Why is Mango TV always the one that eats crabs?

At a time when Internet thinking has become a popular discipline, many Internet people have also begun to talk about ideologies and patterns, but often intentionally or unintentionally ignore the initial feeling that the Internet brings us - a sense of participation.

Participation is the essence of the Internet

In the era without the Internet, who can speak out, where to speak out, and how loud to speak out are all sacred matters. It was not until the advent of the Internet that geographical boundaries were leveled, class gaps were bridged, and ordinary people who were far away from the world experienced the sense of participation in the group for the first time.

In fact, when we look back at almost all popular Internet applications, none of them did not start with a sense of participation. Alibaba, Baidu, Sina Weibo, and Tencent WeChat are all helping users to increase their sense of participation and causing phenomenal fanatical pursuit.

Pop art master Andy Warhol once said: “Everyone will have 15 minutes of fame.” With the boom of the Internet, which has a huge communication effect, the ordinary people’s wish to be a star for 15 minutes has instantly become a reality.

The Internet is dazzling, but when it comes to making ordinary people become stars, television is still incomparably efficient. Although television’s presentation methods seem to be a light-year away from the bizarre Internet, if we dare to try to graft the Internet’s methods, the broadcast-style dissemination of television is still faster than the slowly fermenting Internet. And Mango TV is also using various methods grafted from the Internet to make followers feel a strong sense of suffocation. The secret is to give users a sense of participation.

From bullet screen to participation

In the recent live broadcast of the "Internet Festival" evening party, Mango TV took the lead in using the bullet screen system. When users watched the evening party live on Mango TV (PC, Phone, and Pad), as long as they participated in the interactive message through various ports, the message might appear in the form of "bullet screen" on the live screen of Mango TV. For the first time, the live TV screen was filled with users' real-time interactive information.

That night, 8 million users held up their phones and complained to Mango TV, trying to find a sense of participation.

Danmu, originated in Japan, was originally a toy for Internet users born in the 1990s. They love to express themselves and often let the flashing Danmu content cover the entire TV screen. In other words, TV content is not their first demand. The most important thing is to communicate and express through content to gain a sense of participation.

Danmu is not new on the Internet, but Mango TV is the first in China to use it in live TV broadcasts. For the Chinese TV industry, this move heralds the beginning of a new era of interaction between TV and audiences.

As Li Hao, executive deputy director of Hunan Satellite TV, said, "What is barrage? In essence, it is real-time interaction on multiple screens, a specific example of three screens in one."

In a nutshell, Mango TV has done everything it can as a TV station to enhance user engagement.

Frankly speaking, Mango TV has never invented a completely new interactive technology. However, those technologies that have been tested and do not seem new are always used by Mango TV to perfection, leaving no breathing space for subsequent imitators.

In the Super Girl era, Mango TV activated the enthusiasm of Chinese audiences to participate in national interaction on TV by using SMS voting. But since then, who has reproduced this SMS voting scene?

The same is true for TV programs. There is a saying on the Internet that once you see Journey to the West or My Fair Princess rerun, you know the holidays are coming. Journey to the West has become a classic, and My Fair Princess, which was not well received at the time, has also become one of them, becoming the memory of a generation. Regardless of how the show is evaluated in the future, the fact that it has been rerun for more than a decade shows its continued popularity in user participation in topic discussions.

Speaking of variety shows, the show "Where Are We Going, Dad?" has set off a craze for parent-child shows in China. A large number of similar shows have emerged. Some shows have invited more big-name guests than "Where Are We Going, Dad?", but only "Where Are We Going, Dad?" has gained popularity among users.

Let's go back to the bullet screen at the "Internet Festival". If Mango TV used to encourage users to participate by relying on the setting of program content and the primitive interactive form of text messages, then the emergence of bullet screen is a thorough experiment of the integration of TV stations and the Internet. Its greatest significance is to make young people realize that TV can also participate in real-time interaction like computers and mobile phones.

The change in users' concepts reflects Mango TV's determination to transform to the Internet from top to bottom.

The power of user engagement

Mango TV created an environment for users to participate, and users responded with millions of people sending comments at the same time. Some people said that this was the live broadcast with the largest number of people online at the same time in the history of the Chinese Internet.

Users can find a sense of participation in topics in Mango TV programs. They cannot find like-minded people in other similar programs, so users will naturally pay for this sense of participation.

The sense of participation is what made Mango TV stand out from other satellite TV stations more than a decade ago. Some industry observers said that in the near future, perhaps only three or five satellite TV stations in China will be very successful, and Mango TV will definitely be one of them.

It is worth mentioning that Mango TV not only dares to innovate in order to increase users’ sense of engagement, but is even willing to lower itself and put on a smile.

Ten years ago, netizens on the still popular Tianya Forum gave nicknames to several domestic satellite TV stations. Jiangsu Satellite TV was called the Garlic Channel, Dragon TV was called the Tomato Channel, and Hunan Satellite TV was called the Mango Channel. . . . .

Many years later, faced with this half-serious and half-joking joke that was circulating among users, only Hunan Satellite TV went with the flow, accepted it with pleasure, and even decisively named its new media Mango TV. To use the most fashionable words today, wasn't the name of Hunan TV's Mango "crowdfunded" by netizens?

For the sake of user participation, perhaps from this day on, Hunan Satellite TV has been prepared to interact frankly with users.

Why is Mango TV always the first to take the lead? Because it knows how to increase user engagement!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.