preface
I haven't seen me for a long time, I miss it very much, I am the iron head. The previous Article of Huawei's earnings report, many readers were present, and I would like to thank you for providing valuable comments.
However, many people seem to confuse me and others, so solemnly state that I am an iron head, not an iron stream. Note that it is the iron head, not the iron stream. Although I also talk about the industry, it is more relaxed and playful.
Lighthearted and playful things tend to be more entertaining. For example, video and live broadcasting, people come and go, mainly to see a hilarity. But the recent video and live broadcast seem to be no longer lively. On April 19, the self-media "New Entropy" wrote that the live broadcasting business department of Station B plans to lay off employees. At the same time, Zhihu also spread the news that the video department was going to lay off 60% of its employees.
In China's current Internet environment, Zhihu and Station B are very good platforms. In the fourth quarter of last year, the monthly active activity (MAU) was 103 million, and the monthly active person of Station B was 272 million. But both of them are worried about one thing: not making money. Knowing that the net loss in the third quarter of last year exceeded 900 million, the recent goal set by Station B is to achieve breakeven in 2024.
Zhihu has been running for 10 years, and Station B has been running for 12 years. Logically, if a company has a size and business, it should also make money after ten years. However, the commercialization of these two platforms has made a disgrace.
Iron Head asked the industry insiders here, analyzed the specific situation, and dared to say his own views. If you think the content is too mysterious, you should watch it.
The aroma of wine is afraid of the deep alley
Let's talk about a serious one first, I know.
When Zhihu went online, it adopted a closed invitation system. Ask questions, a bunch of people give their own answers and opinions, text communication, to the point. At the beginning, all the big guys invited were Zhang Xiaolong, Wang Xing, and Zhang Yiming, and as soon as the elite temperament came out, everyone was shocked. (If I remember correctly, some government leaders also opened accounts on the early Zhihu)
This small circle of "secret room social" products recently has another, Clubhouse. The pattern is "big guy pulls a bunch of people around a topic to voice bragging". Listen carefully, the voice version knows. At the beginning, Clubhouse was also chatted through La Masque, asking the big V to be strong, and after the explosion, it also withered. Therefore, the problem of knowing is not its own problem, nor is it a problem of Chinese.
Can't rely on the company, can't rely on the customer, that is, the model is wrong. Before everyone "read the story on Zhihu", everyone thought that Zhihu was a platform with "content value", and there were professionals who gave industry content and opinions on specific issues. Since professional content has value, it has given birth to a business: knowledge payment. That's what I did.
In 2016, Zhihu did two things: one was "worth it", paid consulting. One is "Knowing Live", a real-time Q&A. "Worth it" is relatively simple to do, and the downline is also very fast. The payment situation of "Knowing Live" is better, and someone who engages in workplace training can earn more than 10,000 yuan in a class.
From my personal experience, many people are happy to spend money on personal decision-making on major events (job search, legal advice, investment) and professional domain knowledge. Whether it's a one-on-one consultation or a lecture. However, this has a premise, and users have to feel that they are "worth it":
First of all, it is necessary to directly contact their "teacher" and "big V"; secondly, they must feel that they have obtained continuous output content; if they do it perfectly, the same "big V" user should preferably have a sense of group belonging and be able to hug the group.
But Zhihu experiences in this regard is very poor: it does not guarantee that the big V can continue to output content, and the user wants to spend money on the bottom; second, it does not have any form to prove that the user and the big V have made one-on-one communication (the knowledge planet at least has a boutique Q&A to watch); third, the knowledge payment is a big V output to hundreds of users. But knowing the mode of communication, it is a question that a group of people answers. Users track the answer to the big V. A comparison shows that there is no atmosphere of "someone providing services to me", even if someone pays, the scale is very scattered.
Simplifying the above analysis is to know that we must work with the big V to raise the community, so that people in the community believe in the platform and the big V, in order to pay money. From the actual results, the user payment rate in the second quarter of Zhihu 21 was only 5%, which is on par with Himalaya, indicating that the level of Zhihu's operation is very ... Generally, the follow-up "strict selection of members" business does not have to think about it, and the scale of profitability is not very good.
No operation, how to do video
After half a day, what does this have to do with the layoffs of the video team?
Because I know that the problems encountered in video and paid content are all "no one operates" problems. If you think about it, the text content of Zhihu will directly output the content that the audience needs. But the content of the video, whether you want it or not, as long as you click on it, you have to take the time to watch it.
What if there is a conflict between the Q&A format and the video? The way to know is to have people answer in video and nag for five minutes...
Then let's take a step back and follow the idea of the video platform to distribute recommended content to users through algorithms. This has a problem, and the user's feedback must be responsive. As a result, the video of the knowing, clicking and stepping does not work at all, and the like is equivalent to clicking twice. Some of the video quality is too poor, point out not interested, or inexplicably pushed. Watching a video becomes a very painful thing.
The pain of watching videos is also the pain of making videos. Most people who want to make videos in Zhihu, the first problem they encounter is that the video is published. There are all kinds of inexplicable reasons to call back: to be said to be abusive to talk about history, to be said to be vulgar in dressing, to quote official content material to tell you that it involves sensitivity, and not to tell where there is a problem.
The most ridiculous thing is that the video was sent out, the creator and the operation feedback, said that their video playback is low, the result of the opposite said "I do not guarantee traffic", than the video is even more horizontal, directly to the big V will not be.
At this point, the problem of knowing the video business is very similar to the problem of knowledge payment. At the beginning of the "knowledge payment", the goal of Zhihu was to let users spend money, but not to spend money on users. Now in the video business, it is only the video, not the people who watch the video and the people who make the video.
The ultimate problem of consequentialism, data-based theory, is that the top level does not know how bad their business is, and the grassroots are perfunctory in the business. Still in Zhihu, the average number of likes required to know is over a thousand, and the big V, known as the professional answerer, makes a video, and the number of plays is only 50,000. Then in this environment, the top management actually said that the daily video playback should be from 20 million to 90 million, and it is impossible to make such a performance in a few months. Layoffs in the video department have become inevitable.
Live streaming money, entertain yourself
The rumors of layoffs in the live broadcast department of Station B are currently not fixed, and the chat will be relatively short, but the problems that appear are also very similar.
The live broadcasting industry has developed in China for such a long time, and at present, there are two ways to play: pure commercial live broadcasting based on selling goods and content live broadcasting based on output content. The game, singing, and chat live broadcast that Station B first did were definitely live content broadcasts.
However, Station B, which does live content, has recently been considering things like live streaming with goods, such as the "little yellow car" tested by Station B before. That proves that there is a problem with the content live broadcast business of Station B.
Station B's live broadcast in the past took the initiative to attack the strategy, is three words: buy traffic. Signing Feng Timo at the end of 2019 and signing a contract with League of Legends for season broadcasting are all a principle, who the audience has more data to buy who. Since it is data, who handles the most data in the live broadcast field? Live broadcast brokerage and guild, so station B introduced people from the big goose culture, and the big goose and baby elephant also entered the B station.
The guild mode approach is toss-toss. In order to increase the interaction and flow of live broadcasts, Station B set the live broadcast popular list as "the higher the contribution value, the more popular". Multiple live streams of gifts at the same time are popular and more promotions. This model encourages anchors to pull viewers to throw money. The PK battle that promotes the audience of the two sides to "brush more than who brushes more money" through the interaction of different anchors is also a truth.
Although the users of these modes B station are not adaptable, it is very reasonable to put them in the guild mode. Since guilds need data, can they "make data"? Of course. If the guild uses various methods to brush the flowing water at the B station, it can create a red atmosphere in the live broadcast room.
The live broadcast room is booming, and station B should pump a commission, right? However, in order to encourage the guild to enter, Station B posted money to the guild. For example, if you "brush" 1 million for the live broadcast room (the actual number is probably not this number), Station B will give you 1.2 million, and you will earn 200,000. But the reality is that if you swipe 100 blocks, Station B will rebate 40 blocks. According to some media reports, there are even 100 rebates of more than 100. Regardless of the actual performance of the live broadcast room, the people who make money are the guilds that are middlemen, and the B station is losing money. The so-called red-hot live broadcast room is the self-amusement of the company's employees.
Do the employees of Station B watch themselves do more and more losses? At this time, new problems have emerged, the senior management responsible for the live broadcast business of Station B is the former Big Goose Culture, and the result is that the guild closest to Station B is the Big Goose and Little Elephant. The relationship between former employees and current employees does not seem to be inappropriate, right?
From the personal experience of the iron head, the profit feedback of the live broadcast of station B is also very strange in the eyes of users. Theoretically, the live broadcast of station B often promotes thousands of ships anchors, and the price of the captain is 198 yuan / month, which is close to 200,000 yuan in revenue. However, according to the data of Station B, the revenue share for UP owners and anchors exceeded 2.4 billion yuan, accounting for 42% of the overall revenue. Station B has a large number of anchors on the one hand to bring revenue, on the other hand, it also has a large number of subsidies, and finally lost its own subsidies.
If you still want to do a good job in the live broadcast business, Station B can only choose a realistic way to play: let users spend money through live streaming with goods, and convert benefits in the most brutal way.
It is also driven by live streaming with goods, Station B said that the live broadcast business is still recruiting people (definitely in the direction of carrying goods), and has won the payment license (docking the future of the small yellow car).
epilogue
The difficulties of the two families are actually the same problem. That is, where the traffic exit of the content platform is.
If content platforms want to survive, commercialization is indispensable. Saying that it is good to hear a little is called converting users, and saying that it is ugly is called cutting user leeks. But either way, platforms have to make money to maintain their existence, otherwise they won't have a place to watch videos and live streams.
But getting users to spend money is a process of nurturing relationships and building trust. We can buy classes for promotions, or we can buy goods for anchors. The premise of all this is to have confidence in the content of the platform. As a double user of Zhihu and Station B, Tietou does not want to let them go out of business, but if I buy classes and buy goods on these platforms, there is no corresponding service, not even after-sales (here I name Station B "member purchase"). As a consumer, it makes sense that I don't want to pay for it.
To be honest, in the past two years, the platform that has advertised commercialization has thought that with thousands of traffic, some people will willingly hand over the money to their own hands. However, in the history of human social development, this kind of behavior is called "robbery". Even if users understand your revenue pressure, please tell me where to spend your money and what you can get.
After all, the audience pays on the content platform, it is support, it is the transaction, not the handout.