Text/Yan Chen
Edit/Gale
I have always eaten other people's melons on Weibo, but I didn't expect that now Weibo eats melons on my own head.
Recently, the Cyberspace Administration of China interviewed the person in charge and editor-in-chief of Sina Weibo, and in view of the recent repeated occurrence of information prohibited by laws and regulations from publishing or transmitting on Sina Weibo and its accounts, the circumstances were serious, and ordered them to immediately rectify in accordance with the law, seriously deal with the relevant responsible persons, and imposed an administrative penalty of a total fine of 3 million yuan.
Since the beginning of this year, Weibo has been particularly "water retrograde". From January to November 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China imposed 44 disposal penalties on Weibo, and repeatedly imposed a fine of 500,000 yuan, with a cumulative fine of 14.3 million yuan.
On December 14, weibo administrators responded to the CAC's interview and punishment, saying that Weibo sites sincerely accepted criticism from the competent authorities and conscientiously implemented rectification requirements. At this point, Weibo "Xiti" Weibo hot search.
Marketing is everywhere and chaos is rife
Weibo's hot search is very sudden, netizens are not surprised by this, many Weibo users said: Well done!
In fact, in the face of overwhelming garbage advertising, smoky miasma marketing control reviews, the gray data industry that cannot be seen, and the Weibo big V that always has a rhythm and engages in opposition, netizens have long been deeply disgusted. The world has been suffering for a long time.
According to the response of the Weibo administrator, the rectification is mainly from two aspects. The first is to promote the special governance of soft pornography rectification, and the second is to promote the special governance of homogeneous malicious marketing. This is also the mainly criticized aspect of Weibo.
Some netizens said that there is a lot of pornographic content on Weibo, the number is large, the scale is too large, and it is unsightly.
Take Weibo's "same city" function option as an example, which often covers large-scale, soft pornographic content, and will induce netizens to add personal WeChat or QQ groups. Previously, according to China Youth Daily, weibo "blue V" accounts have become the hardest hit areas for pornography advertising, and the number of these Weibo fans ranges from tens to tens of thousands. In addition, in the Weibo hot reviews, there are often suggestive words that appear, which is overwhelming.
And homogenized malicious marketing is like a virus that spreads infinitely and erodes the network ecology.
Take the "rice circle" as an example. It has been insulting each other for many years, brushing up on the amount of criticism, provoking confrontation, and malicious rumors, making the entire Weibo ecology smoke miasma. Netizens can not see the comments of "speaking people's words", but instead the uniform text queue of rice circle users, the "rhythm" of unified speech, and the indiscriminate attack on passers-by netizens, and the marketing number also plays a role in this process.
Since this year's "Qinglang" action, Weibo has cleaned up the illegal Microblog on a large scale, dissolved the illegal group, closed the illegal super talk, and disposed of the illegal account. From November 26 to December 10 alone, Weibo cleaned up 15,389 microblogs involving "mutual tearing of rice circles", disbanded 238 topics involving mutual tearing and insults, and imposed a ban on 752 accounts for 7 days to a permanent ban.
But even so, the marketing chaos still cannot be completely stopped. Recently, CCTV exposed the phenomenon of water arms control and evaluation of film and television dramas on various platforms, and Weibo was also implicated. The media revealed that the water military control evaluation code marked the price, Weibo comment 0.8 yuan a piece, limited to the female number, after displaying can be checked out.
Weibo's "Midlife Crisis"
These chaos also hint at Weibo's "inability" in recent years.
On December 8, Weibo Hong Kong stocks were listed for the second time at an issue price of HK$272.8 per share. However, it fell below the issue price at the opening and, as of the close of the day, fell 6.82% to HK$254.2 per share.
Opening the door "green" undoubtedly casts a shadow on Weibo. In the 12 years since its establishment, from "national application" to tomorrow's yellow flowers, Weibo has experienced vicissitudes in the world. Now, Weibo has come to a turning point, facing internal and external troubles.
First of all, the single revenue structure and high dependence on advertising revenue have always been a hidden worry for Weibo.
From the perspective of revenue composition, Weibo's advertising revenue accounts for nearly 90%. According to the latest Q3 quarterly earnings report, Weibo's advertising revenue was $537 million, accounting for 88.5%.
To make matters worse, Weibo's appeal to advertisers is waning. From 2018 to 2020, Weibo's advertising and marketing revenue was $1.5 billion, $1.53 billion and $14.86. From the data point of view, advertising revenue has become a downward trend.
Second, weibo has problems with its own positioning.
In the field of content and social networking, Weibo wavered and failed to cultivate any of them, resulting in the division of users by WeChat, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu, and the loss of traffic. The desire to share a piece of the short video has also been shattered under the comprehensive rise of Douyin and Kuaishou.
On the track of commercialization and content, Weibo has fallen into a choice dilemma. The business model of short video platform live streaming with goods has not been copied on Weibo, and the original public opinion platform has gradually lost users due to years of "water injection". Today, Zhihu, Station B, and even Douyin have begun to become a hot discussion platform for the public.
In addition, Weibo's user growth rate has also encountered bottlenecks.
As of the end of the third quarter, the number of monthly active users of Weibo increased to 573 million. In the same period, the monthly active users of Station B were 267 million, the monthly active users of Xiaohongshu were 160 million, and the monthly active users of Zhihu were about 100 million. However, in terms of user growth rate, the monthly active user growth rate of Station B Q3 was 35%, Xiaohongshu was 97%, Zhihu was 41%, and Weibo was at the bottom.
From 2018 to 2020, Weibo's monthly active users were 462 million, 516 million and 521 million, respectively, and the growth rate fell from 12% to 1%.
It can be seen that Weibo's user growth has weakened. As other platforms further segment users, weibo's user growth may become more difficult in the future.
This interview with the Cyberspace Administration of China once again plunged Weibo into a storm of public opinion, with some netizens singing down and some expecting Weibo to counterattack. Nowadays, Weibo is standing at a crossroads again, but there are strong enemies on the outside and jackals on the inside, and I don't know where to go.