How to operate products using “platform thinking”?

Most of the time, operators are only responsible for the operation of a certain module of the product and lack a comprehensive understanding of the product. The author of this article combines his own actual work to teach you how to use platform thinking to think about product operations .

Most of the Internet products on the market today are platform-based products. As product or operator, in actual work, we are often only responsible for or undertake the functions of a certain module or the operations in a certain direction, and rarely form a more holistic concept of the platform.

I have been reading books related to the platform recently. I have used this to sort out and summarize the actual situation at work, and learn to use platform thinking to think about product design and operations.

1. What is a platform product? What is its value?

I once saw a definition of a platform on the Internet:

"A platform refers to a business model that connects two or more specific groups, provides them with an interactive communication mechanism, meets the needs of all groups, and makes profits from it."

Marshall's recent book "Platform Revolution" also mentioned that the primary goal of the platform is:

“Matching users and creating value for all participants through the exchange of goods, services or social currency”.

Regardless of which statement is used, it all refers to providing a "place" for creating value for bilateral user groups.

The value of a platform is nothing more than being created around information exchange, goods, services, and currency. Among them, information exchange is the lightest, followed by the creation of commodity value and services, and gradually the exchange of currency and the ability to obtain cash (of course, virtual currencies, such as medals of honor, can also be included in the category of currency).

The platform's product and operations work is to provide tools and formulate rules for users on both sides of the platform to make value exchange easy.

We can use the platform canvas to specifically analyze the architecture of a platform product. Even if your current job does not involve all aspects of the product, you can clearly understand the position and value of your position in the entire platform system.

The following is a simple example of the platform canvas of the product "Xianyu":

• The value of information services or commodity transactions such as idle, auction, and rental obtained by users on both sides of the platform;
• The platform needs to provide information display, location, search, classification, navigation and other tools and services to users on both sides. It also needs to provide consumer-related tools and services such as returns, valuation, logistics, etc. to users on the other side.
• In addition, currency can be circulated on the platform, user data can be stored, and online traffic can be monetized.

(Platform Canvas)

The participant level focuses on the introduction of production users and the matching of consumer users, and even the mutual conversion between production users and consumer users.

Although the various product functions of the platform may be very complex and numerous, the basic structure of the platform remains the same. The book "Platform Revolution" summarizes the basic structure of the platform as: participants + value units + filters - core interactions, which I think are quite useful.

To understand this basic structure, we can deconstruct the platform of some products by ourselves. The following figure lists some of them for your convenience:

Through the canvas and architecture, we should have some preliminary understanding of platform products. Next, let’s continue to look at user relationships under platform thinking.

2. How to view user relationships under platform thinking

Whether it is a B2B , B2C , C2C or even C2B product, the platform means that this is a two-sided market. The interaction between users on both sides will definitely have an impact on the entire platform. Therefore, when we look at a user model from a macro perspective, we can roughly divide it into A and B ends. We can regard the impact between users as the effect of action and reaction.

Users on one side will affect other users on that side, and the same applies regardless of whether that side is the producing side or the consuming side. When a positive effect is produced, users drive other users, achieving growth and forming an atmosphere; when a negative effect is produced, competition among users and matching of resources lead to waste and may reduce users' willingness to create value.

1. Unilateral action
2. One side works on the other side

Example:

In the early days of Tik Tok , content producers or users used the operational tools provided by the platform (such as music and editing) to output high-quality content. Other users who were willing to participate would create based on this content, imitate and copy it, and make some micro-innovations, which drove the growth of users and formed a good community atmosphere. At this time, the influence between users was positive.

So, as more and more content creators join Douyin and produce more and more content, the attention and traffic each creator receives will decrease, and negative influences will follow. Creators who cannot get attention will become less willing and gradually lose the motivation to create. As the amount of content increases, the elimination and screening of watered-down content will also become the focus of operations to reduce the negative impact between unilateral users.

(Other people's playback volume and my playback volume)

Utilizing the positive influence between unilateral users can often bring about exponential growth in utility. Mechanisms or means such as word-of-mouth, sharing, group participation, and ratings all utilize their positive forces to enable unilateral users to drive another group of users on that side.

The other is that users on one side influence users on the other side. This situation is easy to understand. As producers and consumers on the platform, the more producers there are, the more goods or services consumers can receive; the more consumers there are, the more producers willing to join. The positive or negative impact between the two parties often requires a balance between the input and output of both sides.

Regarding the negative impact, let’s continue with the example of Xianyu mentioned at the beginning: since its development, Xianyu has gradually exposed more and more problems such as buying accounts, brushing likes, piracy, gray information, and counterfeit goods. For consumer users, their trust in the platform will decrease, and they will gradually lose users. The loss of consumer users will have a counter-effect on the publisher side, which is a harm to the real and effective production and publishing parties.

Therefore, the responsibility of products and operations is to reduce negative effects, improve positive efficiency, and help the platform value and users to directly achieve accurate matching and stratification.

In user operations , whether using the currently popular AARRR model theory, using various marketing tools for communication, or labeling precise operations, the platform thinking approach can help you measure whether the operations you are doing are positive or negative. This is also one of the reasons why products such as precision operations and personalized recommendations are becoming more and more popular.

3. Product Operation under Platform Thinking

The development of product function design under platform thinking is a very large topic, which we will not discuss for the time being. Here I mainly want to talk about how to operate products under platform thinking? The above article has briefly mentioned the overall architecture of the platform and the two-sided user effect. So what are the practical connections with our work?

Take new media operators or content operators as an example. Their daily work may be writing articles and activities every day. The written articles are distributed on WeChat , Toutiao and various self-media channels . The purpose is to attract users and promote products through content production, and do some likes and forwarding activities to activate your fans.

Then, you may often encounter these problems:

• The number of articles to be written every day is limited, the materials are limited, and the supply cannot keep up;
• Your content is vertical to a certain profession, and the single style makes it difficult to attract users with different preferences to pay attention to your content;
• The complicated work sometimes leads to a lack of interest in writing articles, resulting in watered-down content and loss of users ;
• The budget is limited, and the activity funds are small, which cannot promote user activity...

With a platform mindset, your solution might be like this. If you view the public account you operate as your own product platform, you should think like this: What is my platform structure? Who are the participants? What is the value unit? What is the filter? What is the core interaction that will eventually be formed?

One of the answers given might be:

• Participants are producers and consumers of articles;
• Value units can be different types of articles, or content in a certain media format, such as video or audio;
• Filters are content criteria that meet a certain rule;
• Since the core interaction takes place on an open platform such as WeChat subscription accounts , the form of interaction lies not in creation but in operation.

Then, the following solution is given:

1. Improve content supply:

• Establish a long-term reprinting relationship with a partner
• Establish a contribution mechanism to encourage your fans to contribute to certain topics and tap into potential content providers among your fans
• Establish a small self-media alliance to output content to each other

At the beginning, it may be some physical work, but when you build a system for content supply, your work may not just be writing articles, but you may also need to play a half-BD role.

2. Satisfy the content needs of different consumers

• Articles are divided into columns, and the preferences of different users are constantly tested and studied.
• User labeling, good at labeling users, with diversified dimensions: based on activity, such as active participants in activities, active commenters; based on interests, regions, etc.; so when you organize an event, you can find the most active users to spread it for you, which often achieves twice the result with half the effort

3. Reduce negative effects and improve positive efficiency

• Establish a positive feedback mechanism, conduct questionnaire surveys and satisfaction surveys regularly
• Rationally formulate incentive mechanisms for new content supply partners to prevent vicious competition and content dilution

The above are some of my thoughts on reading and work. You are welcome to discuss them together.

The author of this article @斜小歪 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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