Bilibili’s product logic and user operation strategy!

Today I will continue to talk to you about how Bilibili’s unique community ecology was developed. I will talk about the composition of Bilibili's community ecology in general based on three aspects: user composition, product logic, and user operation.

1. User composition of Bilibili

The establishment of a community ecosystem is inseparable from the spontaneous activity of users. Based on this, let us first look at the user composition of Bilibili.

As mentioned in the previous interpretation of Bilibili, Bilibili’s user portrait has gone through three stages: two-dimensional → Generation Z → pan-entertainment, and users are constantly added rather than replaced. User characteristics determine Bilibili’s high user value.

Let me explain the concept of the two-dimensional world here: two-dimensional users include core two-dimensional users and pan-two-dimensional users. Core 2D users refer to the user group who have a deep understanding of 2D culture and have the habit of watching 2D animation, using and paying for 2D games, and participating in offline 2D activities; general 2D users refer to the user group who have some understanding of 2D culture and have a low frequency of behaviors covered by 2D-related products.

① Two-dimensional stage: Bilibili was founded during the period of cultivating the core two-dimensional community, and grew during the period of pan-two-dimensional explosion. In the early stage, it grasped the advantages of vertical categories, continued to deploy in the two-dimensional field, and provided core users with one-stop two-dimensional services (including two-dimensional content social/production, two-dimensional content dissemination, and two-dimensional content authorized derivatives).

② Generation Z: Let me first explain what Generation Z is. Generation Z refers specifically to people born between 1995 and 2009, with ages ranging from 11 to 25. They are a generation that has been exposed to technology products such as the Internet, instant messaging, smartphones, and tablets since birth, and has grown up with them.

The proportion of Generation Z users on Bilibili is as high as 80%, which is much higher than other video platforms (Tik Tok 28%, Kuaishou 29%, Kuaishou Lite 25%, Xigua Video 18%, iQiyi 28%, Tencent Video 31%).

As China's first generation of Internet natives, Generation Z has grown up with the development of the Internet and enjoyed the dividends of positive growth. The growth dividend here refers to the difference between the wealth creation ability of the parents and the resource competition pattern of the children, which is used to measure intergenerational resource endowment. To put it simply, Generation Z is a group of people who were born in extremely rich material conditions, received a good education, have no competitive pressure, and can fully express their own personality.

Generation Z is basically a "lonely generation" and lacks interaction with friends; they have a strong sense of loneliness and desire a sense of belonging with their peers; they have strong social genes and are more involved in social applications.

It is precisely because of Generation Z’s love of expression, socializing, and sharing that Bilibili’s constantly evolving community culture and operational strategies just meet the needs of Generation Z and have shaped the community culture foundation of Bilibili in its early days.

③ Pan-entertainment stage: In the era of mobile Internet, traffic is fragmented, pan-entertainment demand explodes, user circles have obvious characteristics, and the demand for video content consumption is high, and the paying group has strong stickiness. Based on this background, Bilibili actively breaks through the circle, expands its core user positioning from the second dimension crowd to the Z generation, and continues to attract pan-entertainment users, integrating into the current public attention hotspots to attract more audiences.

Currently, Bilibili covers nearly 7,000 circles, meeting the content consumption needs of pan-entertainment users in different segments and continuing to attract pan-entertainment users.

2. Product underlying logic

① Interaction logic: Bilibili's double-column video display format makes it easier for users to actively filter content and form a community. The double-column video display format has a higher tolerance for content errors and can display more diverse content at the same time, improving the efficiency of users finding content of interest.

In contrast, YouTube and Xigua Video both use a single-column waterfall flow format, which reduces information density and reduces the cost of user thinking, with the intention of highlighting video content and improving the conversion of individual content.

② Content distribution logic: Bilibili’s content distribution is different from centralized content recommendations such as TikTok and Toutiao. Instead, it adopts a relatively fair traffic distribution mechanism that combines fan relationships and algorithm recommendations, in which interactive content behavior has a high weight.

Content recommendations based on fan relationships: Bilibili has a strong community atmosphere, the relationship between UP hosts and fans is strong, and fans have a high degree of recognition of the platform and UP hosts. Bilibili’s current distribution method will also give priority to recommending updated videos of the channels they follow to users. In addition to recommendations on the homepage, Bilibili’s dynamic page will also push updated videos of the channels you follow, making it easier for users to check and watch.

Content recommendation based on algorithm: The current recommendation weights of videos on Bilibili are: coins*0.4+collections*0.3+barrage*0.4+comments*0.4+plays*0.25+likes*0.4+shares*0.6. Publishing a video on the same day can get additional weighting*1.5. Among all weights, sharing has the highest weight and playing has the lowest weight. Bilibili attaches great importance to the drainage effect of videos. The weights of comments, barrages and likes are greater than those of collections and plays, and it focuses on interactive behaviors based on videos.

Bilibili's distribution system is not based on traffic, but on the interaction between users and content. The number of clicks on videos on Bilibili for each IP is only counted once a day, and a click is only counted if the video is clicked and played continuously for a period of time. Creators can only rely on the content itself to arouse strong interactive discussions among users, and cannot increase traffic through gray methods.

The decentralized content recommendation logic makes traffic distribution more balanced, solves the problem of excessive traffic tilting towards top UP hosts, allows small and medium-sized content creators to have a voice, gives users greater active choice, and makes it easier to form user circles and shape a community atmosphere.

③Content interaction mechanism: Bilibili’s barrage culture and one-click triple-click have created a strong community atmosphere.

Bilibili's "One-click Three-Click" refers to the three operations of liking, coining and collecting the up-master after watching the video content. Coins are the virtual currency in Bilibili, and users can obtain them in different ways. When watching videos, if you come across a video you like, you can give it coins to show your support. Due to the limited number of coins, it also reflects the degree of recognition of the UP host and the content.

The barrage culture first originated from the Niconico website in Japan, where people could express their opinions while watching anime. It was later introduced to China by Acfun, thus starting the barrage culture in China. After Station A suffered a malicious attack from hackers, it gradually declined, which also gave rise to the rise of Station B. Since its launch in 2009, the barrage function of Bilibili has become one of the characteristics of Bilibili. Good barrage etiquette not only improves the viewing experience, but also adds a sense of companionship to users. It also solves the loneliness needs of only children of Generation Z and the loneliness of fans of niche culture. Let more users discover interest circles and find a sense of belonging to the organization when seeing the barrage. The unique barrage of comments also occasionally forms the "meme culture" of Bilibili's community, enhancing user stickiness and shaping community culture.

3. Community User Operation

① Establish an access mechanism and user structure stratification to ensure core user experience and a healthy community environment

The high user stickiness and loyalty of Bilibili mainly depend on the community atmosphere of Bilibili. Bilibili has set up a high entry threshold. Only users who pass the invitation code or in-site test can become official members and enjoy the functions of sending barrage and video submission.

Bilibili's in-site test contains 120 questions, and the high entry threshold can well maintain the platform's tone: user stratification guarantees the experience of core users, stabilizes the platform's community atmosphere and helps create a better content creation environment, ensuring the quality of the platform's content output. In addition, by setting up a personal "moral value" and "small black room" area, Bilibili publicly punishes users who violate the website rules, effectively reducing malicious behavior in barrage exchanges and content production.

② Set up a "small black room" and a discipline committee to strengthen the self-governance and progress of the content community

Active users are the user group closest to the high-volume and high-weight quadrant. Maintaining the activity and stickiness of this user group is more conducive to the stability and prosperity of the product, and on this basis can enter a new product cycle through transformation.

Among them, user reporting introduces the "reporting weight" parameter, which uses relevant parameters such as "account information completeness", "historical number of reports", "historical reporting success rate", and "disciplinary committee system score" for each user to determine the priority and inferior processing level. A ban appeal mechanism has been added to the penalties for violations. Users who are banned by public arbitration can appeal within 7 days of the penalty taking effect, and the appeal will be reviewed by the administrator.

To a certain extent, the Discipline Committee is a manifestation of community self-governance and self-improvement of community users. It brings users into community maintenance, strengthens user participation and stickiness, and at the same time solves some problems that cannot be reviewed by machine recognition and machine learning. Bilibili's "Little Black Room" has a special community bulletin board, which publishes a weekly report of the Discipline Committee members and dynamically publicizes the adjudication of cases, maintaining the quality of content and the prosperity of the community atmosphere.

③ Creator operation: Various monetization methods help UP hosts to earn money reasonably and encourage creators to continue to produce high-quality content

On the one hand, we help content creators generate revenue through incentive plans + user rewards + advertising placement; on the other hand, we continue to improve MCN policies, open up the Huohua platform, improve cooperation efficiency, and integrate various commercial monetization possibilities; and provide more rights and interests support for institutional content cooperation.

IV. Conclusion

Chen Rui, CEO of Bilibili, once explained his understanding of the community: the user experience does not come from the product itself, but from the people the user is with.

Many Up masters make videos not for money. They just want to express themselves and hope that someone will listen to their opinions and applaud their work. Bilibili is the best platform to obtain positive feedback from users. In addition, Bilibili has been creating a sense of honor for Up masters, which is an affirmation of the identity of Bilibili's Up masters.

From the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, Bilibili meets the Up hosts' needs for belonging, respect, and self-actualization. The community culture of Bilibili has enabled Bilibili users to form extremely high stickiness, as well as a "companionship" relationship between fans and UP hosts, thus forming a good community ecology and building a strong barrier for Bilibili.

Author: Master

Source: Interview Master