The content community operation logic of Xiaohongshu!

In 2012, cross-border e-commerce was in its infancy. Mao Wenchao, who was still studying at Stanford, saw the opportunity and, after receiving the first investment from Xu Xiaoping, launched the "Hong Kong Shopping Guide" APP in October 2013, officially launching an overseas shopping sharing community.

Six years have passed. Today, more than 300 million young people use short videos, pictures and texts in the Xiaohongshu community to mark every detail of their lives and share their real daily lives of eating, dressing, playing and shopping. Xiaohongshu has also completed its initial A round of financing from one million US dollars to the current D round of financing of over 300 million US dollars, becoming a super unicorn with a valuation of over 3 billion US dollars. What is the driving force behind it?

In this article, Xiaohongshu CEO Mao Wenchao talks about the operating model behind Xiaohongshu.

1. What did Xiaohongshu do right? To stand out?

By the end of 2018, our user base exceeded 200 million. I think the best thing Xiaohongshu did was to rethink the purpose of doing this. We spend a lot of time thinking about what a lifestyle includes and what groups of people are included in the lifestyle we advocate. We hope that through our efforts, a good lifestyle can be brought to the people.

In a sharing community, community equals people. In the past year, many celebrities have come to Xiaohongshu. They are the pioneers in promoting lifestyles, but the problem is that they don’t have a place to truly show their lives because many commercial considerations restrict them. So we start from this point and try to create a platform that allows celebrities to "be themselves".

It takes courage for a person to be himself, and also requires a good environment. So on the one hand we encourage everyone to have this courage, and on the other hand we hope that the environment will be as friendly as possible, rather than hoping that you will become a person who only exists in imagination. Everyone must live a real life. Based on this guiding ideology, we encouraged many celebrities to join our platform.

One day we looked at the data ourselves and found that the most searched word among students born after 1995 was “learning” . This incident took us by surprise and it expanded my definition of lifestyle. In a constantly flowing and growing community, what we actually need to do is to uphold the spiritual banner and provide good infrastructure so that everyone can live well in it.

Let’s focus first and then expand the scope of this definition. What kind of people can share a lifestyle? What kind of people are most eager and hopeful to find a lifestyle? On the one hand, we extend to celebrities, and on the other hand, we extend to young people.

2. The core logic of Xiaohongshu: Focus on people rather than content

The core logic of Xiaohongshu is that the final focus is people, not content. At the beginning, we had a lot of overseas shopping content. Our earliest MVP (minimum viable product) was called “Hong Kong Shopping Guide”. Although it was called a shopping guide, everyone had already started sharing their shopping experiences in Japan, the United States, and Europe.

From that moment on, we realized that lifestyle is fluid. With the changes in the times and infrastructure, as well as changes in the population and economy, product forms will also change rapidly. If you are stuck in one field, you will always have only the attributes of a tool.

How can we focus on people? We will observe the most representative and vibrant people in various lifestyles to see if they are on Xiaohongshu. We are not so concerned about whether you can perfect the shopping scene, but whether you can make users feel a sense of belonging here. Because when a user has a sense of belonging, he will record his life here.

Where does that person’s sense of belonging come from? I once made an analogy with my partner. For example, if he comes to a city, it may be because of a new job, because of coming to a new school, or because of a relationship. There must be a trigger point for a person to go to a city, but I usually stay in a city because life is very comfortable, I have made a lot of friends here, and I feel I have found myself here, so we spend a lot of effort to turn this community into a "livable city."

When you want to make a city livable, you will find that different cities in the world have their own characteristics. Different city characteristics attract different people. Lifestyles and behaviors are generated by people, not directly by the city. Therefore, we spent a lot of time thinking about the underlying values, and ultimately summarized the temperament of the "city" of Xiaohongshu as authenticity, beauty, and diversity.

I once read a book called "The Life and Death of Great American Cities", which studies the rise and fall of American cities. How to run a good city and its neighborhoods? Why do some of them become wealthy and prosperous under different governance situations, while others become decadent and imperfect? One conclusion that I remember very clearly at the time was that safety is very important in a prosperous city. It is difficult for an unsafe city to develop its economy, and the neighborhoods with the most police are the most dangerous.

We have gained a lot of inspiration from this book. A good community atmosphere actually needs to be maintained by these enthusiastic "Chaoyang masses" together. But what kind of behavior is allowed? What kind of behavior is not allowed? This is actually the culture of a neighborhood, just like a company. We spent more time on mobilizing enthusiastic people to maintain the community, using methods to motivate and tell them that we should do this together.

Many times, it is actually the users who judge whether a certain behavior is appropriate. We will take it and discuss whether it is inappropriate or not worthy of encouragement. There is a difference between the two. Finally, through the product reporting and jury mechanism, we have established a system of mutual assistance and maintenance.

Selected screenshots of the Xiaohongshu community

III. The emergence of innovation mechanisms: strategy, demand, and human drive

Innovation is a result, not a goal.

It can be viewed from three levels:

First, the company level. Our company's mission is to create incremental value for users' lives. To some extent, you have to do something that is different from the current solutions on the market. As for its size, that is another matter. But I think as long as it is different and valuable to some people, it is something worth trying. This is a company's strategic layout.

Second, innovation. If there is a methodology, I think it is two points: first, it must be rooted in user needs. The starting point of all innovation is that you see a pain point, but no one has solved it. Then you also empathize with this pain point, so you solve it. You first find the problem and start the process of searching, which is innovation.

For example, the thinking and application of urban governance that I just talked about is a kind of innovation. There is nothing new under the sun. Many times, innovation is achieved by bringing the methods of another industry to this industry to cross borders. Therefore, it is quite important to make life interesting. You need to look at different fields and integrate them together when you need to cross boundaries.

The last level is still people. We also hope to find people with innovative abilities. It is also important to have a good environment where everyone can unleash their talents and creativity. In fact, a company is also a community. The largest community in the world is called the Earth, which is the collection of all people.

Today, Xiaohongshu has less than 2,000 people. What kind of people should we choose and what kind of infrastructure should we provide to enable everyone to find themselves? In the operation of the community, we emphasize spiritual temperament and allow users to make their own choices; at the human level, we summarize four new people: those with results, insights, trust, and patterns.

Innovation comes from insight. Insight is your unique view on a problem that is later proven to be correct. We tend to let everyone try and make mistakes, including when something is not done very well in the end, but you show a lot of innovations in the process, which is also worthy of encouragement.

4. Xiaohongshu User Profile: Finding Commonalities

I am not so concerned about the differences between people born in different generations, but rather the similarities between them.

First of all, this generation of young people is more willing to express themselves, probably because they have less pressure to survive. At the same time, society has become more diverse and inclusive. A person's courage to be himself has a lot to do with the development of this society. If society is very single, then you will definitely not be able to be yourself.

Secondly, people generally pay more attention to spiritual life. People born in the 1990s and 1995s like to drink milk tea very much. I participated in an event of Xiaohongshu that day. There were 10 people sitting at the table. All of them were younger than me, including some born in the 1990s. We were discussing milk tea. I think the way people discuss the types of milk tea is just like how we discuss the origins of red wine.

Later, Qu Fang and I researched this matter. We searched Xiaohongshu and found 6,000 articles related to milk tea, and discovered a keyword: “happiness”. When we were young, we didn’t worry about being fat because our metabolism was higher. Then, everyone will feel that after a busy day, being able to have something exquisite, delicious and sweet can bring them a sense of happiness. So many times, material life and lifestyle are actually to meet spiritual needs. This is also our higher-dimensional understanding of the word lifestyle this year.

Lifestyle is to satisfy the needs of the spiritual world, it is just another way of expression. At different ages, as your age, body, family environment, living environment, and physical condition change, your lifestyle will appear particularly colorful, but underlying it is everyone's need for the spiritual world at that time.

5. Focus on the “downstream” market: Summarize the “sameness” in the “difference”

The word "sinking" has a very strong sense of class. In our "urban" logic, this word corresponds to "diversity". Diversity means difference, and difference means you need to understand and extract the common points among everyone.

At that time, we conducted an in-depth survey of users in third- to fifth-tier cities, and went to these places to see how people used Xiaohongshu. The user said, why are there so many words, it's like a legal contract, and it's extremely irritating to read. This is very real feedback, so what are the trade-offs our team has to make?

First, everyone is busy and it is difficult to concentrate. This actually explains why short videos are accepted so quickly, because their essence is the difference between reading a book and watching TV. But from another perspective, I don’t think that people in first-tier cities only like to read words, and people in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities only like to watch videos. The essence of people is the same, but in the end the manifestations they display may be different at different stages of life and in different places.

So our final conclusion is, first, the font size should be as large as possible and not too much; second, the video format has great potential. We will think about how videos can be better utilized in the context of Xiaohongshu. The world is complex. Although videos are enjoyable to watch, they may not be the most efficient when you are making a strategy because you cannot always locate the location you want to see.

Different forms of content have their value in real life. Understand the "differences" of this world, then summarize the "similarities", and finally cover up your blind spots.

We often reflect on ourselves using the word "Ignorance And Arrogance". You stand in the middle of the world, and you don’t know how big the world is, but you still think that the world is like this. The first is called ignorance, and the second is called arrogance. Learn to understand the diversity of the world, really get close to these users, and finally find out what everyone has in common, and then provide better products and services to a wider range of people. We haven’t done these things very well, and we are still on the road.

6. Learn to live with anxiety and keep your youthfulness

People always feel a little anxious when they change career paths, and anxiety is more of a feeling of having no control over the future. But then I developed the ability to control this anxiety. I would let myself sit with my anxiety and analyze why I am anxious. Once you find the underlying cause, just fix it.

For example, when Xiaohongshu was first established, the APP had not yet been launched. At that time, we received a lot of feedback, but we didn’t know whether people were willing to use it, so I was very anxious. When I chat with Qu Fang, I always ask her whether she thinks anyone will use it, and what to do if no one does? So many classmates followed us. Some of them had good jobs but didn’t take them. They chose to join Xiaohongshu. We would be sorry to everyone if we didn’t do this well.

Then she said how about this, our money can be used until the end of next year, and we can discuss this issue again in February next year. First, there is no use in being anxious. Second, you should give anxiety some time. You get used to being with it, and gradually you no longer feel its presence. The process of a person solving anxiety is the process of fighting against his own way of thinking and the process of fighting against his own human weaknesses.

When it comes to self-improvement, it is important to maintain a youthful feel. When you are a teenager, you don’t know the rules of the world and you have a desire to explore the world. Once you understand the world to a certain extent, I think you are old, you feel that the world is just like that, and your world stops getting bigger. Keeping a young mindset and curious about exploring the bigger world is the first step.

The second is the question of methodology: how can we learn faster? Different CEOs may have different approaches. For example, some people like to read and study books in various fields. My own style is to enjoy chatting with people. Another benefit of starting a business is that as your business grows, you will be able to go further and meet some wiser seniors. I believe in two things, science and people.

I believe that a wiser person, who has seen a bigger world or a different world, can give you many different explorations and thoughts.

Author: Mao Wenchao

Source: Tencent Media Research Institute (TencentMRI)