On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Weibo launched a low-profile social e-commerce product – “Lv Zhou”.
After downloading the “Lv Zhou” App, the First Financial Reporter found that there were too many advertisements in the past, and the information flow was too messy. The “Lv Zhou”was refreshing and no ads. The channels were divided into recommended, worn, food, travel, beauty, sports. 12 stars, cute pets, photography, parenting, home, and value. At present, the “Lv Zhou” has not been open for registration, and ordinary users need an invitation code to open it.
During the Weibo Red Man Festival held in August this year, Wei Bo, senior vice president of Weibo, said that in the past five years, Weibo has mainly done two things in the traffic system and distribution: First, in the private domain traffic, it will be more and more traffic is allocated to the vertical domain; the second is to create public domain traffic based on hot and hot search. At present, public domain traffic is mainly based on entertainment and funny, but in the future, half of the public domain traffic will be used to support vertical content.
The reporter learned that the logic of Weibo traffic distribution is that entertainment news, star gossip and other topics dominated on Weibo. In the round after round of star scandals and star gossip, the traffic of Weibo platform continued to hit a new high. Even in the vertical field, Weibo’s traffic is mainly concentrated in a few accounts. Therefore, ordinary users, small and medium-sized bloggers in the vertical field have limited perception of microblogging to support vertical content.
The“Lv Zhou” that carries more vertical content is more of a small red book to create a grass community. The ability of the platform to shake the sound, fast hand, small red book and other platforms has proved the potential of content e-commerce.
At present, Weibo also bears a lot of pressure on performance.
Weibo’s revenue sources mainly come from: advertising and marketing revenue, value-added services. In the second quarter of 2019, the former accounted for approximately 85.85% of revenue, which was the main support for Weibo’s revenue. The latter also included members and live broadcast services, accounting for approximately 14.15%. Among them, advertisers are divided into three categories: SME advertising, major customers, Alibaba, Ali’s large-scale advertising orders after the acquisition of Weibo is very important.
According to financial report data, in the second quarter of 2019, Weibo achieved revenue of $370.7 million in advertising and marketing, compared with $369.9 million in the same period last year, a slight increase of 0.21%. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of decline in growth rate. The quarterly growth rate was 12.61%. Among them, advertising and marketing revenues from SMEs and major customers were $346.5 million, an increase of 2% from $338.7 million in the same period last year. Based on this, the revenue from related party Alibaba was US$24.2 million, down 22.63% from US$31.28 million in the second quarter of 2018.
One is “marking my life” and the other is “finding a beautiful world.” Similar to “Instagram+Little Red Book”, the image-based interest is the same as the good grass community. The “Lv Zhou”’s on-line node is more like the market share of robbing Xiaohongshu. Due to content violations, the Xiaohongshu APP has been removed from the Android and Apple mobile app stores, and new users have been unable to search for the app in the app store. The deadline for the release is unknown.
At present, Xiaohongshu will use more energy in comprehensive investigation, rectification and self-examination. Recently, Xiaohongshu publicized some illegal user IDs and illegal content in the APP. From the publicity point of view, the reasons for violations include vulgar teasing. Comments, sales of high imitation fakes, illegal advertising back-to-back content, advertising sales, smashing attacks, not friendly comments. Xiaohongshu gave different degrees of punishment for 48 hours of ban, 7 days of ban, permanent ban, and title, and said that he was tolerant of violations.
The lack of products caused by the off-book of Xiaohongshu has already reacted in the market. On Taobao, the download link of Xiaohongshu has been sold for 5 yuan, and the demand for UGC content community is still strong. In terms of brand launch, many brand owners began to turn traffic distribution channels into content communities such as vibrato and fast hands.
Undoubtedly, the rapid development of new social e-commerce represented by Xiaohongshu has verified the huge potential of social e-commerce. Under the word-of-mouth effect and the fission of community users, Xiaohongshu has experienced explosive growth of users. In the face of Xiao Hongshu, a ship full of gold but stranded in the middle, everyone wants to take the opportunity to board the ship. Weibo has ready-made net red, star, technology and content resources, and is able to quickly make “like red” One of the “products of the book”.
For Weibo, relying on Ali’s e-commerce supply chain resources may make it easier to run smoothly on the e-commerce path. At the same time, in the face of vibrato, fast-handed competition for user time, and the main business touched the ceiling, Weibo really needs to find a new “Lv Zhou.”