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In the financial report released on June 8, 2020 EASTERN Time, the market value of B station is $12.146 billion, with 51 million daily active users and 156 million monthly active users.

In the first quarter, monthly active users grew 70%, revenue grew 69%, and monthly paying users grew 134%.

That’s an impressive growth rate, and investors are thrilled to see those numbers.

B station development process

All companies can be divided into three types: bonsai companies, tropical rain forest companies and afforestation companies.

Bonsai company: it is not to say that the company with small scale is bonsai company, but decided by its growth mechanism. Bonsai needs constant watering, fertilization and care so that it can grow healthily. Some companies are very large but it is still a bonsai company. For example, some domestic video websites are losing more than 10 billion yuan a year, but they still need a lot of capital intake.

Tropical rain forest companies: Tropical rain forest companies have the characteristics of self-growth, repair and regulation. Many internal elements form a synergy, not simply 1+1=2, but more likely 1+1= two hundred, two thousand, twenty thousand.

Afforestation company: afforestation company is more like a medium state between bonsai company and tropical rain forest company. On the one hand, it has the ability of self-expansion, and on the other hand, it needs the support of outside capital.

B station was originally born in AcFun, an animation interest website, which is also the first danmaku video website in China. Later, due to the increase of traffic, the video often appeared to be stuck in the process of watching. Later, A netizen named Xu Yi made an optimization and re-established A website, Bilibili, short for B station, while the former one was called A station by netizens.

The initial development process of B station is different from that of most enterprises. Start a new company, first write a business plan, then attract investors to raise money, then produce a product to market and make a profit. But B station is to develop the product first, after causing a sensation in a certain area of the market to seek investor financing. These two very different approaches often present two different ideas. The mainstream approach is to think about making money first, and then to think about how to make money with the company and the product are tools. Site B appears out of a certain interest or to solve a pain point, and makes money in the process of constantly optimizing the product. This is very much like Steve Jobs’s one more thing. Jobs spends 90% of his time at Apple’s press conferences talking about specific features and experiences, such as how polished, effective and engaging it is. One more Thing, how much profit did this product ultimately bring us? The values of an enterprise are often determined by who gives priority to product value and profit. When encountering huge strategic decisions, different choices lead to different destinies.

B station’s beliefs and principles

At present, the domestic video market presents a three-pronged situation, iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku are divided. They are constantly innovating in content quality and feature experience to attract as many users as possible. However, what makes consumers headache is a large number of product placement advertisements in the videos, which are at most 60 seconds, sometimes 90 seconds or even 2 minutes. Even though users pay to become members, they still insert more than 10 seconds of advertisements in some popular dramas. In contrast, station B does not have slice ads. It was once estimated that if station B introduced advertising, it could bring an annual income of 4 billion yuan. As Chen Rui, CEO of B Station, said :B station may go bankrupt one day, but it will never go bad. In the face of huge interest drive, it can still keep the original intention, enough to show that this is a company with faith and principles. Once B station also tried, according to the user community the survey data of reaction, most people are willing to accept ads within 30 seconds, but in order to make the platform is not bad, the chairman Chen Rui still promised Bilibili buy genuine new never add patch advertising, I hope all friends can be seen in station B without advertising the new times, without waste of 15 seconds, 3 Zero seconds or even 75 seconds of life.

What are the benefits of a video content company giving up revenue from patch ads? Behind this lies the notion of a commercial religion. Often said that one person have a principle, often is to pass his act of self sacrifice, and this is similar to sacrifice sacrifices, like the ancient ritual up day praying expressed by sincerity, when such offerings in front, others can see the obvious costs, such costs can quickly create an emotional link, let each other’s trust. The premise, of course, is that the costs must be realistic and bring tangible benefits to others.

How to manage community culture

The essence of SITE B is a content community. How to maintain a good community usually starts from the following four dimensions.

1.Utility, that is, function attributes. For a community to survive, it must have something that its users want or some pain point to address. For example, many people like to watch the latest Japanese anime, which can not be found on other websites.

My Identity is my own. The premise of identity is the sense of belonging to a particular interest, hobby or idea before it has been popularized. Sometimes the electric car a cell phone in two dimensional animation, and beside it a also like secondary yuan will inadvertently attracted by the content of the mobile phone, at that time can appear magical effect, strangers will produce identity, two people think they are the same person from the bottom of my heart, there is a obvious difference with other people.

(a person’s Mentality or Mentality) Nowadays, esports are extremely popular in China. For example, the GLOBAL finals of S7 League of Legends were held in the Bird’s Nest, which was packed to the house. Such a group of young people who love esports embody similar characteristics, such as blood, passion, Shouting and fighting. Together they exude the same spirit.

4.Spirituality is the nature of faith. The character of belief reflects the user’s high acceptance and recognition of community culture, and it is also the highest form of expression in community culture. The ideas expressed by the community have been integrated into the blood of users, enabling them to have a new understanding of life, self-knowledge and world exploration. For example, DIY is not only about manual exercise and low price, but also about DIY, abundant food and clothing and down-to-earth life attitude behind users’ love for this activity.

When a community contains these four characteristics, it becomes extremely stable. At present, there is a phenomenon on domestic video websites. If a company can buy the copyright of a hit drama, the number of online users and paying users will rise sharply in that period of time, but once the hit period is over, the number of online users will fall back. The result is a cycle in which several video companies snap up the rights to hit shows and users go to whichever platform wins, making content increasingly expensive for the general video sites and forcing them to pay extortionate prices from content providers. Secondly, the community and users are completely driven by interests. When there is no interest, the relationship ends quickly, and the community does not give users a sense of belonging. Even though the size of the population is very large, the core is fragile and can not withstand the wind and rain.

How does station B break the loop

B station originally originated from the tribes interested in 2d animation, and now it is also the largest documentary community in China. There are also many other tribes, such as social sciences, humanities, finance and economics, and handicrafts. Site B is now like a United Emirates, with thousands of interested tribes, each with their own chieftain and theme. The whole development process is like a concentric circle. At the beginning, there is only one animation community. On the premise that the spiritual core is not changed, the boundary is constantly broadened and expanded, which is the so-called broken circle of B station itself.

The main user groups of SITE B are mainly young people, and young people produce a lot of content capital out of interest, such as the game industry. B station, as a company that does not rely on advertising to make money, has found a profit point in games.

What is the essence of advertising? Draw attention with content and sell it to those who need it. B stand it too, it first supplier agree with the game, through the extraction of mining related game strategy, events, news and information content, such as directional push, reached for the purpose of the game, drainage, it also jointly operated for many popular game, the game industry each year B stand for more than 50% of the profits. The popularity of games has driven the development of the livestreaming industry. It’s like a football game that starts out as a 22-man game and attracts 100,000 fans to the stadium. As an interest tribe, site B has many game masters cutting videos and making guides to broadcast live, which will attract a large number of fans with the same interests to watch. At the same time, live broadcasting also generates other value-added businesses, such as advertising and e-commerce, as well as membership fees for recharging large members, which constitute the main revenue of B station.

Although the size of station B is not as big as bytedance and Pinduoduo mentioned before, it is still a tropical rain forest company just as the company type defined at the beginning of the article. Its main business was first content, which then led to games, which led to livestreaming, which led to tipping, advertising and e-commerce. The elements of station B are interconnected and coordinated. These elements are not simply stacked in parallel, but combined to produce the explosive effect of an atomic bomb, which is also an important reason for the rapid growth of STATION B.