How NetEase gathers the power of people

In the era of mobile Internet, how should NetEase gather the power of people?

As one of the four major portals, NetEase has not been prominent in the wave of BAT purchases in recent years. Except for games, the public’s perception of its mobile terminals mostly remains at “attitude”. NetEase News client and NetEase Cloud Music, which is known as the “conscience of the industry”. However, after careful comparison, we found that although the reputation of these two products is acceptable, it is not necessarily a big gap between them and competing products.

Now, when Baidu solves the relationship between people and information, Alibaba solves the relationship between people and goods, and Tencent solves the relationship between people, what should NetEase do? In other words, NetEase Is there still a chance to return to the first camp?

Perhaps the answer lies in NetEase’s slogan, the power of the Internet to gather people and socialize.

Talking about NetEase’s social road in recent years, in short, it has not gone smoothly. From blogs to Weibo, and from Weibo to WeChat, NetEase always seems to be taking one step slowly, one step at a time, and following every step. This follow-up strategy, in the words of Tencent CEO Ma Huateng, “the one who beats WeChat cannot be another WeChat.”

Today, it has been a year since NetEase announced the suspension of Weibo services. Yixin’s situation seems to be a bit embarrassing. Not only has it failed to curb the growth of WeChat, but it has been trapped in the tool of free phone calls. position. Obviously, making a phone call tool is not NetEase's original intention. Other products of NetEase's front are waiting for support. On the other hand, NetEase also urgently needs a high-frequency distribution entrance to cope with the current booming mobile game field. But after Yixin users use up their 180 minutes of free calls, what value is left with Yixin?

Of course, NetEase’s social efforts include not only Yixin, but also LOFTER, a product with a light blogging concept. However, Tumblr, which was popular in the United States, was reincarnated in China and did not seem to be recognized by Chinese netizens. With Sina Qing announcing its closure, Diandian turned its focus to Papa. The only remaining one, LOFTER, still has not left the niche circle of illustrators and photographers. In terms of products alone, LOFTER is actually a bit anticlimactic. The PC version is similar to Tumblr's light blog, while the mobile version is more like Instagram's picture social network. In short, it can be regarded as a hobby social network. But one thing worth noting is that the operation direction of picture socialization that LOFTER insists on is, to a certain extent, the reason why it is difficult for LOFTER to move from the niche to the masses. Are Chinese people accustomed to using pictures to socialize? At least that's not my personal opinion.

Not only that, the comment culture fermented by NetEase News has now spread to NetEase Cloud Music. While listening to songs, users can also write their own short comments under each song. This 140-character text input box brings this music listening tool to the level of music social networking. NetEase also added the "Friends" function to Cloud Music in due course. However, there is a conversion rate problem here. There are many people listening to music and many people with social needs. But how many people socialize through music, I am afraid the real data is difficult to accept. And this is not only a problem of frequency and demand for authenticity, but also a problem of asymmetry between input and output. This is why those video websites that focus on UGC still have to pay high prices to buy copyrights. In short, 1, the quality of UGC is too poor, and 2, the cost of UGC is too high. Therefore, the author is not optimistic about the development of music social networking.

At present, Yixin has 200 million users but has been reduced to a tool, LOFTER is full of style but has difficulty in entering the public eye, and Cloud Music has no emotion but has difficulty in making a difference in the social field. NetEase's situation in the social field always reminds me of another game that "brings together the life interests of 100 million people".

Let me ask you, how should we go about socializing through hobbies?

Personally, I think this requires a large ecosystem, and this ecosystem cannot be completed by one or two mobile apps. It needs to go from content to community, and then from community to communication.

By analogy with NetEase, this is a road from cloud music content to LOFTER community, and then from LOFTER community to Yixin Communication.

First of all, the difficulty of interest social networking is how to find the user's interest, and the user's interest requires a certain context before he can express it.

Just like Cloud Music, in the context of music, users can say a few words about their music preferences. And this preference is the prerequisite for the subsequent interest in social networking. However, NetEase has not established a connection between Cloud Music and LOFTER. In the LOFTER platform, cloud music is just a tool, and the connection between the two is only account connection.

In this large social ecosystem, there are tighter requirements for the connection between products. For example, if a user posts a music sharing status on Cloud Music, if it can be linked to the LOFTER community, it will naturally enrich the content of the LOFTER community and let other people who browse this status on LOFTER know the user's interest in music. For another example, I follow a musician on Cloud Music, but the context of the music is too small, and I cannot get to know the person more comprehensively, and it is difficult to reach the social threshold. At this time, can you import this following relationship to LOFTER, so that users can see more plump musicians on LOFTER.

What is needed here is the association between message dynamics and relationship chains. If this connection can be extended to other products such as NetEase Reading, NetEase Cloud Classroom, NetEase News, etc., it will provide more context for LOFTER, allowing people who use these products at the same time to express more fully on LOFTER. , and then gather the power of these people to build a more popular interest community.

This process can be understood as the transition from "content and content" to "content and people", that is, a process from finding content through content to establishing a relationship chain, and then it will be a process of "people and people" ” process, that is, the process from establishment to strengthening of the relationship chain. In layman's terms, this is the process from stranger to acquaintance. This requires close cooperation between LOFTER and Yixin.

Similarly, based on the association between message dynamics and relationship chains, the content in LOFTER is synchronized to Yixin. The specific operation is that the one-way follow relationship in LOFTER is understood as a subscription account in Yixin, and the two-way follow relationship is a friend relationship and is imported as an address book. Users can browse LOFTER's attention status through a subscription account on Yixin. At the same time, Yixin provides a relatively private circle of friends for those who are familiar with each other to post status, and more importantly, provides an instant messaging service.

This not only separates strangers who follow one-way from friends who follow two-way, while ensuring privacy, it also overcomes the shortcomings of "WeChat" closed relationship chain that is difficult to expand. In this mechanism , strangers can be transformed into friends, which means that this is also a dynamic relationship chain.

The details are shown in the chart:

There is another question. I believe some friends will have such doubts. Why not make these things into an APP?

I think there is a problem of user demand. Just as many friends will question this, your ecology is good, but how many people can go from beginning to end, that is, the conversion rate problem.

This is why I want to separate the products.

In this ecosystem, users can enter from different angles. For example, those who listen to music only need cloud music.

If you like to follow the news of strangers but don’t like to communicate, you only need to follow some interested people on LOFTER.

People who only need to socialize with acquaintances and not with strangers can just use Yixin. Import the address book relationship into Yixin or Yixin and add your own friends.

In other words, this ecosystem has many entrances, covering almost everything, and is also very scalable. Moreover, products each have their own positioning, and they cannot be easily mixed together.

All in all, this is a large ecology of pan-interest social networking.

It can realize the user's consumption needs from known content to unknown content, and the social needs from strangers to acquaintances.

By mastering such a social portal and redefining a new way of establishing relationships between people, you can naturally have unlimited imagination, because the production of any content cannot be separated from people, and the provision of any service cannot be separated from people. They are inseparable from people.

Perhaps, in the future, Internet companies only need to do one small thing, and that is the power of gathering people online.