At the beginning of spring 2022, knowledge live broadcasting has become the first highlight of the Internet video industry.
During this year's Spring Festival, under the influence of local epidemic control measures, many young people who are migrant workers choose to celebrate the New Year on the spot. Less visits to relatives and friends, the New Year's free time suddenly increased.
Among the workers who cannot return to their hometowns, some people "lie flat" for seven days and stay at home to make up for sleep and brush dramas; some people take advantage of the sparse traffic to punch in popular attractions such as Universal Studios and Disney; and some people continue to use vacations to make up for themselves.
Knowledge live streaming can meet the needs of young people's vacation learning. Some bookstores, universities and Internet companies have taken the opportunity to explore different ways of live streaming knowledge.
Beijing Book Building, Wangfujing Bookstore and other four large bookstores previously announced that they would be open 24 hours a day during the Spring Festival, and cooperated with Douyin to invite short video head creators, writers, editors and other people to conduct live broadcasts on themes, including "Tang Dynasty Tea Poetry Analysis Lecture", "Intangible Cultural Interactive Experience" and "Folk Culture Lecture".
Some well-known universities are also using live streams to start classes. East China Normal University launched the Spring Festival Knowledge Live Broadcast Inclusive Program, and a number of professors launched the broadcast through WeChat video accounts to explain general courses such as "Folk Art in the Spring Festival", "Civilization and Global Transformation", "From Virus to Vaccine", "Translator on the Riva River" and so on.
These live broadcasts have been well received by East China Normal University inside and outside the university. Gu Hongliang, vice president of the school, said: "Live video has attracted a large number of young social audiences, and now mobile phone screens have become not only online classrooms, but also university podiums, concert halls and theaters. ”
In addition to bookstores and colleges and universities, Internet platforms are also actively laying out knowledge live broadcasts.
During the Spring Festival, Sohu Video held the "2022 Live Broadcast with You for the New Year" activity, and organized more than 40 live broadcasts by talents in various fields in three days. The knowledge live broadcast station has become one of the two major live broadcast categories that attach equal importance to entertainment.
During the event, Sohu Video invited a number of big coffee in various fields, and the theme of live broadcasting was close to public life. Guan Qingyou, a well-known economist, said in the live broadcast that he is full of confidence in the macroeconomic trend in 2022, but "in the face of uncertainty, ordinary people still have to keep their money bags, open source and throttling, and consider the long term." ”
Zhang Chaoyang, the founder of Sohu, also participated in it and continued to broadcast "Zhang Chaoyang's Physics Class". Compared with the simple and easy to understand at the beginning of the broadcast, Zhang Chaoyang's latest course is becoming more and more professional, and the recent research objects are hydrogen atoms, harmonic oscillators, Schrödinger equations, etc. The audience needs to have a fairly high physical knowledge reserve, but the popularity of the live broadcast room has not decreased due to the increase in difficulty.
As an emerging category, the proportion of knowledge live broadcasting in the entire live broadcasting industry is not high, but the growth rate is very fast. Especially under the influence of the epidemic and other factors, the enthusiasm of netizens to learn knowledge is high, which has brought a large number of new demands and driven the evolution and maturity of the entire knowledge live broadcast track.
This year's Spring Festival, bookstores, universities and Internet companies have increased their knowledge live broadcast, making the social significance and commercial value of this track more prominent. Under the benign "inner volume" of young people with strong desire for knowledge, knowledge live broadcasting is on the eve of explosive growth, and is expected to become the "third track" of live broadcasting outside the show and games.
There is no Chinese New Year's Eve this year's Spring Festival, only Chinese New Year's Eve. On January 29, Liu Boyang, a well-known popular science broadcaster and doctor of astrophysics at the University of Western Australia, started from this phenomenon and explained in detail the astronomical basis of the traditional Chinese calendar in the Sohu video live broadcast room.
"Whether there is Chinese New Year's Eve is mainly related to the 'synodic month'. It happens that the waxing moon in 2022 is a small month, and there is no Chinese New Year's Eve. Liu Boyang said.
In the live broadcast room, there are constantly users sending bullet screen questions. During the live broadcast for more than an hour, Liu Boyang answered questions and explained extended knowledge points. This also reflects the two natural advantages of knowledge live broadcasting: flattening and interactivity.
Before the Internet era, when people acquired knowledge, they could usually only learn through books, television, video tapes and other text and film and television materials, and there were few opportunities for direct communication with professionals. With the popularity of the Internet, people have more access to academic celebrities, but if they are not familiar with each other, it is still very difficult to get real-time Q&A from experts and scholars.
Knowledge live broadcast breaks this barrier, anyone can speak and ask questions in the live broadcast room, and be seen by the broadcaster. With tools like Pay Ask Questions, viewers can also significantly increase their chances of getting noticed by their broadcasters. This simple and direct way of interacting is a manifestation of flattening in the field of learning.
On the other hand, compared with the unilateral indoctrination of books and video materials, live streaming of knowledge can realize the two-way flow of information. The broadcaster's answer to questions not only eliminates the audience's doubts, but also makes the knowledge more and more clear, so as to make learning more efficient.
From the perspective of demand, domestic netizens are more and more eager for new live content categories after watching live broadcasts in the fields of shows, games, entertainment and other fields. This laid the foundation for the rise of knowledge live broadcasting.
Especially with the rise of new platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Station B, more and more netizens are unwilling to spend a lot of time watching live broadcasts that lack nutrition, and the user time of traditional live broadcasts is significantly squeezed by short videos and medium videos.
The fundamental logic behind this is that compared with the three- or four-hour live broadcast, the content of the short and medium-length video is much more dense, and it is naturally the fierce enemy of live broadcasting. Taking the former Douyu "one sister" Feng Timo as an example, after she switched to the B station with a larger user base, the live broadcast was not as hot as that year, which was not unrelated to the transfer of netizens' interests.
Netizens are tired of watching entertainment live broadcasts, and the research data of third-party institutions also reveals this trend.
According to the "2020 China Mobile Internet Content Ecological Insight Report" released by market research firm iResearch, after the start of the epidemic, the demand for pan-knowledge content such as life skills, curriculum learning, and health protection among domestic netizens increased by 21%, while the demand for entertainment content fell by 3.2%.
This means that when users watch live broadcasts, they are increasingly pursuing the "sense of gain" of knowledge, and the content that simply kills time is going downhill. Coupled with the epidemic factor, knowledge live broadcasting has become the next outlet in the live broadcasting industry.
Although the potential of knowledge live broadcasting is huge, as of now, there are not many players who have deeply laid out this subdivision track.
Among the main domestic video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou focus on live broadcasting with goods, with the purpose of driving the development of e-commerce business; Huya and Douyu focus on live broadcasting of games; YY is still dominated by live broadcasting of shows; only Sohu Video takes knowledge live broadcasting as the main attack point.
In September 2019, Sohu Video launched a series of live knowledge broadcasts. In the early 2020 outbreak of the new crown epidemic, netizens' knowledge needs for epidemic protection and daily health are very urgent, Sohu Video launched a series of medical lectures and launched the "Find 100 Knowledge Experts" plan.
In 2021, Sohu Video will continue to increase its knowledge live broadcast, and gradually cover many popular fields such as automobiles, beauty, emotional psychology, culture and education, real estate, health, food, mother and baby parenting through the construction of anchor matrix. The live broadcast activities during the Spring Festival in 2022 are an extension of Sohu's above layout.
Compared with Sohu, douyin, Kuaishou and other companies have more abundant funds, but they have not laid out knowledge live broadcasting on a large scale, mainly for the following reasons.
The first is "genetic determinism." The growth path of an Internet company was largely determined at the time of its inception. Jitter started with entertainment short videos, and its development concept, operation mode and strategic direction will be based on entertainment as the core, and the same is true for setting foot in the live broadcast track. The logic of players such as Huya, Douyu, and YY is roughly similar.
In contrast, Sohu, which first did media, and then extended to branches such as video, information services have always been the background of this company. After entering the live broadcast, Sohu tried multiple directions such as show, game, and outdoor, but in the end it fell on the knowledge live broadcast, in order to combine with its own long board.
Secondly, the different characteristics of the creator community determine the general direction of live content output.
In the past few years, Jitter has gathered a group of pan-entertainment creators who Chinese the highest quality of the Internet, and laid a way to make money such as live streaming with goods and brand cooperation, creating myths such as Li Ziqi and Zhang Classmate. Driven by the head big V, the rest of the broadcasters rushed to follow suit, making explosive models and cashing out goods became the common success rules.
Correspondingly, Jitter is generally performing in the field of knowledge creators, and a few leaders are mainly the products of accurate operation and strong recommendation of the platform. In the community atmosphere with a strong entertainment atmosphere, knowledge live broadcasting is not welcomed by the average user, and most creators have difficulty relying on professional content to gain a foothold.
Compared with Jitter, Sohu has benefited from the long-term precipitation of the media business, accumulating a group of experts, scholars and grassroots talents from all walks of life, and can form a local advantage on the knowledge live broadcast track.
According to relevant sources, sohu's video expert database has included thousands of people, including Han Meiling, a psychological consultant in the field of education, Liu Aimin, a psychologist, and Zeng Zihang, a writer; Mizijun in the field of food; Liu Tao, a child-rearing god in the field of mothers and babies; and Lei Jiamao, a lawyer in the legal field. Among them, the health field has the largest number of broadcasters, accounting for about 30%.
Finally, there are also significant differences in user needs across different Internet platforms.
Jitter fast users open the APP for entertainment and relaxation, at this time, if you recommend knowledge content, especially for a long time of knowledge live broadcast, the user's opening rate can be imagined. Coupled with the fact that jitter users have become accustomed to "3 seconds a burst" entertainment short video, it is difficult to let them change their taste and patiently watch one or two hours of knowledge live broadcast.
The core user group of Sohu Video Live is derived from Sohu information services, and the demand for new knowledge is relatively strong, which is easy to be attracted and retained by knowledge live broadcasting. During this year's Spring Festival, Douyin and Kuaishou successively won the right to broadcast the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, while Sohu focused on live broadcasting of knowledge, which also reflected different user portraits from the side.
The potential of live knowledge is being paid more and more attention. However, panning for gold from this blue ocean is not an easy task.
Compared with pan-entertainment, games and other types, the cognitive threshold of knowledge live broadcasting is higher, and it cannot bring pleasure to the audience at the first time, and the ability to attract traffic is weak. And live broadcasts have a snowball effect, and live broadcast rooms with large viewing volumes will attract more viewers, and vice versa. This makes the cold start of knowledge live broadcast more difficult.
On the other hand, the broadcaster of knowledge live broadcast usually has professional knowledge in a certain field, and the understanding of live broadcast gameplay is slightly inferior. Many broadcasters don't know how to create gimmicks and retain viewers, so it is difficult to boost the popularity of live broadcasts.
In order to solve the problem of knowledge live broadcasting at both the creation and demand ends, the role of the platform is crucial.
The first is to use the star effect to establish a knowledge live broadcast brand. For example, Zhang Chaoyang began live streaming physics classes on Sohu in early November last year, and has aired more than 20 episodes so far. He said in a previous interview that he did not expect everyone to understand the live class, and the key was to attract more bloggers to settle in.
Driven by him, including dr. Liu Boyang mentioned above, Dr. Chen Zheng, a teacher at the School of Science of Beijing Jiaotong University, Bao Kun, a doctor of physical chemistry at Cornell University, Zhou Siyi, a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical physics who has recently become popular, and Li Yongle, a high school physics teacher, have also launched physics on Sohu Video.
"It's still about paying and advertising to keep them, but first you need to scale them up." Zhang Chaoyang said.
In addition, the platform needs to come up with more traffic and resources to promote knowledge content. When Sohu Video does knowledge live broadcasting, in addition to planning activities such as the Spring Festival series of live broadcasts, it also injects more traffic through multi-platform distribution, including home page recommendations, advertising spaces, channel focus, mobile phone pushes, etc.
For some high-quality broadcasters, Sohu Video will help them create personal IP and plan personal label columns. For example, around Bao Kun, a doctor of physical chemistry at Cornell University in the United States, the platform customized the "Bao Adult Play Science" live broadcast room for him.
With the brand and traffic, knowledge live broadcasting also needs to solve the problem of commercialization path.
Knowledge live broadcast is far from money, and it is difficult to stimulate users to recharge and tip by setting up various induction activities like shows and game live broadcasts. It must build a business model that is very different from impulse consumption, so that the audience pays for knowledge.
Sohu Video is already experimenting with this. During the Spring Festival last year, it launched the "tip to say two sentences" function, the higher the user's tip amount, the longer the question stayed on the screen in the live broadcast room, thereby improving the chance of the problem being "flopped" by the broadcaster. In addition, new monetization methods such as "paid lessons" are also being explored.
For the platform, knowledge live broadcasting is expected to become a new content category that impresses advertisers. Compared with pan-entertainment live broadcasting, knowledge live broadcasting can more comprehensively and efficiently convey the value points of advertisers and improve the efficiency of delivery and conversion.
At present, knowledge live broadcasting is still in the early stages of development. After the creator community is gradually improved and the traffic source and commercialization problems are solved, the "flywheel effect" of knowledge live broadcasting will appear and truly become the third track of live broadcasting.
Resources:
iResearch Consulting, "2020 China Mobile Internet Content Ecological Insight Report"
Beijing Youth Daily, "Beijing's Four Major Book Cities Open 24 Hours a Day During the Spring Festival"
Wen Wei Po, "East China Normal University Push Knowledge Live Broadcast Inclusive Plan"
Times Weekly, "Baidu Live Layoffs Insider: YY Financial Explosion into a Fuse"
007 in the public relations industry, "Brand Holding Hands Sohu "Live Broadcasting accompanies you in the New Year""