This paper introduces the bullet screen mechanism of Station B and analyzes the value of the bullet screen function from the user perspective and product perspective.
Danmaku, which refers to the critical subtitles that pop up when watching a video on the web, has now become one of the basic functions of video websites.
As a bullet-screen video website, in the early stage of its development, all kinds of play terrier bullet screens, translation bullet screens, and plot bullet screens attracted a large wave of two-dimensional fans to enter station B to watch anime together, which triggered the phenomenon that watching anime must open the bullet screen.
The bullet screen is not only the evolution of the content review function, but also a dynamic communication medium with strong openness and strong inclusiveness, and even formed a unique bullet screen culture.
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > bullet screen mechanism of station B</h1>
The bullet screen mechanism of Station B is mainly divided into three parts: the user sends the bullet screen, the bullet screen supervision, and the setting of the bullet screen display interface, and the specific process is as follows:
Users send bullet screens: Station B divides the bullet screen levels into two categories: normal and advanced:
Users who answer questions to become members can send ordinary bullet screens for free;
Users pay up to the UP Master for 2 coins and can send advanced bullet screens after passing the UP Master review.
Ordinary bullet screen is the default format of the platform, while advanced bullet screen can customize the bullet screen color, font size, text font, rotation direction, survival time, movement mode, etc., the specific setting interface is as follows:
Barrage Supervision:
According to the algorithm and manual operation, intercept the unreasonable bullet screen sent by the user;
For the displayed bullet screen, the whole site users supervise its reasonableness and have the right to report unreasonable bullet screens;
According to the limited number of bullet screens in the barrage pool, adjust the bullet screens that can be displayed. The barrage pool can be understood as a first-in, first-out queue, the queue size is a fixed number of bullet screens, in the case of excess, the subsequent bullet screen will squeeze out the first bullet screen.
User settings bullet screen display interface: For a variety of bullet screens, users can block by type, and can also set whether they are anti-subtitles, thereby reducing the negative impact of the bullet screen on the content viewing experience.
Users can also adjust the opacity of the bullet screen, display area, bullet screen speed, font size, etc., the specific setting interface is as follows:
I mainly analyze the value of the bullet screen for station B from the two dimensions of user perspective and product perspective.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > second, the user's perspective</h1>
There are two main types of users in the B station:
One is ordinary users who watch videos and consume content;
One is the UP master who produces content and calls on the quality of viewers to be tripled.
Station B has a circular bilateral effect, that is, the ordinary users at both ends of the platform and the UP master influence each other to promote, the feedback and scale of users help the UP master to produce better quality content, and the expansion of the UP main group will also attract more ordinary users to join the B station.
The bullet screen plays a catalyst role in the bilateral effect of Station B, connecting the users at both ends more closely and accelerating the conversion of user value at both ends.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >1</h2>
1) Solve the pain point of not being able to follow the plot "synchronic" comments
In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people's hierarchy of needs, from high to low, is physiological, security, social, dignified, and self-actualizing. Social interaction refers to the social activity that allows individuals to interact with each other and communicate materially and spiritually, and it plays an important role in our lives.
The essence of the bullet screen is that the user group can make social speeches in "the same time and space" based on the movie viewing platform (the same space), that is, the "synchronic" comments in the process of watching the movie.
Compared with functions such as likes, comments, and forwards, the "synchronicity" of the bullet screen makes users no longer have space and time restrictions, and meets the timely interaction and social needs of young users at that moment. On the other hand, the bullet screen is more targeted and purposeful because it follows the plot.
2) Freedom to express opinions
The barrage has its own anonymous attribute, allowing users to have a relatively free and tolerant platform to express their opinions.
The comment function can be traced back to the user's real information. Of course, the bullet screen does not mean that there is no rule restriction on the content of the speech, but it allows the user to have more casualness and truth, and does not have to worry about online violence and over-constrain themselves.
3) Increase the interest of the content
Bullet screen forms such as brush screen bullet screen, full screen bullet screen, color bullet screen and special effect bullet screen bring a visual stimulation to users, and strengthen the sensory impact of the content itself to the user.
The excitement of the bullet screen is no less than the video content itself, and at present, the users of Station B have formed a bullet screen that must be opened to watch the video.
The various high-frequency words in the bullet screen have formed a trend culture of young people. According to Station B's 2019 annual barrage report, Station B users sent a total of more than 1.4 billion bullet screens, of which the best annual bullet screen "AWSL" was sent 3.29 million times.
In fact, bullet screen culture is not only prevalent in the field of secondary dimensions, but also in the fields of variety shows, movies, game videos, etc., bullet screens have gradually become the mainstream way for young people to communicate.
4) Eliminate loneliness
Because the bullet screen has the characteristics of no time and space distance, the multi-person co-time comment scene created by the rich bullet screen has a more community atmosphere.
A variety of "high-energy warnings ahead", "bullet screen protectors" and "protection" of the bullet screen allow users to watch the movie as if someone accompanies them, forming a group viewing and eliminating the loneliness of watching the movie.
The bullet screen not only builds a two-way communication bridge between the user and the UP master, but also activates the communication between the user. Viewers with the same love preferences are more likely to resonate and share under the blessing of the bullet screen.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >2</h2>
1) Solve the pain points of user feedback that cannot visualize each content period
For UP owners, the core operational indicators for a single video content are playback, bullet screen, retention rate, comments, sharing, coins, favorites, and charging.
A closer look reveals that only two metrics, bullet screen and retention, are the result of a single content segment, with the X dimension being the content period and the Y dimension being the quantity/proportion. The remaining indicators are the final output of the content as a whole, as shown in the chart below.
The bullet screen intuitively reflects the user's feedback on the video, and the high number of clips shows that it is easier to generate traffic after receiving a large amount of feedback from the user.
UP master can quickly locate the popular time of the bullet screen, and analyze the specific content of the bullet screen during that time, so as to accurately know the user's emotional orientation, and then optimize the subsequent content.
For example, in the bullet screen hotspot area distribution map above, 00:30 and 02:30 are the time periods that up can focus on. The former has the highest number of bullet screens, which represents the content of the time period, which attracts the highest attention of users; while the latter has reached a short-term peak in the number of bullet screens, indicating that the user's attention has a sudden return.
2) Expand the amount of information in the content
The user reproduces the content through the bullet screen, and the content presented to the user by the UP master is no longer only the video itself, but also the reproduced bullet screen content.
Station B often appears such bullet screens: "come back from the cinema to see the bullet screen version", "come back from iQiyi to see the bullet screen version"... This is the charm of the amount of information in the barrage.
There is no shortage of popular science talents in station B to express their views, and these bullet screens effectively explain and supplement the information of the content.
On the other hand, video content is difficult to let users concentrate on watching the movie at every moment, resulting in users easily falling into a period of aesthetic fatigue.
However, the bullet screen comes with different entertainment information from the content itself - through the bullet screen can be short-term, partial, discrete can effectively divert the user's attention, adjust the fatigue, and thus extend the user's retention time.
3) Increase the propagation attribute of the content
Each user is an information dissemination node, and each comment, forward, and like realizes the dissemination of information.
The communication effect model based on the bullet screen can be mainly divided into cognitive effect, emotional level effect and behavioral level effect.
The cognitive effect is reflected in the user's first impression of the video content due to the bullet screen. As one of the measures of content popularity, the primary purpose of the number of bullet screens is to attract users to come in and watch videos. For example, users who were not originally interested in the subject of the work chose to watch the work because of its huge number of bullet screens.
The emotional level plays a role in carrying on from top to bottom, which not only shows that the bullet screen plays an effective role in the cognitive level, but also lays the foundation for the behavioral level. Its effect is reflected in: in the process of watching the movie, the bullet screen triggered a change in the user's emotions, from the original intention to give up to stay to continue to watch and send the bullet screen.
The behavioral effect is that the user gets a good viewing effect due to the bullet screen, and carries out quantifiable dissemination, such as sharing with friends and tipping up the main.
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > third, product perspective</h1>
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >1. Improve user retention</h2>
The bullet screen solves the pain points of users' "synchronic" comment plots and UP masters can more accurately understand the problems of each time period of content; it also allows ordinary user groups and UP main groups at both ends of the platform to better understand each other.
Up Masters can make a profit by producing content that users like. Ordinary users can see their favorite video content, which meets the needs of both sides, thereby increasing the retention time of users at both ends and reducing the churn rate.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >2. Develop UGV+PUGV model</h2>
In terms of content composition, the video of Station B is mainly composed of professional user generated video (PUGV), that is, the original video of up. Bullet screen is one of the forms of user-made content (UGV) processed by PUGV, allowing users to transform from viewers to re-producers of bullet screens, and stimulating UP masters to produce more professional content.
According to the third quarter of 2019 financial report of Station B: PUGV content accounted for 90% of the total broadcast volume of Station B.
The 2019 B station Q2 financial report shows that the average 850,000 active UP owners of station B upload 2.4 million videos per month, and the average daily video view on the platform exceeds 586 million times. The barrage interaction of Station B reached 1.8 billion times, an increase of 180% year-on-year.
This UGV+PUGV model makes the core traffic of Station B contributed by the majority of waist content creators, avoiding the hidden danger of the platform relying on head creators. The bullet screen greatly enriches the excitement of the content itself, shortens the gap between the quality of waist content and head content, and allows waist content creators to develop accordingly.
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >3</h2>
A simple example: the UP master calls on the user to "please put protection on the screen" in the video, and then the ordinary user frantically outputs the "protection" bullet screen. As a result, the UP master and ordinary users completed an interactive exchange by means of the bullet screen.
Station B has changed from a one-way video playback platform to a two-way emotional connection platform, and the bullet screen is a bridge connecting two-way emotions. The bullet screen no longer reflects a brief viewing view, but expresses emotional tendencies to the UP lord and achieves spiritual resonance.
Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, said: "In Station B, there are more than 1.4 billion interactions between bullet screens and comments every month, and the interaction of these bullet screens actually brings about the collision of hearts and emotions. The barrage makes Station B a community, and this community is a community that can really reach the heart and have a temperature. ”
<h2 toutiao-origin="h3" >4. Expand the payment model channel</h2>
Paying users can unlock more features of the bullet screen, and users who want to send a premium bullet screen will need to pay 2 coins to the UP master. The advanced bullet screen expands the payment model channel of Station B and cultivates the habit of users to pay for content, which is conducive to the overall profit model of Station B.
This article is originally published by @Kitamura Direction everyone is a product manager, and reprinting without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol