MC Tianyou, who became popular because of "One Man I Drink Drink Drunk", was rumored to have been poached for 20 million yuan to Volcano Small Video. And he is not a person to go, the net rumor that he also at the same time from the fast hand to take away nearly 100 net red, microblogging appeared on a suspected internal outflow of the poaching price list, each is a million dollars in fees from, directly set off a short video poaching war. In the face of this powerful war, the fast hand but seems exceptionally calm.
No coincidence, in the face of the platform a sister A Leng was dug, stranger reaction is similar. Stranger CEO Tang Yan mentioned in the 2017Q1 earnings call: "We are very pleased to see more and more ordinary users on the platform began to get used to through the video to express themselves, record life, these entertaining video content and a large number of ordinary users for social purposes of the natural sharing *** with the construction of a rich content ecosystem, so that we can be more effective to meet the needs of Stranger users and their social life. effectively fulfill the core demand of Stranger users to interact and communicate with people." Stranger, although because of the live broadcast revenue skyrocketed, but still chose to break through the ceiling of the user base and online hours by launching short videos.
From the reaction of fast hand and stranger can be seen, they understand that they must do and microblogging "maintain the relationship between big V and fans" is not the same thing, because this point is microblogging is good at, so it is positioned in the help of the "ordinary people self-voice, record and share life platform ". By definition, they are both more inclined to develop a UGC short video platform than to compete with Weibo for the status of a PGC content platform.
The development of UGC short video platform are just a means to an end, the following we analyze the commercial value of UGC from the purpose behind doing so:
In the face of the platform was poached by the fast hand, in fact, it is very clear that the platform netroots bring only content and user volume, these follow the netroots flow to the other platforms in fact, the user is not very loyal to the platform, they are followed by their idols everywhere! They are following their idols around, and when the idols are gone, the consequent loss of users is bound to follow. So, by positioning itself as a UGC platform that "helps ordinary people to make their voices heard", Shutterstock has found the real user needs, and they have paid attention to the desire of the grassroots users at the bottom line to express themselves, but the mainstream social media has not given them the opportunity to do so (e.g., Weibo's essence is to "maintain the relationship between celebrities and their fans"). The emergence of the fast hand has given them a platform to gain a sense of presence, and the user's dependence on the fast hand is really a dependence on the platform rather than a loyalty to a netroots.
However, the fast hand is too focused on grassroots users, will inevitably bring a problem, that is, the content of the high tone of the more difficult to profit, for example, some of the big international brands if you want to invest in infomercials, they will certainly give preference to the today's headlines or the beauty beat, rather than for the grassroots voice of the fast hand.
Each user is a content producer, and under the platform's macro-control of user content, this will inevitably develop into a community of users with close relationships, as they are all based on a specific need to publish a specific type of content based on the platform, such as the national K-song, Jitterbug (although after I used it, I found that Jitterbug's requirements for the general public are still relatively high, and there are some articles that position Jitterbug as a PGC product). ShakeYin is positioned as a PGC product) and so on. So users on this type of platform naturally have some of the same interests and preferences, and it's easier to generate **** between groups, and they will be more active on the platform.
For a platform with a large enough number of users, such as Stranger, allowing ordinary people to improve the social efficiency of open social relationships through short videos and live broadcasts is the reason why its user base (monthly activity of 85.2 million people) can continue to break through the ceiling.
When the user is only a one-way consumption of content, they will not take the initiative to maintain their own social ID, even if the user in order to reply and follow the behavior of the registered account, but also some poor quality accounts: no avatar, no personal description, no dynamic, which is not conducive to the platform itself to understand their own user groups so as to carry out the next step of the business decision. As an example, today's headlines, the absolute volume is very large, whether it is daily and monthly activity or online hours, but precisely because it is a news and information platform, the user in the headlines is completely to consume content for the purpose. There is no social ID, which has become the biggest short board of headlines. And headlines power UGC short video, really to make up for this short board, whether it is the volcano under the headline small video or jitterbug, by reducing the cost of user-produced content to encourage users to release works, users once released works, will inevitably be a good management of their own social accounts, so as to build up a social relationship chain on the platform.
For different platforms, the development of UGC content communities have different purposes, but the products should essentially conform to a certain design logic, the following readers give their own thoughts on UGC product design.
From determining the product concept, rather than determining to say "do a K song software," the form is the concept of the superstructure, leaving aside the form, we should first note which users which needs. Based on this, I gave the following 5 points of UGC product design logic:
The user group must be able to use a few clear keywords to describe, although the platform development to the later stage of the development of multiple aspects of the development to expand the business, but the early description of the group must be clear and figurative, because such a user group of the main content of the platform to produce a general agreement.
Because there is a big difference between UGC and PGC in the way the content is distributed, the PGC platform is mainly to push the "boutique", "excellent" content to the user, while the UGC platform is more biased towards recommending ordinary people to make those interesting, even a little vulgar content. UGC platforms are more inclined to recommend those interesting and even vulgar contents made by ordinary people, and the contents are as close as possible to the target users, so a clear user profile plays a crucial role in the subsequent content distribution. Taking Shutterstock as an example, labels such as "countryside", "low culture" and "spoofing" basically characterize the platform's users, and this well-defined group has similar background and This well-defined group has similar backgrounds and values, and is more likely to ****ing relate to each other. The platform focuses on short videos that are more personalized, and new users can see the same content on the homepage (spoofs, slow-rocking beauties, etc.), and quickly understand the platform's gameplay and content style.
I've divided the cost of content creation into three parts: physical, technical, and talent.
Physical cost: Producing content involves a loss of physical effort, even when publishing an article, such as tapping on the keyboard.
Skill costs: Producing content necessarily requires the producer to have certain skills, such as the skills you need to sing a song, or the skills you need to dance, which may take more time to master. Additionally, some articles at this point also bring up the cost of the tools needed to accomplish the demonstration of these skills, e.g. to sing a song you need to have headphones, maybe even a microphone, editing software etc.
The cost of talent: this talent includes your intelligence, creativity, and even appearance, body shape, etc., which are natural, or difficult to change later in life.
In the above costs, according to the weight of the cost order, there is a "physical cost < technology cost < talent cost" relationship, talent cost is often regarded as the core ability of the content, as in some live platforms, users tend to favor the anchor with a high face value. Each content-led platform is bound to have these three costs, just a different cost share, and this cost share, directly affects the user base of the UGC platform. Obviously, reducing the cost of technology, or even the cost of talent, can greatly stimulate the creative enthusiasm of users. There are many specific examples, for example, many photo communities, through the algorithm of the depth of the picture processing, so that ordinary users can also easily "shoot" excellent photos. For example, impression, by adding filters, watermarks, text, etc. can make users in their daily lives in the picture instantly have a style, reducing the physical cost of users to take pictures (you do not need to wait a long time in order to a certain moment of the effect of the light and shadow), the cost of technology (the software has a lot of templates for you to refer to, and a lot of effect of the very good filters for you to choose). Another example is Meitu Xiu Xiu, through a very good beauty algorithm to reduce the cost of the user's talent, you are a single eyelid? Come P double eyelids; your eyes are small? P big it; you have dark skin? P white. In short, these platforms are finding ways to encourage users to produce content on their platforms by lowering their production costs, and it's proving to be effective.
Below is a picture of a photo processed using Impressions
In the UGC community, most users post content out of interest, without ever thinking about how much money they'll make from it, or that there's not enough money to be made from providing content in a UGC community. In other words, if you want users to provide content on your platform for a long period of time, you have to satisfy their core need: to gain a sense of existence. UGC content platforms are more about creating a community, and only if you satisfy the users' demand for self-expression will the platform have a meaning to exist. In this case, the platform must provide users with an effective upward channel (it is worth mentioning that the upward channel here can be built with non-material feedback, to put it plainly, it is possible to obtain a large amount of content in an inexpensive way), typical practices such as providing fans for the user, or putting the user's content on the recommended page. If the platform can only allow users to get mentally high in the long run, it will be difficult to do this thing for a long time, and difficult to support a strong enough ecosystem.
With a clear user profile, we can think about how to get content into the eyes of users, and how to push user-produced content out.
Social relationship distribution: For platforms with social relationships, content can be distributed through relationships. For example, the circle of friends.
Interest distribution: explicit selection, such as the choice of the bar bar or the choice of each interest channel. Invisible recommendation, the user does not need to take the initiative to make a choice, the background according to the user's behavioral habits of personalized push, more suitable for platforms with a large amount of content. For platforms with the same tone, a centralized entrance combined with relationship distribution can be achieved. For example, Racer's tone is very consistent, with a centralized discovery page as the main scene for consuming content, and then combined with attention to distribution through relationships.
Distribution by geographic location: for example, Stranger's nearby live streaming, which allows users to interact with people in their neighborhood in a richer way.
For a platform that needs to be compatible with different tones, decentralized explicit selection does a better job of physically separating tones. Instead, personalized recommendations that require training are unable to quickly form perceptions of new users' interests and are prone to user attrition. For example, the emotional club of the bar and the interest bar has a very different tone, it is difficult to an entrance all compatible, only through the user's initiative to choose to distinguish.
After doing the above product design thinking, the product prototype has probably come out, however, is still a little distance from the real users, especially in the control of the needs of the target users, whether there is a pseudo-need to define the situation, at this time, to do a full user survey for the validation of your ideas will have a great help. Through the actual examination of real users can help us timely find the design of the missing or misunderstanding.
Every platform is different, so the logic of product design is not necessarily the same. Therefore, platforms need to choose the UGC design logic and development path for the business purpose of the UGC platform.