Why isn't interesting social business a good business?

New Eye Young Group Works

Author ｜ Ye Jing

Edit ｜ Sang Mingqiang

Since the birth of the Internet, social networking has been the hottest track.

Following Sohu and Netease's old -fashioned BBS community, the post bar is at stake, the Douban group is embarrassed, and the slogan of "no socialization after XX" is endless. Not long ago, the forum represented by the West Temple alley completely ended, saying goodbye to the youth of a generation Interesting the social field to add another small sum.

Tracing the rise of social networks, the earliest SIXDEGREES allows users to find a specific population. Most of the traditional social apps are still based on offline social connections to online social methods. Adding interested community circles through labels is the consistent game of interest and socialization.

The further differentiation of the social track has changed, and a paradigm has changed. Instant communication, pure content social networking, functional wedding and job search and other vertical social forms. Blur, according to relevant data statistics, as of 2020, the total number of software with social attributes has approached 5,000.

According to CNNIC data, as of June last year, domestic mobile phone netizens have exceeded 1 billion. In the ten years after 2011, socially specialized tracks have raised nearly 500 financing. Although there are a large number of early users, WeChat and QQ have also welded in the social field. In the iron throne, the pace of life accelerates people's network activities to fragmentation, but social applications still have high market demand. According to Appannie, in the first half of 2021, the downloads of such software exceeded 4.7 billion times, and the use of 44%of global mobile devices was used.

Not long ago, the bytes were launched to increase their interests and social networks, but the effect was yet to be observed. However, before a can, LOFTER, SOUL Internet new and old players, in order to related chains and product ecological closed -loop, but even the rising star incubated by large manufacturers such as Tencent, Ali, bytes, interesting tribes, WeChat circles, exchanges, exchanges, exchanges, and contact The flow of flying chat is also difficult to escape the fate of the halberd.

It is both living water and the Red Sea. Quickly advance and go out. Social software with interest as a bait died for a lifetime, but smoke never extinguished.

01 Narrow interest, broad social social

Generally speaking, personal interests are defined as individual tendencies and play a decisive role in social.

"Interests" have always been considered an ideal stranger social scene. Interest -based dating activities can meet the layers of "emotional needs" to "self -realization" from the level of Maslow's needs. Quality circle layer.

In 2003, BBS was in the ascendant, and Tianya and local forums became a gathering place for people to communicate in the early PC era. With Baidu's search for the maximum traffic with search, Yu Jun, then product director, smelled the air outlet: By searching for the engine to build a platform that allows people who are interested in to communicate, that is, Baidu post, "born for interest".

Tieba can be called the purest "interest social". Different from the traditional forum, the names of the top are built by netizens. No matter how much the hobbies are, users can almost find the base camp in the post bar. In the past ten years, the post bar has grown barbaric. In the case that the Internet is not as popular as today, the number of post bar is as many as 22 million, the daily visits are as high as 1 billion, and the traffic reaches 11%of Baidu's total traffic.

But by 2021, the situation turned sharply, and only one -tenth was left. The reason is that most people think that it is the self -dying after Baidu's operational failure: crazy advertising, selling posts, bidding rankings, harsh the Lord, free deletion of posts, and internal contradictions. Success also interested, defeat and interest. As a typical UGC community, decentralization was once a label that was proud of the post bar, and it was destined to consider the ship in commercialization.

Compared with the centralized algorithm recommendation mechanism of the current social product, users are more inclined to discover and communicate and interact. Because the content of the post is sorted in the order of the reply, it is inevitable to deal with information for those who have just entered; on the other hand, non -content quality as the standard for measuring operations will also cause high -quality content The consequences of timeliness.

Users are separated from each other according to their interests. Each post bar is isolated. It can be said that the post bar is not a complete product in the sense. The platform has almost no way to manage one -on -one, let alone advertising accurately. The scattered content is too decentralized to get out of control. In the era of the mobile Internet with the content of the king, it is based on the post of "Walking and Walking" search engine. Choose to restrict browser access. Opportunities to platforms such as Weibo, Zhihu, Douban.

The decline of the post bar paid tuition for the subsequent socialists: Eden, built by "hobbies", could not survive. Although the narrow interest is pure, the gameplay is ultimately out of control. Then regardless of the content, centralized management has become an essential feature of the latecomers.

As one of the closest to Baidu Tieba Bar, the QQ Interest Tribe is given the heavy responsibility of helping QQ to hold young people in the field of pan -social. Because of this, the social attributes of interest tribes are stronger.

In the tribe, users sign in, publish, comment, and share topics, and at the same time find QQ groups related to the "tribe". Officials have established community categories such as games, emotions, sports, stars, animation, etc., and attract interactions through the nearby topics and live broadcast recommendations. After two years of launch, they are interested in social independence and do apps until 2021. In a sense, interest tribes are more like a vassal product of QQ. Since the QQ group is added, why should we go to the tribe? However, it is also because of the differentiation of the traffic pool of QQ and the differentiation of interest tribe forms. The corporate brands and individual operations are allowed to publish advertisements. Do not worry too much about commercialization. As a stranger social platform that parasitizes the social QQ bias to the social QQ, the market performance of the interest tribe is not good, and the quality of the content also revealed the crisis. As the post is under the rivers and rivers, it was eventually abandoned by strategy.

Figure: Partial interest in 2020 Social data performance (data source: Taste thousand sails)

At this time, we looked at Douban, Tianya and other forums. The former became the carnival of the niche people, and the latter gradually became unattended. It is not difficult to use interest as a voucher, but the application can continue to survive and develop into a small probability event. Although the social software after that is endless, it still faces problems such as serious homogeneity and difficulty in realization. "It has become synonymous with the niche, suppressing the community to develop a wider network ecology.

02

Content and relationship, in the field of interest, become difficult.

Social products such as posting bar and interest tribe, such as socializing, are actually more like the concept of the community. From the perspective of most products, the significance of social networking focuses on the communication between people, and the community's operations lies in the sharing of high -quality content on the square, which is a weak social friendship based on content.

People are attracted by content, and staying will be affected by content. The key to the interested circle in the platform lies in professionalism and content quality. The KOL on the head affects the vertical depth of interest in the field of interest. How to play with Xiaohongshu.

When the shelves were launched immediately, the bytes were launched, and most of the functions of instant, post bar and WeChat were included. By creating a group, a gathering place for enthusiasts can be used to chat with the other party without adding friends. You can directly add groups to reduce social thresholds without agreed.

However, the social platform has accommodated too much interest. At the beginning of entering the platform, users generally did not only focus on a certain interest. Flying chat ignores the precipitation of interest and cultural content. It is difficult to eat the group members through the content of its own culture and content ecological barren.

If the content is used as a measure, at present, just as someone is ridiculed that "the public interest is differentiated into a vertical community, the niche interest landing the WeChat group", the opportunity to socialize and socialize may be more in Douban's immediately waiting for head applications, other small communities, other small communities, other small communities, other small communities, and other small communities Suddenly, even more interesting is not as good as focusing on the development of several vertical communities.

On the other hand, social software that constantly emerging in interest seems to have lost their speed on the way to "interest".

John Stuart proposed that the number of interactions = the richness or quality of the exchange or the quality of the exchanges or the quality of the exchanges. Considering that the relationship between users and platforms and other users will directly affect the use and retention of the product. According to the survey, most of the current interest in social software adopts the design methods of weak connections, the main relationship matching and content display design, which also means that the denominator of the quotient has become larger, but the molecules are small.

For example, after registering SOUL, users need to fill in a personality questionnaire test. This questionnaire that involves the user's personality, preferences, and three views, can describe the user's personality initially. With the help of AI algorithms to analyze big data, the AI ​​algorithm divides users into various groups, and the user personality will be turned into "soul planet" to find the objects that meet their psychological expectations and fit. However, young groups in the age of 20-30 are the main users of most social software. The changing interests and personality of the former also brings uncertainty of satisfaction.

In addition, the social apps such as Fateu, Jiming, Cozyou and other niche interests must be labeled before the first landing, and the similar people are matched by labeling -it is obvious that at this time, "interest" is no longer the purpose is the purpose of the purpose. , But a labeling tool for admission.

In the functional sector, most of the interests and general software are not different from general software. It is nothing more than "Plaza publishing, chatting, random matching, recommendation display, expansion and personal pages". It is to expand dating instead of sharing professional interest content.

In the past, we talked about the social platform of "people with group points", and worried that when the people who gathered the same attributes were cute, the platform also limited its own development. Due to the gap between the autonomous characteristics of the interest community and commercialization, it was different from the gap between the community and commercialization. Functional social networking such as marriage and recruitment, advertising, e -commerce, games and other services, almost every one is "eight characters" with interest social platforms. With the re -selection of the platform's concept of interest and social networking, this situation has changed.

03 Qianlu confusion

Today, advertising, membership value -added services, platform coins, and admission fees have become the main source of income for dating software at the moment.

It is friends, not social. As described in the foreword, the expansion of similar platforms has been far greater than that of community content sharing. In the social relationship of strangers, users are often difficult to establish a stable social relationship. The restrictions on the platform lead to a lack of entertainment and recreation, and spying privacy has become the main fun. However, they often underestimate the consumption power and overestimate the willingness of consumption. They are also expanding, chatting, and making friends with strangers. The threshold design of a platform is tricky, and the payment model is so arrogant. In most cases, consumers will cause dislikes. Of course, there is another possibility. It is precisely because the software itself makes people feel expensive. After all, social currency is needed on the Internet. The platform seems to sign a gambling agreement with users. It is a stranger who has never seen each other, and there is no quality assurance, so it is better to use another free.

It can be determined that the social communication is really changing. It is already an ancient story to make a simple interest community. From BBS to various APPs, from PC to mobile phones, all kinds of gameplay reads thousands of sails, and when entering the venue, imitation and repeated everywhere, more new APPs are dry The entertainment time of young users is also "interest" in the end.

Not long ago, the "one size difficult" knowledge area is an invitation system for the "interest community". Today, when the algorithm recommends the popularity, the slogan of the knowledge zone tries to revive the interests of the social literature and art. The feedback after the experience, as a new generation of intelligent reading tools, most of the content recommended by the knowledge area is overlapped with today's headlines and public accounts. It does not have exclusive high -quality content sources. Essence

There are three main interactive functions in the knowledge area, recommendation, and lighting up, and the interaction between most content communities is not much different from the current major content community. The difference is that the information distribution of the knowledge district exists in the form of an interest group, rather than a single -column information flow product form that is used to it. Content creation is self -established in the community to establish trust incentives, not a means of money incentive.

It has to make people think of the Clubhouse of 2020.

Unlike traditional social platforms to seize public traffic, Clubhouse adopts invitations to absorb members. On the one hand, the scarcity of the invitation code gives members a strong self -recognition, which constitutes the "circle layer" independent of the niche; on the other hand, when the old members are invited to the new The addition of spiral enhancement of the new members and the new members have enhanced the difference in the "circle layer".

In less than a year, the valuation of Clubhouse soared from $ 100 million to $ 4 billion. Zuckerberg and Musk joined pushed this new generation to peak. It is believed that Clubhouse breaks through the hard work of social giants such as Twitter and Facebook, and it really plummeted to 920,000 times when a new incremental market was expanded, which was a wonder.

Interestingly, when asked about the decline of interest in interest, some people said, "My interest lies in making money, and snowballs and same flowers are the best social software." In this repeatedly tossing track, it is actually It was revealed that people's life and work were helpless. When interests are no longer as independent products, they are only labels of various application software such as videos, dating, and media. With the new products, new increments will appear, which is still curious.

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