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Cao Zenghui, vice president of Sina Weibo, shared the story before and after the rise and fall of weibo, the content is very sincere, but also particularly clear to show the real process of weibo every attempt, every harvest and every hardship.

Scope of application: product, operation and other positions

Suitable work experience: 3 to 10 years

Some methods have reached a dead end and need to be changed

A lot of people think weibo is dead, why are people still using it? Who is using it?

Shared by: Cao Zenghui (Vice President of Sina Weibo)

This article is reproduced with authorization from Chaodun University (ID: DFSCX2014). Chaos University is an Internet innovation university without walls. It invites famous teachers from all over the world to expand the cognitive boundary and offer the most professional, practical and top Internet innovation courses, so as to accompany the most dreamers of this era and realize the chaotic world half a step earlier.

Let me show you three simple statistics about Sina Weibo.

 

NO.1:154 million daily active users (DAU);

NO.2:340 million monthly active users;

3. The total revenue in 2016 was 650 million US dollars, with a year-on-year growth of more than 70%.

 

I’m sure this number will surprise a lot of people. We often hear people ask in surprise, “Weibo is not dead yet? Why are people still using it? Who’s using it?”

 

That’s normal. After a major crisis in 2013, Weibo has experienced a complete rebirth. Today’s microblog is no longer the microblog of those days, and the user structure has undergone essential changes.

 

  • The user is young. Users between 16 and 25 years old (junior high school, high school, college students, and young people two or three years out of college) account for 70 percent of weibo users, the core group. Existing users before 2013 were almost completely diluted.

  • User territory sinks. In the past, weibo users were mainly in the first and second tier cities, while today the users in the third, fourth and even fifth tier cities account for more than 50% of the monthly active users.

 

It took us about four years to build a vibrant new weibo. It should be said that the adjustment of operation strategy played a key role.

 

I want to share with you today, is sina Weibo in the second rise of 5 operating experience.

Bonus periods are the devil: stick to your position

This section points

  • Every Internet product hopes to have explosive growth dividend period.

  • Bonus periods are a monster.

  • The real test for a company is the bottleneck period after the bonus period.

  • Pass bottleneck period, want to clear position above all

From its launch in 2009 to 2013, Weibo experienced explosive growth, and the data curve was almost vertical. So a lot of people said, “We support you, you want to kill penguins, we think you can”.

 

In fact, before 2013, Weibo took many detours as a result.

 

Before Weibo, all Internet products were based on PC. Tencent is also familiar — before wechat came out, QQ was also based on PC. At that time, the product design, thinking mode and main consumption pattern of those Internet products are all done around the PC end.

 

We can almost think of Weibo as the first mobile app.

 

In this context, all weibo users put all their mobile demands into this product. Such as communication and interaction with friends. At that time, weibo also had strong private messages, so it could meet users’ needs for both public and private communication.

 

Indeed, in the early days, there were a large number of users, who now put the needs of wechat on Weibo. We had some unrealistic ideas internally. We launched a product called Chum, which is actually a similar product to wechat.

 

However, each product has its own positioning.

 

After the launch of wechat, users transferred a large number of social, communication and interaction appeals to the past very express. Weibo began to enter a gentle period of development. By this time, many users were saying that Weibo was going to die.

 

I believe every Internet product goes through that phase when you have an opportunity for explosive growth and people think it’s awesome and can do anything.

 

However, every product will encounter bottlenecks.

 

Now everyone is talking about “bonus periods”. I think bonus periods are a monster.

 

Everyone thinks that after the bonus period, you can’t do anything. But the real question is what do you do after the rapid growth of the platform.

 

What you need to do is really think about what your product is. Persistence and orientation are very important — if you wander back and forth, the time window will pass.

 

At this stage, Weibo saw its product positioning: social media. We do social media, not social communication.

 

It is because we think clearly about this point that we have the complete reversal of Weibo since 2015. It’s not like, “All of a sudden, it’s hot again.” It’s a lot of work.

 

Let’s go back and summarize and think about it.

 

As a content consumption community, weibo’s consumption pattern is that a few people contribute content or services, while most people consume content/services and interact with each other.

 

For this form, the operation of content producers is actually the most core part.

 

I’ve divided content producers into three tiers: top, middle, and tail.

Fast Monopoly top: The key to a cold start

This section points

  • The top user can bring in initial startup traffic.

  • The key to the cold start of the product is to quickly cover the top of the scale.

  • But the top users are also unstable and not the core of retention.

How is the competitiveness of a platform established? It’s how you build the core space of the top user.

 

At the top of Sina Weibo are celebrities and celebrities. It is characterized by very large startup traffic.

 

The user that does not have any Internet product is the sky falls down, want to expand user. When weibo just started, the core work to do is to attract customers, that is, to occupy the market. This played a central role in sina’s early days.

 

We spent half a year to monopolize the top users of the rapid scale coverage. This is critical for the cold launch of social products. Other rival products will face huge barriers to launch: the cost of user migration is high.

 

But be sure that people who stay with your product don’t use it because of the top. We often get fooled by the top, thinking that once the top is done, retention and activity will be ok.

 

These are unstable flows.

 

Before 2013, including ourselves, what do we think microblog is? It is a public platform where you can watch celebrities, watch stars and participate in hot social discussions. So far, these two points are still the two strongest attribute tags of Weibo. We never thought there was a problem with either label.

 

But since 2013, what has happened to us in our silliest period?

 

First, wechat came out. Many people are “stupid and confused” between wechat and Weibo. A large number of users, including celebrities, face a choice when Posting information: should I post my stuff on wechat or Weibo? A large number of users are migrating to wechat due to its greater user viscosity and sociability.

 

Second, as a public platform for discussing social issues, a large number of Big Vs have been banned on Weibo.

 

Weibo suffers from a “content vacuum” — a lot of content is being pulled out and new content cannot be replenished. When you don’t have enough content to consume, and you don’t have enough content to consume, you don’t have enough content to consume.

User operation sinks to the middle: breaking through the core competitiveness of the bottleneck period

This section points

  • When the user’s influence on the head is weak, it needs to sink to the middle.

  • The center is the core competitiveness that breaks through bottleneck.

  • Net red own traffic and cash properties.

We used to do user research, and users would say which celebrity I followed and who else I followed. In fact, the following sentence, is the product competitiveness.

 

Star, is a traffic portal. But the real user stability down, certainly not the star.

 

There is no opportunity for a product to pass through the bottleneck stage after the high-speed development period and force to become a high-viscosity product with its core in the middle layer. Users consume your product at more than one point. For example, in addition to celebrities, he also pays attention to cosplayers and game anchors in the anime industry.

 

Why weibo can be completely reversed from 2015?

 

After the bottleneck in 2013, Weibo began to carry out user sinking operation, which opened the beginning of microblog vertical. That decision saved Weibo.

 

Before that, only celebrities, media and social politics ranked high on the list. Other areas are not zero, but close. Small and medium V contributed a lot of content to Weibo, but did not form a brand.

 

Therefore, a big part of our work is to adjust our operation direction and product structure, support the growth of small and medium-sized VS, so that Weibo is no longer the dominant platform of big VS.

 

Taking this as an opportunity, the phenomenon of net red emerged.

 

So far, weibo has 55 vertical fields, such as animation, photography, funny, food, cute pets, games, fashion, beauty and dance. In terms of online celebrities, Weibo has only successfully tapped into two areas: clothing and beauty.

 

Many people do not have the concept of net red, think or in the past sister Lotus this kind of fight. But now the concept of net red, has been completely different from the past.

 

Internet celebrities have two characteristics:

 

First, bring accurate crowd flow. Why can net red and Ali’s e-commerce platform have so strong complementary and docking? The reason is simple: traffic is valuable and you have to pay for it.

 

Second, it can be realized on a large scale and sustainably online. Sina’s TOP10 Internet celebrities, especially in the fashion category, have an annual transaction volume of more than 1 billion. During singles’ day, seven of alibaba’s TOP10 clothing stores were weibo celebrities.

 

In fact, because Chinese Internet celebrities are so popular, we think we are already ahead of the world. When we visited the United States not long ago, we found ourselves many years behind schedule. In the United States, influencers are on a par with celebrities: a large number of high-end luxury and fashion brands choose a celebrity and an influencer when choosing their spokespersons.

 

Influencers are an ecosystem and just getting started.

I firmly believe that there are many more of these 55 verticals where an influencer ecosystem can be developed. For example, in the field of parenting this year, a lot of big VS in parenting can earn continuous income by selling some parenting products after finishing their work.

 

There are still huge opportunities for exploration and growth.

Based on the operation of user sinking, Sina’s reading structure and user composition has also changed.

 

At present, there are more than 20 fields with tens of billions of micro-blog readings, and users pay more attention to a wider range of fields.

 

Weibo has become a “social interest” product, based on users’ interests to establish social, consumption and interaction habits. This form will continue to produce very strong explosive power, and it is completely different from wechat, which is mainly related to communication.

 

For example, the number one vertical read we have right now is anime, which is confusing to a lot of people. In fact, the reason is very simple. The consumption structure of users is highly correlated with the content supply structure. Now Weibo is completely a platform for young people.

Weibo vertical: adjust product application rules

This section points

  • When the product direction is adjusted, the product positioning and operation rules need to be changed accordingly.

  • The bottom rules are life and death and must be reshaped.

  • In the era of mobile Internet, the operation structure needs to be open.

Sina Weibo’s eight years of growth illustrates a complete growth cycle: how new products are launched — how to break through bottlenecks — how to enter the platform operation.

 

What is a platform? The platform has three characteristics:

 

  • User-generated content: Your service or content is user-generated, not user-generated. When no users enter your ecosystem, you are always closed.

  • Scale categorization: If there’s only one item in the platform, it’s too malleable to be a platform.

  • Enterprise/institutional operation: If institutions are willing to enter this platform for ecological operation, it means that this platform can make profits and generate new business opportunities.

 

User sinking is the key for a platform to establish competitiveness and barriers. For example, the video website with the purchase of film copyright as the top attracts users only by those few films and TV plays. Whether it is a platform and competitive is questionable.

 

When you make the decision to sink, your product direction and business rules must change as the target population changes during the adjustment process.

 

If it doesn’t change, it’s just a slogan.

 

After the user sink operation, we did a few things.

Grasp the quality of user content production
Reshape the underlying rules

When we first did vertical, the biggest problem we faced was fans. At that time, it was already possible to buy fans on some e-commerce platforms, and finally they were a few cents cheaper per fan.

 

What’s the point of having fans like that?

 

Therefore, in the process of our transformation from big V to small V, our operation direction is to reshape the value of fans. If the fans aren’t worth it, there’s no point in struggling to build content.

 

We came up with the Garbage Fan Cleanup Program. Let’s say you had a million followers and 980,000 of them were fake, so after we clean them up, you’re down to 20,000.

 

On the surface, this matter is just cleaning up the historical garbage powder, but in essence, on the underlying logic, it is a huge support for the company’s product positioning and ecological support.

 

It’s a starter.

 

We faced a lot of skepticism. One of the most common calls we get every day is, “Why are you dropping my fans?” “I won’t play if you clean the powder again.” “If there’s no one to play on your platform, you’re dead.”

 

But optimize the ecology, this is in the transition period must do. It may look tiny, but it’s the heart of the engine, the difference between life and death.

 

If the way we support V’s is by feeding them powder, then everything at the bottom is empty. All the work you’ve done has gone from a 10 to a 1.

Scale, enterprise classification operation

Open operating structure

Portal sites have many channels, so there is a lot of sorting work. However, such a portal operation requires a team size of 700 to thousands of people. Otherwise we can’t do this job.

 

This is actually for the PC era of “block access” product form design. On the PC side, reading by block is the most efficient.

 

But this is the age of the mobile Internet. The operation mode of most Internet products is the push mode of “information flow”, such as Toutiao.

 

Therefore, when we make mobile Internet products, the original product structure and operation structure should be changed. If I was doing a content product and I was doing a bunch of editors and a bunch of departments, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

 

In 2014, when Weibo started to scale up the vertical, we also made a mistake: each vertical field has its professional and different ecology, but we used our own operation team to do it. Today dry animation, dry travel tomorrow, dry food the day after tomorrow. I found it hard to do.

 

Then we found a pattern.

 

First, we run two or three verticals ourselves to find a way to operate — a big V to drive a structure.

In a nutshell, make V big in all verticals.

 

In fact, it’s not just microblogging: all traffic nodes follow big V.

 

For example, if your advertising campaign doesn’t follow big V, it won’t work. Why is OPPO successful in endorsing? They really operate as a big V.

 

Many advertisers sign endorsers for a “revolutionary” amount of money to shoot an AD and get it over with.

 

That’s not true. Each big V has its own traffic. What kind of traffic you need, and how well your user structure matches that traffic, need to be considered. Why is OPPO so successful? Instead of advertising films, they ask spokespeople to shoot MV or micro films of various scenes.

 

It’s a nurturing plan. To turn big V’s fans into your fans. When we started, there were only about 30,000 people in the vertical. But you can’t imagine the explosive power and life cycle of a platform with five or ten times the growth of head users.

 

Second, vertically open teams.

 

After four or five years, Weibo now has a 10-person operation team. Those 10 people, on the outside, drive a team of 400 to 500 partners.

 

In each vertical, we selected a team with a deep understanding of the industry and resources to work with. We will apply what we know to every vertically open team. It is up to them to set the rules, align direction and goals, and provide tools (such as microblog authentication) in the field.

 

This model of operation is inspired by the now-popular MULTI-Channel Network (MCN), or content manufacturer model.

 

MCN actually started out as an institutional character on YouTube. Like weibo accounts, YouTube has tens of millions of channels. As a result, companies have been created to serve these channels. A few years ago, some of the TOP MCN companies, each serving tens of thousands of channels.

 

In 2015, when Weibo made videos, it implemented the MCN plan, further opening up along the vertical field. We made it a rule that Weibo would no longer contact big V by itself. All the expansion and operation will be entrusted to the cooperative organizations.

 

Therefore, in the open system, microblog now has more and more top users, which are operated by a large number of organizations. Vertical video alone currently has more than 1,000 partner companies working together to build this platform.

 

Third, keep the foundation and give full play to the advantages of cooperative teams.

 

If you are working on a vertically open management structure, be sure that you are probably doing very basic work. In the operation team of more than 10 people on Weibo, some people always complain to me: “Doing basic work for others every day, there is no sense of achievement. Is this interesting?”

 

Also because of the lack of sense of achievement, our team flow like water. The team has the same stability and attrition rate as the assistant position — I’ll dive in and do it myself, and I’ll succeed.

 

But in a platform, it’s the rules and infrastructure that are central.

 

You have to tolerate loneliness, but you can’t do it yourself, even if you know you can do it better than your partner.

 

You have to teach them the way you do things, so they learn. And on the premise of his learning, to play its resources, professional influence advantage.

 

In a platform operation, the people who are responsible for building the ground rules are important. The most critical, is to control their own hands, do not do their own, the time to let others do must be bold to put out.

 

If you don’t, you’re the bottleneck.

Establish a vertical business ecosystem

This section points

  • Platforms have to make money.

  • In ecological cooperation, the interests of partners are ensured.

  • In progress, open up all landing departments.

All operations, the end result is commercialization. You say you are a platform not to make money, that is all lies. When doing each vertical field of Weibo, we should consider the ecology of this industry. And the most critical thing in the industry ecology is the business model.

 

Weibo covers more than 50 industries, and each industry has its own ecology, which is difficult to summarize with a business model. However, the core role of the platform remains the same.

 

Therefore, to establish a vertical business ecosystem, we need to think clearly about three issues:

 

  • What is your role?

  • What do you do for money?

  • With whom?

 

Take, for example, the interactive television industry.

 

What is your role?

 

What is the position of micro-blog in this industry chain? Is a communication interactive platform. That means, in this industry, that’s all weibo does. Therefore, in the field of TELEVISION, weibo is the largest and only communication platform. Wechat doesn’t work, because it’s private and doesn’t work.

 

And who else is in this ecology?

 

  • Broadcast platform: TV station, video website

  • Content producers: TV stations and program producers

 

This triangle constitutes a business ecosystem. Therefore, when we do any industry operation or think about a business model, we should first think about this triangle.

 

What do you do for money?

 

In the television industry, the most important thing is definitely the television station, you can’t do anything without working with others.

 

But you need to think about what you can bring to the industry. If you can’t bring something new to the table, why should anyone work with you?

So what can Weibo do for TV stations?

 

  • Ratings: our rule is not to do long video. Because as soon as I do this triangle, it’s gone, and Twitter is going to compete with TV. So for the TV station, we are to solve the appeal of the TV station, to help improve its ratings.

  • IP value: Increased the influence of the program through communication and interaction. Sponsors need data quantification. The amount of discussion on microblog will not only affect the program end, but also affect the customer market.

 

What does microblog get?

 

  • Traffic interaction: Lots of comment interaction, which can add activity to a microblog.

  • Commercial ecology: the sponsor casts the advertisement on the TV, must expand to put, but cannot put the sponsorship on the TV station’s competitor, namely the video website. Therefore, they will give the money to Weibo to make marketing bigger.

 

With whom?

 

You pick the network, and then one level down, it’s who you’re working with.

 

All business models will eventually fall into a company, or even a department of a company, someone. An industry can really develop, not to think clearly what is the business model, but ultimately to the implementation of the ground.

 

And the implementation of all will be implemented to the people, departments, companies, these can get through, in fact, very critical.

Conclusion: Operations need to be thought of in the big pool of “endgame”

When we think about business ecology, we are actually related to our product mechanism, operation, and business thinking.

 

As a product operator, you need to think in the big pool. When you’re planning your strategy and your operations now, look two or three years ahead and see the end game. The results will be completely different.

 

Because if you don’t, there could be a very obvious pothole ahead of you, and you kind of fall into it, and you’re done.

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