The essence of the Internet lies in connection, and "connecting people and information" is one of the most basic and fundamental user needs. In terms of meeting users' needs for information acquisition, different types of content products such as information, video, and music all have representative products, among which information content products cover the largest user groups.The information content market is currently divided into two main categories. One is news information represented by Tencent News, NetEase News, Phoenix News, and Toutiao , which are known for their extensive content and timeliness. The other category is the vertical information market, such as financial information represented by Caixin.com, sports information represented by Hupu, and technology information represented by 36Kr Huxiu. The characteristic of this type of product is that it only focuses on one vertical field and deeply solves the specific users' needs for obtaining professional content.After entering the era of mobile Internet , the demand for information asymmetry has been met, and we are gradually entering an era of information overload. No user complains anymore that they cannot get any information. Instead, there is too much information. How to see the information that users really want to see is the main development direction of information content products in this era.1. Which of the two news models represents the future?In the past era of the four major portals, whoever had a professional content editing team would have the upper hand. It was not until the emergence of Toutiao that the model of aggregated news + personalized recommendations broke this pattern. The two models of media news and aggregated news have their own advantages, but there has not yet been a situation where one will subvert the other.Data Description: Monthly active users and usage of the five major media news clients in July 2016(1) Media News ModelThe media news model refers to traditional information media represented by Tencent News, Sohu News, NetEase News, Phoenix News, and Sina News. The advantage of this group of news clients is that the content quality is controlled by a professional editorial team, the overall quality is high, and the content is mainly PGC. Content collection, editing, publishing and recommendation are all completed by members of the official operation team. Judging from actual user data, this model is still the mainstream information content operation model.The disadvantage of the media news model is that it is all the same, that is, all users see the same content. This depends to a large extent on the level of the content operation team. What kind of content is suitable for recommendation on the homepage is determined by the operators based on their experience and historical data.According to Analysys data, Tencent News currently has the largest number of users, with 120 million monthly active users. Sohu, NetEase and Phoenix are in the second camp, with monthly active users ranging from 45 million to 65 million. Combining the user usage, we find an interesting phenomenon: although Phoenix News has fewer users than Sohu and NetEase, its launch times and user usage time exceed those of Sohu and NetEase, and especially the usage time is very close to Tencent News. Bai Qi has mentioned this point many times. In the competition in the mobile Internet era, user attention is one of the most important competitive points. Only when users are willing to stay on your product long enough can more value space be generated.(2) Aggregate News Model
Data Description: Monthly active users and usage of the three mainstream news aggregation clients in July 2016The aggregate news model is most represented by Toutiao, Yidian Zixun and Tiantian Kuaibao. The characteristics of these information content products are that content production and content release are completed in the form of data crawling and UGC. Data crawling refers to the synchronous update through machine crawling from cooperative content sources. This technology is not new. UGC refers to the currently popular self-media , which is responsible for producing content and publishing it by the platform's cooperative self-media.Due to the demand for scarce high-quality content, all aggregation news platforms and some media news platforms have launched their own self-media column projects so far, such as Toutiao's Toutiao, Yidian's Yixun, Tencent's Penguin, Phoenix New Media 's Phoenix, etc., and introduced corresponding rights and interests incentive measures for high-quality self-media.There are too many self-media platforms , and there was once a situation where there were not enough self-media authors. Each platform tried its best to invite high-quality self-media to join. But for self-media authors, the biggest demand lies in content exposure and the accumulation of personal brand fans. In this case, several platforms with large client user resources have inherent advantages. Overall, the more attractive ones for self-media people include Toutiao, Penguin, Yidian, Phoenix, etc.The reason why the aggregate news model can shake up the original media news model is that it is truly amazing because of the concept of personalized recommendations. That is, guided by user interests, what kind of content to recommend to users is no longer decided by operators. Instead, artificial intelligence technology and algorithms are used to identify what kind of content users are interested in, and then targeted recommendations are made to users, achieving the goal of tailoring content to each individual.Of course, although this model is popular, its drawbacks are also obvious, namely, it completely relies on machine algorithm recommendations, which leads to the homogeneity and vulgarity of recommended content. This is a problem that Toutiao has been hoping to solve since its development but has not been able to solve well. As we all know, vulgar content has the highest click-through rate . After users have read one or two pieces of vulgar content, the machine algorithm will determine that this is the direction that the user is interested in, and then will recommend more vulgar content to the user. The result is that users feel that the content of this platform is too watery. It is okay to read one or two pieces, but users will get bored if they read too many.2. What exactly are users’ needs for information content products?Back to the topic of operations, we have to first look at what user needs are? Do users prefer to read content recommended by professional editors or content recommended by machines?Shirasaki’s point of view is: In fact, users don’t care whether it is recommended by humans or machines, and they don’t know what content they want to watch, but users know what they don’t like to watch. Once they think it is not good, users will take practical action to choose better alternatives.When conducting user surveys, users will say that they prefer the personalized recommendation model because this concept can better stimulate the user's psychology, making them feel that the product understands them well and their individual needs can be met. However, in actual use, users will get bored if content is only recommended within their interest range. Just as many users think of Toutiao, they think it is too entertainment-oriented and the content is too watery. This explains why Toutiao is so popular but its number of users still does not exceed that of Tencent News.All content products are nothing more than two important groups: one is content producers, and the other is content consumers. The information content platform acts as a bridge connecting the two.First, let’s talk about content producers. The content producers of media news are editors, and the content producers of aggregated news are news sources and self-media. The demands of content producers are simple. Whether they are editors, self-media or news sources, they all hope that their content can be exposed to a wider range. The test point for the platform lies in how many user groups it can cover.As for content consumers, there has always been an opposing mindset in the past, thinking that users who read media news and those who read aggregated news are not the same group of people. In fact, this is not the case. All users have multi-level information demands, and content platforms should pay special attention to simultaneously meeting both high-level and low-level information demands of the same user. According to the 80/20 rule, only 20% of users like to read useful content. Does this mean that these users only read useful content? If you recommend him something less dry, he will still watch it. Take Internet operation practitioners as an example. Operational knowledge will definitely attract much attention, but if you are occasionally given some entertainment gossip, you will still read it. After all, everyone has curiosity.3. In order to dominate the market, the practices of these two companies are worth paying attention toWhich one, the media news model or the aggregation news model, will dominate the market? No one can say for sure. At least judging from the current actual user data, Tencent News, the market leader, is still a media news model, but the rapid rise of Toutiao shows that the aggregated news model is enough to attract users. This makes it difficult for several established portal media to make a choice. Once they give up their own advantages and enter the track opened up by Toutiao to compete, it will be very risky. In this context, the actions taken by two companies are particularly worthy of attention.First, Tencent chose to start anew and launched a new independent product, Tiantian Kuaibao, in addition to Tencent News. The two teams still operate independently and do not interfere with each other. This move is very Tencent-style. When WeChat was first created, there were several internal teams working on research and development at the same time. In the end, the Guangyan team led by Zhang Xiaolong won. Tencent's strategic approach has always been to fight both sides in order to be prepared for any eventuality. The situation of WeChat and mobile QQ is very similar. No matter which form of product wins in the future, Tencent will be the winner.The second is Phoenix New Media, which chose a vertical and horizontal marriage, that is, to allow Phoenix News, a media news model, and Yidian Zixun, an aggregated news model, to carry out in-depth cooperation. Phoenix News has been deeply involved in the media field for many years and has a professional editorial team. It has accumulated a good reputation for content quality over the years and also launched the Phoenix self-media platform this year. For example, during the U.S. election, the special topics produced by Phoenix News were rated as the best in the industry, with timely election information updates and visual H5 communications highlighting its professional strength. Although Yidian Zixun started relatively late, its founding team came from Baidu, and it has a solid foundation in user interest mining engines and recommendation technologies. In terms of channels, it chose to cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO for pre-installation. All Xiaomi mobile phones have the Yidian Zixun APP. In addition, the browsers that come with Xiaomi and OPPO systems also have Yidian Zixun's information flow content embedded in them. The two manufacturers together have at least 100 million shipments per year.In terms of original content, in addition to its own media editing team, Phoenix also has Phoenix Account, which is one of the few in the industry that creates high-quality content by combining PGC and UGC at the same time. Among all the self-media platforms, in order to ensure the quality of content, Phoenix focuses on its brand as being warm, genuine, responsible and having character. In this age of information overload, users have no shortage of content, but content with a unique tone will be liked by users.Phoenix has good content and Yidian has good technology. After the two have been connected in content production, content recommendation and other links, Phoenix's high-quality content has also gained more readers through interest distribution on Yidian Zixun, thereby improving the overall content level of Yidian Zixun. The high-quality self-media accumulated by Yidian Zixun platform can serve as a supplement to Phoenix's content. From now on, as long as the self-media authors settle in Phoenix or Yidian, they can get exposure in multiple channels at the same time. Behind Phoenix is not only Phoenix News Client, but also Phoenix.com, Phoenix Mobile, Phoenix Video Client, and now Yidian Zixun. From the perspective of self-media, good authors and good content have been disseminated on a wider scale, thus forming a positive cycle. This positive cycle will attract more high-quality users for both products. This win-win market-dominating model is worth learning from for other traditional media outlets.For information content platforms, the platform can only realize its value if the needs of both content producers and content consumers are met. In this era of consumption upgrading, the monetization model of piling up massive numbers of low-income users is gradually becoming a thing of the past. Now that the platform has gathered enough high-quality users, through more refined commercial operations and the provision of matching high-quality services, its monetization value space will be much greater than in the past.
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