Analysis of user loss in Baidu Tieba

Users' upgrading of social products is not only due to the emergence of new technologies, but also due to fatigue and the gradual process of users adapting to and relying on social products from their appearance to their acceptance and liking. Finally, the change from joining to exiting, from positive to negative, is the process of users becoming tired of using the social product, which is also the process of users losing social products.

01 Baidu Tieba user loss phenomenon

Baidu Tieba was launched on November 25, 2003. It is a keyword-based online communication community. Combined with Baidu search, it allows people who are interested in the same topic to gather together to communicate and help each other, covering topics including games, novels, sports, entertainment, life and other aspects.

As of September 2020, there are 22.67 million Baidu Tieba. Since its launch, Baidu Tieba has stood out among many BBSs for its professionalism. Relying on the advantages of Baidu search platform, relevant people in a certain field are aggregated through keywords.

All Tieba content is produced and managed by users themselves. Tieba moderators have the rights to delete posts, set them as featured posts, set them as pinned posts, and appoint junior moderators. This model has attracted over one billion users to register and join Tieba.

However, according to Baidu Index, the number of searches on Baidu Tieba is less than half of that on Sina Weibo. The number of users, user usage times, and user usage time of Baidu Tieba have dropped abnormally. It can be seen that the user loss of Baidu Tieba, a social product, is very serious.

02 Main issues at the product level

1. Advertising issues

Baidu Tieba advertising originated from a business called "Tieba Promotion" launched in September 2012. There are three main types of Baidu Tieba advertising, namely header advertising, Tieba topic list page advertising and post detail page advertising.

Take the forum “Li Yi Bar” with over 2 million followers as an example. In the Baidu Post Bar mobile app, there are 3 advertisements among the first 15 posts in the post bar. When you click on the latest reply, on a post details page, there are only three advertisements among the first 30 replies, while on the Baidu Tieba webpage on the computer side, there are two advertisements inserted in the first 20 posts.

Too many advertisements result in fewer posts related to the field being displayed, making the forum less professional. At the same time, it increases the amount of invalid information in social networks, causing users to become tired of using the social network products.

2. Too much focus on professionalism

In 2011, the membership system of Baidu Tieba changed from being reviewed by the forum owner to being able to join by just clicking to follow. The advantage of this change is that it can attract more people to join Tieba and increase its activity, but the disadvantages are also very obvious.

First of all, the cost of becoming a Tieba member is low, resulting in an increasing number of advertising accounts, even robot accounts, publishing various advertising information, even pornographic information and phishing website links. With the current number of moderators and administrators, it is difficult to completely delete such information.

Secondly, communication on forums belongs to group communication, and the main role of group norms in group communication is to exclude deviant opinions. Limit differences of opinion and debate within the group to a certain extent. New members are not familiar with the original posting rules of Tieba, especially since the entry threshold has been lowered, and their understanding of Tieba is low, so the content they post often does not comply with the original Tieba rules. It affects the normal order of Tieba and also causes an increasing number of incidents of deliberately disrupting the normal order of Tieba.

Finally, in addition to unintentional posts that do not comply with the forum rules, in order to quickly upgrade membership levels, the number of posts by new members to gain experience has also increased. Most of the posts are copy-pasted versions of the same content, published once in each post, which results in the accumulation of invalid information. However, once they leave the low-level experience-seeking status, the number of members will decrease, or even stop posting.

This results in the fact that the number of topics and replies on the forum appears to be large, but in reality the professionalism of the internal posts has declined. The proportion of meaningless posts has increased significantly, resulting in content that cannot meet user needs, causing core users to become tired and leave.

3. The management of Tieba is chaotic

(1) The phenomenon of buying and selling on Tieba appeared

In March 2015, Baidu Tieba launched the Tieba partner model. Its official publicity defines Tieba partners as several players in an interest field or senior companies in a vertical field. After becoming a Tieba partner, you not only have the right to operate the Tieba, you can directly carry out promotion and advertising in the Tieba, but also have all the resources of the Tieba, and have all the authority to delete posts, monitor and initiate activities in the Tieba, and other bar affairs.

This feature was originally launched by Baidu to monetize Tieba. However, in January 2016, the Hemophilia Bar incident caused the most serious public relations crisis since the launch of Tieba. In 2016, the news that the Hemophilia Bar, which had a history of nearly ten years, was sold began to spread on the Internet. Later, netizens discovered that not only the Hemophilia Bar, but also the Cerebral Palsy Bar and other bars were sold.

Baidu Tieba's actions caused outcry, and on January 14, the Baidu Tieba partner recruitment page was removed from the shelves;

(2) The removal of the forum moderator caused chaos in the forum

In addition to the situation mentioned above where the moderator was removed due to the partners of Tieba, moderators of Tieba are often replaced due to reports or other reasons. However, after the moderator is removed, the new moderator cannot be approved in time. Due to the long-term lack of management, Tieba becomes chaotic and leads to user loss.

At the same time, there are accounts that are permanently banned by Baidu for no reason. After sending feedback through the user channel Tieba, only robots can be searched, and the replies to the feedback have been recorded, so the resolution efficiency is low.

03 Main issues at the user level

1. Existing social interactions are difficult to continue in other areas

In his theory of needs, Maslow divides needs into five levels: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs.

In group communication, the group is an important means to meet individual needs. The social self is a self that is realized through relationships with other people. Only when it is recognized by others can it have the values ​​we hope it has.

In Baidu Tieba, the members of this Tieba are a group. This group can meet social needs, and users can easily find each other in a certain field that they are interested in. Many netizens with the same interests get to know each other and interact by posting and replying to each other's posts. By posting in the forum, they can also get a lot of replies and fans, satisfying the users' needs for respect and self-realization.

However, the distinction between bars gradually becomes clearer. Once you are no longer interested in this field and leave the bar, the reputation accumulated from previous social interactions will be difficult to continue. Every time users go to a new forum, they have to start over. After repeating this several times, users will easily feel tired. Even if they stay in the same forum, as familiar people keep leaving, the original users will lose their sense of belonging and gradually lose interest in the forum, resulting in the loss of core users.

2. User-generated content varies in quality

As a social product, Baidu Tieba also has its own special posting and communication mode. Even the terms used in each Tieba are different, and some of these terms will even become Internet buzzwords. For example, terms like Jia Junpeng and Diaosi originated from the World of Warcraft forum and Li Yi forum. Every forum in front of the public has gradually formed its own inherent culture.

However, not every culture formed in Tieba is positive. In addition, Baidu Tieba's poor supervision has led to the proliferation of advertising posts and mutual insult posts. There have also been multiple malicious bar bombings, which have left a negative impression of low-level violence and bad taste in the minds of users of Baidu Tieba, which has more than one billion users. Even the fact that you came from Tieba has become a derogatory term in the online world to describe a person's low quality.

When Tieba becomes a social product used by people with low quality, low cultural level and young age, it will lead to the loss of original users, especially high-quality users.

Conclusion

Baidu Tieba has been online for 16 years since November 2003. Because it started early, the page still retains the style of the previous BBS and the basic structure has not changed much. However, compared with current social products, the interface is too rigid and users have lost the novelty of using it.

At the same time, similar competing products are constantly being launched. Douban groups, Zhihu topics, Weibo topics, etc. are constantly diverting Baidu Tieba's original users through keywords and people in related fields. At the same time, in addition to highly professional topic groups and other classifications, these social products also have other functions to spread the news to all users, which is what Baidu Tieba lacks.

However, due to years of accumulation, Baidu Tieba far exceeds similar products in terms of both the breadth and depth of data, especially the high-quality posts in each Tieba. It is even the integration of the most important resources in this field. Under such circumstances, Baidu Tieba is eager to monetize its resources and has placed a large number of low-quality advertisements, and even profited from users by killing the goose that lays the golden eggs through buying and selling Tieba.

Paying the high price of losing users and one's own image in exchange for profits will ultimately lead to an irreparable image and user fatigue. This is also worthy of reflection and vigilance for similar social products.

As a social product, the first thing to consider is user needs rather than monetization capabilities. A user model should be established based on existing data to make more accurate recommendations to users, retain existing users, attract more users, maintain the style of the product itself, and achieve sustainable development of social products.

Author: Piao Piao

Source: Piaopiao