Signing big Vs and providing subsidies, is this really what Toutiao wants for Huoshan Video?

Volcano Video did a pretty good PR. First, a list of high-priced poaching was "exposed", and then the official denied the list, confirmed Tianyou's entry, and held a press conference to announce a 1 billion subsidy short video. The whole process was smooth and eye-catching.

But signing big Vs and getting subsidies? In my opinion, behind this seemingly reasonable strategy is Toutiao’s impatience for quick success, Huoshan’s self-maturation, and a growth path that went astray from the start.

Why? Let’s try to analyze it below.

It is an indisputable fact that Toutiao needs to be socialized

First, if you want to expand the ecosystem, you have to make it social.

As a dominant player in content distribution, it is only natural for Toutiao to want to build a broader content ecosystem: from pictures and texts to questions and answers to videos, from PGC to UGC .

But unlike the inherent consumption value of PGC, the value of UGC is more reflected through the relationship chain. This is easy to understand: we try our best to dig into and pay attention to the private lives of public figures, but you don’t care about what ordinary people eat, drink, defecate and urinate, unless you know them.

Therefore, in order to expand valuable UGC content, the construction of relationship chains is inevitable.

Second, if you want to take the initiative, you have to be social. This is a more important consideration.

The field of content distribution is booming nowadays, and a tough battle is inevitable. However, Toutiao’s own moat is not solid: the content itself is too easy to be migrated and copied, and even without official intervention, producers are spontaneously investing more; the benefits of offline pre-installation, which it relied on in the early days, are also gradually dissipating.

Therefore, if Toutiao wants to take the initiative, it needs to attack in addition to defending. The spearhead is naturally directed at the social field. After all, the relationship chain is the strongest moat that has been verified. This can be felt by referring to the powerful attraction of QQ and WeChat . There is no need to explain it in detail.

Toutiao should position Huoshan as a social network , not a social media

Since the socialization of Toutiao is inevitable, how should it deploy its forces? To discuss this issue, let us first clarify two concepts that have long been lacking in distinction: social networks vs. social media.

With the continuous expansion of platform business and the mutual reference of product functions, the above boundaries will become increasingly blurred. But when discussing basic positioning, such a division still makes sense.

Let’s look back at Toutiao’s product layout.

First, the launch of the overseas version of Toutiao Topbuzz, investment in India's DailyHunt, and holding of BABE are all international expansions of the company's core business of content aggregation and distribution, and there is no question of socialization; the launch of the Wei Toutiao module within the terminal has the most obvious intention, directly targeting Weibo-like social media; and the overseas acquisition of Flipagram and the domestic incubation of Tik Tok are both PGC-oriented, more like a music version of YouTube , and should be classified as a social media type in terms of product form. The only thing missing is a social network.

Let’s open the app store introduction of Huoshan Video: a short video social platform. Considering the fact that Volcano’s public relations article chose Kuaishou as its benchmark, adopted decentralized design within its products, and adopted UGC content operations , we have reason to infer that the incubation of Volcano Short Videos is intended to fill the gap in Toutiao’s layout on social networks in the long run, rather than to create another social media.

Toutiao does not need Huoshan to become another Miaopai , nor does it need to be completely Kuaishou. What it wants more is a simple version of Momo, a video version of Qzone.

The reason why it is not entirely Kuaishou is that the current Kuaishou is still not a social network in the strict sense. Users consume more content on it rather than building relationships.

Since it is a social network, it should not sign big Vs or provide subsidies.

Because Kuaishou pursues equality for all users, it is very vulnerable in maintaining relationships with big Vs. Therefore, many people believe that signing a big V is indeed a good move for Huoshan to directly attack Kuaishou’s weaknesses and seek to overtake it.

Sun Zhi, the person in charge of Huoshan Video, also mentioned in an interview with 36kr : " Internet celebrities are more like nodes, connecting the entire network of community relationships. They influence their own fan groups and give them inspiration. I am also an ordinary member of them, shaping the culture of the community together with other players."

This underestimates the siphoning ability of big Vs. A big V can be a node or a black hole. Continuously absorbing resources and user attention within the community has the following disadvantages in the long run:

User cognitive bias. The exposure and persistence of big V content will make users regard the community more as a place to follow and consume big V content, rather than to show themselves and make friends. In this way, personal profiles will be poorly managed and social interaction will be out of the question.

The relationship chain is fragile and ineffective. It is difficult for fans to get point-to-point feedback from big Vs, and the so-called attention is just a large number of fragile and ineffective one-sided relationships. Users look up to big Vs, but don’t have many close friends around them.

Community homeostasis is insufficient. The social network supported by big Vs is cluster-like rather than mesh-like, and is particularly dependent on these huge connection nodes. The exit of any node may have ripple effects on the entire system. This is also one of the reasons why the two products Weishi and Xiaokaxiu declined so quickly. When celebrities stopped playing, the community collapsed.

Therefore, relying on signing many big Vs to fight Kuaishou is more like a strategy of drinking poison to quench thirst. What Zeng Guangming, partner of Kuaishou Technology, said, "It's a pity to waste funds for friendly competitors" is not nonsense.

Now let’s look at subsidies.

Sun Zhi said, "The reason for intervening in the form of subsidies is that Toutiao has a tradition of subsidizing high-quality content creators, from pictures and texts to short videos and UGC short videos. In addition, the UGC short video products on the market have not solved the problem of monetization of mid- and long-tail users very well."

These are all facts, but tradition is tradition, and this time it is really different because it is UGC.

PGC producers focus on profits and economic value, so subsidies directly hit the pain points, and everyone is excited to roll up their sleeves and get to work. A UGC producer on a social network focuses on self-expression, social effects, and emotional value. How many mid- and long-tail users are there who engage in social networking for monetization?

The side effect of subsidies is that they cause the community’s tone to become impure. The tendency of some UGC producers has changed from "real recording" to "making money by performing", performing jokes, making people laugh, and doing whatever they can to attract attention. But we know that once you start performing on the flyover, the most you’ll get is applause, not a handshake.

What Toutiao expects Huoshan Video to achieve is precisely more "handshakes" (relationship chains) based on content.

How can Volcano Video shoulder the heavy responsibility?

When we position Huoshan Video as a social network rather than a social media, the goal should not be simply DAU and VV, but also the quality of personal homepages, the number of relationship chains, etc.

Based on the goals and current situation, I will try to give some suggestions below.

Operational side:

Weaken the presence of big Vs. Whether it is reducing contracts or reducing the output and exposure of its content. Don't put all the responsibility of giving UGC a sense of presence on the algorithm.

Compared with monetary compensation, more emphasis is placed on compensating emotional feedback. If you have money left to invest, you might as well use it to hire someone to chat with you. Going a little further, appropriate fake comments and machine likes can actually be a friendly gesture to UGC producers who receive very little feedback.

Strengthen the guidance of users' social awareness. This is currently far from enough. Let me tell you a little detail: my nickname was taken, and the default one assigned was actually "Mobile user xxxxxx". You officials are so casual about social IDs, do I still need to carefully edit my personal profile? Social behavior is even more out of the question.

Functional side:

Supplementary tools for personal expression. The premise of social behavior is the awakening of personal consciousness (community ID represents my existence) , and expression tools can assist in the formation of this consciousness. Accessories, expressions, signatures, hobby information, etc. are regular tools.

Improve matching efficiency. It helps users to expose each other from various dimensions such as the same city, the same school, the same constellation, etc. It can be explicit entrance aggregation or invisible algorithm allocation.

Provides relationship strengthening capabilities. Interacting with comments and following each other is not enough to give users a sense of "relationship"; but directly doing IM and building relationships is still difficult to break the WeChat and QQ situation. A private message list may be a good choice, as it is likely to be the first “address book” that users think of when reviewing their community friends.

Final Thoughts

Toutiao has always boasted about its "algorithm advantages" and "not exporting values." However, social network products place more emphasis on understanding user psychology and maintaining community atmosphere. This means that human intervention and guidance will be more needed in the future. Algorithms cannot understand the details, and big Vs and money cannot solve the problem of relationship connection.

For Toutiao, will Huoshan be a discarded pawn that has been defeated or a powerful general that will conquer cities and territories? My personal advice: Don’t go further and further down the path of faith in algorithms, big Vs, and subsidies. It would be a more effective strategy to focus on relationship chains, community atmosphere, and user presence.

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