The author | Gu Twenty
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Last year's Clubhouse was hard to find, triggering a product discussion on a larger scale in the post-mobile era. Recently, ByteDance's private beta online App has once again triggered a small discussion in social circles such as product managers.
Circle of friends to find an invitation code, Taobao, idle fish to buy an invitation code, WeChat public number message area to ask for an invitation code. In the major social media networks, the Zhiqu App has once again staged the momentum of the products that Clubhouse once had a hard time finding.
However, although they are all explosive product phenomena, the discussion focused on the product level is polarized.
Unlike Clubhouse, which is Chinese the significance of learning from the Internet product circle, the product discussion of the knowledge area mainly focuses on its similarities with those existing Chinese Internet products.
In most of the online discussions, some people think that it is a combination of "Douban Group + Baidu Tieba + Knowledge Planet", some people think that it is the early moment, and earlier Internet people think that its core is the retro of Rss reading products.
In the discussion on the product function side, although everyone has their own opinions, in the information distribution model, a common understanding is that the recognition area is a community product that byte "de-algorithmizes" attempts.
With the difficulty of finding a yard in this recognition area, why should byte do the recognition area? Will this attempt at a community product be successful? Why do bytes go to the algorithm?
01 bytes of the ideal country
First there is material need, and then there is a spiritual level. This is true for people, and it is also true for businesses.
ByteDance, which has maintained high-speed revenue growth for a long time, after meeting the needs of financial growth, as early as 2021, there was news that a content community product called "Zhi District" was being tested.
According to Tech Planet's report at the time, Byte's official response said that the "recognition area" was a high-end (niche) information platform - intelligent reading tools. The product Slogan is currently officially launched: Define Your Reading Universe.
The product experience of intelligent reading tools is basically divided into two focuses: intelligent and reading tools. Smart means that as the creator of an interest group, the district chief only needs to enter the relevant content topic, and the district can automatically match the relevant content feed of today's headlines under byte.
This means that you can quickly build your own content feed through the knowledge area based on your personal interests and concerns.
However, according to the actual experience of "new entropy", the content subscription sources from today's headlines are highly similar to the content of WeChat public accounts in related fields. To a certain extent, as an algorithm-based information flow distribution channel, today's headlines do not have obvious exclusive high-quality content advantages.
In addition to the disadvantages of content sources, look at the experience as a reading tool. The Zhiqu App provides a reading mode that can de-advertise and re-typeset content from today's headline feeds.
In addition, you can also customize the import of content sources that meet the subscription rules, but for non-byte third-party content sources, the adaptability of the current re-layout needs to be optimized.
As a whole, as an intelligent reading tool, it is difficult to redefine the individual reading metaverse because it does not have an exclusive source of high-quality content. On the contrary, because of the content sources with high overlap with the WeChat public account, many people have ridiculed it as the subscription aggregator of the WeChat public account.
Beyond the basic content experience, look at the community features. At present, there are three main interactive functions: posting, recommendation, and lighting, and there is not much difference in the interactivity of most content communities at present.
But even so, the Zhiqu App is still obviously different from other products of the ByteDance system.
In the form of interest groups in information distribution, it abandons the traditional algorithm-centered single-column information flow product form. In terms of content creation, there is no monetary incentive, but a community-based discussion atmosphere to build trust incentives.
The overall atmosphere of community products to algorithm, money and advertising does make the App a bit of byte "ideal country" temperament in a group of byte products that take algorithms as genes and believe in miracles.
So why should Byte make a content community product that is significantly different from its overall product philosophy?
02 Retry of the community
For community products, Zhang Yiming is obsessed.
As early as five years before the launch of the Zhiqu App, when Byte's other out-of-the-loop community product Wukong Q&A was launched, Zhang Yiming wrote on his personal Wukong Q&A account:
"Knowledge should be shared, we just encourage creativity. As always, we will cover the stomach and intestines, from the white snow of Yangchun to the people of Xia Riba, and the knowledge should be matched. Don't argue, come up and answer the questions. ”
At that time, as a Q&A community product, the benchmarking object of Wukong Q&A was Chinese the earliest Q&A community on the Internet. Believing in the miracle of ByteDance, the growth path planning of Wukong Q&A is also simple and rude.
The first is to dig the wall with heavy gold and know the big V, spending 10 million yuan per month to sign a high-quality respondent. After the large-scale poaching plan was controversial, Goku Q&A also quickly came out of the circle.
Relying on digging people to establish the foundation of the community Q&A soil, real money and silver subsidies to the incentive operation of the respondents are another initiative of Wukong Q&A.
At the creators conference of Today's Headlines in 2017, Zhao Tian, then senior vice president of Toutiao, also said: In the next year, Wukong Q&A will invest 1 billion yuan to sign a contract to subsidize the respondents; in 2018, Today's Headlines announced that it will invest another 1 billion yuan in subsidies to Goku Q&A.
According to these subsidy plans, on the community content supply side alone, ByteDance spent 2 billion yuan in two years.
Less than a year after its launch, in November 2017, Wukong Q&A reached more than 100 million users, generating more than 30,000 questions and 200,000 answers a day.
However, after a year of rapid growth, Wukong Q&A many signed respondents stopped changing, DAU fell sharply, the product merged into the micro headlines, and finally closed the offline line in February 2021.
For community products, Byte hopes to generate content with incentives, distribute content algorithms, and establish a Q&A community with knowledge matching as the core. But the essence of the community is a slow product that is light technology, heavy on operations, and has interaction at its core.
At present, whether in terms of product form or operation strategy, Zhiqu App has adopted a completely opposite strategy to Wukong Q&A, and to a certain extent, it may be after the Byte Fold Q&A community, and then try to de-algorithmize the knowledge community.
03 Aiming for knowledge areas?
In addition to the algorithm, the high-end (knowledge) content community of the knowledge area also has important positive significance for the content layout of ByteDance's overall product line in the knowledge area.
For Byte, the launch of the recognition area can have two meanings: one is the decentralization of the product level, using the group as the point and connecting the community product form into a surface.
The other is the knowledge of the content level, which adopts the invitation system, and the knowledge screening of information content is completed through the management of the district chief to import the subscription source.
These two aspects are also the lessons that all byte products have to make up at present.
For ByteDance, the two growth curves of enterprise development are today's headlines of algorithm-centric graphic and text distribution achievements; and the other is douyin and TikTok, which are algorithm-centered short video distribution achievements.
The generation of the two growth curves is heavily dependent on the algorithm-centric information distribution model, so it also makes the byte system as a whole exist in the form of algorithmic and entertaining product reputation.
At a time when the supervision of user privacy policies is gradually becoming stricter and emphasizing the goodness of big data algorithms, Byte obviously needs to shift from algorithm-centric upstarts to brand spirits that pursue spiritual attributes.
Taking byte's core product Douyin as an example, as a short video platform that mainly relies on algorithms to recommend content, Douyin officially launched the "Learning Channel" at the end of 2021, and the functional entrance is located in the "same city" page on the left side of the application homepage.
At the beginning of 2022, we will further adjust the operation strategy, set up separate partitions for knowledge content, and improve the learning attributes of the platform. However, the "time black hole" attribute of the product itself, in the user's serious brand image, is that brushing vibrato is equivalent to wasting time and playthings.
Obviously, this product image cannot be solved by opening up a first-level entrance to a learning channel in the core product alone.
The launch of high-end (knowledgeable) communities in the knowledge area, if successful, will obviously help improve the genetic image of byte-based overall products and avoid over-algorithmic and entertaining market labels in the Internet elite.
After experiencing two product growth curves centered on algorithms, in the face of various controversies about short videos and the slowdown in the growth rate of platform users, ByteDance began to rethink its value to users and society.
Judging from the version history of the AppStore, the recognition area, which was launched on January 26, 2022, has been updated 7 minor versions so far, and it is still in the initial stage of the invitation system.
When the registration system is fully released, whether the App can really become an ideal country for ByteDance may usher in the biggest challenge.
Resources:
Vibrato, Kuaishou at the same time to power the knowledge of the short video, what is the picture? —21st Century Business Review
The "Wukong Q&A" supported by more than 2 billion bytes was officially closed, and Zhang Yiming's algorithm failed? ------------------------