The romantic rise and fall of WeChat public accounts

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Prequel

On July 21, 2012, Beijing, which rarely sees rain, was hit by the heaviest rainstorm in 61 years, resulting in 79 deaths. This result was incomprehensible on Weibo. All kinds of jokes, criticisms, insults and complaints from netizens and public intellectuals surged like a flood, almost crashing the Weibo server. The next day, in order to strengthen communication with everyone, @People's Daily Official Website Weibo was officially launched, marking the beginning of a large-scale official media presence on social media.

Before this, Weibo was known as the kingdom of grassroots and big Vs, who almost monopolized the entire social media discourse. @薛莽子, @操本, @李开复, @任志强, @冷笑话精选 and other big accounts were at their peak, and countless people regarded them as idols and wanted to work with them. A year later, Xue Manzi recalled in prison: "Every day when I woke up, there were thousands of private messages and Weibo messages asking me to @ you, just like the emperor reviewing memorials!"

At that time, many science men who had never tasted the power of a huge discourse were still busy hiding in the laboratory doing scientific research. Unlike today, people who have killed a little fish dared to come out to teach science courses and charge for knowledge. Therefore, rumors would appear on Weibo from time to time. Even big Vs like Xue Manzi, Ren Zhiqiang and Kai-Fu Lee could hardly distinguish them, and occasionally they would be accidentally caught and become the biggest node for spreading rumors.

After experiencing the heaviest rainstorm in Beijing, people in the circle clearly felt that Weibo began to go downhill.

At this time, Shen Yin, the former entrepreneur and editor-in-chief who proposed to package 50 KOLs and set up an independent new media more than a year ago, has not figured out how to do self-media. Although he has signed Xue Manzi, Luo Zhenyu, Cheng Lingfeng, Jin Cuodao and others, among whom Xue Manzi's "Manzi Digest" has been operating for nearly a year and is as famous in the industry as today's Huxiu, known as China's first self-media, but the second project @Luoji Siwei has recruited a team but has not started yet.

A month later, WeChat official accounts were tested internally. One of the earliest independent new media to obtain the public account internal testing rights, using Xue Manzi's influence on Weibo, was the first to increase the number of fans of @莽子文摘 official account to 30,000. Shen Yin, who was sensitive to the future of the industry, soon felt that a new era might be coming. Two months later, after experiencing a public relations storm, the Luoji Siwei self-media video project was officially launched. Soon, this program attracted a large number of fans through Youku recommendations, and has been at the forefront of the industry, becoming a leading benchmark for content entrepreneurship through continuous changes.

It was not just Shen Yin who smelled the gold mine, but also active frontline tech media professionals and grassroots bloggers, such as Qinglong Laozei, Chen Zhong, Cheng Lingfeng, Guan Peng, etc. At that time, Qinglong Laozei was still the director of the strategic development department of the Media Dream Factory of Zhejiang Daily Media. He keenly felt that this was a rare opportunity for media professionals. Afterwards, he quickly used his position to unite frontline tech media professionals and established the first public account self-media alliance @WeMedia Alliance in China. Although each self-media had only a few thousand fans at that time, because of the large number of people, it became an important force in the tech circle to promote the development of public account self-media.

By 2013, traditional market-oriented media had been on a downward trend for several years, but what triggered it was the famous "Southern Weekend New Year's Message Incident". This incident brought a strong cold air to the market-oriented traditional media, which was already in a bad situation. Some avant-garde media people began to set their sights on public accounts. Shi Feike, who had handled the "Wang Lijun Exposing the Truth", opened @Shi Feike-Legal and Political Observation. Although it was repeatedly banned later, it allowed him to taste the sweetness and experience that technology brought to communication. Another media person, Chen Ming, opened @Filter Film, which specifically discussed the direction of new media, causing a huge shock wave in the traditional media circle.

At the beginning of the year, Pan Yuefei, a reporter who also worked at Zhejiang Daily Media and joined the @WeMedia Alliance, became popular in the technology circle because he wrote several small popular articles during the Chinese New Year. One of them was called "A Brief History of the Dark World of Weibo", which recounted the problems and ecology of Weibo, causing a great shock in the circle and further prompted a large number of grassroots Weibo users to shift to public accounts. The series of articles exploring trends also earned him great fame, and he was soon poached by Sohu IT as editor-in-chief.

Although the technology circle was optimistic about the public account new media, no one knew how it would make money. At the end of January, Cheng Lingfeng, who almost monopolized the hot articles in the technology circle at that time, began to try to sell patch ads on his public account @云科技, which had only more than 20,000 fans, offering a price of 10,000 yuan a day, which attracted Sogou to become the first advertiser to take the plunge. Cheng Lingfeng's trial gave a lot of self-media people at that time hope. Soon, Sanbiao also announced that he had made 100,000 yuan from self-media.

Although everything seemed to be progressing vigorously, Weibo was still the most important social media in the first half of 2013. With its luxurious operation team and high-quality chicken soup content, @People's Daily official Weibo quickly became a famous success story on Weibo and was imitated by other official Weibo accounts. At the same time, the voices denouncing rumors on Weibo and beyond became increasingly strong.

In August, the Internet promoter Qin Huohuo and others were arrested, and Xue Manzi was arrested for soliciting prostitution. While confessing his prostitution process in front of CCTV viewers, he also reflected on his carelessness as a big V and admitted that he may have forwarded some rumors. Subsequently, Xinhua News Agency published a commentary titled "Beware of Big Vs Becoming Big Rumors", and the Red Flag Manuscript, a subsidiary of Seeking Truth magazine, published a commentary: "We must deal a heavy blow to rectify online rumors, and we must dare to hit the 'tigers' and control the websites."

There was a panic at the time. @任志强, who had not been banned yet, sighed on Weibo: "Weibo is infinitely good, but the twilight of big Vs?" His friend, Pan Shiyi, a real estate big V with 16 million fans, trembled and said in CCTV's "Dialogue - Internet Celebrity Social Responsibility Forum" that his Weibo only represents himself, because everyone makes mistakes. Another well-known big V, Kai-Fu Lee, quickly hired two Weibo crawler companies to monitor his 13,000 Weibo posts. A few months later, he announced that he had cancer and returned to Taiwan to recuperate. He almost stopped updating his Weibo.

The great migration of the old and new positions did not seem to alert the traditional media. Dr. Guo Guangdong, who worked in the same building as Shen Yin and was then the vice president of Boya Tianxia Communication Agency and the publisher of Blog China, was still full of confidence in traditional media. In the first half of this year, he was busy recruiting people from the Southern Group, intending to make the magazines he had on hand one of the most powerful magazines, so he recruited Shi Feike, Chen Ming, Zhang Wei, Zheng Yanqiong and others. These people did not change the magazine's decline, but inadvertently opened a new door.

break out

In August 2013, @罗纪思考, which had accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans and had been facing huge pressure from its business model and had become the industry's top account, decided to try a long-planned commercialization plan and launched the "most unreasonable" paid membership system for its fans: 5,000 ordinary members, 200 yuan; 500 hardcore members, 1,200 yuan; a total of 5,500 members, which were sold out in less than half a day, earning 1.6 million yuan and shocking the entire industry. Subsequently, the third project packaged by the Shenyin team, @凯叔说故事, also made its debut. A few years later, it became a super account in the maternal and infant industry.

Starting from the second half of 2013, public accounts ushered in the first wave of bonus explosion period. Almost all self-media that made money on Weibo opened public accounts at the same time. However, most of the content during this period was similar to the routines of Weibo, and most of them were pasted and copied. This situation continued until the end of the year, and gradually improved with the continuous influx of traditional media talents.

The participation of traditional media also brought too many traditional flavors to the gameplay. They were not as lively as today's editors, who were always cute and coquettish. The content of many official public accounts of traditional media was similar to that of the previous ones, and they had no operation and user awareness at all, because their roots were still in traditional paper media. Well-known media person Lin Chufang smelled the direction of the content industry very early, so when he was doing "YiDu" magazine, he took the route of "light humor and fun".

The content of "YiDu" magazine is naturally in line with the style of self-media. In addition, Lin Chufang himself attaches great importance to new media. In the second half of 2013, its relaxed style and content that is closer to young people became a hot topic in the circle. Its public account self-media matrix was also the new media matrix with the most fans among traditional media at that time, but this status was soon replaced by "Blog China" headed by his senior brother Shi Feike.

In September 2013, Wu Xiaoming, the editor-in-chief of Manzi Digest, jumped to Blog China and was in charge of new media with Chen Ming and others. This person who was born in new media had no traditional baggage and brought a new user, planning, operation and even business thinking to the magazine. In order to get rid of the influence of traditional media people on the new media team, Chen Ming, who was in charge of new media, decided to set up a public account from the magazine column, named @怎整.

@怎整’s gameplay is completely Internet-based. With Chen Ming’s full trust and help, Wu Xiaoming and other team members published dozens of popular articles that went viral in WeChat Moments in just a few months, becoming a dark horse in the field of self-media. Then, by integrating magazine resources and persuading @南非周刊, @凤凰网, @微信路况 and other big accounts to promote each other, the number of fans increased by 130,000 overnight, far exceeding the number of users of YiDu.

At this point, Blog China Magazine quickly became a major player in the public account self-media. In addition to @怎整, there are also Shi Feike's personal public account @石霏客—法政观察; Chen Ming's @滤镜片林; Zhang Wei's personal public account @世相, etc. Zheng Yanqiong, who is quite influential in the literary and artistic circles and is responsible for the lifestyle section of Blog China Magazine, later persuaded dozens of literary and artistic public accounts in the media circle to establish @文学联萌. There is a big account in @文学联萌 called @读首诗再睡, which was founded by Fan Zhixing, the editor-in-chief of New Knowledge, and a group of literary veterans. Although it has a great influence, it has no business ideas. At the end of 2014, Fan Zhixing chose to leave Beijing and went to Shanghai, and worked with Xu Husheng, the former editor-in-chief of The Bund Pictorial, to create a phenomenal self-media account @一道. This is a later story.

Blog China did not exist for long as a new media powerhouse. Soon, the original team left due to equity and management issues. The magazine's executives also jumped ship for personal reasons. Zhang Wei went to GQ magazine as the chief writer, and others did public relations or self-media. Although it was short-lived, the Boyaa New Media Matrix stimulated countless traditional media people to try new media, and to a certain extent promoted the explosion of high-quality public accounts.

Of course, the biggest motivation for the explosion of public accounts is real money. On December 27, 2013, @罗集思考 conducted its second community recruitment and easily raised 8 million in one day, making its valuation reach 100 million. The venture capital media @B座12楼 commented: This set a tone for 2014 - the era of full commercialization of self-media has begun. The high-spirited self-media people seemed to have the heroic spirit of "the gun is already loaded, give me a bullet of capital, and I can turn the tide!"

Almost at the same time as @怎整, Huang Zhangjin resigned from his position as executive editor of Phoenix Weekly. After returning from a trip to Xinjiang, he registered @象公会 in an office in a residential building on Da Wang Road, using the label "knowledge, insights, experiences, and the best dinner table talk" to provide original knowledge content. After several difficulties, by October 2014, the number of fans reached 200,000. Although the business model was still unclear, Huang Zhangjin became more confident. In an interview, he said, "I'm here to reshuffle the cards!" In the following years, @象公会 became a typical case of traditional media people engaging in new media entrepreneurship, and it was also one of the most popular public accounts among the middle class.

In 2014, the number of public accounts exceeded 5.8 million. After more than a year of popularization, almost all mainstream domestic companies have opened their own official public accounts, and grassroots accounts are also continuing to explode. In this year, the most common thing in the circle is the resignation announcements of traditional media people, who either joined Internet companies to do public relations or started their own businesses and opened public accounts.

In the same year, Gu Ye, who narrated the world of high-brow painting art in a very "nonsense" way, also became popular. Then, for a long time, @顾爷 became the benchmark for public accounts of graphic and text planning. In the early days of public account self-media, it had the largest number of contributors at the level of 100,000. Its humorous and high-quality content had a great influence on the self-media that came later.

In Hangzhou, a fat man who dreams of becoming a freelance writer registered a public account named @王五四. His content is spicy commentary with a strong personal style. Some netizens exclaimed that Lu Xun is back and frantically helped him forward, which made him quickly accumulate a large number of loyal fans, and almost every article has more than 100,000 views. However, his road was not smooth. Because of reasons you know, his public account was blocked continuously. Later, it was almost a state of one account being blocked after another. He is recognized by everyone as "the man who was hurt the most by WeChat!" Although he still does not have a fixed large account, as a peculiar public account self-media, he is now the only IP that can get more than 100,000 views by posting pictures and texts in Moments.

This year, various self-media alliances have also increased. In addition to the previously mentioned @WeMedia Alliance and @Wenyi Lianmeng, there are also vertical alliances in various industries, such as the Financial Self-Media Alliance, the Micro Media Alliance, the Blockhouse New Media Alliance, etc. The establishment of new media alliances is related to the large-scale entry of advertisers. In this year, Haier was the first to announce that it would stop placing hard ads in magazines and transfer money to new media advertising.

In the second half of 2014, public account articles began to display the number of views, which played a great role in catalyzing the advertising of advertisers. Before that, people mainly used background data and overall perception to understand the effect of advertising, so they were more concerned. However, after the appearance of the function of displaying the number of views, we can basically know the extent of the effect. Therefore, starting from this year, public account media entered the era of quantifiable influence.

The emergence of reading volume has greatly increased the income of high-quality self-media, and has also spawned many third-party evaluation companies. In August 2014, Xu Danai, a columnist who used to write media notes for FT Chinese, seized the opportunity of the list at a critical point and founded Xinbang, which soon developed into a unicorn-type content entrepreneurship service platform. Subsequently, Tsinghua University professor Shen Yang launched a new media index platform service to meet the needs of government, state-owned enterprises, official media and other institutions, and his business has also grown greatly.

Since 2014, investors have begun to realize the value of WeChat public accounts and have tried to invest in them. A series of public accounts, including @潘幸知, @玩车教授, and @Feekr旅行, have announced that they have received financing. The entry of capital has once again stimulated traditional media people who are working in traditional media with meager salaries, and the second wave of content entrepreneurship is about to begin.

Blowout

Before 2015, when people talked about public accounts and self-media, they liked to use the concept of decentralization. After all, this also echoed the slogan of WeChat: "No matter how small an individual is, he or she has his or her own brand." However, starting in 2015, after a large-scale influx of capital, the era of decentralization came to an end.

If 2014 was a trial run for capital, with only a few financing events, then 2015 was a big year, with the number of financing events soaring to 42. The rush of capital into the media has made the overall quality, team-based and professional content of self-media better. From this year on, high-quality self-media has exploded, laying the foundation for the subsequent development of the industry.

In the first few months of 2015, many public accounts that had been operating for a long time received venture capital, including @榜, @漫頭商学院, @接招, @坏男孩学院, etc. These are relatively forward-looking self-media that started operating very early, with relatively stable fans and quality, and relatively clear business models. At the same time, some self-media intermediary projects, such as Panda Self-Media Alliance and Taobao Official Account, also received venture capital.

In January, the "Entertainment Reading" public account @混子曰, which had been prepared for a long time by automobile designer Chen Lei and his senior brother Luo Runzhou, was officially launched. It captured a lot of attention through vivid and funny pictures and texts. The number of fans increased by 300,000 in just a few months. It soon received an angel investment of 1.5 million from CCTV celebrity Zhang Quanling and others. The support of capital ensured the quality of the content. In less than half a year, the valuation exceeded 100 million.

Since 2015, high-quality public accounts have begun to go vertical, and almost every major field has seen the emergence of several imaginative public accounts. The biggest trend in the Internet industry this year is Internet finance. Because most lending platforms acquire users through public accounts, a large amount of hot money has poured in, giving rise to countless P2P vertical accounts.

In March, Liu Xiafeng's Xiaotongren Technology officially started operating as a company and soon became the top company in the field of Internet finance. While making a lot of money, it also gained the favor of capital, raising 10 million in the angel round alone. In the same year, @年糕妈妈, which had been operating for more than half a year, began to have more than 10 articles. The huge market for maternal and infant products enabled the founder Li Danyang, who was originally a small employee, to have his own maternal and infant service studio and obtain financing. Subsequently, with lightning speed, it became a super service platform in the maternal and infant industry in just a few years.

Soon after, various self-media financing information was all over the place. The Lion Enjoyment New Media Investment Fund, which was founded by Wu Xiaobo, alone invested in many vertical self-media accounts, including 20 million yuan for @餐老板存储, 10 million yuan for @酒业家, and tens of millions for @12缸汽车. Other investors were also scrambling for vertical accounts, such as ZhenFeng itself invested in @军武次位面, Yuerong Capital invested in @鸟哥笔记, and Daotong Capital invested in @医学界.

In April, Xu Yan, a senior student majoring in Chinese at Jinan University who was interning at the New Media Department of Southern Media Group, keenly felt that she could make money by writing for public accounts, so she chose to resign and created a public account called @深夜发媸. By the summer, the number of fans exceeded 400,000, and in just a few months, it became a case-level internet celebrity. Xu Yan's life trajectory was also rapidly changed, from a new worker to a winner in the eyes of countless post-90s girls.

On the fourth day of June 2015, Zhang Wei, who was known as the literary guru in the circle and was also the chief writer of GQ magazine, found that his literary account @世相 with 480,000 fans had been blocked. He had started thinking about how to start a content business since he worked at "Blog China". After four months of silence, he posted a QR code of a public account called @新世相 in the circle of friends. Everyone rushed to call for it, and the number of fans soon exceeded 10,000.

In the next few years, @新世相, which received venture capital, will change the direction of the industry. After stepping into the pit of an APP, it will return to its own strengths. By planning explosive marketing events such as "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" and "Throwing Books in the Subway", it has become the first target of advertisers to cooperate. After making money, New World began to develop horizontally, based on advertising and selling books, actively exploring the direction of film and television, greatly broadening the commercial dimension of self-media.

In Shanghai, @一道 short video self-media created by Xu Husheng and Fan Zhixing has become a household name, with fans growing to 10 million, becoming a benchmark for traditional media to start new media. Two years later, @一道, which has entered the social e-commerce sector, has gathered more than 1,500 design brands and 100,000 high-quality products in the e-commerce sector, covering more than 20 fields such as life, home, electronics, beauty, clothing, food, books, etc., with annual revenue approaching 1 billion yuan.

Influenced by Luoji Siwei’s knowledge payment, knowledge payment began to explode in 2015. This simple, direct and cost-free monetization method first appeared in the literary and art circles. In August of that year, Lin Shao’s @十点读书 received angel investment from the Lion Enjoyment New Media Fund and began to explore knowledge payment. The public account @樊登阅读会, which was launched as early as 2013, raised millions of yuan that year and quickly expanded numerous reading clubs across the country. By 2017, it had developed into a super knowledge service platform with more than 2 million formal paying members.

Also in August, Jiang Yile, a married woman who studies directing at the Beijing Film Academy, had nothing to do all day so she started making various self-directed and self-shot short videos on social media. One of them, titled “The First Round of the Survival Rules for Men”, was a short video with a unique sarcasm style and received more than 20,000 reposts and more than 30,000 likes on Weibo. From then on, she felt that she was a "woman with both beauty and talent", so she registered the public account @Papi酱.

Riding the wave of short videos, @Papi Jiang became a rare phenomenal short-lived internet celebrity in the history of Chinese internet celebrities in just a few months. Overnight, people on the streets and alleys were watching her complaints and digging deep into her gossip. She even attracted the investment and hype from the outdated self-media platform @罗集思考. The first advertisement was auctioned for 22 million yuan. Although Papi Jiang later became outdated at the same speed, this incident directly ignited the trend of internet celebrities in the following year of 2016.

Stimulated by the industry, Liu Shenleilei, who had been operating part-time for two years and had accumulated 300,000 fans, decided to resign from Xinhua News Agency in October 2015 and officially join the new media industry. Soon, his advertising income from a single article exceeded his previous annual salary at Xinhua News Agency.

Of course, there are so many stories in 2015, and one of them cannot be ignored.

In September 2015, Ma Ling, a veteran media person who had failed in her first business venture and exhausted her 4 million investment in a film and television company, once considered selling her property in Shenzhen. After eating a meal of spicy spicy rice in a residential building, she decided to try to start a public account and self-media, so she registered @咪蒙. After years of working in the media circle and knowing human nature well, she began to win the attention of a large number of fans by taking the toxic chicken soup route.

Since the release of "To the Bitch" on WeChat Moments, @咪蒙 has become a phenomenal traffic harvester on WeChat Moments, occasionally releasing controversial articles on social media, becoming the top-ranked account in the history of self-media to grow from 0 to 10 million followers in the shortest time, and the price of advertising is also much higher than that of its peers. Although Mi Meng did not lose weight after making a lot of money, she has figured out a unique "PS weight loss method" and successfully lost 30 pounds with the help of a powerful PS technology assistant with a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan, and successfully returned to single status.

The year 2015 can be said to be a blowout period for public accounts and self-media. Both the top accounts and marketing accounts have become money-printing machines due to the influx of a large number of advertisers. This is the year that has created the most successful entrepreneurs since the birth of the Chinese Internet. From the literary and artistic circles to the chicken soup circles, from the entertainment circles to the popular science circles, from the foodie circles to the travel circles, self-media peaks have begun to emerge one after another.

climax

From 2016 to the first half of 2017, the self-media industry, which was gradually taking shape, ushered in its most glorious peak period. During this year and a half, a large number of marketing bloggers in Shenzhen began to purchase their own properties, and the top big accounts were the money-printing machines in the bank's key customer department. Generally, if you want to advertise with them, you have to make an appointment in advance, especially for some phenomenal big accounts, and you may even have to wait in line for two months.

In 2016, the P2P online lending industry started a fierce war of advertising. The cost of acquiring customers soared from tens of yuan to thousands of yuan per person in the first half of 2017. This means that for public accounts that meet the requirements of the group, it is easy to make money. In addition, non-financial big brands have already regarded the advertising of public accounts as a standard that cannot be ignored, and a considerable part of the advertising budget has flowed into the pockets of self-media operators.

This year, the number of self-media that received financing reached an unprecedented level. According to incomplete statistics, at least 125 projects received financing. But history is often like this. Once an industry reaches the top, it means that it will start to go downhill. By 2017, the amount of financing had dropped sharply to only 22. Behind the vacant prosperity is the dust settling of the pattern. The content of the top accounts is very high-quality, while the content of the marketing accounts is still poor. The control of capital and traffic has left only a crack for individuals to enter the market.

In the big environment, both emerging platforms and traditional platforms like NetEase and Sohu have extended olive branches to self-media people. Toutiao has become a unicorn that competes with Tencent's client. In 2015, the fashionable account @石榴婆报导, which became popular with Toutiao and attracted fans to the official account, was sold for 60 million. As content operation and support become more mature, Toutiao began to launch short videos to compete with Tencent from another track.

The mainstream Internet venture capital circle was almost dominated by cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence from 2016 to the first half of 2017. Although many industry media also poured in, they were niche industries after all, and their monetization capabilities were not that strong. On the contrary, some more general visualization projects developed unprecedentedly rapidly. Influenced by the popularity of Papi Jiang, the term "Internet celebrity" received unprecedented attention during this period, and a nationwide movement to create Internet celebrities was launched. Good-looking post-90s people all wanted to become Internet celebrities, while those who were not good-looking were busy pushing up the stock prices of the plastic surgery industry.

As the idea of ​​technology changing the future has gained popularity and the documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" has become popular, science men have begun to appear on the self-media stage in large numbers. Although they are a bit stereotyped, most of them produce serious and solid content. At least on the surface, you feel that they have dug deep, which has set off a wave of popular science in and outside the circle. "Intellectuals", which was personally brokered and supported by angel investor Xu Xiaoping, had become a leading popular science account by 2016 and began to enter the knowledge payment market.

In the field of science and technology, a public account named @坏评, which was launched at the end of 2015, has gradually become famous in the circle of friends through the perfect combination of integration, mining and plagiarism. Its seemingly profound and humorous graphic style is deeply loved by urban white-collar workers who are already familiar with various routines. Although this account is controversial, it has joined the top club in the field of science and technology in a very short time.

Far away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a group of young people walked the streets of Silicon Valley, interviewed various technology companies, and wrote reports on technology in Silicon Valley and overseas. The articles were attached with a large number of high-quality pictures and content, satisfying the curiosity of people in the circle about the "Internet holy city" Silicon Valley. They quickly gained recognition from users and favor from capital, and quickly established their own position in the self-media world.

As a major center of popular science culture, Zhihu launched institutional accounts this year. A large number of institutional account editors who were struggling to find a sense of presence began to run wild. The most typical example is @丁香医生, who educates everyone on whether boys should recommend girls to drink hot water every day on Zhihu, and also provides a theoretical basis for urban white-collar workers to suppress the rumors of health chicken soup forwarded by old relatives in family groups. Some big accounts that became popular on Zhihu also began to be loved by everyone in public accounts.

In addition to popular science, another new excitement point is the story.

Zhang Yuhong, a former editor of 36Kr, was considering starting a business. He compared the three best-selling magazines in the traditional media era: Readers, Zhiyin, and Story Club. He found that there were countless public accounts that were comparable to Readers and Zhiyin, but there were very few public accounts that told stories. So he registered @老道消息, with the slogan "Internet cold knowledge, story club, and jargon collection". This public account, which used a lot of political rhetoric to tell high-quality stories, was a dark horse in the public account industry in 2016 and one of the few public accounts that Ma Huateng had rewarded.

In June 2016, Zhang Yuqun, a former real estate industry reporter for Southern Weekend, registered a public account called @兽楼处, calling himself "兽爷". He started by writing real estate stories, and later expanded to the general financial field. Although there were not many articles, each one was a masterpiece. Being well versed in the real estate industry, 兽爷 may not have realized at that time that two years later, his article on problematic vaccines would cause a sensation in the Chinese public opinion circle, setting a new height for self-media.

In July, the @True Story Project, a project that media person Lei Lei had been preparing for a long time, launched its first story, "The Preacher in the Alliance of the Dying", which was read by more than 1 million people within 24 hours, which strengthened his confidence in the field of non-fiction stories. A year later, its fans exceeded 700,000, and it received a 12 million A round of funding from Chenming Media, and began to try to get involved in the film and television industry.

Entering the second half of 2016, the overall situation was basically stable, and the hierarchy of the public account world began to solidify. The phenomenal articles that went viral in the WeChat Moments were mainly monopolized by big accounts such as @咪蒙 and @新世相. Although the marketing accounts were silent, they were busy deploying and penetrating into second- and third-tier cities, making a fortune in silence. If a new entrant did not get an angel investment, it would be difficult for him to get a position even if he had a good idea. It was not until March of the following year that another phenomenal big account appeared, named @局座邵忠, which was completely promoted by Zhang Shaozhong's personal influence and resources.

The solidification of the social class means that accounts that don’t actually have that much traffic may be ignored by advertisers. Therefore, for market considerations, some accounts that are well-known in the circle but not that powerful attract customers to place ads by inflating the number of readings. At the same time, due to the extremely high price of the head, some third-party intermediaries between customers and self-media, PR companies, often like to recommend some unknown small accounts to customers in order to make high-profit price differences, and then inflate the number of readings to meet the customer’s KPI. Since the public account has displayed the number of readings, this situation has gradually formed a black industry with huge profits.

In September, "Tencent Technology" revealed that some big Vs had been cheating on their readers, which triggered a strong earthquake in the self-media circle. Many big accounts that were swimming naked were partially exposed, triggering in-depth discussions in the advertising, marketing, and self-media circles on the entire gray industry chain behind cheating on readers. This made @姜茶茶, which specializes in complaining about the client, the contractor, and the copywriters in the marketing circle and has been operating for more than a year, more widely recognized in and outside the circle, and quickly developed into one of the benchmark big accounts in the copywriting field.

In November, Shenzhen media person Luo Er tried to get help from everyone on WeChat because his daughter had leukemia. He pushed a touching article, "Luo Yixiao, stop right there," which was forwarded by countless netizens with sympathy. Two days later, his friend Liu Xiafeng added an article, "Jesus, please don't let me be someone else for you," on his big account @P2P Observation. He used a marketing tone to mention that his company, Xiaotongren, was willing to donate one yuan to Luo Er for Luo Yixiao's leukemia treatment if the article was forwarded once before the early morning of November 30, with a minimum donation of 20,000 yuan and a maximum of 500,000 yuan. As a result, netizens suspected that Luo Er was using his daughter to hype the situation, and the plot quickly reversed. Luo Er and Liu Xiafeng were suddenly pushed to the forefront, and the abuse came like a tide. Regarding new media marketing planning, it once again caused strong reflection inside and outside the circle.

In the last two months of 2016, two huge acquisitions proved how crazy this industry is. One was that the uncle Cai Yuedong cashed out 178 million yuan, and the other was that @李叫兽 and his team, who had been founded for just over a year, were acquired by Baidu for nearly 100 million yuan. The two large mergers and acquisitions at very close intervals once again announced the huge value of self-media, and also hinted that this industry has almost reached its peak, because almost at the same time, @Papi酱, who was once very popular, was reported to have withdrawn its investment from @罗集思考.

In 2017, Zhang Xiaolong's long-cherished mini program was launched, and many people rushed to call for it, saying that the last big outlet for mobile Internet has come. However, since the mini program did not open to the circle of friends, many people only tried it briefly. Later, some people found that it was a perfect match with the official account. The mini program could not subvert the official account, but it supplemented the shortcomings of the official account in developing into social e-commerce. A large number of literary and fashion accounts that were not satisfied with advertising income launched mini programs and got involved in social e-commerce, including @胡辛束, @于小戈 and other big accounts, making a lot of money and opening up a new business direction.

The first half of 2017 continued the prosperity of 2016, but apart from some occasional gossip about Mi Meng, there were few major events that went viral on WeChat Moments. From 2016 to the first half of 2017, public account self-media ushered in its golden 18 months, but also faced the impact of multi-platform and diversified self-media forms. The inherent pattern and ecology also began to show its drawbacks, and after the peak, it began to decline.

dusk

In the second half of 2017, Toutiao's second nuclear weapon product @TikTok had been in operation for a year and was becoming more mature in all aspects. From time to time, a few short videos that went viral in WeChat groups popped up from the TikTok platform. Although Tencent actively fought back, due to the lack of strong operational genes, its Weishi team was particularly powerless in this regard, and the overall situation had already been formed. TikTok quickly developed into a brand new ecosystem, and the content format was different from the past. It was simpler and clearer, and fans only needed to lie on the sofa to enjoy it.

During this period, Xu Zhiyuan, a veteran heavyweight media person who interviewed Luo Zhenyu, also interviewed Ma Dong, the host of "The Debater", who discussed entertainment until death, discussed the characteristics of Internet culture and audience, and caused heated discussions in the circle. Some comments even believed that Xu Zhiyuan was just an old man who did not understand new media. In this episode, Rujing, the debater of "The Debater", analyzed: "We are actually ideological actors." This sentence also answered many traditional media people's confusion about why new media is popular, because most self-media are essentially actors, or they can be said to be translators of content, not producers.

After interviewing Ma Dong, Xu Zhiyuan became popular inexplicably because he released many highly controversial conversation videos in the future. However, this industry also attracted a prediction from Xu Zhiyuan. Many contents cannot be settled and new stimulation points are needed every day.

After 2017, for a long time, fewer and fewer new large accounts were released. On March 15, 2017, @GQ China was officially renamed @GQ Laboratory, using visual brain-based graphics and text methods, becoming a 100,000+ harvester. More than a year later, the advertising price of this official account was priced at 1.3 million in the market. Behind the success of @GQ Laboratory, it means that the consumption of new media content is upgraded, inferior content is further eliminated, and more comic-style content is increasing. Soon, even many first-line large accounts such as @Mimeng also introduced comics.

In 2017, the industry environment began to undergo subtle changes, and there were more and more negative news about self-media.

The first wave of earthquake occurred in June. On June 1, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Online Listening Program Creation and Broadcasting"; on June 7, gossip accounts such as the first paparazzi Zhuo Wei, famous detective Zhao Wuer, Fengxing Studio were blocked, and Weibo, Toutiao, and Tencent were summoned; on June 8, 25 WeChat public accounts such as @大片 Movie and @大片 Gossip Growth Association were blocked; on June 20, more than 40 Internet films such as "Erlonghu Hao Ge" were removed from the shelves; on June 22, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television asked Sina Weibo, Station A and other websites to shut down online audio-visual program services and carry out comprehensive rectification. This earthquake directly affected the top accounts, and even the king of the public account @大片片免费 was banned.

In August, the self-media marketing account @Kuwan Lab was sued by Baidu, asking it to immediately delete the infringing content published on Weibo, WeChat public accounts, Zhihu and other platforms, and apologize in public and written form to eliminate the impact. At the same time, claiming a total of 15 million yuan in economic losses suffered by infringement. The news caused great controversy in the circle, but public opinion almost turned to Baidu, believing that the editor of @Kuwan Lab was too self-righteous and used his voice indiscriminately.

In November, because the previous video was dug up by relevant media, the well-known IP self-media program "The Great Event" with a valuation of 4 billion yuan was removed from Youku. Host Wang Nima posted on Weibo that the program needs to be "corrected" and temporarily suspended updates. The incident lasted until May of the following year, and the team led by the co-founder of "The Great Event of the Great Event" to the Dong Cunrui Martyrs Cemetery to present a flower basket to the Dong Cunrui Martyrs Monument and ended with a public apology.

During this period, @下王小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小小�

In response to this series of incidents, the Beijing Cyberspace Affairs Office and other relevant departments ordered the website to strictly implement the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs", earnestly fulfill its main responsibilities, take effective measures to resolutely resist illegal and irregular behaviors that distort, vilify, and insult the image of heroes and martyrs on the Internet, and vigorously promote the core socialist values.

At the beginning of 2018, the technology circle ushered in the biggest blockchain revolution in history. Although blockchain technology has not yet made any decent applications, its own ICO model is equivalent to a money printing machine, which has attracted a large amount of hot money influx. Media and exchanges are considered to be the most profitable and policy-free form of the blockchain industry. The crazy money-making myth has attracted countless post-90s who cannot find a job. In just half a year, more than 5,000 blockchain industry official accounts have appeared, and hundreds of them have obtained financing. This is an honor that no industry has encountered.

However, everyone soon discovered that the only value of this industry is to issue coins to buy coins. Therefore, almost all the blockchain industry self-media have participated in the wave of direct or indirect cutting leeks. The official account with no more than 1,000 fans will be charged 5,000 when posting a message, and 10,000 when posting a headline. Among the early dividends, some of the coin issuers did pay, but as the money making movement became more and more intense, more and more people joined. The XMX coin of Yuhong, a rich boss who claims to have N listed companies not short of money, broke the issue and fell by 1,500 times. After experiencing a crazy half year, the blockchain industry quickly entered the cold winter. Those editors who just announced that they were blockchain media people also began to look for jobs again.

In May, @同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同同

From June to mid-October, the once-popular and rich P2P online lending platform suddenly experienced a thunder. In just a few months, more than 2,000 P2P online lending platforms have encountered difficulties in withdrawing cash, bosses running away or losing contact. While arousing strong social attention, it has also caused a large number of financial and financial marketing accounts to be greatly reduced, and the revenue of top accounts has also suffered an unprecedented impact.

Also in June, WeChat upgraded the 6.7.0 version, making comprehensive changes to the public account entrance, changing from the original name listing mode to the feed streaming mode. Click "Subscribe Account" to enter and see the content directly, and the content of all subscription accounts will be displayed in a concentrated manner. This change has caused heated discussions in the circle, and everyone is worried that the reading volume will decrease. For this reason, Tencent's public relations director Zhang Jun's analysis on WeChat Moments has no impact on reading volume. However, a month later, the media found that this function was changed back when the Android version 6.7.2 was internally tested.

On July 21, 2018, six years after the heavy rain in Beijing, the official account @Sales Office published an article called "The King of Vaccine", which exposed the history of the problematic vaccine companies and angered countless netizens. Although this article was later deleted, it aroused the follow-up of almost the entire network. The anger was like a flood and a beast, which was no less than the public opinion that everyone complained about the heavy rain in Beijing back then.

This incident alarmed the top leaders of the country in just 48 hours. Both the Prime Minister and the Chairman gave instructions on this. Soon, relevant departments intervened in the investigation and filed a case against Changchun Changsheng. Relevant departments in various places also actively cooperated to investigate and deal with the problematic vaccines. The official accounts of the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention simultaneously investigated the news. The result of the incident was that the relevant responsible person was arrested, the "Drug Production License" was revoked, and the fine was 9.1 billion yuan.

The "problem vaccine incident" with a huge impact seems to be a strong reverberation of the self-media when it declines. The negative news about the public account self-media has not stopped next.

In August, the Internet big V Chen Jieren used self-media and the Internet to hype and exaggerate the negatives of relevant units and individuals, and used this as a threat to blackmail and exaggerate the problems of the relevant units and individuals, and was arrested on the Internet. In the same month, several blockchain public accounts including "Huobi Information", "Golden Finance Network", "Coin World News Service", "Shenchain Finance", "Da Cannon Rating", "Daiju Reading", "TokenClub", "Wujie Blockchain" and other blockchain public accounts were blocked, and the industry entered a cold winter.

In September, the State Copyright Administration summoned 13 mainstream online media platforms, requiring them to strengthen copyright construction, adhere to the basic principle of copyright law of "authorization first, then use". No direct reprint of other people's works without authorization; when reprinting other people's works in accordance with the law, they should actively indicate the author's name and source of the work, and not distort and tamper with the title and original intention of the work; they should actively carry out copyright cooperation with rights holders and relevant copyright organizations, improve the authorization and licensing mechanism, and curb online infringement and piracy. This means that those marketing accounts that live by plagiarism and scheming have less and less room for survival.

In October, two months after the vaccine incident. On the 22nd, Xinmin Weekly published an article: The "chain reaction" behind the shady curtain of self-media is far from what you think; the next day, People's Daily published four comments on the chaos of self-media: the "stinky, dirty and black" routines are no longer available; Xinhua News Agency published an article: 10 yuan, a thousand words are 10 yuan, and it is made into a large account by replacing the face - revealing the underground "paper-slapping" industry chain of self-media; "Xinmin Weekly" continued to publish articles: The extortion of real estate self-media is shocking, and there are public accounts earning tens of millions a year; on the 26th, CCTV News: These self-media are too cheating, so hurry up and pass it to their families! On October 27, People's Daily: Only by taking a heavy blow can we curb the deterioration of self-media gangs.

This collective and unanimous voice reminds people of the condemnation of Weibo rumors by major official media before Xue Manzi was arrested in 2013. The self-media circle was in a panic and they all came out to express their opinions. Subsequently, many large accounts such as @大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大大�