Bilibili product analysis report!

As a gathering place for Generation Z, Bilibili attracts young people with its two-dimensional content products. In the future, the situation of Bilibili will remain grim. If Bilibili wants to have new developments, it needs to make some product changes.

Bilibili , also known as Bilibili in English, or another more commonly used abbreviation - Station B, is a well-known video website.

Ten years ago in 2009, China already had many video websites such as Youku, Tudou, and Ku6. Bilibili very accurately targeted the emerging two-dimensional culture in China and provided a communication platform based on video for the two-dimensional community.

After 10 years of development, Bilibili has now grown into the largest two-dimensional community in China, but it is not limited to this. Many people say that Bilibili will become China's YouTube.

Wait, why is it Bilibili, and not Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent Video? The latter three obviously have much higher monthly active users.

Youtube is actually a video website that focuses on UGC (user-generated content). Although Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video are large, their main content is PGC content, such as TV series, movies and variety shows. In fact, these three websites are more like Netflix.

Currently, the only major video websites in China that focus on UGC video content are Bilibili, Xigua Video, Douyin and Kuaishou, but the latter three focus on short videos. So currently in China, there is only one website like Youtube left, Bilibili.

In its profile, Bilibili positions itself as: a cultural community where young Chinese people gather.

Bilibili should not only be a video website like Youtube, but also a community platform for young people to communicate their interests. Judging from a series of actions in recent years such as adding new sections, opening channels, and increasing the proportion of non-two-dimensional content, Bilibili is moving in this direction.

This article will analyze the B station APP from four aspects: product, market, users, and functions, and give some optimization suggestions.

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

1. Product function structure
2. Market Analysis
3. User Analysis
4. User research
5. Functional analysis
6. Summarize

Use environment:

• Operating system: iOS 13.1
• Software version: 5.48.2
• Experience device: iPhone Xs
• Experience time: October 2019

1. Product Function Structure Diagram & User Usage Path

1.1 Product Function Structure Diagram

1.2 User Usage Path Map

Scenario 1: Users visit Bilibili to read the updates of the UP masters they follow

Scenario 2: The user wants to watch a new TV series

Scenario 3: UP host uploads video using APP

Scenario 4: UP host checks the comments and comments of his own video

2. Market Analysis

2.1 Product Introduction

Speaking of "bullet screen", everyone is familiar with it now. Basically all major video websites and live broadcasts have this function.

But when it comes to barrage websites, many people may think of Bilibili first. Although Bilibili was not the inventor of barrage, it was indeed the one that made barrage popular in China.

Bilibili was launched in June 2009. Its full name is Bilibili. In the beginning, it mainly focused on two-dimensional animation content. There were no opening ads in the videos, and coupled with the highly interactive barrage, Bilibili quickly became popular among young people. At the same time, Bilibili encourages users to upload their own video works, making the content of Bilibili more and more abundant. It is no longer limited to the two-dimensional world. Currently, it mainly has three business segments: video, games and live broadcast.

From 300,000 monthly active users at the beginning to 110 million monthly active users now, with those born in the 1990s and 2000s accounting for 78%, Bilibili has become the leading cultural community for young people in China.

2.2 Defining the Market

Bilibili initially targeted the two-dimensional market, and in the early days there were many two-dimensional websites competing with it. Among them, the biggest competitor was ACfun (A Station for short), which is the most similar to Bilibili. In the 10 years since B Station was founded, due to the repeated changes of ownership and wrong decisions of Station A, it has gradually declined, and now has only more than 2.9 million monthly active users; while the monthly active users of B Station have reached 38 times that of Station A. In the vertical field of domestic two-dimensional community, B Station has basically secured the top spot.

It is difficult to achieve a major breakthrough in user numbers by only producing 2D content, so after 2012, Bilibili added more content sections, such as life, technology, music, dance, etc., to diversify the content and attract more users. After that, Bilibili's target users are the general 2D group.

The market for pan-two-dimensional (2D) is huge. Many data analysis agencies have given the number of pan-two-dimensional (2D) users in China in 2018, such as 290 million from iMedia Research, 320 million from iResearch, and 370 million from CNG (270 million pan-two-dimensional (2D) users and 100 million core two-dimensional (2D) users).

Although the data from different sources vary, it can be roughly estimated that the number of people in the pan-two-dimensional community will be around 300 million in 2018, and may reach 350 million in 2019.

Bilibili’s goal seems to be more than just general two-dimensional content. Its official website says that “Bilibili is a cultural community where young Chinese people gather” and its target users are the people born in the 1990s and 2000s who are called “Generation Z”.

Before and after its listing in 2018, Bilibili took frequent actions:

• In December 2017, Bilibili established its own e-sports club and obtained the live broadcast and on-demand rights for the 2018 LPL, the regional finals, and the intercontinental championship.
• On November 13, 2018, Bilibili Comics was launched on Bilibili.
• On December 18, 2018, Bilibili released more than 20 animation works led by B Station.
• In addition, Bilibili has also begun to lay out its plans in audio and virtual anchors.

It can be seen that Bilibili has begun to move into the "pan-entertainment" field with a wider audience, and its target users have expanded to "young people in China."

2.3 Where is the ceiling for the number of users?

So how many young people like this are there in China?

By June 2019, the number of Internet users in my country reached 854 million (data source: CNNIC "44th China Internet Development Statistical Report"), of which 210 million were in the age group of 20-29. From the data of the sixth national census (2010), it can be found that there were 220 million people aged 12-22 in 2010 - that is to say, now almost 95% of people in the 20-29 age group are Internet users.

With the further popularization of the Internet and the construction of 5G in the future, I believe that the new generation of young people will have a higher Internet rate. In the next five years, there will be 470 million people aged 15-35 in China, and the number of Internet users aged 12-35 is roughly estimated to reach 490 million.

Bilibili is known as the Youtube of China. The two do have many similarities in content. Both are based on PUGC (Professional User Generated Content). Youtube was founded in 2005. By 2018, it had 198 million monthly active users in the United States, with a penetration rate of 92%.

Given that China's Internet started relatively late, the proportion of Internet users over 40 is relatively small, so it is indeed difficult to fully cover them; but for users aged 12-35, the Internet penetration rate is over 95%, so if Bilibili continues to move towards pan-entertainment in the future and its penetration rate among young people can reach 70% (currently iQiyi's coverage rate among Chinese netizens is 71%), then among these 490 million users, there will be nearly 340 million users, which I believe is the ceiling for the number of users in the next five years.

2.4 How is the market performance of Station B?

According to Bilibili's financial report data for Q2 2019: Bilibili's monthly active users reached 110 million, a year-on-year increase of 30%; the number of paid members reached 6.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 111%; and revenue reached 1.54 billion, a year-on-year increase of 50%. Among them, the game business accounted for 920 million, or 60%, a significant decrease from 83% when Bilibili went public.

In addition, the number of paying users, advertising, live streaming, e-commerce and other revenues have all increased significantly, which shows that the video website B station is gradually getting out of the embarrassing situation of "relying on games for a living."

ACfun, a two-dimensional video website similar to Bilibili, is no longer on the same scale as Bilibili in terms of monthly active users, revenue, etc., so Bilibili is currently in an absolute leading position in the two-dimensional field. However, it has many competitors for its future development, the most important of which are the three video giants (iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku) and Xigua Video, a UGC video platform that was launched in 2016 but has risen rapidly.

2.4.1 Copyright dispute with the three video giants

From July 2018 to July 2019, the average monthly active users of iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku were 600 million, 540 million, and 400 million, respectively, firmly occupying the top three positions in online video. These are much higher than Bilibili's highest monthly active users of 110 million, and the number of paying users is also many times higher.

According to iQiyi's Q2 2019 financial report, iQiyi, which ranked first in monthly active users, had Q2 revenue of 7.1 billion yuan, of which 2.2 billion came from advertising and 3.4 billion came from membership and other value-added services. Although Tencent and Youku did not directly release their revenue data, it is conservatively estimated that their data are much higher than that of Bilibili. The main reasons for the large difference in the number of users are as follows:

1) The website targets different users

When Bilibili was first established, it was aimed at a specific user group - the two-dimensional group. As it developed, it gradually turned to the broader "Generation Z" and did not deliberately attract new users or increase user growth. The target users of "Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video" at the beginning were users of all ages who had the need to watch videos.

2) Large differences in capital investment

As the country attaches more importance to copyright, video websites that want to attract more users will inevitably have to invest more costs in purchasing the copyrights of film and television works.

Judging from the financing obtained by Tianyancha, Bilibili only raised US$350 million in the nine years before 2018; iQiyi, supported by Baidu, had obtained US$1.88 billion in financing before its listing in 2018; Youku was founded in 2006 and started early. The rich video content and viewing experience allowed Youku to gain a large user base, and it received US$6.1 billion in investment before 2017. Backed by Alibaba, it has very good resources; not to mention Tencent Video.

3) Content Differences

Due to the two reasons mentioned above, the content of Bilibili is very different from Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video.

Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video have very strong financial support and have purchased many film and television programs with big IPs. At the same time, these three companies have many self-created variety shows, such as iQiyi's "The Rap of China", Tencent Video's "Produce 101" and Youku's "Street Dance of China". Video platforms such as Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video, which are mainly based on PGC (Professionally Generated Content), not only have abundant content and a wide range, but also high quality, which can meet the needs of most domestic video users.

Bilibili is mainly based on PUGV (Professional User Generated Content) and UGV (User Generated Content). In addition to watching anime, users on Bilibili often enter specific sections according to their own interests to watch videos uploaded by other users. Compared with Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video, Bilibili has a smaller audience. In addition, Bilibili started with the two-dimensional world, and a lot of its early content was produced around the two-dimensional world. Even though there were many types of videos later, it still left the impression on many people that it was a two-dimensional website, so the number of new users increased relatively slowly.

Fortunately, Bilibili realized these reasons very early on and is gradually moving towards the "pan-entertainment" market for all young people in order to gain more user growth, but at this time it has to face competition from Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video.

Previously, Bilibili focused on two-dimensional content and purchased a large number of animation copyrights. There was less competition in the first few years, but with the gradual expansion of the domestic two-dimensional industry, leading video websites have also begun to deploy two-dimensional content and will spend big to purchase animation and film and television copyrights. For example, "One Piece", which is very popular among young people, is exclusively broadcast on iQiyi, "Bleach" is exclusively broadcast on Youku, "Detective Conan" is on Tencent Video, etc. This has put a lot of pressure on Bilibili.

But Bilibili also has its own characteristics, that is, a large number of UP hosts continuously provide video content, which is also Bilibili’s most important resource.

The competition between the three video giants "Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video" and Bilibili is a competition for some copyrighted content, but when faced with most UGC and PUGC content, the three giants are relatively weak. More young users will go to Bilibili to watch videos that suit their interests and hobbies.

From the table below, we can see that the top three most popular areas on Bilibili in 2019 are the game area, life area and music area, and the animation area ranks fourth. Moreover, the number of articles in the game and life areas far exceeds that in the animation area. This shows that the content of Bilibili has gradually enriched and is not just two-dimensional.

Currently, Bilibili is very similar to Youtube, while Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video are more like Netflix. Since Youtube can achieve a 92% coverage rate in the United States, we have reason to believe that Bilibili will have more users as it develops towards a wider range of UGC content.

2.4.2 Competition with Xigua Video for Users

In addition to copyright disputes with the three video giants, Bilibili also competes with the currently popular Xigua Video in terms of content and users.

Although Xigua Video is a short video platform and Bilibili is a traditional long video platform, there is a large overlap between the content of short videos of 1-10 minutes and Bilibili. As the pace of life accelerates, more and more users prefer short, fast and fragmented video consumption.

In addition, Xigua Video is an upgrade of Toutiao Video. Although it was launched in 2017, with the help of Toutiao's huge user base, excellent promotion algorithms and rich promotional activities, Xigua Video quickly achieved a high monthly active rate.

From the monthly active data of the two, we can see that in July 2019, Xigua Video had 170 million monthly active users, while Bilibili had 95 million, a gap of almost double. The average daily usage time of Xigua Video is 80 minutes, which is almost the same as that of Bilibili at 81 minutes. Compared with the "two-dimensional" attribute that Bilibili's content currently gives people, Xigua Video has generalized content since its birth and has a wider audience.

On the road to "pan-entertainment" in the future, Xigua Video is an opponent that B station must face.

Similar to Bilibili, Xigua Video is also a platform that focuses on PGC and UGC content, but Xigua Video directly targeted PGC in the early stages and provided subsidies (20-120 yuan/10,000 views) for excellent video content. The content was a bit rough at the beginning, but with the incentive of subsidies and the recommendation of excellent videos by algorithms, excellent creators have reaped the rewards of their hard work, and more and more excellent videos have appeared on Xigua Video.

Bilibili also launched an incentive plan in 2018. Creators who successfully apply can receive 200-30 yuan per 10,000 playbacks. Creators can also accept some advertising displays at the bottom of the playback page as additional income. However, compared with Xigua Video's mature advertising distribution mechanism and large number of users, Bilibili's current advertising revenue is still relatively weak. The income of excellent creators on Bilibili is relatively small, which has led some excellent creators of Bilibili to "jump ship" to Xigua Video. For example, Director Ao, who is very popular in the gaming circle, and Save Chinese Native Dogs from the life section have signed contracts with Xigua Video one after another. The loss of these creator users still has a certain impact on Bilibili. The author is also a UP host (video producer) on Bilibili. In the early days of video release, because the content was good and the number of fans increased rapidly, some MCN companies contacted me through Bilibili private messages and asked me to post videos on Xigua Video. The subsidies were indeed more than Bilibili’s incentive plan, which shows how fierce the competition was.

In terms of content, Xigua Video also manages videos into sections. Currently, the game, Vlog, fashion and farmer sections are very popular, and are very consistent with its user positioning - wide. Regardless of age, in cities or towns, many users can find their favorite content on Xigua Video, or are willing to watch recommended videos. Because Xigua Video uses the domestic first-class Toutiao algorithm in its recommendation algorithm, it makes it easy for users to become "addicted". Bilibili's recommendation algorithm is relatively simple, mainly based on user attention + channel + search. Judging from actual user feedback, the relevance of the videos recommended on the homepage is high, but the click-through rate is low, and users are not very satisfied with the recommendations.

In 2018, Xigua Video invested 4 billion yuan to create its own micro variety show. In July this year, Xigua Video announced the launch of a "10,000 yuan monthly salary" plan for vlog content, setting up a million-yuan creation fund and a 100 million-yuan cash profit pool, and investing tens of billions of traffic to help outstanding vloggers achieve a monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan and encourage long-term high-quality content creation. These investments all show Xigua Video's efforts in PGC and UGC content. Being able to earn high income is undoubtedly more attractive to creators.

High-quality creators can bring high-quality content, which in turn brings in more users, so Bilibili needs to consider how to retain and attract high-quality creators in the future to win the younger generation of users.

2.5 Problem Summary

At present, Bilibili has achieved huge success in the field of the second dimension, but this has also given Bilibili a very eye-catching "second dimension" label.

Bilibili is bound to develop, so it is definitely not feasible to continue to maintain a small and beautiful two-dimensional circle. Bilibili will have to enrich its non-two-dimensional content in the future, continue to work hard in the fields of technology, digital, life, fashion, etc., and carry out more topic activities that encourage everyone to submit content. It can separate the popular open class section in the technology area and the food, comedy and other sections in the life area, and add an entertainment section, etc., to weaken the two-dimensional attributes.

Bilibili has 110 million monthly active users and more than 46 million formal users who have passed the quiz exam. The rights and interests of formal members mainly include barrage privileges and comment functions. This is to ensure the quality of the barrage, which does have a very good effect, making the quality of the barrage on Bilibili much higher than other websites. However, many of the 60 questions are about the second dimension, which is really difficult for ordinary users. This undoubtedly excludes some users who want to join Bilibili.

Therefore, in the future we can simplify the answers and focus mainly on the barrage etiquette and Bilibili itself to reduce the resistance to user growth.

Bilibili currently has a rich video content. If it wants to attract more users, it will be slow to rely solely on word of mouth. It also needs to do some promotional activities. For example, Xigua Video launched the "Million Heroes" campaign in January 2018. In two months, the monthly active users doubled to 120 million, with outstanding results. Since Bilibili is targeting the younger generation, which is more educated, it can actually carry out some similar question-answering promotion activities.

In order to continue to deepen its presence in the animation field, in addition to purchasing the copyrights of new shows, it is also necessary to maintain cooperation with domestic animation companies. The first is to increase its own authority in the animation field, and the second is to promote the development of domestic animation, create an IP belonging to Bilibili, and lay the foundation for future development.

Optimize the recommendation algorithm and add more dimensional analysis of user behavior so that users can see their favorite content on the homepage, making them feel "addicted".

Currently, most of Bilibili's revenue still comes from games, and the revenue from video business (paid membership, advertising) is relatively small. However, considering the flag that Bilibili set before, "Bilibili will never add patch ads to the genuine new programs purchased by the company", a large part of the advertising revenue from animation and film and television works is gone.

However, Bilibili could consider increasing the types of advertisements appropriately, such as adding ads that can be closed after 5 seconds, similar to Youtube’s ads, to the beginning of general videos, end-of-video ads, and recommended stream ads on the playback page. The benefits of premium membership are relatively fewer. You can consider adding features such as special barrage, colorful comments, double likes, enhanced picture quality, etc. Of course, if funds permit, you can consider purchasing more film and television copyrights.

3. User Analysis

3.1 User Data

3.1.1 User Gender Distribution

There is a big discrepancy between the gender distribution of Bilibili users found from two larger data websites, which may be caused by different statistical methods. So I found the crawler information of Bilibili users (source: uups crawler group). The data was collected from a random number of users on Bilibili from 2009 to 2018. The genders included male, female, and unfilled (classified as other). The data may not be accurate, but from the data we can see obvious changes in the gender distribution of Bilibili.

As can be seen from the picture above. In the early days, Bilibili mainly had male users. After 10 years of development, the ratio of men to women is now close to a balanced state.

Combined with the fact that the gender of Chinese ACG users is mainly male, it can be inferred that because Bilibili was an ACG website in the early days, it was mostly male. With the expansion of content and the gradual transformation to pan-entertainment, there are more and more female users. The popularity of Bilibili’s life and entertainment areas can also indirectly confirm that there are indeed more and more female users.

There is no gender difference in the platform's content as a whole, and the fact that it appeals to both men and women shows that Bilibili's pan-entertainment strategy has begun to show results.

3.1.2 User Age Distribution

It is obvious that Bilibili's users are mainly concentrated under the age of 30, that is, those born in the 1990s and 2000s of the "Generation Z", accounting for 73.7%. “

The "Z generation" lives in an era of more developed media such as television and the Internet. They have been exposed to anime-related content since childhood. In addition, they are generally well educated and have a strong ability to accept things. Naturally, they have become the main group of the pan-two-dimensional group. As a two-dimensional community in its early days, Bilibili easily gained the support of this part of users.

As Bilibili develops into an interest community for young people, more and more non-two-dimensional content has emerged. The food, cute pets, and funny things in the life area, the popular science, open classes in the technology area, and the reviews and tutorials in the digital area are all popular among young people. Because most young people know what they like and will look for content that interests them, and the rich UGC and PUGC content on Bilibili makes it easy for young people to find content that interests them.

Bilibili's users are mainly young people, and its content is also mainly based on the interests of young people, thereby attracting more young users. This cycle has made Bilibili a community for young people.

Precisely because of this strong "young people" attribute, it is somewhat "unfriendly" to older people. First of all, they don't understand the content related to the second dimension, and they are not interested in many digital technology content. They can barely watch the funny content, experience, social news and other content in the life area, but many videos will add "playing with memes", which they can't understand and will find very boring.

I once recommended Bilibili to several of my relatives who were born in the 1970s and 1980s, but all ended in failure. They all said that there was nothing interesting on it. At the same time, I also found that they didn’t like to use search and would only look at the recommendation page and section page. They preferred to browse content in a push-based manner, which explains why they like to use Tik Tok and Toutiao News so much. Therefore, there are very few Bilibili users over the age of 35.

3.2 User Profile

User 1:

Xiaomei, female, 20 years old, is a university student in Shanghai. She is a fan of the second dimension and likes to watch anime.

She started using Bilibili very early, and she follows anime series almost every day. The reason she uses Bilibili is that it has no advertisements, and you can just click and watch, which is very cool, so she often recommends Bilibili to people around her.

She knew that Bilibili has always been generating power with love, and it would be difficult to buy anime without advertisements, so she had contracted her favorite anime several times before. After the premium membership was released, she bought it without hesitation. She thinks that Bilibili’s premium membership costs 149 yuan a year, but only 98 yuan a year during Double Eleven or other events, which is quite cheap, and it also allows her to watch more anime. However, she also complained that Bilibili did not buy the copyrights of famous anime such as Conan and One Piece, so she could only watch them on other websites.

User 2:

Xiaoting, female, 25 years old, from Shenzhen, has worked as a clerk in a certain unit for two years and likes dancing.

A friend from the dance club in college recommended Bilibili to her, and she quickly fell in love with the dance section of Bilibili because it contained a wide variety of dances, and had rich content such as performance videos, tutorials, experience sharing, etc.

After work, she had no time to learn dance. In order to enrich her life outside of work, she taught herself several sets of home dance on Bilibili. She thought the effect was good, so she simply recorded a few clips and uploaded them to Bilibili. She became a UP host in the dance area and gained thousands of fans, which encouraged her.

Later, a dance enthusiast from Shenzhen invited her to dance at the dance studio on weekends. She changed into more professional performance costumes and used more professional scenery and filming equipment. Her video immediately received more likes and attention. She now has more than 30,000 fans. She plans to continue working with the studio. After she reaches 100,000 fans, she may quit her job and become a dance UP host.

User 3:

Ah Bing, male, 21 years old, studying in Beijing, likes playing games

He likes playing computer games, especially 3A masterpieces such as "Crysis", "The Witcher" and "Tomb Raider", but these games sometimes have several levels that are difficult to pass. He usually goes to B station to search for game walk-through videos and other guides, and at the same time watch the operations of the masters. He began to follow some UP hosts in the game area, such as Infiltration C Jun, Qi Xiaodian, etc.

Because Bing has never dared to play horror games because the sudden startles are too scary, but the plots of the games are very attractive, such as the "Silent Hill" series and the "Escape" series. So he would watch some horror game experience videos made by UP hosts, and the barrage of comments would give high-energy warnings, so he would not be so scared.

Sometimes A Bing would also watch the live broadcasts of game UP hosts, and it was quite interesting to see them complain about the games. He plans to use the summer vacation to record a video tutorial for a game and try his hand at being a UP host.

User 4:

Xiao Li, male, 18 years old, freshman, major in mechanics

Xiao Li just entered college, and his family gave him 10,000 yuan to buy a laptop, mobile phone and other standard products for college students. The mechanical major requires CAD drawing, which has high requirements for computer configuration. He also wants a mobile phone with better photography, but he doesn't have a lot of money, so of course he can't buy the best laptop and mobile phone, so he must use the money to buy the most cost-effective products.

So, he watched many reviews and experience videos of digital products such as laptops and mobile phones in the digital area of ​​​​Bilibili. In the end, he chose the laptops and mobile phones that he thought had the best cost-effectiveness and were suitable for his professional use. He also saved some money to buy a pair of headphones. At the same time, these videos also made him well aware of the configuration of computers and mobile phones, and the performance of various chips. Many classmates who wanted to buy computers came to him for advice, and he became a little digital expert among his classmates.

User 5:

Xiao Wang, 22 years old, male, a senior student at a university in Hangzhou, likes traveling and photography

He likes traveling and photography. Since he is a student, the money for traveling is earned from tutoring, so he basically travels on a budget. He will read a lot of travel guides before setting off, but he thinks it is very interesting after the trip, which is much more fun than joining a tour group.

He used to watch other people’s travel videos on Bilibili, and he thought there would be many students like him who wanted to travel but didn’t have much money to do so. When he was in his sophomore year, he decided to start recording his own budget travel guide. He used a mobile phone and a selfie stick to record a video of his budget travel to Huangshan, teaching everyone how to avoid tourist scams around Huangshan, how to find delicious local affordable restaurants, etc. After the video was posted on Bilibili, it first became popular in school through forwarding by classmates, and then gradually gained a lot of likes and collections on Bilibili, which greatly boosted his confidence. He then recorded more videos on his own travel guides for winter and summer vacations. Now he has more than 60,000 fans on Bilibili, and he plans to start a travel media after graduation.

4. Functional analysis and improvement suggestions

4.1 [New] Progress bar "airdrop" function

4.1.1 Reasons for improvement

Currently, there are many tutorial, review, and game guide videos on Bilibili. These videos are generally quite long, and users often only want to watch part of them, such as the cutout part in a PS tutorial, the BOSS battle part in a game guide, and so on. At this time, users have to fast forward the progress bar multiple times to find this part of the content. Obviously, many UP hosts are also aware of this problem, so they will add a "catalog page" at the beginning of the video (as shown below, picture source: UP Large Seafood Pancake and Egg Noodles "Sai Beginner's Basics & Advanced Knowledge"). But this kind of directory is very inconvenient. First, users have to slide the progress bar manually, and as we all know, it is generally difficult to control the sliding progress bar accurately; they have to repeatedly return to the directory page to find the next part of the content they want to watch.

In addition to the above-mentioned types of videos that require a directory function, there are many videos that have "high-energy" climaxes or highlights, such as ghost, funny, music, and game videos. Some people want to watch the highlights directly or want to watch them repeatedly, but adjusting the progress bar is troublesome.

4.1.2 Improvement Suggestions

To address the above issues, you can combine the directory with the progress bar, that is, you can add "drop points" on the progress bar. When users click on these points, the "subtitle" and "screen preview" of the point will be displayed, and then click again to play directly from that point. These "drop points" can be added by the UP host or by the audience after the UP host opens the permission to add "drop points", and will be displayed on the progress bar after obtaining permission from the UP.

The interface is as follows:

This is how the drop point on the progress bar is displayed when the user is watching a video in portrait mode, i.e. a small yellow dot; when the user clicks on the small yellow dot, due to limited screen space, only a preview subtitle will be displayed first, and clicking on the subtitle will "drop" to that point to start playing.

When playing in horizontal full screen mode, clicking the yellow drop point on the progress bar will display a preview box with a preview image and a subtitle for that moment. Click the preview box to "drop" to that point to play. There is an additional "Airdrop Point" icon on the right side of the input barrage box. Click the icon to display the "Airdrop Point" list, as shown below:

If the UP host turns on the permission to add drop points for the video, "Add drop point" will be displayed at the top of the page. Click it to add a drop point for the video at this moment. The thumbnail will automatically be displayed as a screenshot of the video at this moment. The time location of adding the drop point will be displayed at the top. The user only needs to enter the subtitle at the moment to complete the addition. The interface is as follows:

When uploading videos via mobile phones, UP hosts can also add drop points to the videos in the editing interface and confirm whether viewers are allowed to add them, as shown in the figure below.

Considering that this is a new function, some people may not understand it, so a help symbol is added after adding the drop point. Clicking on the symbol will display the introduction of the function and how to add it. The specific content will not be repeated here. The switch below allows spectators to add drop points. After clicking "Add Drop Point", enter the Add Drop Point page, as shown in the figure:

4.2【Improvement】Bullet screen interaction

4.2.1 Reasons for improvement

Barrage is a major feature of Bilibili videos, and the fact that other major video sites are vying to imitate it is the greatest affirmation of this interactive method.

Interviews with multiple in-depth users show that all interviewed users turn on barrage when watching, but fewer send barrages. Perhaps most people watch more barrages but rarely send them.

Some users and up-hosts have responded that barrage has increased the interactivity of watching videos. However, there is less interaction in the barrage itself. Currently, there are only likes and reports, and the number of likes cannot be displayed. If you ask a question in the barrage, you will not know when someone has answered it. You will have to check the barrage again after a while, or just forget about it.

Many people come to Bilibili to watch the barrage because they can find resonance in the barrage, so the barrage on Bilibili can appropriately enhance the interactivity, enhance the sense of resonance between viewers and between viewers and UP hosts, thereby enhancing the user stickiness of Bilibili.

4.2.2 Improvement Suggestions

My suggestion is to add more obvious like and reply functions to the barrage. When watching the barrage, many viewers hope to find barrages that share the same ideas as the content of the video or are original. When seeing such barrages, people who like to post barrages may post them again.

Most people find it troublesome to post barrages, so the frequency is relatively low. Most of these people will only be happy for a moment and then take no action. Therefore, adding the more obvious and simple-to-operate "barrage likes" can increase the interaction of this group of people. Moreover, for the senders of the liked barrages, receiving likes is also a positive affirmation, which can encourage these users to send more barrages to express themselves.

Barrage reply is also a feature that most of the surveyed users expect.

There is currently no barrage reply function, and the barrages for later interactions are generally things like "XXXXX in front" or "Like the red barrage in front to express your love". However, the person who posted the previous comment was unaware of this, and users who later watched their "conversation across the air" sometimes had to go back to see which previous comment this one was referring to, resulting in a poor interactive experience.

A reply function can be added to the barrage. The reply barrage will be placed below the target barrage in the color you choose, aligned to the left and indented two spaces. This will not affect the experience of other viewers, and the audience can also understand the interaction of the barrage. The sender of the replied barrage will also receive a reminder of the reply and can view and continue to reply.

Because the action of "liking" is relatively simple, the interaction rate should be relatively high, so the liking process should be simplified and the results should be displayed, but at the same time it should not affect the viewing experience. Therefore, for the barrage that has not been liked, the general barrage display method will be used. The method to like the barrage is the same as it is now - first click on the barrage, and three operation buttons for the barrage will appear in the lower left corner: Like, Reply and Report, just click the Like button.

When the barrage is liked, a "Like button" will follow it and display the number of likes. You can then directly press the button to like it.

In order not to affect the viewing experience and avoid filling the screen with like buttons, you can set a rule to display a maximum of 5 bullet comments that can be directly liked in the same screen (prioritize displaying the TOP5 bullet comments with the most likes for that screen, the number to be displayed still needs to be evaluated, this is just to give an idea). For the barrages that the UP host has liked, the like icon will appear yellow, and the barrages that the UP host has liked will appear pink.

To reply to a barrage, you need to click on the barrage. Three operation icons for the barrage will appear in the lower left corner. Click the reply icon in the middle to open the reply interface, which is similar to the interface for sending barrage. In order to ensure that everyone can see that this is a reply barrage, the reply barrage needs to be consistent in style with the barrage being replied to. The barrage color and type cannot be set here. Just enter the reply content. The target barrage content of the reply will also be prompted below.

For barrage replies, you need to click on the barrage. Three operation icons for barrage will appear in the lower left corner. Click the reply in the middle to open the reply interface, which is similar to the interface of sending barrage. In order to ensure that everyone can see that this is a reply barrage, the reply barrage must remain the same as the style of the replies.

You cannot set barrage color and type here, just enter the reply content directly. The target barrage content of the reply will also be prompted below. The following response barrage display on the playback interface is as follows:

After the barrage is replied, the person who is replying to the barrage will receive a notification reminder in the "Reply to Mine" of the message notification. As shown in the figure below, you can swipe left to choose to delete the notification or no longer remind the barrage's reply. Like reminders are similar to this and will not be repeated.

4.3 [Improve] Channel page optimization

4.3.1 Reasons for improvement

The B station IOS APP upgraded the original tag to a channel in version 5.27 updated on June 8, 2018. Users can choose to subscribe according to their preferences, which adds a new way to content aggregation for B station.

However, judging from the feedback from 15 interviewed users, the effect is not very good. In the more than a year since I was launched, I have rarely read the channel tabs of the interviewed users, and I have rarely read the partitions in the past. The main reason is that recommendations and dynamic pages are enough to read. I have never cared about the channel page, nor have I paid attention to setting and following some channels. In addition, if you want to watch videos on the channel page, users need to follow the channel first, and then click on the channel subpage you follow before they can see more videos, which has more operations, so the usage rate is lower.

At the same time, the interviewed users also said that they rarely pay attention to the "topics" of B station, but they will receive relevant hot videos when browsing the homepage recommended videos, but they will not pay much attention to the hot topics of B station.

This leads to the weakness of B station when facing sudden hot topics or wanting to create topics. The current channel function can play a certain role in promoting hot topics, but it still needs better operation.

4.3.2 Improvement suggestions

If you want to increase the frequency of users using channel functions, first of all, you need to reduce the operation steps for users to see channel content, so I suggest revisioning the original channel page. Interfaces are as follows:

Most of the channel pages before the revision were displayed on the channel icon. Videos that follow the channel need to be clicked on the channel before they can be seen. The page information is small, making it difficult to stimulate users' interest.

After the revision, put "All Channels" and partitions and "Subscription Management" at the top, and place the subscribed channels at the top with a sliding tag. Users can swipe left and right to continuously switch the channel content they subscribed to, which is very convenient. The most important thing is to save most of the page space for directly displaying the content.

Now, the channel content that originally required users to click multiple times to browse is only necessary to slide left and right and up and down, greatly simplifying the user's usage path.

Secondly, the content on the channel pages was mainly videos. Although there was a "topic" tag, the topic content was still mainly videos, and there were fewer columns and picture content. Since it was a topic, the more people participated in the discussion, the better. However, the threshold for publishing video content will discourage some users. In comparison, the dynamics of pictures with topics will be simpler and faster to read. Therefore, I suggest that the content display method of channel pages be improved, and the "tofu block" display method as shown in the picture above will be comprehensively displayed on the main content of B station - videos and columns, as well as dynamics with pictures. Users can also choose a certain type of content to browse. It is divided into two columns to display more content at the same time. If users are interested, they can click to enter the regular playback, column, and picture dynamic pages to browse.

Furthermore, in addition to the existing browsing by viewing volume, latest and highlights, I also recommend adding hot comments to display comments with more likes or faster likes. This can increase discussions in the channel, increase the popularity of the topic, and encourage more users to participate in the discussion in the comment area.

And sometimes comments often have highlights, bringing secondary creation to the original topic content. The hot review page is shown in the figure below. In addition to displaying the original content, 1-2 popular comments will be displayed below. Users can directly like or reply to comments and participate in the discussion.

Through the above revisions, users can simplify their use of channel content to a certain extent, and increase users' attention and frequency of channel pages. In addition to the above page improvements, there are also some areas that need to be improved in terms of operations. For example, the refresh content of topics in the channel is not updated in real time, but is updated regularly, so every refresh is the same content within a certain period of time. This is not conducive to the distribution of content, and should be changed to real-time updates, and there will be new content every time you refresh.

On the home page, you can recommend more channels. When there are hot events, you can use the corresponding channels to distribute hot content, etc. Currently, the management of the channel should be completed by B station staff and algorithms. In fact, the management permissions of the channel can be opened to some active users of the channel.

Some small channels are also maintained by people, and the content quality of large channels can also be improved. Bilibili only needs to do a good job of review. For details, we can learn from the administrator model of "Baidu Tieba", so I won't discuss it here.

V. Conclusion

Can B station become a YouTube in China?

This is not easy.

Investing a lot of money to build a diversified ecosystem means that B station will still be difficult to escape the loss-making operation for a long time, and it is still unknown whether the diversified content built with real money can allow more potential users to stay.

On the other hand, other platforms are also stepping up the deployment of this "snatching people". With the rise of vlog content, Tencent, Baidu, Douyin and Weibo have also entered the market and developed their own vlog ecosystem. Bilibili, which has come out of the second dimension, has no mediocre competitors to face.

The further traffic harvest of short videos also made Bilibili feel pressured. Behind Douyin Kuaishou's short video pattern is the trend of entertainment fragmentation, which makes Bilibili, which has long videos as the core, inevitably suffers impact. While grabbing bloggers, everyone is also grabbing users' attention.

Other problems are also very serious: internal operational pressure, transitional contradiction between the two-dimensional and mainstream user platforms, and potential impact of the overall environment... There are still many ups and downs on B station's YouTube journey.

Of course, the advantages of B station are also obvious: a large number of young users, a relatively good community environment, a comprehensive layout system, production of high-quality content, UP hosts who improve user stickiness, and long videos as the core are also an advantage...

Or will B Station become a video sharing website not only like Youtube, but also an interest and cultural exchange community?

Will B Station, a legendary barrage website in his early 190s, give us more answers? Let's look forward to it together.

Author: Flade

Source: Flade