"Outdated Internet Celebrity" Xiaohongshu

Written by Wu Dalang and produced by Niudaocaijing (niudaocaijing)

Xiaohongshu has been trying to save the declining community.

An investor told Niudao Finance that Xiaohongshu is constrained by history and existing models. Its current business model looks very lively, but in fact, there is no future for boiling frogs in warm water, and it can only be thoroughly Only by looking for breakthroughs can there be a way out. Don't make a fuss in the existing community.

As a community platform, how to maintain the quality of content and monetize it commercially is a test of the wisdom of Xiaohongshu managers.

In the Internet vocabulary, "planting grass" refers to the behavior of "promoting the excellent quality of a certain product to attract people to buy it."

As a kind of information, choosing between "objective sincerity" and "commercial tendency" is a difficult multiple-choice question; and as a collection of content and users, the community " "Trust" is to some extent the foundation of a grass-growing community and the source of the emergence of the grass-growing community model.

But now, the way Xiaohongshu has chosen to save itself is to further put content and transactions together. This will make it difficult to ensure that in the face of short-term interests, influential content producers can Ensure fair content output.

Xiaohongshu started as a cross-border shopping guide in 2013, and then grew into a user content sharing community focusing on topics such as beauty and travel. It is called a "grass-planting community" in the industry.

After many users have a purchase need, they will first check other users’ notes, experiences and usage sharing on Xiaohongshu before deciding whether to purchase. In the end, the purchase behavior is often implemented in some other comprehensive e-commerce platforms. on the business platform.

For Xiaohongshu, this is a contradiction. Content can be monetized by connecting to e-commerce, but at the same time, it also restricts each other.

Users like to "plant grass" in Xiaohongshu because of their trust in platform-neutral content. Once the e-commerce business becomes stronger, users will think that advertising is too strong and they will lose trust in platform content. On the contrary, it will decrease.

Xiaohongshu also seems to be weakening its e-commerce label. Qu Fang once said that Xiaohongshu is not an e-commerce company, but emphasizes the community nature of Xiaohongshu. The company's slogan has also changed from "discovering good things around the world" to "marking my life."

In Xiaohongshu’s view, cross-border e-commerce has limited room for growth, and lifestyle sharing platforms make it easier to show users a diverse world.

Some analysts believe that weakening e-commerce functions is more like a passive choice. E-commerce is the best way for Xiaohongshu to monetize, but if this business can be developed, Xiaohongshu will not go back and emphasize its community attributes.

In addition, although the content community is still relatively peaceful, "enclosing one's own cuteness" is no longer suitable for the current competitive environment. Resources and traffic are increasingly concentrated towards the top platforms. For non-head platforms, it is already a good result to retreat if they do not advance. There may not be much time left for Xiaohongshu.

Chen Rui, chairman of Station B, previously said in an interview with "Late", "My understanding of the community is that 1. The user experience does not come from your product itself, but from the user Who else are you with? 2. Community satisfaction is more important than individual user satisfaction.”

In fact, it is not easy to monetize content communities, and users’ trust in platform content also needs to be continuously maintained. Although Xiaohongshu has repeatedly claimed that illegal production and volume fraud has been the target of Xiaohongshu's severe crackdowns, Xiaohongshu's chronic problem of content fraud has not yet been completely resolved.

Xiaohongshu started with content. When the integration of online and offline was at its peak, it was difficult to have the potential to expand its retail business, so the project ended hastily.

Nowadays, Xiaohongshu is facing the risk of losing anchors and brand owners, and the quality of content is declining. Notes frequently violate red lines. Previously, CCTV once again exposed the phenomenon of fake traffic and fake reviews on e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu, and the black industry chain behind them also surfaced.

In this regard, Xiaohongshu said: “The platform has already set up an independent anti-cheating technical team to take real-time crackdowns on false notes and malicious brushing, and severely punish them once verified.

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From the user group of a platform, we can not only get a glimpse of its current situation, but also predict its future. According to Analysys data analysis, it was found that the user group of Xiaohongshu is divided into two categories, regardless of gender and age. , the geographical distribution is still very single.

In terms of gender distribution, women account for the vast majority. According to statistics, male users only account for 12.7% of the total users.

Xiaohongshu. When the community was first established, most of the users were women, and they shared shopping experiences with each other, which led to its later operations and marketing activities being dominated by female users.

Age distribution. , 70% of Xiaohongshu users are born in the 1990s, of which about 40% are under 24 years old, and about 30% are between 24-30 years old.

In terms of consumption power, Xiaohongshu users are distributed. In the past, middle and high consumers accounted for the most part, but in recent years, due to the overall decline of mobile Internet companies, the proportion of low consumers and low-middle consumers has continued to accelerate.

Recently, Xiaohong has continued to accelerate. The book's advertising in variety shows and the presence of celebrities have attracted many younger students with lower spending power.

In terms of provincial distribution, most of Xiaohongshu's users are concentrated in economically disadvantaged areas. Among the developed coastal provinces, Guangdong Province has the largest number of users. Compared with second- and third-tier cities, first-tier cities have the largest number of Xiaohongshu users, accounting for 40.94%.

So it can be concluded that Xiaohongshu has the largest number of users. The main user group is young women living in big cities.

From the perspective of traditional business to modern Internet business, women’s social attributes give them higher consumption power, so small businesses. It is also wise for Hongshu to target women as a user group.

However, with regard to the development of Xiaohongshu in recent years, it is obvious that it is no longer satisfied with the size of the group of young women in big cities.

Therefore, if Xiaohongshu does not adjust its operating strategy and create a more diverse user group to adapt to its development requirements, words such as stagnation, decline, and decline may be its future.

Qu Fang, the founder of Xiaohongshu, once said: Beauty, authenticity, and diversity are the community spirit of Xiaohongshu. However, the reality is that these three characteristics that Qu Fang yearns for cannot be achieved at the same time. Exist.

Xiaohongshu’s business model may be successful, and the injection of large capital and more and more imitators (such as Meitu Community) illustrate its success. Behind the busy grass planting, does the platform need more supervision and guidance?

I hope that our life under the label of Xiaohongshu will be real and full of meaning, rather than an embarrassment after a lot of noise? and disguise.

On November 28 last year, Xiaohongshu announced that it would launch a creator center and interactive live broadcast platform to serve Xiaohongshu experts.

The arrival of the interactive live broadcast platform means. With this, Xiaohongshu has bet its future monetization straw on e-commerce live streaming.

According to data released by QuestMobile, on the day of Double Eleven in 2019, among the top 15 popular Taobao live broadcast anchors, Li Jiaqi ranked first and Wei Ya ranked second. They are all higher than the total popularity of the other 13 anchors. From the perspective of the ability to carry goods, the head effect is also prominent.

In addition to the top KOLs, aspects such as supply chain and product selection capabilities also determine how far Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce live broadcast will go. However, Xiaohongshu is not competitive in these aspects. Advantages, but pressure is not small.

In addition to facing many strong competitors, the e-commerce environment with slow user growth also makes the prospects of Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce live broadcast less optimistic. Data shows that the number of mobile e-commerce users is expected to reach 713 million in 2019, which means that the number of e-commerce users is about to reach the ceiling of the number of netizens.

The content of Xiaohongshu is mainly based on pictures, text and short videos. After the live broadcast business is launched, it will inevitably cause a decrease in the traffic of pictures, texts and short videos. This reduction will have a negative impact on small businesses that rely on communities. For Hong, the gain may outweigh the loss.

Currently, e-commerce live broadcasts are being regarded by more and more e-commerce platforms as an important way to open new entrances and attract traffic.

Therefore, the competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and the traffic and scale will be increasingly concentrated towards the giants, and the opportunities for small players will become smaller and smaller. Therefore, it is still unknown whether live broadcast can become a life-saving straw for the monetization of Xiaohongshu content in the future.

Because once it enters the live broadcast e-commerce track, Xiaohongshu will need to face the boundary problem between the content community and e-commerce.

With Douyin and Kuaishou sharing the traffic, how many chances does Xiaohongshu, which entered the game late, have? If "financing" fails, how can Xiaohongshu rely on to support the next round of profit-making changes?