Author 丨 other shore
On December 20, 2021, the Headlines Vitality Conference will officially kick off.
Since 2015, as the annual creator event of today's headlines, the Vitality Conference has become the focus of the industry every year. This year's vitality conference, just one year after today's headline official slogan Slogan upgraded to "see the bigger world", will not only summarize the achievements of today's headlines in 2021, but also release new trends and new policies on the platform.
According to official sources, the theme of this year's vitality conference is "Leapfrog to the New , See the True Knowledge", with 1 main forum, 3 sub-forums "8 hours of uninterrupted live broadcast", today's headlines, watermelon video, vibrato three ends of the synchronous live broadcast.
What achievements have been made in today's headline content ecosystem? Has the "expert plan" and "creator income of 10 billion yuan" proposed by last year's conference been completed? What are the blockbuster policy releases this year? Reviewing the vitality conference of the previous years, the whiplash discovered a new trend in the ecology of today's headline content.
The number of creators exploded
In September 2015, the first "Toutiao Creators Conference" was launched. At the meeting, Toutiao today announced the creator data of the year: the number of accounts of Toutiao number exceeded 35,000, of which 1,298 accounts had a cumulative reading of more than 10 million.
Why are creators able to achieve these results? The most basic is due to the advantages of headline number "precision distribution", which can help quality content cross the cold launch threshold, "without more marketing to gain readers and wide dissemination".
With this advantage, the number of creators of today's headlines has ushered in an explosive growth: in 2016, the number of headlines reached 300,000, and the platform shared more than 150,000 words or videos; in 2017, the total number of headlines exceeded 1.2 million, with an average of 500,000 pieces of content released per day.
Fast forward to 2018, a year in which more than 800 accounts on the Toutiao platform had more than 1 million followers, an increase of 900% over last year.
This year is also the year when today's headlines announced the "launch of platform ecological upgrading", in addition to the "Creator Conference" officially renamed "Vitality Conference", the platform proposed to "build a good infrastructure, better serve creators, and protect the platform ecology".
In 2019, the content ecological upgrade strategy of today's headline platform has begun to bear fruit, and the number of millions of fan creators has increased by 111% year-on-year. Today's headlines announced that it has become a "universal information platform", and in addition to personalized recommendations, distribution methods also include search, follow subscription, category navigation, hot list, etc.; content carriers include articles, micro headlines, Q&A, medium video, and short videos.
In 2020, Today's Headlines also officially announced the brand upgrade at that year's Vitality Conference, enabling the new Slogan to "see the bigger world".
Support quality content
At the 2020 Vitality Conference, today's headlines have repeatedly emphasized "insights": professional content is popular, professional creators are in the headlines, and professional creators will be vigorously supported in the future.
In fact, today's headlines did not begin to emphasize "professional creators" and "high-quality content" in 2020, from the beginning, today's headlines have gathered the power of platforms, creators and users to create a positive and motivated content ecology.
For professional creators, Today's Headlines continues to launch fund and flow support plans, and constantly improves diversified monetization forms. Specifically, the construction of today's headline creator ecosystem can be divided into two stages:
2015-2017 is the first stage, today's headlines have successively launched the "10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
In the first stage, the monthly share of Toutiao rose from 3 million in 2015 to 30 million in 2016, and as of October 2017, the traffic share of the Toutiao platform had approached 100 million.
After 2018, the second stage is to open vertical, professional and refined operation of high-quality content after the infrastructure is complete.
For example, at the 2018 Vitality Conference, today's headlines proposed the "Creator V Plan", covering more than 100 vertical fields and supporting 100,000 high-quality creators.
To this end, in the field of technology, today's headlines announced the launch of small programs and open technology models. In terms of content, today's headlines launched a creator service package, including content e-commerce, content payment, live broadcasting and other monetization tools; and announced that it has entered the era of vertical operation, deeply cultivating the fan ecology, improving fan monetization, and helping high-quality creators obtain long-term benefits.
It is worth mentioning that today's headline "open technology model" includes technical models such as the greyhound anti-vulgar model, the rumor dispelling model, and the anti-headline party model. It also reflects today's headlines' desire for quality content.
By 2019, with the increasingly rich monetization methods, the content industry has evolved to the "current stage of content changes". Today's headlines announced the launch of the "Creator Revenue Plan", which will help 10,000 creators achieve a monthly salary of more than 10,000 in the next year.
In order to help high-quality creators get more revenue, today's headlines launched "tens of billions of traffic packages", "personalized IP creation" and "multiple monetization methods", and continued to add two core tracks of "paid columns" and "content e-commerce".
The importance of professional creators
Toutiao Fang once proposed at the 2015 Vitality Conference: "The advantages and disadvantages of content creation determine the size and survival of the platform, and we care about everyone who creates seriously." ”
This is one of the reasons why today's headlines have always emphasized professional creators and high-quality content: it is the foundation of the prosperity of the content ecology and determines the future of the content ecology.
Secondly, high-quality professional content is also the choice of today's headline users.
"They're very picky about content, focusing on current affairs, finance, real estate, family, entertainment and sports, but all have a demand for professional content with a perspective."
According to the 2020 data, today's headlines such as life, finance, science, health, education and other vertical categories have been read/played more than 1 billion times a month, and users are more welcome to multi-perspective, professional depth, effective and practical content.
Finally, in the era of information explosion, homogeneous content is flooded, and subdivision and professional high-quality content are still scarce. This means that the platform must not only facilitate creation, but also match and find high-quality content for users.
Professional creators in the headlines. In 2020, more than 130,000 headline creators have professional identity certifications, such as doctors, lawyers, professors and scholars, financial experts, animal research institutes, etc.; the rise of "expert content" on the headlines is very obvious, and the consumption time of professional content has increased by 66% in one year.
Can last year's Flag be completed this year?
At the 2020 Vitality Conference, Toutiao proposed two numbers: one is the "Expert Plan", which is expected to help 1,000 creators grow into personal brands in the next year; the other is expected to help headline creators earn 10 billion yuan in 2021.
According to the past activity practice, the progress of these two plans will be announced at the 20th conference.
In fact, almost every time the vitality conference, today's headlines will put forward new plans, such as "supporting 100,000 high-quality creators" in 2018, and "helping 10,000 creators earn more than 10,000 per month" in 2019, and these goals have been successfully achieved.
According to the official announcement, at the upcoming vitality conference, a number of business leaders of today's headlines will all appear, release platform strategy and ecological data, and interpret the industry trend in an all-round way, face-to-face to explain the platform product mechanism, personal influence building and content monetization gameplay.
In addition to the main forum, the vitality conference also set up three sub-forums, with the themes of "True Knowledge", "New Vitality" and "Liquidity". Combined with the development trend of the industry and the theme of these three sub-forums, we can peek into some details of today's headline content ecology construction.
For example, "True Knowledge" continues to emphasize professional creators and quality content. iResearch consulting report shows that with the fading of the demographic dividend and the continuous improvement of user aesthetics, the initial development of the content field ended with a situation of victory and chaos, and the trend of content being king has been continuously strengthened.
The aesthetic improvement of user content, the de-quality of content has become the common expectation of users, and authenticity and richness have become the focus of attention. Therefore, creators must also return from the volume of stacking to the content precipitation.
The "monetization power" refers to the monetization of content, which is a direct means of attracting new creators and leaving professional creators. Previously, Today's Headlines has created a variety of monetization methods such as paid columns, content e-commerce, traffic sharing, and live broadcasting.
"New Vitality", according to the currently revealed theme sharing content speculation, should be emphasizing young creators and young users.
According to the Tsingshan Capital report, Gen Z cares about niche culture, vertical circles, likes to "expand", and regards social media as an important part of the meaning of life, they are heavy content consumers, and they will also take the initiative to share information. Gen Z KOLs are on the rise.
At present, Today's Headlines has been upgraded to a common information platform for multi-content genres and multi-field core creators: high-quality content is hard currency, basic disk is the introduction of high-quality content, mature infrastructure is multi-content genres and multiple distribution methods, and Today's Headlines also pays attention to creators and user experience.
Under the action of the flywheel effect, what will happen to the future of today's headline content ecology, which is working together by the platform, creators and users, to work together to efficiently?
Today's headlines already have an answer to this question at the first "Toutiao Creators Conference" in 2015: "There will be no headlines without creators", and Toutiao is committed to better serving creation and "creating a win-win ecosystem with creators".
▽Sneak peek at the conference agenda:
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