The article is from WeChat public account: Internet and Entertainment Strange Team (ID: TMTphantom) , of: training PEI
At the end of December 2007, I used a website called “Douban” for the first time. There were many books, audio and video entries, as well as diaries and photo albums. I quickly fell in love. In the next two years, I wrote some content in Douban, joined many groups, met some friends, and added MSN (exposed age) . Later, due to various reasons, I almost never visited Douban.
A few days ago, I browsed Douban again: the homepage recommendation content is still a lot of updates, the group still has a lot of posts, but the popularity has not been comparable to the peak period; now, the outside world is most concerned about Douban “Movie Rating” , because it is fairer (can’t pay for it) , it can affect the box office to some extent. That’s it. Douban’s influence can not only be compared with super content platforms such as Weibo, WeChat public account, headline account, and Baidu Tieba, nor can it be compared with vertical or interest communities such as B station, Zhihu, and TapTap.
Of course, Douban won’t break for a while, and it probably won’t break in a few years. The founder Abei said that Douban can make a profit. (I believe the profit number is small) ; it did n’t buy much and did not burn money. Business, cash flow should be sustainable. It is not unreasonable to maintain it as a niche community; but, unfortunately, Douban was so close to success …
(Maybe the most popular Douban now is the goose group after resurrection?)
There are many reasons for the decline of Douban. I personally think that Douban missed too many and too many opportunities for success; some of the air vents were almost sent to its product manager, but they were missed alive. In a nutshell: Douban’s managers are too stubborn, too innocent, and they like to be angry with users. As a company founder, as a product manager, as a technician or as an operation staff, you must keep in mind: you can have principles, you can have faith, you can stand out from the crowd, these can lead to Successful; but do n’t be angry with users.
In the past ten years, Blizzard, the prestigious company in the global gaming industry, (Note: not Activision Blizzard’s parent company, because Activision’s performance is pretty good) span> is in a long downward trajectory. The number of new products is small and the life cycle is short. The fried rice of the old IP is becoming less and less appreciated by players. Blizzard’s biggest mistake is to “teach players to play games”-it wants to let players follow his rules completely, control every detail, ignore the player’s own creativity, and even view the player’s free play as a “hole “” BUG “.
Douban made similar mistakes-when it was the hottest, it was too keen to “teach users to use Douban”; teach them to read movies, listen to music, teach them to make friends, and teach them to chat and water. It ignores some normal (and can make money) requests from users; it can’t wait impatiently for some users’ spontaneous exploration behaviors Fight (also find various excuses) ; It is not to meet the changing needs of users, but to follow the established play style. Go slowly. As a result, everyone knows: users are not happy, Douban has not grown up, and sit and watch the new platform skyrocket.
Because the new platform is not angry with users. If you can’t get along with your users, you can’t get through with money, but also with influence. Just like star players and fans cheer, movie stars and movie fans cheer, it is the most undesirable.
(Douban movie ratings are more fair, and now is the feature that the outside world is most concerned about)
Take a few typical examples of “Douban product managers arguing with customers”:
Douban’s content entries only had “Book Movies and Videos” in the beginning. We all know that a lot of young people who like books and videos also like games. Since 2007, numerous users have repeatedly called for Douban to add “game” entries, which have been repeatedly rejected by Douban officials. Game fans have to “disguise” their beloved games as movies or books and give them login ratings; Douban’s attitude is “discover together and delete them together.” This is really meaningless pique!
Since 2010, due to the popularity of smartphones, the game industry has skyrocketed, and game channels, game media, and game peripherals have also flourished. In the end, Douban still added game entries shyly, but it was too late. Today, the valuations of professional gaming communities such as TapTap and Machine Core Network are likely to far exceed Douban.
In the early days, Douban homepage recommended items were mainly book reviews, film reviews, and music reviews. In order to allow more people to see their articles, some authors often choose to “hook” the articles under a certain popular book video entry. For example, if you want to comment on the political situation in the United States, you can choose to post a film review in Fahrenheit 911 or White House. For this kind of “scratching ball” behavior, Douban’s attitude is still “discovered and processed together”, turned into a personal diary or even directly deleted.
The problem is: Douban is a Web 2.0 community, and users are the ones who make the final decision; it allows users to vote out “irrelevant content” from the book audio and video area. Furthermore, it can also change the homepage recommendation rules and algorithms, allowing original authorsThere is no need to play “sweeping the ball”. But it chose to be so angry that it took away a large number of original authors.
After the Douban group function was born, it quickly surpassed books and videos to become the traffic burden. By 2010, the group discussions had occupied more than 70% of Douban’s entire content. Regarding such unexpected surprises, normal Internet companies should be too late to be happy. Douban is like an enemy, because the group function is not the main function of its “preset”, and it is accompanied by some operational and regulatory risks.
As a result, Douban did not manage the group or keep the group warm; it was deleted and deleted, sealed and sealed, the shunt was also shunted, and the current limit was also limited. Reap any benefits. The so-called “Douban Group’s decline due to supervision” is purely nonsense-Baidu Post Bar and Sina Weibo have more content than Douban Group in the same period, but they have a stronger operating force and have not declined.
(I used to be a loyal user of Douban FM, but now I have defected)
Some people think that Douban ’s founder Abe and product managers may only want to be a niche website from the beginning, have no intention to grow big, no money to make money, no intention to go mainstream … Sorry, this is also nonsense. Abe’s ambition is so big that he has tried countless new concepts and new functions, but most of them have not been approved by the users, and a small number of them have not been persisted.
For example, Douban launched the online virtual community “Alfa City” in 2008. Users can build virtual houses and start virtual social networking in the city. I don’t know why, “Alpha City” closed after a short time, maybe because the user has nothing to do in it. Douban also tried several “virtual communities” later. I do n’t understand how the user feedbacks. The key is that I did n’t stick to it every time.
After Sina Weibo became popular from 2010 to 2011, Douban also bet on the “Weibo-like” function and launched “Douban Shuo”, which later seemed to be renamed “Douban Shuo”-I ca n’t remember the specific timeline Anyway, it’s Weibo-like social media, the name changedThe function changes, and the attention mechanism also changes. At that time, Douban had already begun to stay away from the mainstream, and it was even more useless to change it.
Douban also launched the “Same City” function, which makes people think of Damai.com, and the “Read” function, which makes people think of Reading Group or WeChat, and the “Time” function, which means knowledge payment. I personally prefer the FM function. To be honest, these functions are ok, at least usable, but not extreme. They are destined to be only supplementary or secondary functions of Douban, and at this time Douban ’s “main function” has been marginalized.
Interestingly, since the beginning of the mobile Internet era, Douban users have repeatedly requested to strengthen the “Douban” function and make it an instant communication tool. However, Douban’s action has been very slow. Until today, there are still many bugs in Doudou and the user experience is mediocre. Douban enthusiasts even developed their own Douban chat application based on Douban Post. Hey, countless Internet giants are seeking to develop WeChat and QQ competitors, but Douban watched the opportunity missed.
(Douban has put too much effort into minor functions that are not important)
I can understand that the developers / operators of a content community are very powerful in some aspects: they can decide the distribution of community traffic, they can decide which authors and content have been followed, and they can delete posts. You can adjust the user interface at will, and you can launch large-scale activities with a single command … These “powers” give them a false sense of satisfaction and make them think they are the boss.
Wrong. A product manager or operations manager in any content community is not the boss. The producer or operator of any game is not the boss. The person responsible for any aspect of any e-commerce platform is still not the boss. Because in the Internet industry, or any consumer industry, there is only one real boss-the user.
Any entrepreneur or manager, starting a new product,Or when adding new features to an old product, there will be a contradiction: My thinking and user needs may be contradictory, and the behavior of a large number of users may lead the product to a completely unknown development direction. This is especially true in the game: you developed a new hero and defined him as a tank, but high-level players quickly used him as an assassin, and low-level players were keen to let him make up C bit.
There are no “right” and “wrong” questions here. The key question is: Is the game still balanced? What’s the difference between user-created gameplay and curated gameplay? Which one is more fun for the user?
The same is true for non-gaming products. Douban’s product manager considers himself a “book movie” platform, but users want to add game entries; users also clearly prefer the group function; users also strongly demand to strengthen the Douban function. At the same time, Douban’s product manager’s expansion direction was inconsistent with user demands. At this time, the most important thing is to go to the front line to listen to the user’s actual thoughts, communicate with the user, and weigh all the options calmly. Douban exists because of users, and users do not exist because of Douban.
Douban chose to be angry with users, but it declined. Of course, this is not the only reason for its decline, but we will only discuss it here.
(Betting will not only lose users, but also love)
I sincerely hope that Douban will be revived, after all, it carries the memories of me and many “art young / middle-aged” users. I also sincerely hope that other content communities will not repeat the same mistakes. Of course, in the process of expanding the content community, especially in the process of expanding from “vertical / niche” to “horizontal / popular”, there are many and many challenges. “Do not be angry with users” is just a minimum demand.
For example, you must have a very efficient and responsive team. You must be results-oriented and highly sensitive to realityCorporate culture. You can rely on a group of literary youth or technical homes to build a vertical community, but you must rely on a group of iron fighters to win business competition.
In this respect, there are many products / platforms facing challenges, and the names are not the same. I hope that they can all be boiled out, until the day when they become fruitful. After all, in order to reach today’s magnitude, they have already suffered so much, made so many sacrifices, and made so many correct decisions; it would be a shame to fall before dawn. Of course, this is just my personal wish.
The article is from WeChat public account: Internet and Entertainment Strange Team (ID: TMTphantom) , author: Pei Pei