Text | Noise Reduction NoNoise, author | Strange
Some time ago, Xiaohongshu applied for the trademark "Old Red Book" and was sent to the hot search by Weibo netizens.
Someone worried that they would have to be planted in 30 years, and I laughed.
That's obviously a lot of worry.
In 2021, 14.2% of China's elderly population over the age of 65 is the highest since statistics were available, while the birth rate hit a new low since the founding of the People's Republic of China. That is to say, if everyone does not grasp the birth of a baby, and when they enter old age after thirty or forty years, they will either insist on continuing to work until they falter, or accept the shrinkage of pensions, even if they are planted, they will have more than enough and lack of strength.
Little Red Book was also frightened and waved his hand: Don't think about it. It's just defensive and reserve registration to prevent backordering.
In the Little Red Book, which has lived more than 200 million a month, there are many elderly users "lurking" now, but it does not want to be labeled as "sunset red".
Although many mainstream Internet products have developed love functions for the elderly, such as large fonts, large icons, large volume playback, etc., no one has placed it in the most prominent position of the main interface. In the business category, serving the elderly, serving only the elderly, these are two completely different concepts.
However, focusing on the elderly, the Little Red Book is serious.
At the same time that Xiaohongshu applied for the trademark "Old Red Book" in June 2021, an app called "Youyou Video" was quietly launched. Public information shows that Fu Ping, the supervisor of its registered company, is the technical leader of Xiaohongshu mobile terminal, which is considered to be a low-key attempt by Xiaohongshu to lay out the elderly market. A few months later, xiaohongshu's recruitment of middle-aged and elderly content operation positions also appeared on a recruitment website.
The penetration rate of Xiaohongshu in the elderly group, especially in first-tier cities, may be higher than many people think.
For young people, the success and exquisite content of the Little Red Book may make you feel that you are "unworthy of being a human being". But for the elderly, it is grounded, the elderly version of the kitchen + keep + health care public account collection.
Netizen "Wang Fan" posted a conversation between himself and his mother on Weibo:
My Mom: Do you know there's a net that teaches cooking?
Me: What's it called?
My mom: It's called Little Red Book.
Me: Doesn't little red book teach luxury tourism to show off wealth?
My Mom: No, I teach cooking.
When I forwarded this screenshot in the circle of friends, Liu Jia, an indigenous friend in Beijing, expressed his approval for the first time. Her 65-year-old mother, a veteran user of Little Red Book, downloaded it not long after the epidemic began, and read it almost every day. Wellness, food and fitness are her favorites.
"Faster than I can see," she sent a rolling expression.
"Maybe it's because people are richer and more idle than you." I replied.
In Beijing, no one dares to underestimate any aunt wearing Uniqlo fleece. Their lavishness in buying imported beef at a membership store will make you wonder if you're not worthy of the year-end bonus for an LV base. After all, people may have a few books in their hands, but you only have a few one-year rental contracts in your drawer.
tuyere
Not everyone in this class of elderly people has money, but at least they have more time than social animal young people.
According to a "2020 Report on the Internet Life of the Elderly", the average daily Internet use of elderly users over the age of 60 is 64.8 minutes, which is 16.2 minutes more than that of users over the age of 40. I believe that this time data is mainly contributed through mobile phones.
The Internet is already full of elderly people.
Of course, the Little Red Book cannot be absent. As a typical Haipai Internet company, in addition to a slightly conservative low profile, it is never ambiguous in the matter of "catching up with the fashion".
It has followed several waves of trends and already has experience.
For example, e-commerce.
In 2014, with the listing of Alibaba and the entry of the e-commerce industry into a golden age, Xiaohongshu shouted out the slogan of "all in e-commerce" and established a "welfare society". It also confidently chose the heaviest self-operated model, self-built warehousing and customer service.
"E-commerce is responsible for making money to support the family, and content is responsible for beauty", this vision was once close to realization. In 2015, the company, which has 15 million users, achieved sales of more than 700 million.
But the good times didn't last long, too high costs, changes in customs policies, the entry of large companies... Many factors are superimposed, and Xiaohongshu's self-operated dream is ultimately unsustainable.
In 2017, founder Qu Fang said in an interview with 36Kr that the words have changed:
"Cross-border e-commerce is only a phased concept", "The proportion of cross-border sales of Little Red Book has dropped to less than 50%."
Like falling in love, desperately breaking down the past is to catch up with the next one. In 2018, Internet companies blew the east wind of "online and offline integration", with Hema and Xiaomi homes blossoming everywhere in the country as a typical example, and offline business was fragrant again.
This wave of popular trends soon blew to Shanghai Xintiandi, and Xiaohongshu quickly reproduced the gameplay. In June of that year, the Little Red Book House opened in Joy City in Jing'an.
However, Shanghai celebrities always have to face it. In order to avoid being too embarrassed when failing, the official special emphasis this time is that this is an "offline experience space", which is an extension of community retail offline, rather than offline stores.
The achievements of The Beijing Internet Company in creating word games such as concepts were indeed very exquisitely learned by Xiaohongshu. I don't know if when this "offline experience space" closes on New Year's Day 2020, whether the Xiaohongshu team is congratulating its own foresight.
Destiny
Of course, the makeover growth of Xiaohongshu in recent years has also benefited from two outlets: content e-commerce and new consumption.
In June 2018, Xiaohongshu won the $300 million financing led by Ali, riding on the east wind of "content e-commerce".
This year, Taobao homepage has a short video portal, "no content, no e-commerce" has become the consensus of the industry. In the second half of the year, Xiaohongshu changed the slogan from "the good things of the world" to "the good life of the world", and began the "sharpening knife" of the content ecology.
It's lucky enough. A lot of effort, done too early or too late, is in vain.
Xiaohongshu has raised a large number of active KOCs, and new consumption outlets have come. Because to rebuild the user's mind, these new brands need to pay great attention to marketing, and some beauty brands even spend more on marketing than on research and development.
Some insiders said that if you want to be a new consumer brand, you must first put 5,000 reviews on the Little Red Book.
Genki Forest, Bubble Mart, Perfect Diary... Later, these new consumer brands have all achieved the rise of Xiaohongshu and established a mass base. Of course, the transaction is ultimately completed on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall.
The little red book that took the money had to confess his fate. Making wedding dresses for others like an advertising agency is its fate at a specific stage.
Or rather, one of the fatalities.
After all, it is difficult for most people to clearly explain the positioning of the Little Red Book. Advertising and marketing platforms, content communities, and e-commerce platforms seem to be all, and they don't seem to be pure.
From 2017 to 2020, the number of users of Xiaohongshu has achieved four consecutive jumps of 50 million, 150 million, 300 million, and 450 million, and the valuation has also risen all the way, reaching as high as 20 billion US dollars by the time the E round of financing is completed in November 2021.
In the content community at that time, this was second only to Station B, which was more than 2 times the market value of Weibo and more than 3 times that of Zhihu.
At the cost of blurring identity tags, Xiaohongshu has achieved generalization of content and growth of user data. More and more commercial planting notes have also brought about an increase in revenue. In 2020, Xiaohongshu's total revenue is about 1 billion US dollars, of which advertising revenue accounts for about 80%.
But for those who are chasing the wind, the success of one stage may become a burden to the next stage. When Little Red Book sets its sights on the capital market, it will soon fall into a new embarrassment:
The story of the "waist" advertising agency is not sexy enough.
increase
The two companies with the highest Internet advertising revenues in China in 2021 are Alibaba and ByteDance. Their annual advertising revenue exceeds 100 billion.
Previously, it was reported that the proportion of byteDance's advertising revenue in 2020 has reached 77%. This has, to some extent, raised concerns about the lack of revenue growth.
Questioning the commercial imagination space is the fate of "advertising agencies".
Little Red Book can't escape. It can only be "optimized" like bloggers use filters. But the underlying requirement for all "optimization" is traffic. After all, in the world of the Internet, traffic is the foundation of all stories. It's like running a water park to make money, the first thing to do is to find a large enough water with abundant sources.
Not everyone can find it, and not everyone can keep it. As a result, traffic anxiety has become the "same breath and common destiny" of Internet companies.
Following the data of 450 million registered users, Xiaohongshu has not updated its results for a long time. The message conveyed by this move is as clear as the daily active data that Douyin has not published for more than a year:
It can't move.
Stagnation is always terrible, and it tends to push people into the opposite downward passage. Just like losing weight, I have a friend who has been exercising and controlling the diet for 1 year, but the weight does not move at all. Recently, she plans to throw the pot to the gene, just lie flat.
Of course, the little red book that carries the hope of capital cannot lie flat.
It is focusing on expanding male users in 2021. Data show that this year, the male users of Little Red Book increased by 30%.
I have a straight boyfriend who is proficient in technology products, our children are of the same age, every time I need to buy something like a baby's English reading pen, balance car, etc., I will ask him, in the past, most of the links he threw me were "what is worth buying", and recently it has become a little red book.
However, this part of the growth obviously cannot increase the proportion of e-commerce business in Xiaohongshu's revenue.
One is because everyone is used to reading the Little Red Book and going to other e-commerce platforms to complete transactions; second, because male users are too picky.
On the road to traffic monetization, male users are not very valuable. This is what a friend who is engaged in short video entrepreneurship told me. He has a financial account with millions of fans in his hand, the proportion of men was once as high as 90%, investors were not satisfied, and the live broadcast with goods attempts were also quite bleak.
"Middle-aged men are not as good as dogs", every time we talk about this, the middle-aged man will shake his head repeatedly. The CEO of the company with an annual revenue of more than 40 million yuan likes to wear UNIQLO every day, overtime box lunches do not exceed 30 yuan, and a 200,000 car has been in service for seven or eight years.
I chose to take his word for it.
interest
It seems that elderly users are like the traffic pool that Xiaohongshu wants to exert its power next.
It has become a consensus that China has entered an aging society, and the elderly are also actively participating in the new Internet lifestyles such as taxis, takeaways, and online shopping.
In my home, since my mother learned to shop online on Douyin, she no longer complained about my behavior of moving the courier to my home, but sent the pickup code of the express station to the crowd at home every three to five minutes, so that my father could retrieve it when he walked.
They also love to share and discuss. In every WeChat group named "Love a Family", the most active users are definitely the elderly. They like to share health, be human, or simply say good morning and good night to each other. Such users, all content communities like.
Little Red Book said no, but the body was already honest.
Some elderly creators have already "red" on the Little Red Book. Food blogger "Food in My House", 59 years old, retired for many years, likes to cook, and shares his simple meals with his wife every day. Her 180,000 followers, many of whom are young people, have no shortage of comments like this under those photos of modest meals:
"Missing granddaughter?" I can." "Wow, I miss my grandmother." "I'm a non-cooker who likes to read your notes."
Although in reality, when these young people who wrote warm messages return home, they may not be too lazy to say "thank you" to the meal carefully prepared by the elderly, at least at the moment when they leave a message, the little red book satisfies their emotional needs.
Such content, if it appears on the "Old Red Book" special app for the elderly, probably has no such effect.
To some extent, young people watching the exquisite life of the elderly in Xiaohongshu is the same as they are watching the rural life of Classmate Zhang in Douyin, just taking an escapist placebo in an immersive way.
From another point of view, Xiaohongshu taps the traffic of men and the elderly, and can also increase the activity of old users while pulling new ones. The "ladies free" strategy prevailing in bars is a similar logic. As many women as possible, it is possible to attract more male users, which in turn will lead to higher alcohol consumption.
Therefore, in this move of Xiaohongshu, the time and consumption budget of young female users may still be the ultimate "prey".
Finally, back to the topic of the elderly.
Developing and operating an app similar to "Old Red Book" alone and absorbing elderly creators and users is obviously the laziest and most ineffective way. (Similarly, I don't watch the future of friends' videos).)
I recently talked to some "old sweet potatoes", and the biggest feeling is that it is no different from young people.
Most of the content they pay attention to in the Little Red Book has nothing to do with age, but follows the interest. Like to cook, watch food; pay attention to health, look at health; get used to sports, watch fitness.
Moreover, like my mother, who will be over sixty in the next year, but the psychological age will stay 10 years ago, rejecting all the elderly users who are set up by retired old ladies, what they hate most is the elderly App.
After all, with the Little Red Book, you can flaunt your own tide; with the "Old Red Book", you can only admit your own oldness.
Older users can bring new life to little red book, but it is unlikely to be its new story.
If you really want to "please" the elderly and lay out the future, Xiaohongshu might as well forget their age, return to the original intention of users, treat them as living ordinary people with their own personalities and preferences, do a solid job in community content management, and explore a healthier business monetization model.
Perhaps one day, in the key categories of the Little Red Book's treatment of false grass, there will be elderly health care products and health care equipment. Because, the mighty old man, has come.