When I went to Japan for the New Year, I found out that Xiaohongshu was about to occupy Japan
Text: Chen Meixi
Editor: Principal
During the Spring Festival holiday, Gao Lego and his companions found a soup curry shop in an alley near Akihabara, Tokyo. He first saw the recommendation on Xiaohongshu, and then checked the store's rating through Google Maps, and it was 4.4 points, a good score.
The taste was good and the restaurant atmosphere was great for chatting. At first, he and his friends chatted about the gossip of domestic game companies and Internet manufacturers while eating, and as they chatted, their voices gradually became quieter. The small storefront, not located on the bustling main street of Akihabara, can accommodate about 20 people at the same time, and they found that more than half of the customers spoke Chinese.
The next table is Chinese.
The table further away is a Chinese student.
At the outermost table, there were Chinese couples who had just waited together.
Going out of the store, Gao Lego opened Xiaohongshu again and found that after entering the keyword "Akihabara soup curry", most of the search results were from this store.
The soup curry in the shop
A fact that is gradually being seen by everyone is that in overseas travel, Xiaohongshu is becoming a "Lonely Planet" that is more suitable for Chinese tourists, taking on the function of a travel search engine. And what contributes to this phenomenon is a large number of "amateur" creators who do not seek commercial realization. When the content of the community is enriched to a certain extent, the content can also have tool attributes.
"It's time to save the point"
In late February, the early cherry blossoms in Kawazu are in full bloom, with visitors throughout the Kawazu region – especially Chinese – concentrating on the cherry blossom trails in the river valley. Searching for the keyword "Hejin" in Xiaohongshu, almost all of the cherry blossom photos that appear in the notes point to this area.
Walking on the short cherry blossom trail, you can hear dialects from all over China, which can be called a Chinese festival.
On the Kawazu cherry blossom trail, there are tourists dragging small suitcases
Miraculously, Asians, especially East Asians, can always recognize their compatriots in the crowd at a glance, even if everyone hasn't spoken up yet, even if they haven't spoken their mouths. If you open your mouth, you can even challenge yourself to guess which part of China the other person is from.
For example, passing by a row of food stalls, the eldest brother with a telephoto camera stopped and shouted to his companion who had already left quickly, "Nong rice cake cut?" He was talking about a charcoal-grilled rice cake in which several rice cake balls are skewered on a wooden skewer and brushed with a sweet, salty sauce after roasting. Sure enough, Shanghainese people really love to eat rice cakes, and "Prosperous" is not a bully. Unfortunately, his companion had already walked away, and only a voice came: "Don't cut it, don't cut it." ”
For example, at a crowded photo spot, the tourist next to him turned sideways to give way to the passage, blurted out "thank you", and got a "no" answer, and probably guessed that the other party was a Taiwanese compatriot.
The accent of the Northeast is difficult to locate the province, and can only be judged in general terms as "Northeast fellow".
In a row of snack stalls, only one Sakura Taiyaki is lined up in front of the door, and the owner of the beer stall next door is afraid that it is difficult to understand that his loud voice has been defeated by a dozen pictures and texts on a foreign app.
Sakura taiyaki in the queue
Guangsheng was amazed at the level of detail of these strategies.
When he went to Lake Yamanaka on Mt. Fuji, he and his companions followed the tips they found in Xiaohongshu and transferred to Mishima Station to take a bus. As soon as I got on the bus, I found that almost all of the buses on this bus with only a few flights a day were Chinese, and the only two European and American tourists and scattered Japanese tourists seemed to have strayed into the Chinese tour group. "They even wrote a guide, and when they went, they chose the AB seat and when they came back, they chose the CD seat, because they could sit on the side where they could see Mt. Fuji. ”
Mt. Fuji seen from the bus
Halfway through the Spring Festival trip, Lego and Ovaltine discovered that they could not only speculate on where there were more Chinese tourists based on the strategies on Xiaohongshu, but even deduce whether this was a popular check-in place on Xiaohongshu by using the strategies on Xiaohongshu.
For example, in Tokyo, Lego happened to pass by a subway station and noticed that there were many people taking pictures under the cherry blossom trees at the entrance of the station.
Within the confines of these trees, Chinese once again became the lingua franca. Those who take pictures of their companions are boasting that "this angle is beautiful" while taking pictures, and those who want to take a group photo are asking for help from Chinese tourists they don't know in Chinese. Gao Lego also took the legendary "check-in photo" here, and guessed that this must be "a very popular camera on Little Red Book".
Sure enough, as soon as he got on the subway back to the hotel, Gao Lego swiped the same photo on Xiaohongshu and posted it the night before.
The subway shuttles through tunnels, maybe it's a train, and the Japanese rail transportation system is too complicated for him to understand. After moving away from the "archive point", the Chinese tourists around him disappeared, and the Japanese migrant workers who had just gotten off work took the subway together, whispering unintelligible words in Japanese, and in the slight shaking of the carriage, he said: "It's like a kind of cross-time and space in the same frame." ”
Both Lego and Ovaltine are people who work in the game industry, and they have another way of evaluating popular check-in places on Xiaohongshu.
Whenever the "concentration" of Chinese words around them rises sharply, they will look at each other and smile, and say tacitly: "It's time for the archive point." "In large games, save points often appear after important levels or milestones, allowing players to quickly return to those important locations after failing a level.
Believe in the "book", it is better to expand the map
After repeatedly looking at the photos of "Cherry Blossoms and the Tower", Gao Lego smiled and sighed, and found that the person in this camera position did indeed "have something". A few ordinary cherry blossom trees at an ordinary subway entrance make up a seasonal free attraction because they are just enough to make Tokyo Tower not far away peek out of two blooming cherry blossoms.
Young people, who are increasingly disinclined to go to well-known scenic spots, constitute the main force in planning trips with Xiaohongshu.
Gao Lego commented that the strategies of community platforms such as Xiaohongshu are different from those of travel service platforms, which can provide strategies for larger itinerary planning, with the purpose of selling travel services for a route, or selling hotels and tickets. And the overseas travel tips on Xiaohongshu currently seem to be mostly shared by individuals.
Sitting on the train back to Atami from Kawazu, Ovaltine showed me his collection of pictures and texts: "You see that they are all writing about their feelings, and if they want to write more, they can write more, and if they don't want to, they can write two sentences and send some pictures." This kind of "living person" writes fragments from all corners of the city and countryside, which makes him more eager to explore.
The Xiaohongshu strategy has become the baton of crowds for overseas Chinese tourists, but it has also brought the problem of too many tourists. In the graphic comment section of some recommended overseas niche restaurants and niche check-in places, you can often see comments such as "I will definitely line up when I am done".
But Lego doesn't think it's a bad thing, provided that the recommended place is really worth visiting.
He prefers to explore the Open World Map near the Save Point rather than checking in with the Guide. That's also a concept in the game, and Assassin's Creed: Origins, Assassin's Creed: Osced, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, etc., are all well-known open-world games.
On the way to the Kawazu cherry blossom check-in place according to the guide, Gao Lego and Ovaltine misread the name of the station, got off the train one stop in advance, and accidentally found a cherry blossom trail by the sea.
The platform where you got off the wrong train
On the left hand side is the coastline, where the waves crash against the reef and breakwater, becoming the only sound left between heaven and earth, and on the right hand side are the cherry blossom trees scattered in the mountains, I don't know if they are wild in the mountains or deliberately planted. After walking about 1 kilometer of the trail, Gao Lego and Ovaltine did not meet anyone during the whole process, and the companions sighed to them: "If I send today's photos to Xiaohongshu, this place will definitely become a popular attraction." ”
Guangsheng, who doesn't like to join in the fun, sometimes refers to the strategy on Xiaohongshu in reverse, and if a place is too hot, he will take the initiative to avoid this "save point" and explore the area near the "save point" instead. In Kamakura, for example, he didn't get off the train in the classic scene of Slam Dunk, but took two more train stops.
Two stops away, the crowds disperse, and on the road along the coast, you can occasionally meet local residents walking their dogs. Eagles hover in the sky, ready to swoop down and snatch away fish from the sea or ice cream from passers-by.
I met a fishing brother on the beach
Search-based user growth
During the trip, I asked two male tourists about their motivation to start using Xiaohongshu, and the answer they got was "for the sake of strategy", both of which were in the second half of 2023, that is, after the relaxation of overseas travel policies.
Previously, Gao Lego's impression of Xiaohongshu was that "the tracks for female users such as beauty and mother and baby are relatively strong", and when chatting with other friends, he also learned that "if you want to make money in Xiaohongshu, you have to do these tracks for female users".
But the actual experience was not what he imagined. Because his biggest hobby is to collect food, before the Spring Festival, Gao Lego searched for several destinations and collected a bunch of restaurant notes in his favorites, some of which are chain restaurants, and some are small shops hidden in alleys. In Atami, he spent 150 yuan on a seafood buffet, including alfonsino with local characteristics.
After checking in, Gao Lego felt that the overall experience was not bad. "On the one hand, it's because I also check the Google rating, and they usually post pictures on Xiaohongshu, and I will look at the pictures to see if the food is what I want to eat. ”
Fellow Ovaltine added: "Maybe it's because most of the users who write notes are girls, and they really write in great detail. He flipped out his previous collection of Tokyo animation scene check-in guides, each picture is divided into two parts, the upper part is a screenshot of the cartoon, and the lower part is a field photo, from the scene to the angle, almost identical.
There are only a limited number of use cases for overseas travel tips, but as a starting point, male travelers may be converted into everyday users.
Gao Lego said that in addition to his ongoing collection of food, he now searches Xiaohongshu for work-related content. A while ago, the team he managed was adjusted to the business structure and needed to create a new position and complete the recruitment, because it was not completely related to the field he was engaged in before, Gao Lego chose to search for relevant notes in Xiaohongshu. "If I really found (notes) analyzing the work experience of this position, I checked the information and wrote JD, which is part of the scene of for recruitment, and there are also some scenarios for daily work, and I will look at some content of product design, operation, and data analysis. ”
When the content volume is large enough, the content richness is high enough, and the search function is strong enough, the content product has tool attributes.
Gao Lego, Ovaltine, and Guangsheng have similar habits of using Xiaohongshu - opening the APP is generally for searching, never publishing content, basically not leaving messages and interactions, rarely paying attention to other users, rarely liking, and the most commonly used function is collection. When you need it, look for information from your favorites list.
Using a content product as a tool product does not seem to match the platform's own pursuit.
Insufficient consumption time means lower advertising value, strong reliance on search means more accurate demand for content, and it is more difficult to become potential customers of e-commerce because of the recommendation system, and not forming social relationships and not becoming creators means that the stickiness to the platform is lower.
But even so, the search ability and the tool attributes of the content are still a powerful tool for products like Xiaohongshu to break through the existing user base.
When visiting Yamanaka Lake, Guangsheng brought the yogurt he bought at the convenience store in the morning in his bag, and he even opened Xiaohongshu to search: "Can the swans in Yamanaka Lake drink yogurt?" Although he couldn't accurately locate the eating habits of the swans in front of him, he saw the popular science of "don't feed bread to the swans in Sailim Lake" and silently terminated his yogurt feeding plan.
Swans who didn't drink yogurt
Users who originally fit the portrait are more like low-hanging fruits for the platform. Targeting potential users from non-users, making them users, converting them into active users, building social relationships, and finally becoming users who are willing to pay or produce content is the ladder to higher fruits.
After all, in the stage from 0 to 1, as long as one or a few groups are captured, they can survive, but if they want to become a national product, they need to break through the original user characteristics. Just as in 2024, no one will talk about WeChat or Douyin user portraits anymore, they are not just products that a certain group of people love.
And after DAU broke through the 100 million mark, Xiaohongshu also came to the threshold where it needed to face the fruits of the heights.
The night before the end of the holiday, Lego Ko sat at a restaurant near Tokyo Tower on the observation deck on the 33rd floor. He said that maybe he would try to post some travel tips on Xiaohongshu to pass on happiness to others. "Because after happiness, I am afraid of forgetting. ”
Before that, I wondered why so many accounts that were obviously unmonetizable were willing to continue to produce content. Some are long texts, some are lots of pictures, and some are casual but useful bus schedules. At that moment, I read some of the answers from the eyes of Lego – expression itself is a demand, even in the moment.
(In this article, Gao Lego, Ovaltine, and Guangsheng are pseudonyms.) Images were taken by both the author and the interviewees. ）