B station product analysis!

At the just-concluded 9th China Internet Audiovisual Conference, in addition to the "Tencent-Alibaba fight", Bilibili , as a newcomer in the video industry, also successfully stood out. As a representative video website of the "Z generation", let us see what is different about Bilibili!

1. User Growth Model

1. A station diversion

Bilibili was founded in 2009. When it was first established, it was just a website for sharing 2D videos.

This picture shows what Bilibili looked like when it first went online in 2009:

It can be seen that when Bilibili was first launched, the UI design was still very simple. Compared with Bilibili's A at the same period, the gap in UI design was huge. During that period, apart from the fact that its server maintenance and review speed were better than those of Station A, it could be said that Station B had an all-round advantage over Station A. However, it was precisely because of these two points, namely, its stable server and fast review speed, that Station B attracted its earliest batch of users.

2. The first explosive growth of users

In 2010, Bilibili redesigned its UI, and its usability has been greatly improved. Also from March to May of the same year, chaos and barrage of comments broke out on Station A, which was in competition with Station B. This caused Station A's server to crash multiple times, and a large number of users switched from Station A to Station B, whose server was more stable.

3. “Breaking the Circle” to Discover New Growth Points

This is the Baidu search index chart from 2011 to 2021. The blue in the chart represents the B station search index, and the green represents the two-dimensional search index.

It is obvious that the number of two-dimensional searches is basically the same, while the number of searches on Bilibili is increasing year by year. Through analysis, it is not difficult to conclude that the user growth of Bilibili in recent years has benefited from Chen Rui's "breaking the circle" action, breaking the ACG style of Bilibili (a general term for animation, comics, and games) and turning Bilibili into a video community platform where PUGC and UGC coexist.

2. Content

1. Video

1) Definition of Chinese video

I chose three dimensions to define mid-length videos:

• time:

Most domestic short video platforms limit short videos to within 15 seconds to 15 minutes, and some define it as within 1 minute; the length of medium videos has not been clearly defined, and Ren Lifeng, president of Xigua Video, believes that medium videos should be defined as within 1 minute to 30 minutes. We will focus on his statement first, and then the long video, which is naturally limited to more than 30 minutes in length.

• content:

The content of short videos is mainly entertainment and life-oriented. The characteristics of most short videos are: simple, fast-paced, and (creative); the content of medium videos is mainly popular science and knowledge. Compared with short videos, its content is richer and can fully explain to the audience what it wants to express. The content quality, production time and professional requirements are higher than those of short videos; the content of long videos is commonly variety shows, film and television dramas, etc. Compared with the above two types of videos, its content is mainly plot-based, with a complete storyline, better content quality, longer production time, and higher professional requirements.

• Producer:

Most short video producers are the users themselves, that is, user-generated content (UGC), which takes relatively low time and cost to produce; long video producers are mostly professional organizations, with higher content quality (PGC), which takes more time and cost to produce; and medium videos are in between the two. Although they are original content produced by users, the users' professional level is higher than that of short videos, that is, professional user-generated content (PUGC).

2) Characteristics of the B-station platform

This is the top 100 videos in each section of Bilibili's popular rankings since January, and then the median length of their videos is calculated.

This is the number of videos in each sub-area in January of the same year.

• Duration characteristics:

I took the top three categories of video volume (life, games, and film and television) and calculated their weighted average to be approximately 7 minutes. Based on the previous definition of medium-length videos, 7 minutes is within the range of medium-length videos.

• Content Features:

Compared with short videos, medium videos focus on popular science and knowledge. Due to the professionalism of the content, Bilibili can automatically eliminate some meaningless and low-quality videos. Compared with long videos, although long videos have better content quality and are more sophisticated in production, they are too professional, resulting in a high entry threshold and making it difficult for users to produce them on their own.

Based on the above two points, the medium-length video feature of Bilibili makes Bilibili a platform that can output high-quality PUGC and UGC. According to statistics, Bilibili’s PUGC content currently accounts for 91% of the total playback volume on the entire platform.

3) Video content

Since Bilibili has many video sections, I took the three sections with the highest playback volume, namely life, film and television, and games, for analysis, and analyzed the differences in platform content caused by platform algorithms and video characteristics.

• Living Area:

The living area is dominated by self-made videos, which account for 80% of the total videos. Take Geng, a UP host in the handicraft area of ​​the living area, for example. His video titled "Homemade "Cough Reaction Kung Fu Stove"" was released on Bilibili and Douyin.

(Statistical deadline: June 6)

Although there is a difference in release time, the difference in playback volume still surprised me. I think the reason for the huge difference in playback volume is mainly due to the difference in calculation weight logic between the two platforms. As a short video platform, Tik Tok puts the completion rate first when calculating the weight. The video released by Geng Handong is 12 minutes long, which seems too long compared to a short video of less than 1 minute.

The following is the B station weight algorithm formula given by netizens:

Video weight = coins x 0.4 + favorites x 0.3 + bullet comments x 0.4 + comments x 0.4 + plays x 0.25 + likes x 0.4 + shares x 0.6

From the formula, we can see that Bilibili values ​​the quality and interaction of videos more than the completion rate. The average playback time of the top 10 videos in the manual area of ​​Bilibili is about 5.5 minutes. For this duration, Bilibili's algorithm is undoubtedly the optimal solution.

• Film and TV Area:

The film and television area mainly focuses on film and television commentary, film and television editing, and homemade short films.

As people's pace of life is accelerating, it is difficult to have plenty of time to watch a whole movie or TV series. As a result, video themes such as film and television commentary were born. For a 2-hour movie, film and television commentary can let the audience understand the general plot in about 6 minutes.

There are many accounts specializing in film and television commentary on short video platforms. As mentioned above, the importance of completion rate for short videos means that if film and television commentary videos want to increase their playback volume, they must control the length of a single short video. Controlling the length means three things:

1. The commentary of a movie will be divided into multiple short videos for release
2. Speed ​​up the narration
3. Castration of some content

Publishing an explanation video in multiple short videos means that viewers cannot get a complete viewing experience. A faster commentary speed means that the audience's acceptance speed must also be faster. In some suspense films and television shows, if the commentary speed is accelerated but the audience's acceptance speed remains unchanged, the audience will need to watch a certain video repeatedly, reducing the audience's viewing experience. Because the film and television commentary has already deleted some of the film and television content, and then it is castrated again, the degree of restoration of the plot will be greatly reduced.

On Bilibili, UP hosts do not need to consider the limitations imposed by time, they only need to consider how to create good film and television commentary content.

• Game Zone:

The content of the game area can be roughly divided into three categories: online games, offline games and game MVs.

Take the online game "League of Legends" that I play most often as an example: short videos pursue completion rate and viewing experience, so the popular videos on the platform are all highly stimulating operation highlight videos. As a content-based platform, Bilibili pays more attention to the quality of content. Therefore, viewers see more teaching game videos on Bilibili.

From my observation, offline games rarely appear on short video and live broadcast platforms. Because the fast pace of short videos cannot match the slow pace of offline games. The real-time nature of live streaming makes it difficult for viewers to notice the status of players participating in the game, which is particularly evident in games like Werewolf. But the editability of videos can perfectly solve this problem, which is why there are so many offline game videos on Bilibili.

4) Community Content

In Bilibili, barrage culture has become an important part of community content.

Glossary: ​​The word "barrage" originally meant that artillery fire was so dense that it was like a curtain. It is a military term. In the field of communication, it refers to the comments posted by users in the form of subtitles on the video screen while watching the video.

Compared with likes, comments, and forwarding, the "synchronicity" of barrage breaks the geographical, temporal, and spatial limitations of audiences, forming a new "group" viewing mode, satisfying the young audience's needs for timely interaction and social interaction at specific moments, and truly realizing social interaction without time and space distance.

It is also because of the strong social attributes of barrage that Bilibili has formed its unique community content.

5) Development of UP Masters

As a PUGC and UGC platform, most of the content on Bilibili is created by users. Therefore, if the platform wants to have high-quality content, it needs to attract or cultivate high-quality producers. In Station B, such producers can be roughly divided into three categories:

1. Part-time creator
2. Full-time creator
3. Professional creative agency

For part-time and full-time creators, they themselves may be veteran users of Bilibili. The problems they face may be lack of creative direction and inability to monetize their works.

In order to solve this problem, Station B launched the Creator Academy feature:

The Creator Academy directly provides creators with creation templates and tutorials. Creators only need to shoot materials according to the creation templates, and then make the materials into videos according to the creation tutorials and publish them on the platform. They can also receive additional rewards for publishing works of designated themes.

Of course, these mostly apply to part-time creators. Compared with full-time creators, part-time creators are definitely not as professional in production, but their dependence on the platform is also lower than that of full-time creators. Therefore, for part-time creators, how to produce high-quality videos is more important than how to monetize the videos.

For full-time creators, because they are full-time, their demand for video monetization will be stronger. The rewards of the Creator Academy mentioned above are far from enough for full-time creators, but UP host Xiao Wenge "EatEatEat" has provided us with new ideas.

The usual video style of this UP is mainly about eating seafood. In the video he released on October 23, 2020, we can see that the subject matter of the video is still seafood eating, and the number of video views and comments has not fluctuated much compared with previous periods.

However, it can be seen from the creative team and video content that this is a video sponsored by advertisers. Brother Xiao Wen implanted advertising content into the video in the form of reviews, so that even though the audience knew it was an advertisement, they could still accept it with pleasure.

For professional creative organizations, video production and monetization are no longer a problem. The main problem lies in how to adapt to the environment of Bilibili, so I will not go into details here.

3. Monetization Model

In February this year, Bilibili released its Q4 and full-year financial report for 2020. In the revenue structure, value-added service revenue accounted for 33%, game business revenue accounted for 29%, advertising business revenue, e-commerce and other business revenue accounted for 19% respectively. It is worth noting that value-added services have become the largest source of revenue for the first time since Bilibili’s listing.

In the financial report, Bilibili explained its value-added services as "premium membership plan, live broadcast service and other value-added services." Bilibili did not explain in detail the content of "other value-added services", but it can be considered that the revenue from value-added services mainly comes from the share of premium membership and live broadcast rewards.

The financial report shows that the average monthly number of paying users in Q4 reached 17.9 million. Based on the same purchasing intention, the number of premium members this quarter is about 14 million. Based on the highest (25 yuan per month) and lowest (168 yuan per year) purchase price of premium membership, the revenue from premium membership is approximately between 590 million yuan and 1.05 billion yuan, and the revenue from live streaming is approximately between 200 million yuan and 660 million yuan. During the same period, Douyu's revenue from live streaming rewards was 2.348 billion yuan, and Huya's revenue from live streaming rewards was 2.657 billion yuan. It can be seen that Bilibili's data on live streaming revenue is not ideal.

The growth of Bilibili's value-added services is largely attributed to the explosion of self-produced content at Bilibili in recent years. In 2020, there were 33 domestic animations "MADE BY BILIBILI", including excellent works such as "Heaven Official's Blessing" and "Tower of God". Among them, the playback volume of "Heaven Official's Blessing" reached 340 million, setting a new record for Bilibili's domestic animation.

In addition, Bilibili has reached a long-term cooperation with the BBC, and is deeply involved in the production of documentaries. It has launched Bilibili's first 4K HDR documentary "Dynasty Meerkats". Bilibili has also become the first online video platform in China to support HDR10 high color, 4K high resolution, and 120 high frame rate image quality.

IV. Conclusion

Looking at it now, Bilibili’s “breaking the circle” is a very correct choice. Although breaking the circle has brought a large amount of user growth, it has also generalized the content of Bilibili. The generalization of content will inevitably lead to homogeneous competition. You can refer to the competition between iQiyi and Tencent, and Douyu and Huya. Therefore, in the future, Bilibili needs to continue to optimize the content of the platform, increase the amount of self-made content on the platform, create points of difference, and form its own core competitiveness.

Author: Wangzai2331

Source: Wangzai2331