Should the "corner of our spirit" be changed?

Abstract: WeChat, Momo, Kuaishou, Douyin, Weibo's commercial valuation records are constantly being washed away, standing next to these companies with data in their left hand and money in their right hand, the cold Douban is still quiet.

But this rare indisputable energy has been broken by the outside world.

In 2017, Douban users, known for their literary, independent and spiritual nature, were criticized by the outside world as having no commercial value. "The two most worthless groups of users in the Chinese website circle are the user groups of Douban and Acpun", this phrase, from an article by a technology reporter, was forwarded and quoted by Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei and began to ferment and circulate on the Network.

What happened to Douban?

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What happened to Douban?

11 years ago, Douban's users reached 1 million, and at that time, it was a promising test field. This pan-interest website that expands from Douban Music, Douban Books, and Douban Movies to the community specializes in original products that others have not done, and they believe that "if the product is done well, the growth of users will be a natural thing." ”

However, this website, which seeks to change the spiritual life of human beings, is increasingly becoming an out-of-place in the process of commercialization of community websites.

In recent years, the data of Douban is really not good.

Today, the average daily UV of Douban is more than 2 million, while Weibo is more than 100 million. According to Alexa statistics, Douban's website ranking has only dropped in the past year, and it has dropped by more than 500. On the free APP list, Douban ranks outside the 200th, and compared with Douyin, which ranks first in the world in the Apple Store, douban's commercial influence is gradually declining.

But another interesting fact is that although Douban is no longer a star product that can attract traffic, its users have shown unprecedented loyalty in the stickiness of fans.

"Join Douban as soon as possible, lose value as soon as possible", a group of users who are quiet and silent on weekdays, who only focus on self-high, in the face of external difficulties, have produced a large number of self-black mocking diagrams, which are hung on the home page to express their dissatisfaction. Other Douban netizens are responsible for giving these titles to build a building, intending to pay tribute to the values of Douban. "It's hurting my petals," such self-deprecating words, and the era of selling anxiety.

Of course, there are also some fans who hate iron is not steel, and make another sound. They are heartbroken for the loneliness of Douban, "Others are engaged in financing and listing, Ah Bei, Ah Bei, what are you doing." ”

In China, it is rare for a user of a social networking site to gather sand and fight for the values of their site. Such a scene is both funny and touching. As one of the most famous slow companies on the Chinese Internet, Douban has sparked controversy.

At this time, the media are brewing a big headline to report the failed commercialization process of Douban, and people are eager for Douban CEO Ah Bei to be able to stand up and respond when the company is in the center of the whirlpool.

Unfortunately, no.

Ah Bei does not like to show his face, and rarely gives media interviews. The media hopes to be able to find, amplify and sit on Douban's evaluation of the commercialization process table through his only words, but found that the report talks about business and products, profitability and loneliness, so far, Abei has only left a sentence in Zhihu.

"Profit is not vulgar at all, only vulgar is vulgar."

Yes, this answer, very douban.

There is a folk saying: the boss changed douban,----- seems to be in the name, the company from the moment of birth appeared to be unambitious and aggressive. However, around 2012, the volume of Douban was once almost the same as Weibo. Many people are curious, how did this website, which once reached an average of 160 million PVs per day, step by step become a representative of the reverse trend in China's Internet business ecological spectrum?

The clues also need to be picked up from scratch.

Abei founded Douban in 2005, at that time, the café has not yet become the hardest hit area for talking about entrepreneurial projects, and few people realize that money has such a great effect on entrepreneurship, at that time, Internet users and entrepreneurs only know PCs, people respect the concept of Web 2.0, advocating that users are both consumers of content and producers.

It was also the golden age when China's first generation of Internet entrepreneurs started. People with entrepreneurial dreams are eager to replicate the legend of Silicon Valley. That year, Wang Xing founded the intranet of the school, and Yang Haoyong and Yao Jinbo entered the classified information website, and each created the catch-up network and 58.com. Video websites also rose at this stage, Storm Group CEO Feng Xin began to start a business, and Gu Yongjun also began to prepare for Youku.

At that time, Abei was still a young man in his 30s. In fact, at the beginning of the business, this is almost a technical otaku, starting with a leisurely rhythm of entrepreneurship.

According to Ah Bei, the place he most often went at that time was Douban Hutong outside the Chaoyang Gate in Beijing. The so-called hutong, just leave its name. There are wide streets, high-rise buildings, and there is a Starbucks nearby. There, he could choose a cup of coffee, find a sunny spot by the window, and slowly open the Apple notebook while glancing around at interesting people and things.

"When I saw all kinds of people, I couldn't help but hear strange things. Half of Douban's programs were written there, and that's how the names came about. Abei said.

Almost by relying on the strength of only one person, Ah Bei cut the page design and product functions of this small station into the hearts of literary and artistic youth at once, and such skills and efficiency are highlights in any case.

There are no diamonds, no porcelain work.

Abei has no popular taste, like all literary youth, he is a fruit powder, in order to use apples, he can endure powerbooks with half a year to drop the paint, isight only used once (China can not find other ichat users), email net is garbled (Apple in 2004 believes that Chinese is still using doss era coding). He says he's a complete Apple masochist, but from another point of view, if the CEO of any company has such a harsh acceptance standard for the product, then, at least from the perspective of design and function, he must be a qualified product gatekeeper.

In product theory, there is a version planning ability, in the vernacular, that is, the first version of the product can not be extremely complex, because the complex additional function points will lead to the product can not directly cut the heart. The performance of playing away is to put the recognition of self-worth above the value of users. Influenced by Jobs, Abei does not like the form of fancy things, on the Douban, he only opened the book video, broadcast, group of these three projects of the review function, neither do pop-up advertising, nor do dynamic pictures, Flash. ----- from the perspective of efficiency, simplicity is the hallmark of a good product.

All of this is related to the corporate culture of Douban, in 2011, Abei set "simple" and "user experience and user value first" as the two foundations of Douban. ------- and another foundation is "respect for the individual."

The reporter of "I am a guest" found that Douban was not very interested in how outsiders evaluated themselves. Here, the constant themes that people are happy to discuss are music, movies, books, and various niche topics. If you compare Douban with Zhihu, in terms of fitness, interpersonal relations, workplace, dressing, these issues of "trying to win the recognition of others", Zhihu has more attention than Douban. In photography, art, music and other content that "can be high in their own world", Douban is better than zhihu - "buying books is like a mountain, reading is like a silk", parents' scourge group, Jingtao roaring group... Many subcultural groups with distinct personality traits originated here.

For such users, the rapidly evolving world, whizzing by, only for a glimpse, has nothing to do with themselves.

Some people have commented that visiting Douban is a scene of "strange coffee and bullet crown celebration, and friends looking at each other", which is actually quite image, for the latter, The group social function of Douban is simply the Stone Age of the Internet, because it has never emphasized the authenticity of users. The idea that some socialites try to make friends through the Douban group will eventually be defeated by the inefficiency of this organization, but for the former, it brings a relatively free voice to Douban. For example, on the intranet, many college students will be ashamed to comment on sex-related movies because they pay too much attention to the ideas of others, but in Douban, you can leave these without considering these. Those anonymous comments have brought more messages that can reveal the true feelings, all of which make Douban have distinct niche brand characteristics at the beginning of its establishment.

To some extent, Douban is a case of demand-driven products, and the three major corporate cultures set by Abei for Douban, coupled with Abei's literary and artistic and idealism (such as adhering to commercial independence and adhering to the principle and strategy of formulating Douban movie ratings cannot be changed), is an important factor in the formation of a unique recognition of Douban.

Abeiqi people

There are few detailed reports of Ah Bei in the media, and some scattered information comes from the only few media interviews he has been interviewed in 2016, but these materials are enough for us to piece together the personal history of the father of Douban.

From the data, we know that Abei's business awareness is not strong. It is said that investors may know more clearly about Ah Bei's reading status than they do about Douban's business performance. According to Zhang Xiangdong, who was a journalist and is now the co-founder of 700BIKE, once, at the anniversary of Douban, Feng Bo, an investor in Douban, gave Ah Bei a large cardboard box full of books that Ah Bei marked on Douban that he wanted to read, including English novels in one color, and some books outside of business, such as Qian Mu's "Introduction to Chinese Studies" and Wu Nianzhen's "These People, Those Things" and so on. ------well, they can't be found in crash books at airport bookstores.

Abei's rhythm is also very slow, his pet is a turtle, and the clothing he often wears is canvas shoes and T-shirts, in the words of Douban netizens, "in a piece of business clothes, fresh and standing.". His T-shirt is printed with "Everything is on its place." The bookshelf, CD, and book on the T-shirt are in their place.

According to the evaluation of those who have contacted him, Abei is very low-key, and the sense of existence is as thin as air and water.

In an interview with Douban in his early years, Ah Bei defined himself as a "grassroots entrepreneur", on the grounds that for a long time, there were only three people in his company, except for himself, and the other two were part-time, which lasted for three years. But before that, he was a Tsinghua graduate and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California. It is reasonable to say that with such an academic background, the correct life trajectory should be to do research or scientists or something, but there is always a type of human temperament, and it is not very important to "reason".

As a result, Abei, who is a physics scientist, became a software engineer at IBM in the United States, and he added all his talents to another skill tree with a starting value of zero. On the Internet, his avatar is a red cover. And his friends, all of whom are liberal arts students, as a procedural ape, he likes movie music and travel, as evidenced by a wall of discs, two walls of books, and three continents of car and boat tickets. And his real name is Yang Bo,------ the much-rumored "Abei" is just a net name. An interesting detail is that many female netizens mistakenly believe that this person has long hair and fluttering hair and explosive appearance because of his screen name, but when he really asks for verification, he is laughed at and not said.

In February 2001, Ah Bei made a douban with a paint-off PowerBook, where there were neither editors, special articles, nor beating topics, but this simple cold wind poked at the weakness of literary and artistic youth. A Douban user described his own process of using Douban. At that time, his mood was in an extremely depressed state but no one told, out of a subconscious reaction, a year after registering Douban, he wrote the first dynamic on Douban for the first time, with only two words, "sad".

People often say that Douban is a spiritual paradise, in the circle of friends, a person must have a healthier and mainstream personality, but in Douban, no one will accuse a person of being niche and not positive enough. This unique user experience also makes it more and more like a gathering place for literary and artistic youth. Huang Canran, Sang Ke, Wang Ao, Wang Wei, Liao Weitang... Many young people who may be marginalized in reality because of their niche sing and communicate here. "I can't sit in the mountains obediently, blame the mountains and the rain is falling, the apples thrown up expose it to the fact that it is actually a porcupine, and I have evolved into a person who can sleep anywhere," ----- words that are rarely seen in any other Chinese online community.

People are always eager to be recognized by their peers and meet acquaintances. "For me, the biggest value of Douban is that a group of people who have no social relationships communicate and recommend content completely out of their own inner needs." A Douban user said.

But this is destined to be a double-edged sword.

Gradually, within the scope of a certain small circle, the prestige of Douban reached a small climax. But it also sets a high barrier to entry for maintaining high-quality content. In 2016, Douban launched its first official advertisement "Our Spiritual Corner", although this advertisement, whether from the perspective of photography, script, copywriting and execution effect, can be called a delicate word-of-mouth work, but from the perspective of communication effect, its evaluation has begun to show obvious polarization. ------- "hardcore users are proud, ordinary users are inexplicably admired, and strange users are inexplicable." ”

Obviously, Douban users have never been the majority of the crowd, in a sense, Douban is aimed at some people who have received some education, have similar aesthetic tastes, and have a self-consistent cognitive system. In order to maintain the experience of these core user groups, for a long time, Douban has maintained a simple page and few traces of advertising. It is said that on the first day of Douban's launch, the first income received by Abei was only two cents, which was a sub-account of Dangdang.com. For a long time, Douban has relied on the links attached to the book channel and shared with the online bookstores it cooperates with, and it has been consistent for more than a decade, and even brand advertising has only appeared a few years later.

Douban's profit model has always been very single. In the early days, many idealistic entrepreneurial teams in China were always interested in the monetization of knowledge communities and lacked the motivation to explore.

Abeiyi is not here. His specialty and ambition is to make products, which can be seen in his signature that "programmers who don't want to be CEOs are not good product managers."

In September 2011, Alpha City, which was designed by Abei, was launched. This is a virtual community he has created for two-dimensional users. At that time, Douban users were three religions and nine streams, and a hundred schools of thought were contending, so Alpha City also set up different streets, shops, and workshops, which had all the characteristics of human society, such as the masses, multi-party views, different parties, and the corresponding rules of the game, such as facilities, currencies, commodities, etc., and even elections, canvassing, politicians, spectators, saboteurs, builders...

It's a condensed world.

Alpha City is showing the young generation of China in a forward-looking, even romantic, way into a new cultural stage. In a certain scene, a group of teenage manga lovers, with the fireworks of the Tama River as the artistic conception, seized a street, named "Tamagawa Hanabi Alley", and then all the core members began to establish a united front, in order to unite other girl lovers, trade, currency, goods, shops appeared, free economy grabbed resources and vicious competition also appeared. Then, in order to eliminate heresy, people began to fight wars, and journalists, leaders, propaganda departments, enthusiastic masses, and even politicians appeared. Some users reported, "They are bright and beautiful in front of the stage, wandering behind the stage for common benefits, and finally even barding with the system administrator." ”

"Motivation is admirable; technique is admirable." Like Ah Bei, Youzan founder Bai Crow, who has experience as a product manager, has written an article expressing his joy, believing that it shows the cultural changes of China's new generation. Deutsches Boulevard, Mulling Street, Master House Ichiban Street, Baker Street, Sunset Boulevard, Tamagawa Hanabi Lane, Kill Matt Street... Listen to these street names about interest, in the eyes of many product managers, this is a rare innovation attempt and experiment in China's Internet for so many years.

At that time, a street chief in one of alpha city's ONE PARK squares, named "Xiang RiXue", believed that Abei's design concept had begun to treat alpha city as a special case of large-scale sociological experiments. He said, "Alpha City's product design ideas are good, and UI interaction is very forward-looking. To this day, I am glad to have played in it. ”

But while being praised by professionals, when Ah Bei's commitment to community functioning is getting better and better, things are getting more and more fun, people's hearts are beginning to tire. When the KOLs in the city began to form gangs, Alpha City began to have excess information and put the cart before the horse, which made some users dissatisfied, "still don't understand how to play", "don't know what to do", and even some people began to sign, calling for Douban to be restored to the original version. From 2014 to 2016, groups such as "Opposing the Dictatorship of Abei" and "Abei Can't Find the North" appeared on Douban, specifically to make large-scale complaints about him personally. No one can deny that content that is too advanced will abandon other users. People say that Abei's unique subversion is more like a rootless Ping with poor function and no mass support.

Obviously, Alpha City is not an entertainment product for the masses, and it seems too ambitious, which violates the principles of simple, straightforward product design.

In the view of opponents, with the increasing complexity of Douban's products, Abei has given up its pioneering position to meet the core needs of users to other knowledge communities that have risen later, such as Zhihu and Guohu. When the zhihu app released the second version, its popularity in the iOS social classification rankings surpassed WeChat and Momo and climbed to the first place; and the fruit shell seized the opportunity of the panic spread of the crowd in the 2011 Japanese nuclear leak, and popularized science on topics such as the salt storm, effectively capturing a large number of users.

If 2011 is the new yardstick, Douban's competitors begin to appear, from the perspective of content creation, they are not like Douban, blindly obsessed with idealized blueprints. From a fundraising perspective, they convince investors that the main thing to do will start with creating a "better Douban-style story." Around the same time, the two sites dedicated to high-quality content and high-quality users quickly opened and grew, and since then, there have been no latecomers in this niche market of the Chinese Internet.

Alpha City ended on May 12, 2015. In addition to the above reasons, one of the most important problems is that the momentum of Douban has gone. The new era of mobile Internet has begun, and the story of Douban is no longer fresh. ”

Failed path to commercialization

In 2011, Douban completed a $50 million C round of financing, and in 2012, Douban's revenue was 80 million, close to profit. But in a 2015 interview, Abei said: "We are now close to flat, two quarters of profit, two quarters of no." Mainly brand advertising. ”

That is to say, from 2012 to 2015, the profitability of Douban has not changed.

Douban's last financing stayed in the C round, and since then, the Internet has entered the era of knowledge payment. When today's headlines, air coin ICO, Momo, get, Himalaya expanded the profit model to investors, advertisers, virtual products, and paid products little by little, douban, which lagged behind, but there was no action, which was a cruelty.

Douban has been established for 13 years, the exit cycle of venture capital is generally seven years, once the growth of users stops, capital will pay special attention to the profit statement, which is an eternal economic law.

More seriously, the weak purchase data and low profit efficiency are not as serious as the lack of confidence of the users themselves.

I believe that many people have heard this god spit summarized by a Douban user.

"A few years ago, if you had a lot of fans, there were brands looking for you to cooperate and do promotion. Later, these brands found that there was no egg use at all, and the conversion rate of Douban users was too low. You have to believe that if there is a person who starts selling things on Douban, then he must also sell on other platforms, and it should all sell better than Douban.

A long time ago, bloggers who worked Douban Broadcasting worked hard and found that it was useless, and many gave up Douban. Good-looking photos are not sent, valuable texts are not written, and you do not interact with your group of netizens. You don't buy the books that Lao Tzu produced, and you don't buy a certain treasure shop opened by Lao Tzu.

Everyone wants to eat, they want to have money, and I show you every day how hard I am. I'm funny, but I'm poor. ”

In 2017, Douban finally announced the opening of the road to commercialization. This belated transformation path is not necessarily anxiety from behind the scenes.

Obviously, on Douban, Kol's commercial value cannot be realized in time, which means that Douban can only watch its core users gradually migrate to the newly emerging competitive websites. A Douban staff member named Hong Bo revealed, "Douban only spent less than $2 million in three years, and there was no pressure, but when it was done for six and a half years, the company was not profitable, and Fang felt anxious." ”

But in the exploration of this business model, Abei, an entrepreneur who has always been reluctant to change, has not made a fundamental revolution to Douban. Whether it is entering the book publishing industry and the film and television industry, or launching a new knowledge payment column - Douban Time, all business strategies can find benchmarks and prototypes from competitors.

Some people compare Douban with Zhihu and Kuaishou, and believe that the shortcomings of Douban's commercial monetization lie in the core users' vigilance and resistance to emotional content. A typical scenario is that a person writes a good article on WeChat or Weibo, takes a beautiful photo, can directly receive tips from fans, and can even bring goods in the form of e-commerce. But all this on Douban, it does not work.

Their classic inner line is usually "What's so great about you, I can do it too." Even if it doesn't work now, I'll just practice again. Sooner or later, I will see through that little bit of creation. ”

Tiger sniffing network author BoTong proposed a formula for how to mobilize the masses and make money for the masses, he believes that in an ideal state, the main point of Kol harvesting users is, "The consumers of the platform must always maintain a large number, and these users, do not intend and do not have the ability to convert into creators." In a word, the main force of exuberant purchases has never been elite, but a large number of "village Netcom" users.

In contrast, the emotional threshold of Douban users is too high, they despise unconditional acceptance and appreciation, and have no reason to worship or like. This is like an image analogy played by Bertone, "The more those places that look like 'masters are gathered', the less likely it is to let a cross-talker charge his peers." ”

Obviously, Douban's competitor website has gradually realized this theory, sinking the focus of knowledge payment to the public context, just like knowing to ban the invitation code registration system, resulting in a large number of student users massive expansion, just like the courses obtained, from finance, history, philosophy, technology, and gradually expanded to accept emotions with lower thresholds, parenting, financial management, and psychology. Although the quality of the community's responses has plummeted from this moment on, for its founders, the only way to replace a coin-operated machine for a harvester is to make persuasion less difficult. ------- of course, this will lead to the creation of the "original intention" and the object of later want to fight, before and after is no longer a group of people.

From this point of view, in order to put the user's "individual feelings" in the forefront, Abei does not regard the user as a harvester. It differs from other Chinese sites in that while all social networks are trying to stand on the sinking outlet of the channel and eager to be noticed by a larger number of users, Douban has always stood still there. In 2017, it launched its first paid knowledge class, called "Wake Up", the main speaker is Kitajima, and the category is unpopular poetry. In a doomed war for ordinary users, Douban tries its best to maintain its artistic energy and special value.

Someone once evaluated the value of Douban as "a world that is moving forward rapidly, a huge world that looks backwards and can be explored." "Concise.

It's about looking at the value of a business from another dimension. Most of the Internet companies to rob a large number of people in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, these behaviors are based on a basic common sense, the essence of the traffic dividend is to add new users, but the latest change is that these largest number of traffic dividends, may also be the last traffic dividend. In fact, the dividend of mobile traffic is slowly disappearing, that is, when the veil of those companies that are ripened by the wind and heat is lifted. When the market enters the stock market, those companies that have unique value and cultivate in a certain field are expected to gain new opportunities and value.

As a Douban user said, "the world is diverse, not everyone has to roll forward, there are always some people willing to look back", from the secular business judgment, perhaps Douban is indeed declining, but this is by no means equal to the judgment that "Douban has no vitality".

He said, "It is not that when Douban misses any outlet or dividend period, it will die, but when it begins to become not itself, it begins to really lose its vitality and become aging." ”

In cultural startups, maintaining quality and violating profitability is an eternal conflict, but this tearing has never made Ah Bei express a trace of grievances, complaints, or unwillingness in speech and self-statement. His temperament is not exposed, no matter the success of the product, he always responds lightly, so that many times, people can not see a little expression of his corporate gain and loss mentality in the rise and fall of Douban.

In a media report, a period of Abei's experience was introduced. At the age of 20, he spent a period of "great psychological disconnection" in the United States because of a sudden change in the environment, when he read many books on Zen Buddhism and even had the idea of becoming a monk.

The reporter did not know whether such an experience would affect his logic and judgment, nor did he know whether anyone had told him whether there was a debatable place in the commercial judgment of Douban products in recent years, and how he himself viewed this problem. But as far as the picture shown now is concerned, compared with the drastic reform, Abei obviously still wants Douban to maintain the old tone.

He said, "I've always been a person who doesn't like to be changed," and as he believes, Everything is on its place.