Little Blue Star Recommendation” list.
Zhihu’s ambition also includes e-commerce. The shutdown of Instant Film in June once again announced the failure of the short video attempt.”Little Blue Star Recommendation” implies that Zhihu is trying to enter the field of e-commerce with goods. I know that trying to use service products for revenue, but this road is not smooth at present.
The problems that Xiaohongshu failed to resolve are also faced with the same problem. How to balance the community atmosphere and commercialization is the obstacle that community products always surpass. When Tiger Flutter, who has been developing for 15 years, is still hovering a few times before it goes public, who can give the lost community an answer of “Let’s not lose?”
Thanks for reading. Click the link below to draw. The prize was drawn at 19:00 on December 14th, and 200 cash red envelopes were sent. Thank you for your support. Sending cash and red envelopes will continue for a long time.
Daily Topics
Do you think there is a conflict between community atmosphere and commercial realization? Are there any good commercialization cases? For the content community, is “bread” more important, or is it more important to maintain the purity of the community’s content?
The commercialization of Xiaohongshu is accelerating with the naked eye.
On November 28th, on Xiaohongshu Creator Open Day, in addition to upgrading and iterating the previous brand cooperation platform and good product recommendation platform, Xiaohongshu also announced that it will launch a creator center serving Xiaohongshu experts. And interactive live broadcast platform.
The arrival of the interactive live broadcast platform means that Xiaohongshu has truly entered the field of e-commerce live broadcast and divided the dividends in this field. In the past, Xiaohongshu has always faced an embarrassing situation. As a lifestyle sharing community, Xiaohongshu has a strong “grass” attribute, and the aggregation of female users makes it a place for beauty and fashion content.
But for a long time, most of the users of Xiaohongshu use the same habits. They grow grass in Xiaohongshu and weed in other e-commerce platforms. Xiaohongshu has become a word-of-mouth community, but it cannot form a closed loop of direct realization of traffic and content. As a result, Xiaohongshu started to get involved in e-commerce and insisted on self-employment.
According to the data released by Xiaohongshu at that time, in the five months after starting the e-commerce model, Xiaohongshu’s sales have reached more than 200 million yuan. As of May 2017, Xiaohongshu’s revenue was nearly 10 billion . From being planted by content to buying, to publishing user experience, shopping to share content, and acting on purchasing in reverse, a new content consumption chain provides Xiaohongshu with a good consumption atmosphere.
For the content platform, Xiaohongshu also faces issues such as the authenticity of the content and the production of advertisements. It is undeniable that Xiaohongshu will never stop at content and grass, and ignore the field of e-commerce consumption. As a platform, Xiaohongshu’s strategy is to establish a closed loop of services for consumers (content producers), brands, MCN institutions and its own e-commerce business. In fact, the arrival of e-commerce business has given Xiaohongshu more infamy .
The completely self-supported Xiaohongshu is difficult to provide a sufficient and complete e-commerce service system, the problem of fake goods caused by an incomplete supply chain system, and the slow delivery and delivery caused by the incomplete logistics system, including the poor after-sales experience. E-commerce for books”Slots”.
Xiao Hongshu must promote strengths and avoid weaknesses. In addition to the fact that Xiaohongshu’s founder repeatedly emphasized that Xiaohongshu is a community rather than an e-commerce company, Xiaohongshu also always announced that the company tends to share products through social means. Business services and social networking in malls are just extensions of the community, not shopping. The main e-commerce platform.
The service was upgraded again in February this year. Xiaohongshu internally adjusted the structure and upgraded the original community e-commerce division to a “brand number” department. Focusing on the core product of “brand number”, the company integrates the resources of the company from community marketing to closed-loop transactions to provide the brand side with full-chain services.
Being a direct-operating e-commerce is not conducive to the development of the community’s ecology, but it has aroused the user’s antipathy to “refereeing and being an athlete.” E-commerce live broadcast may be more beneficial to the ecological players in the Xiaohongshu system.
Judging from the various actions of Xiaohongshu, it is almost a nail-biting thing to enter the e-commerce live broadcast and harvest this popular dividend. According to the introduction of Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu has live broadcast + note two-way planting, supports anchor PK connection, red envelope interaction and other gameplay. In the past, Xiaohongshu’s upgrade from graphics to short videos has also revolutionized the way in which community content is presented.
But there are also MCN institutions that are pessimistic about the entry of e-commerce live broadcasts. The founder of one MCN institution said, “Xiaohongshu launching e-commerce live broadcasts is a new round of bonuses and a new round of shuffling. For those who fail to adapt to the short video and live broadcast ecology on Weibo and earn small red books to do graphics, they still can’t catch up with this wave. But for both platforms and experts, e-commerce is the best and the most Fast monetization path. “
While the content ecology is gradually enriching, Xiaohongshu is also facing new challenges.
Affected by the previous delisting, Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users showed a significant decline. According to QuestMobile data, as of June this year, Xiaohongshu’s MAU was 93 million, which was close to 100 million, but the latest data in October showed that Xiaohongshu has 72.88 million monthly active users. The arrival of e-commerce live broadcast will bring new review problems for Xiaohongshu. After all, problems in content review have caused Xiaohongshu to fall several times.
For Xiaohongshu, it may be unexpected to be an e-commerce vendor, but it is naturally chosen by the community. In July 2019, Xiaohongshu announced that the number of users exceeded 300 million. Stimulating the production of content by creators and retaining users to purchase products in the platform will further help Xiaohongshu better commercialize through content and e-commerce.
Knowing: Users sink, still pay for knowledge
KOL’s collective exodus was originally a story belonging to Zhihu.
In 2017, the competition of information aggregation platforms was fierce. Hundreds of people who knew that Big V was exploded would sign the headlines to this day. The first mention of this matter is known to Da V. “Devil’s milk dad” mentioned, “It is also money, and the annual income is higher than that of ordinary white-collar workers. After signing, all the content cannot be sent to Zhihu, which is equivalent to exclusive Agreement. “
At that time, knowing the realization of knowledge was not easy. “Demon Demon” said in a follow-up reply, “Knowing the atmosphere of the entire community is absolutely opposed to any commercialization.” “Make money by writing. It ’s a particularly evil thing, it ’s marketing, it ’s the left, it ’s the evil devil. ”
I know that I have taken the upper-level route. At the beginning, I decided to use knowledge to pay for revenue. The form of scorned advertising is limited to side-screen advertising, and content advertising is regarded as a high-voltage line that must not be touched. For this reason, Zhihu even once blocked the “Zhuhu No. 1 V” Zhang Jiawei.
Zhihu has tested water knowledge payment for many times, leaving the knowledge payment product “Zhuhu Live”. At that time, I knew that the published data was that there were more than 2,000 Live speakers, and the average speaker’s hourly salary was over 10,000.
To this day, Zhihu’s commercialization model is still advertising + knowledge payment. With platforms such as Weibo and Today’s Headlines setting up MCN institutions in an attempt to institutionalize support and launch high-quality content, knowing the pace is still slow. In February this year, Zhihu also said in an interview with Hedgehog Commune that there is no traditional “MCN organization” in Zhihu, and everyone has knowledge that is worth sharing.
In the past few years, Zhihu, who is leaning towards Kochi atmosphere, has lost some professional content creators and content. When knowledge payment still fails to form a climate, broadening new user groups has become a channel to solve the user growth ceiling. one.
Knowing the natural community atmosphere is: sharing experiences is part of content consumption. A person in charge of content marketing told Tech Planet (WeChat ID:tech618), knowing the need to attract third- and fourth-tier cities and below, to seek a larger market, so that more users can share their experiences. However, this is not an easy task. From the perspective of content consumption, the third and fourth lines have already been saturated and have their own habits. Content consumption platforms such as Quoting Toutiao and Today Toutiao may not be able to integrate into the atmosphere of knowing.
Although Zhihu founder Zhou Yuan said in an interview, Zhihu does not agree with the concept of sinking, let alone sinking consciously.
But Zhihu also made temptations. Tech Planet learned that Zhihu had found a content marketing company and hoped that the other party would help him formulate a sinking plan and “do Low Content in exchange for traffic”. Works well. However, Zhou Yuan was reluctant to let Zhihu become more “smart” and suspended this plan. But many users have said that they have seen more and more gender-sensitive topics in their knowledge.
The person in charge of content marketing said that the topic of both sexes is more popular, which easily leads to natural discussions among users. He concluded that knowing that there are three types of content: story-type, share-type, and professional-type, so there are also professionals such as psychological counselors and emotional counselors on emotional issues. To a certain extent, “The sinking of knowing can also be regarded as the content consumption upgrade of users in third- and fourth-tier cities.”
Zhihu’s commercial hematopoietic ability has always been questioned. Is it necessary to monetize traffic through advertising or to maintain the elite elite in the community to pay for knowledge? The former violates Zhou Yuan’s inner ideal country, while the latter does not explore smoothly. Zhihu also told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618): At this stage, knowing that the source of profit is indeed two types of advertising and payment of knowledge, but it is not convenient to disclose the proportion of revenue.
As the largest Q & A community in the Chinese network, 9-year-old Zhihu has yet to find a solid profit path. However, it seems that Zhihu is also accelerating the pace and transforming the “slow gene” that has followed for many years.
Since this year, we know that commercialization and broadening of business lines have continued. In February, I knew that the male planting community “CHAO” was in beta. In March, the short video product “Instant Movie” was launched (in June). In August, the attitude towards MCN in the past has not been positive. , Began to recruit MCN institutions; in September, the internal test “good thing recommendation” function, you can add product link cards in the answer; in October, the live broadcast function and “Little Blue Star Recommendation” list.
Zhihu’s ambition also includes e-commerce. The shutdown of Instant Film in June once again announced the failure of the short video attempt.”Little Blue Star Recommendation” implies that Zhihu is trying to enter the field of e-commerce with goods. I know that trying to use service products for revenue, but this road is not smooth at present.
The problems that Xiaohongshu failed to resolve are also faced with the same problem. How to balance the community atmosphere and commercialization is the obstacle that community products always surpass. When Tiger Flutter, who has been developing for 15 years, is still hovering a few times before it goes public, who can give the lost community an answer of “Let’s not lose?”
Thanks for reading. Click the link below to draw. The prize was drawn at 19:00 on December 14th, and 200 cash red envelopes were sent. Thank you for your support. Sending cash and red envelopes will continue for a long time.
Daily Topics
Do you think there is a conflict between community atmosphere and commercial realization? Are there any good commercialization cases? For the content community, is “bread” more important, or is it more important to maintain the purity of the community’s content?