Bilibili VS Zhihu: The two sides of the same coin in terms of user expansion

From the New Year's Eve party that went viral to the joining of financial big V Banfoxianren and legal internet celebrity Luo Xiang, Bilibili is no longer a Bilibili exclusive to the two-dimensional world, and its content is becoming increasingly mainstream.

Similarly, Zhihu is no longer exclusive to the elite circle. It has expanded from focusing on the Internet/finance/venture capital and other fields to 3C/automobiles/health/emotions/gossip and other diverse fields, and the knowledge community has transformed into a lifestyle encyclopedia.

As the number of users increases, uneven content is flooding in, eroding these two community websites that were originally regarded as spiritual sanctuaries. However, Zhihu has taken bigger steps and spared no effort to accelerate the sinking of users; while Bilibili is relatively more cautious, and the retention of core users has become a beachhead that cannot be lost for commercial monetization.

1. High threshold registration mechanism

In the early days, both Bilibili and Zhihu had strict requirements for user registration - Bilibili required the completion of 100 questions, mainly two-dimensional content; Zhihu adopted a closed registration mechanism, and only users who obtained an invitation code could complete the Zhihu registration process. Non-registered users could not view Zhihu content.

Under the high-threshold registration mechanism, Bilibili and Zhihu cultivated the first batch of core users and formed a high-quality community creation scope. As the demand for commercialization becomes increasingly urgent, Bilibili and Zhihu have lowered the registration threshold to varying degrees.

Zhihu has evolved from officially distributing invitation codes, to core users transferring invitation codes, and then to fully opening up registration. Now, you can complete registration on Zhihu simply by binding your mobile phone number. Bilibili still retains the 100-question answering mechanism, but has changed from focusing on two-dimensional content to 50 community-standard questions and 50 questions in self-selected fields (games, film and television, technology, animation, art, pop, and ghost animals). Each question is worth 1 point, and a score of 60 or above is required.

From this we can see that although Bilibili has lowered the threshold to the second dimension and accepted content from more fields, it still maintains a bottom line for community atmosphere and content quality. Only by recognizing the community culture of Bilibili can one become its official member.

2. Segmented circles of co-existence

With the development of the Internet ecosystem, "universal xx" has become a thing of the past. Different age groups, values, interests, hobbies, regional cultures, etc. have given rise to countless independent "circles". Each circle has its own unique culture and language system; there are thick barriers between different circles. When opening Zhihu, apart from following friends on Zhihu, users can only consume content based on the results of machine learning that determines their interests. All content is recommended to users through intelligent algorithms and is not classified by column.

On Bilibili, content recommendations are operated in a very sophisticated manner. On the one hand, Bilibili has divided the culture into more than 7,000 circles.

The B station APP not only has ACG (animation, comics, games) content, but also 22 sections including music, dance, technology, ghost animals, fashion, entertainment, film and television, etc.

Under each partition, there are different secondary partitions. Taking music as an example, it is divided into seven secondary divisions: cover, VOCALOID·UTAU, performance, OP/ED/OST, original music, three-dimensional music, and music selection.

• VOCALOID UTAU: A software that synthesizes sound sources. It inputs vocal materials and synthesizes virtual singers.
• OP: Opening Song
• ED： Ending Song
• OST: Original Sound Track

Under each secondary partition, there are many labels. For example, under cover, there are 21 labels including Chinese male voice, Chinese female voice, English cover, Japanese cover, ancient style, burning style, soul singer, healing style, guitar singing, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Europe and the United States, YOUTUBE, etc.

In other words, there are 7*21=147 sub-circles for music on Bilibili alone. Users who like passionate music may not like healing music; those who like the BGM of "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" (an original BL fantasy novel) may not like the sound quality of VOCALOID.

More than 7,000 cultural circles are independent of each other, yet share the public space of Bilibili. Users who like animation and users who like technology may see completely different things about Bilibili.

On the other hand, Bilibili applies segmented tags to recommendation strategies.

Go to the "Recommendations" column on the homepage of Bilibili and you can see a lot of content with different tags. Bilibili uses "tags" to understand content and then pushes it to users who are interested in the tags. Compared with other websites, Bilibili has richer tags, including popularity tags (such as 40,000 likes, likes surge), interest tags (such as music MAD, food circle), advertising, support program tags (such as Bilibili Rising Star Program), etc.

Tags are presented in the form of "partition + sub-tag" , such as "Entertainment·Likes Soaring", "Food Circle·Sichuan Noodles", "Entertainment" and "Food Circle" are the partitions of Bilibili, and "Likes Soaring" and "Sichuan Noodles" are sub-tags under this partition.

In this way, users can more easily find content that interests them, and Bilibili can more accurately explore user interests and improve push efficiency.

At the same time, users can mark and adjust the content recommended by the system.

Click the "Tag" button in the upper right corner of the page, you can select the tag content you are interested in, and the system will add relevant recommendations; and click the three dots in the lower right corner of a specific video to mark the video as not interested, which means you are not interested in the UP host, the content of this section, or the content under this specific tag, or you are simply not interested in the video. After selection, the system will recommend fewer similar contents.

As long as users can get the nutrients they need on the platform, the damage caused by traffic flooding to the community atmosphere can be minimized. What users fear is not living in the same space, but "seeking common ground while not reserving differences". Noisy sounds will destroy the originally quiet and beautiful sky.

3. The core value of content creation

The core value of Zhihu lies in "professionalism". However, with the accelerated expansion of users, the dry goods on Zhihu are gradually disappearing: Zhihu today has both the elite style of "I'm in America, just got off the plane", the story-telling style of "What is the experience of xxx", and various witty jokes. The "knowledge circle" has become the "entertainment circle".

The core value of Bilibili lies in "fun". Whether it is two-dimensional or not is not the key point. The key point is that it can make people addicted. In particular, the general entertainment knowledge and popular science videos have become the hot-selling material that attracts a large number of UP hosts and users to Bilibili at this stage.

For example, Luo Xiang, a popular criminal law professor , uses imaginative and bizarre cases to make obscure legal provisions vivid and easy to understand. Thanks to classic cases such as "The Septic Tank Case", "Will You Be Punished for Reading Pornographic Books?" and "Zhang San's Thousand Crimes", Mr. Luo Xiang's video playback volume has skyrocketed, and he has gained 5.15 million fans on Bilibili.

Among them, the "outlaw" Zhang San, who appeared most frequently in Teacher Luo Xiang's lectures, has become the favorite ghost material of the scissor hands. Secondary creation and original content complement each other, making Teacher Luo Xiang a celebrity on Bilibili.

Another example is Banfoxianren, who loves Luckin Coffee and became popular on Bilibili with his video "How Luckin Coffee Beats Capitalism" , and is also famous for his humor and fun. When he was digging deep into the tricks of various industries, he often told jokes and gained 3.28 million fans on Bilibili with his eloquent tongue. I'll quote a passage for you to enjoy. When commenting on "How Luo Yonghao Subverts Every Industry", he gave this introduction to Luo Yonghao that netizens suggested memorizing in full:

The king of mouth cannons, the god of hammers, the industry's dark lamp, the perpetual motion machine for slapping faces, the Starbucks unit of measurement, the gravedigger of idealism, the excavator of craftsman spirit, the king of Weibo literature, the chairman of Apple, the lifelong enemy of Wang Ziru, the mudslide in the mobile phone circle, the man who walks at the forefront of the times

Originally, popularizing knowledge is Zhihu's strong point. However, leveraging its own advantages in video production, Bilibili has rapidly created a variety of interesting knowledge and popular science videos, attracting a large number of non-2D users.

If Zhihu uses the sinking of users as a means to achieve vertical expansion, then Bilibili uses "people's interests" as a connection to achieve horizontal extension. In comparison, it is easier for Bilibili to inherit its unique content genes and retain core users. After all, people's interests may vary, but their value judgments remain the same.

4. “Autonomous” content review

In addition to the entry threshold, both Bilibili and Zhihu have strict punishment mechanisms. Zhihu has launched the "Public Arbitration Hall", which selects public arbitration cases from the content reported by Zhihu users and invites public judges, mainly Zhihu users, to make judgments. This is Zhihu's autonomous decentralization of content community management.

Every Zhihu user whose salt value reaches 500 points and who has no violations in the last 30 days has the opportunity to become a judge by taking the community values ​​and community norms exams.

Similarly, Bilibili also has the famous "black room system". If a user violates the community guidelines and is punished by the administrator, he or she will be announced in the black room, and each announcement will be annotated with reasons.

The small dark room is jointly managed by the "Discipline Committee" and the administrator. When a user's membership level exceeds Lv4, and there is no violation within 90 days, and after participating in real-name authentication, he or she can apply to join the Discipline Committee and participate in reporting and ban review.

In comparison, the review system of Bilibili is more sophisticated, with a total of 29 penalty regulations, such as:

• If you promote your favorite anime and insult other anime, you will be banned for "provoking war";
• If you say "He's going to die soon" in the comment, you will be blocked for "spoiler";
• Accusing another comment poster of being out of his mind will result in him being blocked for "personal attack";
• Calling on everyone to conduct a human flesh search on UP hosts they dislike will result in being blocked for "invading privacy"...

Zhihu only has six regulations regarding spam advertising, false information, unfriendly behavior, harmful information, suspected infringement, and inducing approval and attention. Regarding more subjective judgments such as "unfriendly behavior", Zhihu did not make any subdivisions when setting up the "reporting" mechanism, but instead allowed the reporter to fill in the reason for the report themselves. The "autonomous" content review mechanism can not only reduce the difficulty of review for operators, but also gather the power of core users to jointly maintain a good community atmosphere. The more detailed the classification and the clearer the description, the more reasonable and well-founded the content review can be, thereby improving operational efficiency.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to user growth, should we flood the market with funds or cultivate them in depth? Bilibili and Zhihu gave different answers respectively - Bilibili expanded the circle based on interests and ensured that the core culture of the community was diluted and changed as little as possible through refined operations; while Zhihu went down to the grassroots level and made the community as open as possible. In comparison, Bilibili's user stickiness and community atmosphere are superior. The 12-month retention rate of official members of Bilibili is as high as over 80%, and Banfoxianren also said that the activity of his fans is over 85% (which means that at least 85% of his fans have interacted with him through barrage, comments and private messages recently).

Indeed, traffic is the commercial lifeline that every application must compete for. However, good community attributes are the boosters that ensure a positive cycle of traffic.

Author: Vinky

Source: Whispering22