The multiple historical highs created by Bilibili in the first quarter of 2020 highlight the importance of long-term investment in content ecology and community building.

Not only did the community's data experience explosive growth, but revenue also increased strongly. In particular, Bilibili's continued efforts in increasing brand awareness, achieving user growth, and establishing strategic partnerships will have long-term positive effects on community development.

In fact, the core logic of Bilibili is very simple, which is to develop more diverse and larger-scale monetization models based on the rapidly increasing number of highly sticky users.

1. Product Introduction

1.1 Current Status of Bilibili Products

Bilibili (English name: BiliBili, referred to as B Station) is now a cultural community and video platform with a high concentration of China's younger generation. The website was created on June 26, 2009 and is affectionately called "B Station" or "Xiaopo Station" by fans. Now, after 10 years of development, Bilibili has become the largest two-dimensional community in China.

In its introduction, Bilibili positions itself as follows: a cultural community where young Chinese people gather, aiming to be a community platform for young people to exchange interests. Judging from a series of actions in recent years such as adding new sections, opening channels, and increasing the proportion of non-two-dimensional content, Bilibili is moving in this direction.

However, a comprehensive video website has long maintained a single revenue model based on games. In order to change this revenue situation and better support the diversified development of B Station, B Station is also working hard to expand revenue from non-game businesses.

The Q1 2020 financial report shows that the proportion of Bilibili's non-gaming business revenue has reached 50%, and the gross profit has increased quarter-on-quarter to 23% for two consecutive quarters. The current business structure in which game revenue accounted for too high a proportion has been significantly improved, the diversified channel monetization model has begun to show results, the company's revenue structure has become more balanced, and its ability to resist risks has been significantly enhanced.

2020Q1 Revenue Structure

As a company that has promised all users not to add interstitial ads, there is no doubt that it is determined to maintain the community atmosphere and user experience. However, as a listed company, the commercialization pressure on Bilibili will not be reduced because of this determination.

Although B station's revenue capacity and user scale are further improving, it has not yet escaped from its current loss-making situation. The financial report shows that in the first quarter of 2020, Bilibili's net loss was 539 million yuan, an increase of 175% year-on-year, setting a new record for losses. The net loss in the same period last year was 196 million yuan. In fact, since its listing, Bilibili has been in a loss-making state for nine consecutive quarters. In 2019, it lost 1.304 billion yuan, more than double the same period in 2018.

According to CEO Chen Rui, the company will not consider directly placing advertisements in videos in the short term. The company will prioritize user experience and community atmosphere. Before the MAU reaches 200 million, the core strategy is user acquisition and retention. The company has proposed to make Bilibili a 10 billion US dollar company within three years.

At the same time, the 2020Q1 financial report also pointed out that Bilibili's 12-month retention rate reached an astonishing 80%. As a comprehensive video community platform, with such high user stickiness, its revenue seems to have greater room for imagination. It can also be seen from the side that Bilibili's monetization ability does need to be improved.

1.2 How to maintain user growth?

The company’s current core strategy is user growth. Under the premise of prioritizing user experience and community atmosphere, how can Bilibili maintain its current user growth momentum?

"Breaking the circle" marketing; live streaming and e-commerce; self-made programs to expand content boundaries; defending the ACG position.

1.2.1 Breaking the Circle Event Brand Marketing

2019 New Year’s Eve Party: On the evening of December 31, 2019, the New Year’s Eve Party launched by Bilibili received more than 80 million online live views. Statistics show that as of January 3, 50,000 people gave the gala a high score of 9.9, and the number of barrages for the complete video was 1.3 million, almost six times the number of barrages for Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve Gala on a certain video platform.

Li Ni, vice chairman and COO of Bilibili, said at the earnings conference that Bilibili's New Year's Eve Gala was a milestone event that successfully attracted many users from different backgrounds and generations, allowing them to understand Bilibili from their perspectives, making the Bilibili brand accessible and attracting a wider range of generations and audiences. It also laid a very solid foundation for Bilibili's overall user growth plan in 2020.

"The New Wave Enters the Sea" uses a "youth image mix" of young people, combined with the motivation of young people from a third perspective, starting from the perception of target users, arousing resonance of the times, and ultimately creating a beautiful content marketing campaign. As of now, the number of views of "The Next Wave" on Bilibili has reached 2789w+.

Not long after, Bilibili released another video titled "Into the Sea", which won the hearts of a wave of young people. Three days after its release, it has been viewed nearly 7 million times, sparking not only heated discussions and sighs among young people, but also many working young and middle-aged people saying they were "shedding tears." Its extended topic on Weibo has received millions of views and click-through rates, and has been forwarded and commented on by a large number of public accounts. Although it is not as popular as "Houlang", it is still a successful emotional marketing. The sentence "Dedicated to those who are about to graduate or have already graduated" in the video also attracted countless confessions from the comments.

Within half a year, Bilibili has triggered three consecutive screen-sweeping hot topics. From the big-budget "New Year's Eve Party" to two video social marketing campaigns, Bilibili seems to have achieved good results with its "breaking the circle" strategy during the past six months. Indeed, many young and middle-aged people with purchasing power have taken a new look at Bilibili, which was once known for its "two-dimensional" and niche content, and have become its fans.

1.2.2 Live Streaming and E-commerce

After spending 800 million to acquire the exclusive live broadcast rights for the League of Legends finals for the next three years, at the end of last year, Bilibili announced that it had signed Feng Timo at a high price. On the day of Feng Timo's live broadcast on Bilibili, her popularity peaked at 10.237 million, with 452,000 barrages and her number of fans increased by more than 400,000 within four hours of the live broadcast. Within less than 10 days of joining Bilibili, her number of fans exceeded 700,000.

Although logistics was affected by the epidemic, the performance of the e-commerce platform "Member Shopping" continued to grow rapidly. In the first quarter of 2020, Bilibili's e-commerce and other business revenue reached 160 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 64%.

Bilibili's e-commerce is divided into two modes. One is that KOLs sell goods through videos or live broadcasts on the platform. However, Bilibili stated that the platform will not participate in the merchants' purchasing, operations, transportation and other aspects, nor will it obtain any share of the profits. In other words, all product-related issues, such as pre-sales and after-sales, are communicated and transacted directly between users and the merchants of the UP host’s store. Therefore, KOL sales play a greater role in attracting new users for Bilibili.

The second is to sell figures, models or exhibition/performance tickets in the "Member Purchase" column, which are actually two-dimensional peripherals and the real source of B station's e-commerce revenue.

1.2.3 Expanding content boundaries

During the epidemic, based on the cultural and entertainment needs of users while at home, in addition to the traditional ACG modules, Bilibili actively operated content categories such as food, fitness, Vlog, and general knowledge. A total of 1.8 million content creators submitted 4.9 million video content. The average monthly active UP hosts and the average monthly submissions increased by 146% and 138% year-on-year respectively, and both video playback volume and user interaction volume saw an explosion. In the first quarter, life, games, entertainment, animation and technology became the top five content categories in terms of playback volume.

Starting from the end of last year, Bilibili launched a plan to support media entry, with the clear goal of attracting in-depth text content to settle in, and to express and disseminate it in the form of video.

In terms of professional direction, it mainly focuses on vertical academic fields such as finance, technology or popular science, or self-media migrated from WeChat public accounts. Within three months of their entry, accounts such as Half-Buddha Immortal, Surfing Plus, Lili Finance, and IC Laboratory have gained followers ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions despite having only a small number of submissions.

In the first quarter, PUGV continued to account for 91% of Bilibili's overall playback volume, forming the cornerstone of the community content ecosystem. At the same time, Bilibili is also continuing to increase its investment in PGC and OGV content.

In terms of OGV, Bilibili continues to promote its two major strategic priorities: IPization and high-quality development.

In the field of animation, in 2019, the number of monthly active users in the Chinese Creation Area exceeded that of the Anime Area for the first time, becoming the largest professional content category on Bilibili.

At the same time, Bilibili is also further expanding the subject matter of documentaries, variety shows and other categories. In the first quarter, the documentary "In Wuhan" co-produced by Bilibili, CCTV News and Figure recorded the real life stories of ordinary people during the public health incident through in-depth filming in Wuhan.

The ever-expanding content boundaries have made Bilibili an important platform for young people to express themselves and share their lives.

1.2.4 Defending the ACG Position

While Bilibili has been making great strides in breaking out of its circle, I always hear the voice saying "Bilibili has changed."

In August 2019, Bilibili announced that it would lower its membership entry threshold by 50% over the next year and strengthen its marketing to users who had not used Bilibili before or had not heard of it. New users feel that after "breaking the circle", Bilibili's content has become richer, and people with different interests can find content that interests them. However, some old users feel that although they understand that if Bilibili wants to acquire more users, the threshold must be lowered, otherwise the dimensional wall will be too thick to penetrate, but what they cannot accept is the change in community atmosphere brought about by acquiring more users.

For a platform that accelerates commercialization, diluting the original community atmosphere is an inevitable process. However, Bilibili has never forgotten its two-dimensional position and has continuously increased its investment in content. In the past few years, Bilibili’s content library has not only added more than 1,680 animation works, but has also actively participated in series including "Fire Force", "Dororo", and "Hamimoto My Little Pony!" The production committee of 42 Japanese animations, including "Umaru-chan", has entered the upstream of the Japanese animation industry.

On April 9 this year, Bilibili announced that it had received a strategic investment of US$400 million from Sony. The two parties will also cooperate in multiple fields such as animation and mobile games to meet users' growing cultural and entertainment needs. For Sony and Bilibili, replicating more "phenomenal" games like FGO can be said to be one of the common goals of both parties.

2. User Analysis

Next, I would like to discuss how Bilibili should better embrace change from the perspective of user groups and core needs.

Bilibili has been listed for two years. The commercial pressure and user growth pressure are not only on the platform, but also reflected in the content side on which it relies for survival.

While carrying out brand marketing and expanding B station's influence on the brand, it must maintain a good community atmosphere and ensure a high-quality user experience. At the same time, it must provide content creators with clear monetization strategies and a good creative environment. Only when there are no worries can creators be inspired to continuously produce high-quality content.

2.1 User roles

Here I would like to divide the B station user group into four main roles: ordinary users/video consumers, UP hosts/content producers, advertisers/brands, and MCN agencies.

Let's use a picture to express the relationship between users with different roles:

China's social entertainment video industry chain in 2020

2.1.1 Ordinary users: sense of belonging and identity

From its establishment in 2009 to the present, the core user group of Bilibili has changed significantly, gradually expanding from a young group focusing on the second dimension to the current Generation Z group; the core needs have also changed from chasing anime and posting barrages to the current young people of different interests and hobbies and all ages gathering here to play pranks, learn, chase anime, watch dramas, and chase stars.

As the most preferred APP by Generation Z users (data source: QM), what did Bilibili do right to successfully capture Generation Z users?

Chen Rui once said that the core of Bilibili is "loneliness".

Sense of belonging:

Bilibili has always firmly grasped the loneliness of users, using strong cultural barriers to firmly confine users to the subculture circles they are familiar with (which is also the circle they now hope to break). Although it may seem like an obstacle to further development now, it was precisely because of the strong atmosphere of like-minded people that Bilibili developed such a unique Z-generation community culture.

Barrage culture:

Although the time of sending barrages varies, the barrages transmitted in online videos can give viewers a "real-time interactive" experience. Compared with the comment system of traditional players, online videos equipped with barrage functions have certain social attributes.

On the one hand, the enthusiastic barrage gave the UP master great feedback and motivation; on the other hand, the barrage was also a secondary creation of the entire video, which added icing on the cake to the video content and enhanced the user's interactivity and enthusiasm.

The excellent community culture and the unique barrage function, the user's barrage itself is a kind of reprocessing, a secondary creation based on the original content. The high-quality original content and barrage together constitute the complete characteristics of Bilibili.

Characteristics and future of Generation Z

There are approximately 328 million people in Generation Z, accounting for 24% of China's total population. This group of people are the main users of Bilibili. They are the key driving force of China's entertainment market and represent the future of the online entertainment market. It is characterized by deep user penetration, willingness to spend time and strong willingness to pay. Bilibili predicts that the size of China's entertainment market will reach US$97.5 billion by 2020, of which the proportion contributed by Generation Z will increase from 55% to 62%.

Generation Z is the basic base of Bilibili, and if it wants to successfully commercialize the platform, it must grasp this group.

2.1.2 UP Masters: Don’t follow trends, define fashion

Bilibili’s fourth-quarter financial report shows that PUGV content created by UP hosts accounts for 91% of the platform’s total playback volume. Professional content creators create high-quality video content for users, which enables content creators to accumulate a large number of loyal fans, which in turn encourages content creators to produce more high-quality content.

As competition in the video field becomes increasingly fierce, high-quality content creators have long been the favorites of major platforms. When faced with high signing fees from other platforms, are content creators still willing to stay on Bilibili and work for their passion?

One of the top 100 UP hosts, "Ao Changzhang", mentioned a question in his video: What is the relationship between a mature professional video creator and a platform?

He gave his own answer: Survival is important, but what can really make your content have long-term vitality, in addition to the persistence and exploration of the creator himself, is the support that the platform can provide not only money, but a good atmosphere and feedback based on common values, to grow together and explore more possibilities for the future.

But at the same time, Wizard Finance's departure from Bilibili to join Xigua Video in June undoubtedly sounded a wake-up call for Bilibili: it cannot require all creators to "generate electricity for love", and to retain them, it is necessary to further improve the commercialization capabilities of UP masters.

Bilibili manages and operates UP hosts in layers based on the size of their fans. It formulates targeted operation strategies based on the different problems faced by UP hosts at different levels, and motivates the UP host group by creating multiple monetization channels and virtualized identity symbols in the community, thereby increasing the size, activity and influence of the UP host group.

The "Rising Star Plan" activity encourages grassroots UP owners to produce high-quality content

Build the "High Energy Alliance" brand, deeply bind with top quality UP hosts, and build a moat. Organize the "bilibili power up" award ceremony for the top 100 UP hosts to enhance the sense of honor of the UP host group and build industry influence.

Resource support and commercial realization are the core demands of the UP master group. Through Bilibili's "Creation Center-Revenue Management", we can see that the main sources of monetization on the product side are creation incentives, charging plans, and bounty plans.

As high-quality top UPs gradually become the object of competition among major platforms, we cannot expect all content creators to "generate electricity with love". Bilibili must strengthen and clarify the monetization path for this group.

2.1.3 Advertisers/Brands

"Bilibili is like a 'new type of online TV station' with a massive and targeted young user base."

Traditional TV stations also have a huge number of users, but the difficulty lies in the inability to push carefully prepared video content to the most suitable and accurate young users.

But Bilibili can do it, because on Bilibili, different content circles and even each up-host face different and precise user groups.

Internet companies, technology companies, etc. have an extremely sensitive nose for changes in user demand. Any demand has the potential to become the next trend or hit. Companies that are left behind by young people will lose the right to define trends and will ultimately lose users and be abandoned by the market. The younger generation is their core user group, and Bilibili has become their main battlefield.

Young people who will dominate the main consumption in the next 5-10 years on Bilibili, as well as targeted users from diverse circles, have led more and more brands to increase their marketing efforts on Bilibili.

DingTalk's "DingTalk Original Ding" and Tencent's "I'm the Silly Penguin Who Ate Fake Chili Sauce" are both phenomenal B station communication cases, and both are crisis public relations response video works that have been widely circulated. Not only that, technology companies such as Xiaomi, vivo and Tesla have all used B station as an important channel to attract young people of Generation Z.

2.1.4 MCN

In July this year, the Bilibili Fireworks UP main commercial cooperation platform was officially opened. The Fireworks UP Business Cooperation Platform is based on platform big data and provides UP hosts with system quotation references, order process management, platform security settlement and other services to help high-quality UP hosts better realize content monetization, increase creative income and reduce cooperation disputes. In other words, the Huohua platform will take over some of the work that previously belonged to MCN agencies. At the same time, it will standardize the price of meals so that up-hosts and advertisers have a price to rely on.

2.2 Typical User Profiles and Scenarios

Xiaobai, male, 23 years old, is an ACG enthusiast and a die-hard fan of EVA. When he was in junior high school, he came into contact with anime accidentally, and from then on he couldn't stop, he began to fall in love with the two-dimensional culture. He learned more and more about the two-dimensional culture on the Internet, and gradually came into contact with Bilibili. He is considered an old fan of Bilibili, and visiting Bilibili every day is a part of Xiaobai's life. Xiaobai has a UP host that he likes very much, but he finds that the UP host’s fans are managed in QQ groups. He wants to join the UP host’s fan group to learn more information, but because of his "social phobia", he feels that he will be disturbed if he joins the fan group.

Meimei, female, white-collar worker, 26 years old, found that her friends would talk about some jokes that she didn’t understand, so she came to Bilibili on the recommendation of her friends. Meimei has known for a long time that Bilibili is a two-dimensional video community, but she has never been exposed to it because she doesn't like anime. Now she finds that there is not only two-dimensional content here, but also many other sections, including her favorite food, beauty and star chasing. Meimei soon became interested in the unique culture here. She liked everything here, especially the barrage. It was very happy to be able to chase stars and make comments together with like-minded people.

Xiaoyou, 19 years old, is a college student and an amateur UP host in the gaming area. Xiaoyou likes games very much and has played many games. He also often plays B station's own games and will post his own game guides in the forum area. But he felt that the game forum was hidden too deeply and no one except old users would be able to find it. He also likes to edit some game videos himself. Gradually, he has the support of some fans. He finds it more and more interesting. Xiaoyou does not ask for anything in return, it is just a hobby for him. He hopes to have more channels to communicate with fans, but as the fan base grows, the operational pressure becomes a bit too much for Xiaoyou who is still a student.

Zeige, 29 years old, is a full-time UP host. Zeige is a veteran of Bilibili. He started sharing his original videos on Bilibili just a few years after it was founded. He has made many types of videos, including ghost videos, gossip, music, etc. Zeige has a lot of fans. His videos take a lot of time and money to make. He is not productive at all and his updates are a bit slow. But his fans are very supportive and like him, and the number of views and followers is still considerable.

Xiaoxiao, female, 17 years old, a sophomore in high school, often goes to the study room for live broadcast. At first, Xiaoxiao didn't expect that there would be so many people in the quiet live study room, but seeing so many people studying with her, she felt that she had to work harder. When she is tired of studying, she will chat with other classmates in the barrage, but she often misses some barrages, and her study is more or less affected by the barrage. She hopes there can be a chat room-like function where everyone in the live broadcast room can chat and communicate together, so that people who do not enter the chat room can avoid being overly disturbed.

3. Functional Analysis

3.1 User survey of Station B

In order to better analyze the functions, user surveys are conducted based on the current product goals from maintaining community atmosphere to improving user retention. I conducted in-depth interviews with four users (two content creators and two ordinary users, including a 19-year-old student, a 26-year-old white-collar worker, and a 29-year-old freelancer) to discuss their pain points and expectations during use.

The final survey results based on the usage scenarios are as follows:

3.1.1 Social

• A small number of respondents hope to have a function for multiple people to chat in real time. The existing barrage, forum and reply functions are all inefficient.
• A small number of ordinary users and UP hosts hope to join fan groups. Ordinary users can chat in the group, but there will be no social pressure like in QQ groups. UP hosts can interact with fans directly in the group, reducing the operational pressure of external fan groups;
• Some respondents also said that joining a group would bring them social pressure, and barrage as a lightweight social channel can fully meet their needs.

3.1.2 Usage Path

• 5 users' UGC video viewing paths are relatively simple, and they rely heavily on active search and homepage recommendations;
• Most of the respondents said they did not know what the channel was for;
• Some respondents said they were not clear about the difference between channels and zones;
• A small number of game zone users hope that the game community can have more traffic;
• A small number of users expressed their desire to communicate with other users by posting.

3.1.3 Usability

Three users reported that it was troublesome to manually rewind every time they wanted to listen to a part again. One user expressed the wish for a rewind gesture function, whereby when watching in full screen, the user could press and hold the left side of the screen with their thumb for a few seconds to automatically rewind the video.

3.2 User Demand Analysis

3.2.1 Fan Group

The demand for fan groups serves as a supplement to inefficient and light social scenarios such as barrage, replies, and comments, providing a multi-person social scenario based on like-minded people. At the same time, it is not as heavy as private messages, and will not bring too much social pressure to users. At the same time, it can improve the stickiness and activity of ordinary users.

From the perspective of UP hosts, it can reduce the pressure of social operations and facilitate communication with fans.

From the platform's perspective, it prevents users from extending their social relationships outside the platform, thus avoiding user loss. It also makes it easier for UP hosts to accumulate private traffic within the platform, providing more room for the commercialization of private traffic within the platform in the future.

From the perspective of ordinary users, UP host demand scenarios and platform strategy, this function has a high priority.

3.2.2 Topic function optimization

In addition to UP hosts, in such a strong community atmosphere, ordinary users also have the desire to express and share.

Ordinary users also share their insights and life experiences by posting videos, but the threshold is too high for ordinary users. In comparison, using text and pictures as carriers is more in line with their usage habits and makes it easier for them to share and express themselves. The community atmosphere forms a fertile ground for sharing, which guarantees activity and further increases user stickiness.

Users' needs in this scenario are not well met, so the topic function needs to be further optimized.

3.2.3 Usability Improvements

The playback shortcut gesture function is used most frequently. After improvement, the user usability is improved and the implementation difficulty is relatively low, so it can be developed as a priority.

3.3 Product Demand Analysis

3.3.1 Connect product segments

From the perspective of product structure, the video content with the largest traffic and the highest user activity is too dispersed with functions such as games, membership purchases, and live broadcasts. The correlation between the several sections is weak, and the vast majority of users are only active in the video playback module.

It is possible to add some entrances to the video section, connect several main functional modules, and direct active traffic to major profit scenarios such as games, membership purchases, and live broadcasts.

3.3.2 Game community entrance optimization

There is a big gap between the number of video views and forum discussions in the gaming community. Thanks to its unique community attributes, gaming content has a natural fertile ground for growth and development on Bilibili.

On the one hand, 78% of Bilibili users are aged between 18 and 35, and young audiences have a stronger interest and preference for games and e-sports content; on the other hand, Bilibili's user-based nature and content production mechanism have led to a large number of original game manuscripts emerging.

The game area is one of the sections with the largest number of users on Bilibili and is also an integral part of ACG content. Both the stand-alone game area, which has an advantage over other platforms, and the rapidly developing e-sports area have considerable traffic.

Discussions about game content and gameplay are actually an extension of the game content, and are beneficial for improving user activity and stickiness. Moreover, Bilibili’s e-sports content is more community-oriented, which makes it easy to build user loyalty.

This time, the focus is on connecting the video playback module and the game center.

3.3.3 Adjustment of “Channel” Tab

There is a serious failure in the channel function of the platform, which is due to the deficiencies in function guidance and function utility to a certain extent. The gap between channel subscriptions and video playback volume is as much as ten times. The bottom tab high-quality traffic resource entrance has not yet realized its value, and there is a need for optimization.

Wishlist

4. Functional Optimization

After analyzing the above survey results, we finally decided to optimize in two major directions: fan group functions and multiple entrance structure adjustments.

4.1 Fan Group Function

The core goal of this function is to help UP hosts reduce the operating pressure of fan groups and prompt users' activity and stickiness. Typical user demand scenarios focus on users being interested in UP hosts and hoping to chat and communicate with other fans, facilitating communication between UP hosts and fan groups within the platform.

Function description: Currently, only UP hosts with more than 100,000 fans have the right to open fan groups. The upper limit of a single UP host's fan groups is 10 (if there are more than 10, the UP host needs to apply to the operation for opening). The upper limit of each fan group is 5,000 people, and the UP host is given more setting permissions. The entrance to join the fan group for the first time is set on the UP host's homepage and live broadcast interface.

In the later stage, we can consider gradually opening up permissions and more fan group gameplay and operation functions, including fan group check-ins to increase intimacy with the UP master, voting within fan groups, and lucky draws within fan groups.

UP fan group opening flow chart

4.1.1 Function page flow display

Fans join the fan group: Fans have two options for joining the fan group, one is on the UP host's homepage, and the other is on the UP host's live broadcast page. In addition, the floating window on the live broadcast interface only exists when watching in a small window.

Since the permission to join the fan group is set by the UP host, after the fans click to join the fan group at any entrance, there are two display results depending on whether the fans are fans of the fan group.

If this group does not have joining permissions or the user is a fan of a fan club, directly jump to the application page to join the group and send the application.

If the group has set permissions and the user is not a fan of the fan group, the content will be displayed in a pop-up window.

After successfully joining the fan group, users can find the fan group entrance on the Dynamics-General page. New messages in the fan group will only be prompted by a red dot in the upper right corner of the group icon.

Rules for handling special situations:

• If the user clicks on the floating window on the live broadcast interface and selects "No", it will no longer be displayed today.
• The “+Fan Group” pop-up window is only displayed when the user is not watching the live broadcast in full screen.

4.2 Multi-entry structure adjustment

4.2.1 Integration of game center and video content

The stand-alone game area and e-sports area of ​​the video playback module both have considerable traffic. Discussions about game content and gameplay are actually an extension of the game content, and are beneficial for improving user activity and stickiness.

At present, there is a big gap between the number of video playbacks in the game center and the number of forum discussions. We can appropriately add some entrances to the video part, connect the video playback module and the game center, and direct active traffic to the game, which is the main profit scenario.

Function description: This time, the entrance is mainly opened in user search scenarios and highly relevant video playback scenarios to minimize the disturbance to other users.

4.2.2 Improvement of topic function entrance/optimization of channel function

For UP hosts, a video contains a relatively large amount of information and has certain requirements for production. At this time, text and pictures, as a more fragmented way of expression, allow UP hosts to share and express anytime and anywhere.

For ordinary users, the threshold for video sharing is too high, and text and pictures are more convenient for them to share and express. The community atmosphere of Bilibili has formed a fertile soil for sharing, which guarantees activity and further increases user stickiness.

However, the function that can be provided at present - dynamic sharing of pictures and texts, as a social tool for sharing users' real-time information, is only based on the follow-up mechanism and cannot cover more users. This is not conducive to the construction of a complete community atmosphere.

At the same time, there are serious failures in the channel functions of the platform, which to a certain extent are due to the deficiencies in function guidance and function utility. The gap between channel subscriptions and video playback volume is as much as ten times. The bottom tab high-quality traffic resource entrance has not yet realized its value, and there is a need for optimization.

Functional description:

• Improve the "topic" function entrance, enrich the content of the first-level Tab "channel", and make up for the lack of its functional effectiveness; at the same time, the improvement of the functional entrance will bring greater traffic.
• On the topic page, recommendations are used as a supplement to the real-time information of users based on the attention mechanism. The centralized and decentralized information presentation methods complement each other. It will help to further consolidate the community atmosphere and increase user activity.

The "Topics" function page adds hot topics and uses hot events to stimulate users' curiosity.

This function requires operators to provide good user guidance based on the product. More active users can enhance the network effect of the function and further improve user activity and stickiness.

At the same time, when guiding users, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the functions of "topics" and "channels": "channels" still exist as bounded communities, but "topics" are tags. Activities can be used to guide users to use topics, and topics can also be used in daily activities.

4.2.3 Improved video playback usability

V. Conclusion

The multiple historical highs created by Bilibili in the first quarter of 2020 highlight the importance of long-term investment in content ecology and community building. Not only did the community's data experience explosive growth, but revenue also increased strongly. In particular, Bilibili's continued efforts in increasing brand awareness, achieving user growth, and establishing strategic partnerships will have long-term positive effects on community development.

In fact, the core logic of Bilibili is very simple, which is to develop more diverse and larger-scale monetization models based on the rapidly increasing number of highly sticky users.

This article always revolves around the "changes" and "unchanges" of Station B:

• In order to change the revenue structure: develop diversified business;
• In order to broaden the user base’s desire for change: brand marketing, expanding content boundaries;
• In order to maintain the unchanged community atmosphere: defend the ACG position and capture the Z generation group;
• Then, from the evolution of different user groups and the upgrading of demand scenarios, we talked about the essence of "change" which is to "remain unchanged": to protect the community culture. Finally, we conducted user research from the perspective of maintaining the community atmosphere and improving user retention, and provided optimization solutions.

But I would also like to express my opinion on an issue that many people have been discussing recently, which is, has the original community atmosphere really weakened?

I don’t think so. The core of community culture lies in the group characteristics formed by users in the community.

The initial batch of loyal users who grew up with Bilibili are still there, but as the user base continues to grow, the characteristics of the group are bound to change. At the same time, the partitioning of Bilibili has enabled users and content with different interests to form small subculture communities within the large community atmosphere of Bilibili, thus avoiding interference with each other.

As of now, the growth rate of the community is still within a controllable range. Not only has the original community atmosphere not been destroyed, but new users are gradually assimilated into the community atmosphere and gradually integrated into the old user group. I hope that Bilibili can maintain its current user ecology on the basis of commercialization and breaking the circle to further expand its user base.

Bilibili (゜-゜)つロ Cheers~

Author: Lo

Source: Lo