In my childhood memory, there was always a radio on the desk in my room that accompanied me as I grew up and witnessed my joys and sorrows. Today's fast-paced life makes many people feel suffocated, and daily time is becoming more and more fragmented.

As a leader in China's mobile audio industry, Himalaya has been bringing fun to people's daily lives and meeting their needs for entertainment in fragmented time with the slogan "Listen to what I want, anytime, anywhere" since its inception.

But in today's content-driven market, competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and Himalaya still faces many challenges.

This article will conduct an in-depth analysis of Himalaya from five aspects. As a newcomer to this product, some of my analysis may be a little immature, and I welcome your comments.

(The article is long, please be patient)

1. Product Disassembly

Product Architecture

The author breaks down Himalaya into six main modules: audio, community, live streaming, social, personal, and commercialization. Among them, audio is Himalaya's main business. Based on audio, the product has derived related voice live broadcast, voice community, and voice social sections. There is also a personal section for comprehensive account management and a commercial module responsible for traffic monetization.

2. Competitive Product Analysis

2.1 Market & Product Positioning

Himalaya first opened up the market with audio. Later, as the number of users accumulated, in order to improve the quality of platform content and broaden the platform layout, it began to join the "knowledge payment" business and "live broadcast" and other pan-entertainment battlefields, and brought together new gameplay such as "full name recitation", "Karaoke room", and "fun dubbing" in the "discovery" module.

With the rise of the smart hardware market and the continuous growth of business, Himalaya's product positioning is now to provide an audio entertainment sharing platform that protects content property rights and provides UGC+PGC sharing and communication channels for everyone who wants to express themselves to the world.

2.2 Identify competing products

Looking at the entire current mobile audio market, Himalaya is the only dominant player, occupying almost half of the entire industry, but several mainstream audio-related apps on the market also have their own strengths.

In terms of product positioning,蜻蜓FM focuses on copyrighted audio and PGC content, which overlaps with Himalaya's copyrighted audio business;荔枝 emphasizes participation and develops interactive communities based on sound, which also overlaps with Himalaya's community business.

From a commercial perspective, Duoduo focuses on paid knowledge, and there is a certain degree of competition between it and Himalaya's general knowledge content. The three competing products have their own advantages in different segments.

The above are the main reasons for choosing蜻蜓FM,荔枝, and得 as Himalaya's competitors.

2.3 Business Distribution

Analysis of Himalaya and its competitors

The above picture shows the business distribution of Himalaya and its competitors. It can be seen that:

Himalaya:

It has a wide range of business and has grown into a comprehensive audio sharing platform through several years of development. It has the most and most complete content through the combination of PGC and UGC, and has many prime programs. It has the largest user base among several softwares, and it can now meet users' multi-scenario needs through a multi-dimensional ecological layout.

Qingting FM:

As a comprehensive audio aggregation platform, it has the highest business overlap with Himalaya, and its model is also a combination of PGC and UGC, but it focuses on PGC and pursues high-quality content. It is on par with Himalaya in the pursuit of copyrighted content.

Qingting FM does not have a community section like circle dynamics, but it has placed social-oriented businesses in the live broadcast section. Compared with Himalaya’s welfare club, Qingting’s points mall is larger in scale and covers online and offline services such as catering, culture, and entertainment.

litchi:

It focuses on the audio community, mainly based on simple and novel UGC content, with the slogan "Everyone is a host", which lowers the threshold for audio creation. It mainly attracts young users, and the target users are more specific and accurate.

Because UGC content is extremely prominent, it is easier to stimulate user activity and the production of more fresh content. At the same time, Lizhi is also exploring voice social networking, launching entertainment forms such as voice games and voice dating, strengthening audio social networking and promoting community vitality.

get:

Both Baidu and Himalaya focus on content payment, but Baidu emphasizes knowledge payment as the core: it provides users with time-saving and efficient knowledge services, and has live broadcasts that focus on sharing knowledge content. The high-quality resources and efficient services can easily establish a good reputation in the minds of users.

The user groups of Duode and Himalaya are different. Himalaya's user groups are for the general public, while Duode is mainly aimed at those lifelong learners who hope to use fragmented time to learn systematic and highly concentrated knowledge.

In addition, compared with Get, Himalaya's community content and atmosphere are more entertainment-oriented, and it mainly makes profits through three channels: community communication, advertising, and content payment. However, Get's learning community does not yet have a clear profit model.

2.4 Development History

The above summarizes the development history of Himalaya and its competitors. Generally speaking, the four products have different focuses so far. Himalaya has become more and more comprehensive, Lizhi focuses on UGC business, Dedao continues to advance in the field of content payment, and Qingting FM aims to focus on PGC business.

From the historical development of various products, we can see that:

• Qingting and Himalaya have made many exploratory attempts in the fields of community and live broadcast. So far, Himalaya has developed a large and comprehensive community + live broadcast + PGC section, while Qingting is more focused on live broadcast and PGC content.
• Compared to the large and comprehensive Himalaya,蜻蜓's copyright content is more elite. Although the development speed of copyrighted audio is not as fast as that of Himalaya,蜻蜓 still insists on taking the route of professional content. At the same time, it also expands its own audio content by incubating high-quality content on its own platform and connecting with other leading content platforms. In order to occupy a place in the downstream user scenarios,蜻蜓 has reached a strategic cooperation with other home appliance and smart device manufacturers to connect the APP to more life scenarios, and may compete with Himalaya's smart speakers in the future.
• Compared with Himalaya, Lizhi pays more attention to audio live broadcast and UGC content. Its more prominent UGC community is more likely to stimulate user activity and the production of more fresh content than Himalaya. At the same time, Lizhi is also exploring more forms of entertainment, such as voice social networking, launching voice games, voice dating and other live broadcast forms, and continues to emphasize audio social business, thereby occupying a place in the audio live broadcast market. However, the UGC-focused approach that Lizhi insists on and its main user groups also limit its own development, making it unable to produce major changes and can only take the niche path.
• Compared with Himalaya, it started earlier and has a larger user base, so it has strong business expansion capabilities in the audio field. Since its launch, Duoduo has been positioned as an audio learning and sharing platform. Although its user base is not as good as Himalaya, the user growth trend is very obvious, which also reflects that people are paying more and more attention to intellectual property and knowledge content. The publicity obtained relied on Luo Zhenyu and his speeches and press conferences, while Himalaya's publicity mainly relied on advertising and events. There are obvious differences in the user groups and quality obtained by the two different publicity models. But it can be seen that Himalaya and Duoduo launched the knowledge payment business at the same time, and may spend more time on user quality and knowledge content in the future.

2.5 Data Performance

Data source - Yiyang Qianfan

• Judging from the market size of the four platforms, Himalaya’s industry monopoly rate accounts for 42.3%, which can be said to occupy half of the entire industry. Its monthly active users exceed 85 million, more than twice the total of the other three products, and it leads in exclusive user rate.

The author believes that the main reasons are:

1. In today's content-based mobile audio market, the production of high-quality content is the core. Since 2015, Himalaya has cooperated with many first-line publishers, and the content of the cooperation includes audio book adaptation, IP incubation, copyright protection, etc. Himalaya owns the audio copyrights of 70% of the best-selling books on the market, the audio adaptation rights of 85% of online literature, and the copyrights of more than 6,600 original English best-selling audio books. Himalaya has established long-term cooperative relationships with many popular stars. The content it produces includes more than 50 categories, including audio novels, music, crosstalk, knowledge, etc., covering a wide range and being able to meet the user scenario needs in various segments, thereby accumulating a large user base. In its seven years of development, Himalaya has expanded from its initial mobile audio sharing business to today's comprehensive platform with strong audio content production, consumption and sharing, knowledge payment, smart hardware and other businesses. Therefore, it can now meet users' multi-scenario needs through a multi-dimensional ecological layout.
2. As an aggregated audio platform, Qingting FM has many overlapping businesses with Himalaya. However, because Qingting has long focused on mobile audio radio stations and has a single content, it has insufficient momentum and slow user growth. As a vertical platform, Duoduo mainly provides paid knowledge content. Its target group is audiobook enthusiasts, and its audience group is limited. The monthly active users of Lizhi are only 18.8% of Himalaya's, but the average daily activation volume is half of Himalaya's. From the perspective of Lizhi's business development, it has long focused on UGC and live broadcast content, and has focused on emotional content during its development. Therefore, its audience is mainly young people. Young blood is more likely to stimulate content production and can ensure that the content it produces is fresh. Therefore, the data shows that the number of daily activations of Lizhi is about three times that of Himalaya, and the month-on-month decrease in the number of activations is only 30% of Himalaya. But this is both a spear and a shield for Lizhi. Lizhi's next-month retention rate is only 29% of Himalaya's. This shows that without solid PGC content, UGC and live streaming alone cannot perfectly retain users, so its user scale has always been mediocre.

Himalaya has a very high industry exclusivity rate and started earlier, with a user base far exceeding that of Duoduo. However, Duoduo has a high user growth rate, while the user growth of the other three audio software is slow, and the number of launches is on a downward trend. Among them, Himalaya's launch number has dropped the fastest month-on-month, reaching -10.1%. The author believes that one of the reasons is that in the era of knowledge payment, people pay attention to the cost-effectiveness of knowledge: Himalaya has a large user base and uneven content quality, which will lead to low user stickiness. At the same time, since many excellent anchors have entered the platform to develop in the early stage and now have most of the fans on the platform, this has intensified the fierce competition among many grassroots creators who are only creating content on Himalaya today.

In terms of per capita data, Lizhi has the best per capita daily usage time among several products. The author believes that there are two reasons: First, Lizhi’s main business is UGC voice community. It itself has a high level of UGC creation activity and a huge content library. In addition, the content distribution is relatively sophisticated. It distributes content to users through intelligent algorithms, making it easier for users to hear content that interests them. Second, Lizhi encourages users to participate in creation, which adds an extra link in the behavioral process. Users will spend more time in the product when creating their own works. Himalaya has also been operating its own community section since 2018, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in overall activity and user acceptance.

2.6 SWOT Summary

As summarized in the above figure, in terms of advantages, after 7 years of business development, Himalaya has become relatively complete in terms of user scale, brand awareness, and product polishing, and it also has a long-term layout for smart hardware in its future development.

However, in terms of creative vitality and business norms, Himalaya still needs to consider the optimization of subsequent plans to break through the situation of declining user stickiness and user ceiling.

threaten:

【Content Production】

Competitors in the vertical track, such as Duoduo, have more advantages in content creation vitality or quality due to their relatively clear user strategies. In comparison, Himalaya lacks vitality in content production and has lower overall quality, resulting in insufficient user stickiness. Among user-generated content, many works are involved in copyright disputes and competition among anchors is fierce. Himalaya needs to provide a friendly platform environment for more creators and guide excellent original works.

【Community】

The community module lacks vitality and there is room for development that needs to be explored.

Chance:

【Commercial Promotion】

The platform has accumulated a certain amount of user operation experience and brand effect, and can consider developing the publicity market for content producers, while optimizing the appearance and presentation of commercial-related content.

Improve user quality and product reputation, thereby increasing the cost-effectiveness of paid audio content in the minds of users.

【Business integrity】

The product's functional development is very comprehensive, and there is still much room for improvement in the details and experience of its various functions. You can consider deepening the connection between different functional modules based on audio.

3. User Analysis

3.1 User role map

3.2 User Profile

PGC Consumer:

Sound creator:

UGC users:

4. User Research

4.1 Research Purpose

In the competitive product analysis stage, I believe that Himalaya has room for improvement in four areas: community, content creation, business integrity, and commercial promotion:

First, the community lacks creative vitality and participation, and the content quality is uneven; the overall business needs to be improved to avoid local shortcomings; use its own brand effect to tap into the potential for commercial promotion, and at the same time pay attention to optimizing the user experience when exposed to commercial content.

After that, the author conducted a comprehensive investigation of Himalaya's product reviews in the past six months on Qimai Data and found that the problems mentioned in user feedback mainly focused on three aspects: content payment, commercial promotion, and listening to audio:

4.1.1 Content Payment

• VIP automatic renewal leads to unexpected deductions
• VIP users still need to pay extra for some content
• After purchasing VIP, the content you intended to use will be removed from the shelves

4.1.2 Commercial Promotion

• There are a lot of ads overall, and almost all listening pages contain ads
• The splash screen ad appears every time you switch from the background to the APP, and you need to wait for several seconds
• Purchasing VIP membership can only remove ads on the playback page
• The volume of audio ads is very different from that of normal programs.

4.1.3 Audio Listening

• Can't find audio that matches your preferences for announcers
• The volume is huge, there are too many categories, and I can't find what I want to listen to
• I keep getting pushed a program or host I don't like in my private FM push.
• Disliked content is pushed in the recommendation. Even if you click "not interested", similar content will still appear.

To sum up, the author will start the research from five usage scenarios: audio creation, audio consumption, content payment, community, and commercial promotion.

Taking into account that in the learning scenario, students and working people may have different usage due to their goals, time arrangements, and environment, this survey is divided into two types: students and working people. Regarding these two groups, in question setting and subsequent analysis, the author will pay attention to whether there are differences due to group characteristics.

4.2 Research Questions

4.2.1 Basic Information

• gender
• age
• Profession
• Salary range/monthly pocket money
• City
• How to get in touch with Himalaya
• When did you start using Himalaya and why?
• Under what circumstances would Himalaya be opened?
• How often do you open it and how long do you use it each time?
• What do you usually watch first when you open Himalaya? Describes the approximate browsing path.
• Would you recommend Himalaya Station to others? Why?
• What's your opinion on Himalaya?

4.2.2 Specific usage scenarios

4.2.2.1 Audio Creation

• Will you publish your own audio content on Himalaya? What type of audio do you typically create? How often do you create?
• Why did you initially start sharing your audio creations on Himalaya? Why did you choose Himalaya as this platform?
• Did you encounter any difficulties during the recording and publishing process?
• After the audio went online, what kind of encouragement or positive feedback do you think you received? Have you ever experienced anything unpleasant?
• How long do you expect the interval between two updates to be? Do you reach the expected update frequency? If not, why?
• What kind of help do you hope to get in your future creation?
• What do you expect to gain from audio creation? Is there a big gap between this and the actual situation?

4.2.2.2 Audio Listening

• What do you think are the good aspects of your audio listening experience, or have you encountered any inconveniences?
• Do you check your phone when you're listening to audio? What content do you want to watch?
• Do you have any behavioral interactions when listening to audio? For example, posting comments, etc.
• Do you care about the audio quality? What aspects do you care about? For example, the announcer's voice, the length of the content, the order of playback, etc.

4.2.2.3 Learning

Current Students

• Will you study through Himalaya? What is your purpose of studying? What did you learn and how did you find it?
• In what scenarios do you usually use Himalaya to study? How often do you study and how long does each session last?
• Do you usually make a study plan for yourself? What other study habits do you have?
• During your study on Himalaya, did you encounter any inconveniences? Were they resolved in the end? And how were they resolved?
• How effective do you think your learning experience is with Himalaya? What were the gains or dissatisfactions?
• Have you used any learning channels other than Himalaya? What are the main contents of your study? What advantages and disadvantages do you think it has compared to the learning experience on Himalaya?
• What other knowledge do you hope to learn through Himalaya? How do you think we can help you better?

Professionals:

• Do you study through Himalaya? What do you study? How did you learn about this?
• In what scenarios do you usually use Himalaya to study? How often do you study and how long does each session last?
• Do you have any expectations for the results of your learning on Himalaya? How do you hope these learnings will help you in your life?
• While using Himalaya to study, have you encountered any inconveniences? Were they resolved in the end? And how were they resolved?
• How is your progress in learning on Himalaya? What are the factors that affect your progress? How do you usually overcome these factors?
• How do you feel about your learning so far? What have you learned? What are you dissatisfied with?
• Have you used any learning channels other than Himalaya? What are the main contents of your study? What advantages and disadvantages do you think it has compared to the learning experience on Himalaya?
• What other knowledge do you hope to learn on Himalaya?

4.2.2.4 Entertainment

• In what scenarios do you usually use Himalaya to listen to audio for entertainment and relaxation? What is the frequency? How long does it take each time?
• Do you use other sources for audio and entertainment? Why? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of Himalaya compared to them?
• How did you learn about these audios?
• What categories do you usually use to find these audios? Which one is used most frequently? Why?

4.2.3 Community

• When you listen to audio, do you want to discuss it with others? Who do you usually discuss this with? By what method? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of this discussion style? Why? What kind of discussion would you like to have?
• When you listen to audio, do you feel the urge to share it? Who do you usually share with? By what method? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of this sharing method? Why? If possible, who would you like to share it with?
• Have you ever used the Listener Circle or Discovery function? Do you post in your circle or publish some short videos to share your life or thoughts with others? Will you bring up topics in the circle? Will there be discussion? Why?
• If the comments section of an audio channel could create topics for discussion about the content being listened to, would you want to join in? Why?
• Have you made any friends through Himalaya? What was the reason and how did you get to know each other (through a circle of listening friends or a karaoke room, etc.)? Would you like to make more friends on Himalaya? Why?

4.2.4 Helping you sleep and relieving stress

• Do you use the sleep-aid and stress-relieving function on Himalaya? When will it be used? Which aspect do you use the most? What is the frequency? How long is each use?
• Which modules do you mainly use to help you sleep and relieve stress? Which one is used most frequently? Why?
• Do you use other apps to relieve stress and help you sleep? Why? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages compared to Himalaya?
• When using Himalaya to relieve stress and aid sleep, have you encountered anything that you want to complain about?

4.2.5 Content Payment

• Have you ever purchased Himalaya VIP membership? Why?
• Which of the various benefits and rights of Himalaya VIP membership do you usually use?
• Suppose purchasing a channel's content includes channel VIP with partial usage rights and short-term VIP with free use on the entire platform within a week, would you be willing to purchase it? Which one do you prefer?
• Have you ever had the experience of paying extra money to purchase a lot of works or channel content at a low price after you have already purchased a membership? Why do this? Do you have anything to complain about this?
• What do you think about many classic dubbing works being taken off the shelves due to copyright issues and being re-dubbed by internet celebrities or stars?
• For you, do you think paying for Himalaya VIP is worth it? Why?
• Would you consider renewing your membership? Why?
• Do you have anything to complain about Himalaya VIP membership?

4.2.6 Commercial Promotion

• What forms of advertising do you think affect your user experience on Himalaya? Which one has the most serious impact? Have you ever actively clicked on the links of these advertisements? Why?
• How often do you usually visit the official store? Have you ever bought any products in the mall (such as smart speakers, books, and cultural and creative products, etc.)? Do you have any complaints about the customer service or other aspects of the mall?
• Do you actively accumulate points? What do you hope to do with these points? Do you have any complaints about Himalaya’s current points system?

4.3 Survey Results

Professionals:

Current students:

4.4 Analysis of survey results

By analyzing user needs, the author draws the following conclusions:

From the user's perspective:

Both students and working people have a low reliance on systematic learning on Himalaya, and there is no obvious difference.

Therefore, the author will mainly analyze the survey results from a business perspective.

4.4.1 Audio consumption

The audio business of Himalaya products itself is well-known and has been very successful in promotion. Users are relatively familiar with and satisfied with the main business of the product, especially users with audio creation experience, who have a good experience when using the software to create audio. Users have high requirements for audio listening, and their main problems in audio experience are:

• It is difficult for users to find their favorite content according to the current platform promotion mechanism;
• Users have concerns about the quality of some paid content;
• The audience's choice of announcers is too limited and cannot meet the user's diversified needs for audio;
• There was a problem during audio listening operation.

4.4.2 Community

Community research found that even among Himalaya's heavy users, most only use Himalaya for a dozen minutes to an hour a day, and user stickiness is insufficient. Himalaya has been working hard on this. After several years of hard work, it has iterated its products into a large-scale audio community, and hopes to extend people's attention to the product from hearing to vision, thereby increasing users' dependence on it.

Himalaya has also added a live streaming service in line with the current trend, but not many people on the platform have used the live streaming service, and users do not have high expectations for live streaming. They believe that the live streaming services in various software are similar.

In terms of community content, people's use of Himalaya is still mostly limited to hearing. They are not very active in the community and rarely post comments. Even if they play with their mobile phones while listening to audio, they will not use Himalaya, but other software.

4.4.3 Commercialization

Himalaya is a very large content payment platform. Its main sources of commercial profit are membership and knowledge payment. How to reasonably monetize traffic is a key part of the product.

However, during the interviews, all users were dissatisfied with its commercialization model.

The problems with the user experience in Himalaya's commercialization are mainly reflected in:

1. Ads pop up too frequently during audio listening for non-members;
2. The membership system is not friendly to low- and medium-level users;
3. Users have little interest in membership activities promoted within the system.

4.5.4 Social

In terms of social interaction, users generally suggest that it would be great if they could find like-minded partners on the platform, but there is not much demand for using Himalaya for social interaction. The main reason is that the user groups are quite different, and the product itself is not a social platform.

4.5.5 Summary

The author believes that Himalaya is a platform with a huge user base. In order to break through the user ceiling of Himalaya, the product must first start from the product positioning itself, continuously optimize and improve the user's user experience for audio consumption, and stabilize and improve user retention and growth rates.

In addition, based on the current advantages of the product, we continue to explore community business, guide users to extend the focus of hearing to vision, enhance user activity, and thus increase user stickiness. In addition to ensuring audio quality, it is also worth discussing how to stimulate user activity in the community and guide users to participate in the community.

To sum up, through the analysis and sorting out of the user needs of this survey, the author will analyze and optimize the user experience based on the community and audio content in the future.

V. Functional Analysis and Optimization Plan

5.1 New Features

Demand background: According to the results of user surveys and partial data analysis, although Himalaya is a large community with a huge user base, there are problems in the specific performance of the community, such as lack of user vitality, insufficient creativity of community content, and fatigue in interaction between users.

Therefore, the author summarizes the main problems encountered by Himalaya users in the community experience as follows:

• The entrance to "My Listener Circle" is too hidden, resulting in many people rarely using the circle or even never hearing about it;
• Currently, the push mechanism of the circle is unclear, and the push path is not obvious;
• Ximalaya has a large user base, but the quality of its users varies greatly, which makes it difficult for users to find a circle or group that suits them.
• Himalaya currently does not have a management system for circles. Users need to enter each circle they follow to manage the circles they follow, which is very cumbersome.

Optimization goals: enrich the ways in which users participate in the Himalaya community, increase the exposure of "circles (the main concrete manifestation of the Himalaya community)" and improve the push mechanism, improve the community user participation model, enhance the overall vitality of the community, increase user stickiness, improve retention rate; and increase the overall management of the circle of attention.

Optimize mind map:

Optimization suggestions:

• A new “Listen Together” function has been added within the circle, as well as a chat and microphone mechanism when listening to audio to increase users’ community interaction methods and enhance interaction and communication between users when “listening to audio”.
• A new popular “Listen Together” push entry has been added to the top of the live broadcast section, discovery and recommendation section, and the top of specific circles to guide users into the circles.
• Move the circle push section of the old version of "My Listener Circle" to Discovery to increase the exposure of the circle function, optimize the push mechanism, and increase the user's circle interest preference settings to push circles and related content that are more in line with user habits to users.
• Integrate the old version of "My Listener Circle" function and add circle management function.

Optimized interface:

5.1.1 Added "Listen Together" function

Based on the interview results, the author found that users who listen to audio on Himalaya need to communicate with people who have similar interests and can chat with them when interacting in the community. This requires a channel that can bring these people together as a group to stimulate users' desire to discuss. In addition, the current way Himalaya users communicate is mainly through comments and barrages, lacking relevant functions that can enable timely communication and interaction, such as chat and voice discussion. That is to say, it is necessary to provide users with an active, appropriate and timely interactive channel to satisfy their desire to communicate while listening to audio.

5.1.1.1 Content publishing portal

“Listen Together” was added based on the original Himalaya publishing entrance. As a Himalaya user, you can create a "Listen Together" on the Discover page regardless of whether you follow a circle or not. If you select a circle when initiating it, you can increase your exposure and the probability of being recommended. After entering a circle, users must follow the circle before they can publish content, in order to increase user retention in the circle. The publishing entrances within the circle include "posting" and initiating "listening together". Posting retains the relevant functions of the old "My Listeners Circle". The listening together initiated by users in the circle will be attributed to the circle by default.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.1.2 Create a Listen Together Room - Audio Selection

When users create a listening room, they must first select audio. Audio is divided into the platform's copyrighted audio source works and the user's original works.

The solution is as follows:

Users can search or select the audio content they want to listen to together based on the recommendation form.

5.1.1.3 Create a Listening Room Together - Create Information

After selecting the audio, set the room information, including chat type (private password setting), initiation time, and room profile description. After the settings are completed, you can initiate the chat.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.1.4 Listen to room sharing together

After creating a room, the room owner can share it immediately (including outside the site and within the Himalaya site). After the user receives the sharing link from outside the Himalaya site, he can long press and copy it to enter the shared listening room on Himalaya.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.1.5 Message reminder - Listen together to schedule broadcast & reputation value

After the user creates or makes an appointment for "Listen Together", the system will prompt the user, including the appointment start reminder and the credit value reminder (the credit value is to ensure that the host arrives on time at the appointment time, and the added standard system (described in detail later)) The solution is as follows:

5.1.1.6 Listening & Playing & Details & Contribution Value

Listeners who enter the listening room midway can choose to listen to audio content that they have not heard before in the playlist, and synchronize it with the current progress at any time with one click. Personal choices will not affect the current listening of the host or other listeners.

The listening time and interaction of users in the room will affect the contribution value, and the contribution value will affect the popularity of the current room on the recommendation page.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.1.7 Listen to chat in the room & host management

As a host and user, the functions of chatting, taking the microphone and listening to audio in the same room are the same. The room prompt display page for the host and the audience when they first enter is slightly different. The host's page will receive a notification when a viewer enters the room. Viewers can see what the homeowner is doing with the audio. The solution is as follows:

Specific chat page and microphone mechanism:

Click on the user's avatar to display the information and the room management page of the room owner:

5.1.1.8 Listen together entrance in the platform

Add recommendations for popular circles that are "listening together" at the top of the "Live Broadcast" page.

Add popular Listen Together recommendations to the top of the Discover page. (The author will elaborate on this in “Discovery” later)

Add a "Listen Together" section and popular listening rooms recommendations in the "Listener Circle". (Details will be given in the “Listener Circle” later)

5.1.2 Optimizing the “Listener Circle”

5.1.2.1 Optimization of discovery page and recommendation mechanism

Move the "Circle Recommendations" and "Popular Audio and Video Recommendations" related content of the old version of "My Listener Circle" to "Recommendations" on the discovery page, and optimize the recommendation mechanism. A new "Listen Together" section has been added, with the main purpose of attracting users to join the circle, use the circle, and pay attention to the circle.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.2.2 Listener Circle Square & Listen Together

The relevant content of the old version of the Listener Circle has been integrated into the "Square" in the new version of the Listener Circle, and a "Listen Together" section and related recommendations have been added to the circle.

The solution is as follows:

5.1.2.3 Listen to the “Circle Discussion” under the audio

Users can find the following dynamic solutions for listening together initiated by the circle related to the audio on the page where they are listening to the audio:

5.1.3 Circle Management

A new circle management system has been added to the "Listen Together" credit points system, and circle management will replace the original "My Listener Circle". Circle management is mainly convenient for users to batch manage the circles they follow. The newly added user circle interest preferences can help users recommend more accurate and interesting circles and related content in the future.

In addition, a credit points system for "Listen Together" has been added to prevent some hosts from breaking their appointments after the reservation time, which would affect the user experience. This measure can regulate the behavior of hosts. After each room reservation time is created, the host will receive an official message in the message center to remind the host.

The solution is as follows:

5.2 Functional Optimization

Demand background: For the long-term development of the Himalaya platform, it is necessary to increase user stickiness and ensure retention rate. According to the user survey results, the author found that users have many opinions on the experience of audio search and audio listening.

Optimization goal:

Taking into account the main business of Himalaya platform, namely audio content recommendation and consumption, this optimization will analyze the retention loop of users using audio software, namely "finding content more effectively", "selecting content with more confidence" and "listening to higher-quality content". By improving the current user experience to discover the shortcomings of the current product and meet user needs, the platform's user retention will be improved.

Optimize the page:

Effectively search for content/recommend content. Add "Interest Preferences" to the "Guess You Like" section on the homepage, allowing users to select content preferences, which can make it easier for the platform to recommend more accurate content to them.

The solution is as follows:

Add a "Guess You Like" recommendation section on the "I Listen" page, and use left and right sliding to increase the interaction and fun when users select content. The solution is as follows:

Choose content more confidently by making better use of the "Buy Audio" pop-up on the audio listening page. In order to better utilize the user's possible purchasing desire in this scenario, the banner can be pulled up to expand, displaying relevant information about album purchase and membership listening, and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of payment.

The solution is as follows:

For better listening content, the new "Other People Who Have Recorded" feature has been added: users can see people other than the host who have recorded the same content under the same audio clip, providing users with more choices.

The solution is as follows:

Add a "Back to Top" button to facilitate users to return to the top playback page after browsing the page information. The solution is as follows:

Add a "Bullet screen list" button to facilitate users to view the bullet screen according to the timeline. The solution is as follows:

Merge comment section:

Before optimization, popular comments were separate from all comments, which was very time-consuming and easy to get boring when browsing. Among them, popular comments are those with the highest discussion and the most interactions. All comments are sorted by comment time, and the more recent the comment, the higher it is ranked. After the improvement, the popular and latest comments will be merged into the same comment area.

The solution is as follows:

VI. Conclusion

Today, the market for audio products is full of fierce competition. First, there were蜻蜓FM and 彭群FM, which held many copyright resources. Then, 得得 and 荔枝 emerged as dark horses, respectively occupying a place in the vertical fields of knowledge payment and audio social networking.

Although Himalaya occupies a high ground, the environment of the mobile audio industry is changing rapidly. In addition, after years of development, its business system is huge, so Himalaya needs to remain vigilant and constantly review itself.

In addition, due to its relatively generalized user-generated + copyright creation model, Himalaya has problems with uneven quality in content creation, which to a certain extent limits the development of the product itself. At the same time, the community functions it has incubated also seem to lack vitality. Himalaya still has some distance to go before it can build a truly open and fluid audio community ecosystem.

However, through the use and observation during this period, the author firmly believes that the advantage that Himalaya has built up over time cannot be surpassed overnight. With its excellent audience base, brand credit endorsement, operational experience, and rich content library, the platform will surely continue to iterate itself and become a spiritual home for users.

Author: The Wizard of Glenfinnan

Source: The Wizard of Glenfinnan