Written | Wen Yehao
Edit the | Wu Xianzhi
"Since I left a message under other people's notes to rent a house, a bunch of inexplicable people came to me privately, some let me share a room together, some let me add WeChat to see the listing, and even the front foot just said to a person that I wanted to rent loft, and someone on the back foot came with a bunch of loft listings to ask, it is really pervasive." Little A complained.
The object of vomiting is the grass planting platform with 200 million monthly active people - Xiaohongshu. Prior to this, the Little Red Book was repeatedly named and even removed from the shelves because of the problems of "false grass planting" and "filters", but after many rectifications, it seems that it is still difficult to break off the relationship with the chaos.
In the end, Xiao A, who was afraid of being deceived, was overwhelmed and chose to pay hundreds of yuan more to sign a contract with ease. Like all traffic pools, Xiaohongshu seems to have been occupied by intermediaries and once again fell into a crisis of trust.
Intermediaries surround the Little Red Book
Unlike the intermediaries who stare at professional photo avatars on vertical platforms such as Anjuke and Shell, the intermediaries gathered in the Small Red Book private chat are not obviously different from ordinary users, and some even send a few rental notes about personal experiences, which is difficult to distinguish.
Most of these notes revolve around renting and life, the content is based on petty bourgeoisie, literary and artistic youth to enjoy life, realize the ideal, the picture is generally more exquisite, compared with other platforms to shoot the housing map is simply a dimensionality reduction blow. However, there is a commonality in this type of note, that is, it will never mention the details of the listing and the specific price, and interested users can only leave messages and private chats.
In the private chat, if the user is not imported into the private domain, this group of people also refuses to negotiate the price, and will not admit that they are intermediaries, but once they successfully add WeChat, they will take off their sheepskin and rely on a variety of listings for information bombardment. At this time, the user's favorite listing on the Little Red Book is no longer there, and it is replaced by a poorly sold listing, or a similar type of listing that is far beyond the price range revealed in the note.
"The company requires that customers must take a look, sometimes can not complete the task can only first make up some cheap, decorated and luxurious listings to leave customers, but the actual price is much higher than the standard price, some customers ask that the listing has just been rented, and then take to see others." an intermediary said.
In fact, this is a common phenomenon in the industry, and some verticals have also strengthened the identification of false listings, but on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Zhihu, users occupy both ends of content production, so that false information can be hidden in a group of normal notes, quietly harvesting users.
In addition to renting, studying abroad, education and training are also the hardest hit areas for the flood of intermediaries. Compared with the real estate agents who use false listings to divert KPIs, the lower limit of intermediaries in the study abroad circle is lower, and the technology of whitewashing themselves is also more superb.
"The cause of the epidemic, now the study abroad environment and before a lot of difference, a lot of past information and policies are not applicable today, online information is very fragmented, so I want to find a reliable intermediary." At first, I went to Baidu to search, but only searched for a flood of advertisements, and there was very little useful information, so I thought of the Little Red Book. Little D said.
At that time, Xiao D felt that the study abroad information on the Little Red Book was very rich, and there were many sisters to share their study abroad cases, coupled with their urgent desire to go abroad, and quickly contacted the institution recommended by the "study abroad blogger", who claimed to reject all the compensation and supported the guarantee. With a bright future looming, Little D quickly signed a contract with the agency, but trouble ensued.
"After signing the contract, my study abroad consultant hinted that my academic background is poor, the GRE score may not be enough, persuade me to lower the standard, or say that the guarantee is not applied for a refund, but the time is wasted, it is better to go to the school of the bad, anyway, the difference is not big." In the end, the little D who felt cheated on himself bitten off the non-guaranteed school and did not leave, or returned the money, but at the same time he also missed the study season.
An industry insider pointed out: "There are no more than two logics for heavy gold guarantee, one is that students can apply normally, the intermediary can apply normally, lying down to collect money; the other is that they know that they can't apply, but the PUA students can go to the school to make money, and if they can't get a refund, because the money has been earned from the students who have gone away." ”
Of course, some study abroad intermediaries have established cooperation with foreign institutions, and they have poor information on the admission requirements and document preferences of colleges and universities, which can indeed provide help in study abroad planning, and it is understandable that formal intermediaries can properly publicize through the Little Red Book, after all, as long as there are areas of information asymmetry, there will inevitably be intermediaries.
However, like real estate agents, many study abroad agents also disguised themselves as ordinary people and mixed up in the Little Red Book to refer to them as sisters, and only exposed the true side after importing users into the private domain, which made them have a little more fraudulent meaning. Not to mention the black intermediaries who are hidden in the shadows and firmly bound to the gray-black industry.
Little Red Book, next 58 same city?
In recent years, the discussion of the HPV virus in the Context of the Internet has triggered the public's "nine-valence anxiety", and the status quo of "a seedling is difficult to find" has attracted a large number of gray and black gamers to hear about it.
Nine-valence substitution robbery is the most common "way to play", which includes both "real scalpers" who make differences through technical means and those who eat the anxiety of the group and wear scalpers.
As we all know, the nine-valent HPV vaccine is suitable for women aged 16 to 26 years old, which is a high match with the Xiaohongshu user pool. Aurora data shows that the monthly average of Xiaohongshu DAU is 83.187 million, the proportion of young people with strong spending power is as high as 72%, and the proportion of female users is nearly 70%.
Xiao G is a senior at a university in Chengdu, and she was extremely anxious about missing the nine-valent HPV vaccine in the school hospital many times during college, and was determined to take advantage of the gap before graduation to solve the "life event". To this end, Xiao G stared at the local seedling release news, and tried many times on various seedling platforms, but found nothing, but spent a lot of time and energy. In the end, deeply tired, she still compromised with the "scalper" who had been despised, and added an intermediary who claimed to be able to achieve technical help under the recommendation of the "sisters" of the Little Red Book.
At first, Xiao G was "tightly guarded" against the so-called intermediary, but the latter provided him with a number of chat records and records of the appointment, plus the intermediary's circle of friends was filled with information about the seedlings everywhere, so that Xiao G gradually relaxed his vigilance. After some inquiry, the intermediary guided Xiao G to add a local seedling group in Chengdu, and told Xiao G to pay a deposit of 600 yuan first, and only half of the deposit was refunded if it was not grabbed, and then paid the final payment of 4,000 yuan after grabbing it.
Just when Xiao G, who was eager to ask Miao Miao, was preparing to pay, she found that the so-called About Miao group was in a state of full silence, which made her raise her vigilance again and suspend the transfer. Later, after adding to ask the same group of friends, Xiao G learned that not only failed to grab the vaccine after paying the deposit, but even half of the deposit promised in advance also needed to be refunded after xiaohongshu praised the intermediary or pulled new ones for it. Now, the local seedling group where Little G is located also has new people joining from time to time.
The undefrauded Little G is undoubtedly lucky, but more users who are not vigilant have fallen into the scam. According to media reports, some of the black intermediaries of About Miao will even make up a successful sms to defraud the balance of money, and even do not hesitate to forge the website of about Miao, defrauding money ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan, and the deceived people are from social platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu.
In order to compete for traffic, some black intermediaries not only pretend to be bloggers, but even solicit customers through "proxy". It is reported that most of the hair is for the talent or the person, the black intermediary usually does not choose to cooperate with the person, the threshold for the person to send is very low, there is no requirement for the number of fans, the amount of notes sent, and the relative remuneration is not high.
Generally speaking, the price of each single order is in the range of 5 to 8 yuan, in principle, the sender needs to be original, but according to industry insiders: "Text, go to some relevant Microblogs to excerpt a few paragraphs to spell together, but the picture can not be directly copied, but through the form of screenshots to change the picture MD5 value, to avoid being recognized by the system to repeat." ”
With these chaotic, batch-copied generations pouring into the platform, users are inevitably deceived in the bombardment of information. On the black cat complaint platform, a total of 1257 complaints were searched with keywords of "Little Red Book" and "deception", and 2194 complaints were searched with keywords of "58 same city" and "deception". It can be seen that Xiaohongshu is equivalent to most of the "largest con artist distribution center in China".
But even so, there is an essential difference between Xiaohongshu and 58 Tongcheng, which is already an intermediary platform. The reason why intermediaries poured into Xiaohongshu, in addition to coveting the high-quality traffic of Xiaohongshu, also looked at the "planting grass" gene of Xiaohongshu.
With "planting grass" as the basic appearance of Xiaohongshu, its UGC content community focuses on sharing "products" and "experiences", while accurate content distribution aggregates UGC content into smaller interest circles, thereby stimulating users' sense of belonging and enhancing discussion. Driven by the cycle of "content output - interest circle layer - content re-output", Xiaohongshu has gradually accumulated batches of high-quality and accurate notes, covering all aspects, while the decentralized traffic distribution model is more friendly to long-tail accounts such as intermediaries.
Compared with the Zhihu and short video platforms that are also content communities, Xiaohongshu "Notes" focuses on mixed output of graphics and text, and the creation tools cover stickers, filters, templates, labels, text and other sections, which makes it better than Zhihu in product presentation and beautification. The intuitive graphic form also makes it have a much shorter information dissemination chain than That of Douyin and Kuaishou, which gives it the attribute of a tool, and is increasingly used as a second search engine by users.
Therefore, although it cannot be compared with the traffic pool of short video platforms such as Douyin, the tool attributes included in Xiaohongshu make users often come for XXX, in contrast, although the DAU is higher, the user uses the scene to hang out, pass the time, and lack a sense of purpose.
Based on different scene uses, relatively cheap white-label goods are easy to sell in the vibrato live broadcast room, but it is difficult to achieve strong purposeful service consumption such as intermediaries on short video platforms; on the contrary, under the action of "planting grass" logic, it is difficult for white-label goods with no characteristics to arouse discussion in the Little Red Book, while service consumption such as medical beauty and study abroad can cultivate a fixed interest community. At a time when the marketing environment is deteriorating, this naturally attracts hungry wolves.
However, 58.com as an intermediary platform, can rely on artificial relaxation of review to benefit from it, Xiaohongshu is not, although 80% of the revenue of Xiaohongshu in 2020 comes from advertising business, but the aforementioned black intermediaries or soft and wide, will not create profits for it, but will reduce the quality of platform content, and then damage community activities and commercial interests.
Therefore, Little Red Book does not want to become a 58 city. To this end, in recent years, it has been strengthening the suppression of false marketing and soft broadcasting. However, in the early days, the platform only formulated the Little Red Book Community Convention, requiring note-sharing users to "declare interests", and now it is gradually rising to block some brands. In February this year, Xiaohongshu launched the "Special Governance of Medical Beauty Categories" for the chaotic medical beauty sector, and the objects of rectification from the account to the company eventually fell to the industry, reflecting Xiaohongshu's panic about content governance.
But the so-called Tao is one foot high and one foot high, on the one hand, to maintain the quality of platform content, on the one hand, the maintenance of the content quality of the platform by the Little Red Book, on the other hand, the intermediaries make money and survive, and the latter is obviously more willing than the former, which also makes the Little Red Book after many times of governance still full of chaos, and even evolved to take the initiative.
The private chat bombardment encountered by the above-mentioned small A is to a certain extent the product of the evolution of the institution to fight against the platform, after all, its own propaganda cannot go through, and it can only chat privately with users under other content. It's more barbaric and it's crazier. As the scale of users continues to expand, the content of UGC will be diversified, and the amount of content accumulated will also increase, and the problems that Little Red Book will face will only become more complex.