The author | Blue Lotus
Before and after opening the "Close Algorithm Recommendation" button in today's headlines, ByteDance launched a new pan-information and community App - Zhiqu.
Although it is still in the internal testing stage, after being exposed by the media, it is now "difficult to find a yard", and even on Taobao, there are still people on Taobao who openly sell the invitation code of the recognition area.
This APP incorporates the "algorithm recommendation" that byte has advantages, and the content can also be actively subscribed by the user. What articles the user sees are set by the "district chief" of each recognition area through the mechanism of subscription + algorithm fusion.
"Internet Archaeology Association", "Cat Slave Tuition Class", "Architectural Aesthetics", "Bicycle Tosser", "Women and Psychoanalysis", "VICE's Legacy of the Old and the Young", "Deep Thinking on Death", "New Breakthroughs in Cancer Treatment"...
These are full of middle-class tastes, intellectual tones, and even bourgeois temperaments, and the articles in them are from today's headline content library.
The existence of the knowledge area seems to be a declaration to the outside world, today's headlines are not without good content, but you have not yet discovered.
Since the beginning of 2019, today's headlines have not disclosed their DAU and other traffic data, while on the other hand, community platforms such as Weibo, Douban Group, and even Instant have been growing.
Recently, with the increase of the post reply function, the recognition area has evolved from a reader tool to the community, which is also considered by the outside world to be more and more like the Douban group and the moment.
Doubts also poured in - "If the end game is a million DAU product, what value is this for ByteDance?" ”
Under the wave of introspection on algorithms in the entire Internet industry, a "de-algorithmized APP" grown in the byte mother is still of important specimen significance.
01 A "RSS Revival" campaign
"From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, what channels do you get information from?" How much time will it take? What do you think is the most efficient way to get information? ”
These are the most classic questions in the app user survey of Zhiqu District.
An industry insider who first participated in product research revealed that before the launch of the product in the area, product managers almost visited all the Internet big V, trying to provide users with a more effective and interesting information acquisition platform.
In the end, Zhiqu chose a technical route with a sense of age - RSS.
After the district chief creates the "recognition area", he must first configure the feed through the bot, after which the bot will automatically grab all kinds of deep content of the feed. If you want to further filter the content, the district chief can set filter words to limit the title, body, and genre, so that the content of the district is more accurate and more in line with personal reading interests.
For many young users, the RSS mechanism is still too complicated. More than one district chief who participated in the internal test issued a similar complaint, and even the official of the district occasionally posted self-deprecation in the "district tabloid".
But there are still many users in the recognition area to play out the "tricks".
AdsL connection successful, welcome to the Internet world 10 years ago. We hope to bring you some Internet information from 1995 to 2014 through this area. Here, you can exchange quotes from big guys, company changes, Chinese the progress and regression of the Internet.
For example, Ma Yun said in 2009 that there will be more powerful enterprises than Ali, 10 forgotten WEB tribes, cat poker, happy network, 19th floor remember? Welcome to join the "Medieval Internet Portal" in the Knowledge Zone and speak freely.
This is an early, typical, and relatively active area, created by the "Mirror Collectors" and currently has more than 3,900 followers. One of the more popular articles in it is about the old news of M&A cooperation with Du Yinan, CEO of 24 Bonds, when he was snoring in 2012.
In addition, there are currently thousands of knowledge areas in various categories such as art, geography, science and technology, medicine, emotion, history, etc., and there are currently more than 100 art areas alone. With the continuous iteration of the product, the rules of the identification area are gradually simplified.
But there are still hidden concerns about this rule.
An Internet product manager said that this RSS-like function will face the reality that "the mayor is the content ceiling", because the mayor's content taste and ability to control the product rules determine the quality of the single recognition area, "just like the WeChat public account has no way to ensure that every author writes a good article."
02 "Another Douban Group"?
Xiao Mo is a senior Internet operator and the first batch of seed users to participate in the regional test in October last year. He has exchanged many products and operational issues with the product leader of Zhiqu. Not long ago, after the zhiqu was reported by the media, a large number of product experiencers poured in, most of whom were product managers. Therefore, Xiao Mo joked on the moment that when he opened the area of consciousness, he felt that the pills and products were crossed by locusts, and there was no grass.
The day before yesterday, Dr. Gu responded to this situation: after the first batch of product locusts left, the number of badcases of the content magically dropped, the operation did not have to get up at night, the audit did not have to work overtime, the product did not have to panic, and the New Year was over.
In just a few months, the change in the area is not only the arrival of a large number of product managers, but also some changes from the product level.
In the earliest days, Zhiqu was positioned as a pure subscription tool, and users could only join the subscription group and could not participate in the discussion. But with the continuous iteration of the zhiqu product, more and more interactive features have been added, far beyond the scope of subscription tools.
For example, there is a special post button lit above the bottom right corner of the page, which can not only post long articles and opinions, but also add long article links with one click. Compared with the content under the recognition area button, which is mainly filtered by the bot mechanism, the new content of the post has received a high weight in the "recommendation" of the information flow.
Under different areas, users can also participate in discussions. For example, in the "Contestants please listen to the question" area, someone asked, what is the name of the predecessor of QQ? There are 3 options, A, ICQ, B, OICQ, C, none of the above. There were 24 users who participated in the comments on this question, and in addition to giving their own choice of answers, users also revealed more information than the answers in the discussion.
"The original subscription version, after a while, didn't want to use it. But now, a bit like the reader + Douban interest group, the positioning is becoming more and more blurred. But it doesn't matter, because the user experience is getting better and better. ”
The product manager believes that community is likely to be the only way to go in the future. Because tools run out, the community is able to retain users.
It is a similar product immediately, limited by the user base, that is, it may have limited commercial value, but it is quite important for the entire Chinese Internet, and the knowledge area also needs to leave users on the platform to create an irreplaceable industry position.
"In the past, the main battlefield for everyone to discuss the Internet and investment topics was in Zhihu, and now most of them happen on instant apps. To some extent, these discussions can affect the direction of the Internet and investment markets, and thus affect the elite community in China as a whole. This is the reason why Instant APP is currently irreplaceable. Xiao Mo said.
Due to the similarity of product forms to other products, Gu Dafu, the person in charge of the product of Zhi district, also sent a self-deprecating state on the moment: the Zhi District image series has formed a product matrix: Douban, Instant, Tieba, QQ circle, NetEase Cloud Music, Light Mang, CH, reddit...
But in fact, the consciousness zone has its own obvious characteristics. Compared with the immediate point of view, many Internet people on the instant app are real-name system, content and discussion are generated around their identity, and the interaction between users and users is as important as the topic content.
However, in the knowledge area, most users still use the network name to communicate, and the user is completely through the attractiveness of the topic and the quality of the content to judge whether to join the knowledge area. This is more similar to the Douban group.
03 Once values challenge the algorithm?
From the perspective of bytes, the recognition zone is a challenge that values put forward to the algorithm. Therefore, the birth of the knowledge zone actually faces a double opportunity.
The first opportunity is that the information and information content of most platforms cannot be highly selected, and each platform has its own focus, such as Weibo focusing on entertainment and news information, and zhihu focusing on knowledge Q&A.
The second chance is that users have been working hard for a long time, and Byte really needs a product to break the current content recommendation mechanism and innovate.
In the past, many people have raised their aversion to information cocoons, and even a small number of users have chosen to return to Newsletter compared to chasing hot spots on social networks.
ByteDance is known as an APP factory, but after flying chat and multi-flash silence, Byte is also very cautious in the product promotion of the new APP. In addition, most of the engineers are still concentrated on the Feishu side, the team for the development of the knowledge area is relatively small, and the resources invested are limited.
The intention of the district is obvious, that is, to break through the highly educated people, dig out the headlines of high-quality content, and then accurately push it to readers. With the success of the immediate transition from a content subscription platform to a Kochi discussion community, Zhiqu also has such an imagination.
"At the content level, if the district does a good job, it will in turn promote more high-quality content creators to enter the headline number, thus optimizing the content pool of the headline number." Xiao Mo thinks. This is also a bottom-up innovation experiment within ByteDance, which gives the new team a lot of space, and it is also a new attempt after the industry bids farewell to the algorithm cult.