5 aspects of analysis: content-based social networking

With the rapid development of the Internet era, we have shifted from obtaining information through traditional search engines to dialogue, communication, and interaction between people, and social interaction has become the core link in information dissemination.

Social interaction is necessary for humans to determine the value of their own existence, position themselves and identify themselves. Through natural selection, humans who are accustomed to living in groups and are good at cooperation survived and continued to grow. We promote the flow of information by integrating collective wisdom, exchanging experiences and sharing knowledge.

Over time, our brains have evolved a special response, that is, when we do not receive information from our peers for a long time, we will feel anxious.

Why do we need to log in to WeChat and QQ?

Make it easy for others to find you and for you to find others.

Why is Momo so popular ?

When I feel lonely and cold, I just want someone to accompany me.

Why do we become so immersed in circles we have never met before?

Get information and gain resources.

If we classify Internet products, they can be roughly divided into tools , content, social, transactions, platforms, games ... etc. The most difficult of these should be the social category, because social products are the type of products that are most closely related to human nature, and their demand is more difficult to grasp.

Through Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, we know that social interaction is an indispensable factor after humans have met their physiological needs and safety needs. Everyone hopes to have mutual relationships and care.

Mobile Internet has brought social networking into a new stage. In "Social Dividends", social benefits are summarized as the sum of "relationship chain", "information" and "interaction". The three are closely related. The production of content will promote interaction between users. Conversely, the interaction between users directly affects the establishment of relationships between users, which in turn will lead to the generation of new content.

1. The three relationships of social benefits

Relationship Chain

It is divided into three aspects: relationship establishment, relationship maintenance and relationship development. Social applications generally connect users by creating conditions or extracting some characteristics and factors of the users themselves. When many content-based products begin to transform into social products, they will try every means to create relationships among users. The most common ones are, for example, based on geographic location, consumption preferences, indirect friendships, etc., to form weak relationships between users who were originally strangers to each other.

From left to right: Cloud Music - Nearby, Now - Recommendations based on content you follow, Facebook - Mutual friends.

information

Information is an inevitable product of the social process, and conversely, information can also promote the establishment of social interaction. The main purpose of focusing on content-based social networking is to obtain or consume information. Information can be divided into three aspects: production, display and consumption, and products will have tendencies based on their own positioning.

Taking picture information as an example, in order to optimize content and reduce production costs, various filters, stickers, and props came into being. For example: MeituXiuXiu , in, nice, Faceu, etc. are commonly used in the market.

The display process is usually accompanied by consumption. As word-of-mouth picture sharing service platforms, Instagram and LOFTER have done a lot of work on the details in order to achieve good visual presentation. Especially the latter, which does not have good image generation and processing capabilities, can attract many users to share their creations here.

In addition to basic consumption operations such as browsing, commenting, and liking, TuChong supports uploading pictures in the form of paid wallpapers, allowing pictures to achieve consumption upgrades through paid downloads.

From left to right: Meitu Xiuxiu, Instagram, Tuchong

interactive

Refers to the way people connect and interact with each other. The process of interdependent behavior between individuals, groups, or groups and individuals through the dissemination of information through some means.

Based on the purpose of users staying on platforms with social attributes, products can be divided into two categories: relationship-based social and content-based social . Regardless of the type, it is nothing more than an organic combination of relationships, information, and interaction.

Simply put, relational social networking means that users use products to establish or maintain relationships and interact with other users. The threshold for products with relationship chains as the core is usually very high. It is an extremely complicated task to allow users to establish relationships in a brand new world and map them to real life. In my country, Tencent dominates the relationship-based social networking space, WeChat tends to be an instant messaging tool, and QQ is becoming increasingly popular among young people.

In content-based social networking, the user’s first goal is to obtain content. Even if a fixed relationship is formed during the interaction, it is only for the convenience of obtaining further information. Weibo has firmly occupied the first position with its high penetration advantage and has become the external voice of celebrities and media. New leading products have emerged in various vertical fields, such as Zhihu, Xiaohongshu , Douyin , Bilibili , etc.

Content information is the communication carrier of content-based social networking. From the earliest forums to various forms of streaming media today, the types and methods of how we obtain content are constantly evolving.

Based on different information carriers and field segments, representative products in various fields have evolved, which can be roughly divided into:

In recent years , Toutiao has made big moves and undergone strong transformation, and has been extremely aggressive in grabbing user traffic . In some ways, he can be regarded as a model of content-based social products. Through these big moves by Toutiao, we can get a glimpse of the development direction of such products.

2. Thousands of people, one size fits all, distribution based on taste

Compared with the information scarcity in the early years, people now get information by reading newspapers, watching the news and listening to the radio. With the acceleration of informatization today, users' effective time is constantly divided, and they need to spend a lot of energy to find the content they like.

Personalized recommendations are based on the user's characteristics and preferences. By collecting, analyzing and defining their historical behavior on the terminal, we can understand what kind of person the user is, what their behavioral preferences are, what they share, what kind of interactive feedback they generate, etc. Ultimately, we understand and derive user characteristics and preferences that comply with platform rules, thereby recommending information of interest to users. Only by reducing the cost of acquiring content and improving the efficiency of content consumption can we maximize users' perception and friendliness of the platform.

Toutiao's recommendation mechanism is mainly based on: topic similarity, user occupation, age, geographic location, content keywords , platform popularity, social friend relationships, long-term interests, similar user habit lists, consumption time, stay time, comments, likes... etc. It claims that through social behavior analysis, user interests can be calculated within 5 seconds, and through user behavior analysis , the user model can be updated within 10 seconds after each user action.

The pictures are from the Internet: personalized push for different users

3. Promote UGC content production and activate grassroots users

Toutiao started out as an information distribution company and now has surpassed Facebook with an average user time spent of 76 minutes. On March 21, 2018, Toutiao released an announcement on "Simplifying the registration process for Toutiao accounts and canceling the novice period."

Any user can open an account and create and publish pictures, texts, videos and other content by binding a real-name authenticated mobile phone number. Compared with the previous threshold and growth space for becoming a "Toutiao author", this adjustment basically makes the account characteristics completely consistent with Weibo.

In addition, various forms and functions of "account recommendations" are added to the recommended information flow on the homepage after the user opens it. Obviously, this emphasizes the attributes of fans and sociality, allowing users to transform into fan relationships.

Secondly, a popularity list of “hot topics” has been added to the homepage of Wei Toutiao, which is updated in real time at the top of Wei Toutiao. It is equivalent to Weibo’s daily hot topic list. While aggregating content, it can also attract fans and traffic to some accounts.

Finally, the user's address book is connected, and your friends will be recommended while following you. The corresponding name in the address book is added directly below the account nickname, which is very helpful for the formation and migration of social chains.

4. Supporting high-quality content from big Vs and feeding back to the general public

Since last year, Toutiao’s “socialization” transformation has been accelerating, and it has begun to build a fan system and social relationship chain. The direct confrontation between Toutiao and Weibo is becoming increasingly fierce. First, Weibo modified its user agreement to target Toutiao (if users authorize Weibo's exclusive content to a third-party platform without Sina Weibo 's permission, they will be responsible for a series of losses and consequences), and then Toutiao immediately fought back by disabling Weibo account logins. The competition between the two sides for users and content is becoming increasingly fierce.

At the same time, Toutiao spent a lot of money to poach 300 big Vs from Zhihu, and Zhihu also launched a counterattack.

As we all know, the generation of UGC content can enhance the social atmosphere of the platform, but high-quality information is the key to keeping users on the platform. The quality of a content platform determines the quality of the platform. Zhihu is a distribution center for high-quality content on the entire domestic Internet platform, and is known for creating big Vs.

Big Vs not only guarantee the platform’s content output, but they also bring their own user traffic. Use the platform to build your own fan circle and monetize through content. The platform ensures user loyalty and stickiness by supporting big Vs, and the relationship between the two is a symbiotic one.

At present, it seems that it is unknown whether these big Vs poached by Toutiao can really start a new life after working hard on a platform that is not known for its professionalism. In addition to paying huge sums of money, how Toutiao can truly retain these top creators and make them work for the platform is something that needs to be seriously considered next.

5. Content Management and Experience Enhancement

Every content social platform must have had a period of poor user experience , and Weibo was once abandoned by users. The introduction of UGC will make the content on the platform a mixed bag, and the expansion of production caliber requires strengthening the review and management of content. Toutiao uses algorithms to identify and filter low-quality content, and filters out false news, clickbait , and content that does not meet Toutiao’s quality standards in advance.

At the same time, as the product size continues to expand, new functions and new content will inevitably be introduced. When faced with product changes, there will be some impact on users' existing habits. It is unclear whether users are willing to accept the changes and become more and more sticky, or whether they will abandon the product and start over.

The relationship between products and users is a process of mutual communication and continuous evolution. As designers, we need to always pay attention to the product experience, think about what users think, and plan for users.