Can Toutiao surpass Baidu and WeChat in the era of self-media?

The launch of WeChat public accounts has led to the popularity of the concept of self-media, and 2013 is also known as the year of self-media. The popularity of self-media has caused a large number of content producers or journalists to leave their institutions and operate their own public accounts or self-media.

In terms of the influence of subscription accounts, personal accounts are now on par with institutional accounts. According to Xu Danei's ranking, many personal accounts have an advantage in subscriptions and readership compared to established institutions such as People's Daily and CCTV News. Apart from current affairs, in the sub-sectors of finance, fashion, and emotions, personal accounts have completely dominated.

In the field of current affairs, personal accounts are slightly inferior to institutional accounts due to factors such as government resources and license thresholds; in the competition for information in the open field, the flexible maneuvering of personal accounts is far superior to the slow decision-making of institutional accounts.

Li Xueling, the founder of YY, once summarized that industries such as teachers, doctors and journalists are naturally "self-employed" industries. Self-employed individuals are the core competitiveness of institutions, and institutions have strong channels. However, the Internet empowers individuals, and self-employed individuals have channels. Their potential value is revealed in the market, and the income of self-employed individuals has been greatly improved.

The association of these "free men" is what Marx called the highest form of ownership.

However, information providers with channels still have to solve a fundamental survival problem, which is how to obtain income.

At present, most information providers rely on brand advertising for marketing and monetization. By inserting hard ads or brand exposure, information providers endorse and brand advertisers enhance their brand reputation and popularity.

Another model is to monetize Internet traffic. After the traffic from clicking on the information matches the advertisement, payment is made according to the effect. Currently, platforms that have done this include Baidu Baike, WeChat public accounts and Toutiao.

The traffic monetization of WeChat public accounts is an automatic delivery model, which provides two interfaces in the background: "traffic owner" and "advertiser". Information providers can access traffic owners and charge according to click effects. This structure is realized through Tencent's Guangdiantong advertising system. However, the threshold of WeChat traffic advertising model is extremely high. You need to have 100,000 followers to access the system. People who operate WeChat accounts know the difficulty of increasing followers of WeChat public accounts. According to those who have accessed, the current income is very limited.

Baidu Baike is known for being the first to accept advertising, because Baidu itself has an advertising alliance, and all Baidu Baike traffic can now be realized within the Baidu system. Baidu Baike earns thousands of yuan for an article with hundreds of thousands of clicks, which has led a large number of self-media people to open accounts at Baidu Baike. However, the consequence is that the traffic is shared, and the income is not as good as last year. There are three problems with Baidu Baike. First, the threshold is also extremely high. It must be reviewed by Baidu News Department before it can be opened. Currently, there are only a few hundred people; second, Baike is editor-led, and only editor-recommended positions can obtain traffic and income. Most people's articles without editor recommendations cannot get clicks; third, Baike is based on the PC side, and the traffic from the mobile side is limited. Without mobile, there is no future.

Toutiao has been hosting self-media for a long time, and the advertising system is still under testing. According to tests, 10,000 views can bring about 10 yuan in revenue, and 1 million views can bring 1,000 yuan in revenue. Such income is not high. The income of 100 million clicks from Baijia is already over 10,000 yuan, which is 10 times that of Toutiao. Such clicks are extremely difficult to obtain on traditional websites: the traffic of traditional websites is declining, and editors will not give priority to recommending self-media articles.

As an emerging information distribution tool, Toutiao has a huge traffic. According to a test conducted by Chaoxiansheng, the number of readers of an article can easily reach 200,000, and there was once an article with more than 1 million readers. Toutiao's intelligent recommendation has made articles that had no readers in the traditional era play a long-tail effect: no matter how remote or unpopular an article is, there are always readers who want to read it. However, in the traditional portal era, if there was no editor's recommendation, these articles would definitely have 0 clicks, but after intelligent recommendation, these articles can always find interested readers and earn some income.

As a self-media platform based on mobile terminals, with low barriers to entry, large traffic and good revenue, Toutiao has taken the lead. Toutiao's open attitude and sharing spirit towards information creators are related to the fact that Toutiao does not have media genes.

Toutiao has made information into a business, but the copyright issue is always the sword of Damocles hanging over its head. Since the information provider is an individual business and does not rely on institutions, why doesn't Toutiao recruit heroes from all over the world and provide income through a closed loop, bypassing the quagmire of institutional copyright, and thus becoming a central platform for information distribution and advertising matching?

Information providers have both mobile channels and traffic advertising monetization. Information providers live socially on multiple platforms such as Toutiao and UC Browser. This may be the future of most information providers. Except for a small number of current affairs news agencies, most agencies have died in the competition with individual businesses.

Are you ready?

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.