"For 6 years, I have read almost every technical post posted on the forum. For thousands of days and nights, I almost feel like vomiting. But only by mastering the basic skills can you clearly master the basics of the website. What are the silent majority thinking?”
The stubbornness and persistence of grassroots entrepreneurs: establishing the core value of the website
javaEye was founded in September 2003. The origin was that founder Fan Kai was studying and researching the open source framework of Java but found that there was no place for discussion, so he started one himself. Today, it is already the leader in domestic professional content community websites.
Fan Kai described the operation of the early website as: playing on his own website for more than 10 hours a day, except for sleeping, he spent time on BBS. Slowly the popularity came.
However, various shortcomings of BBS are also encountered unexpectedly: kneeling, naked begging, leaving claws, receiving points, marking, headlines, etc.
The first question Fan Kai throws to website operators is "What is the core value of the website?" He repeatedly asked himself, "Is an atmosphere of chaos, gossip, and mutual attacks what I want?"
Fan Kai persistently believes that what he wants is a place for in-depth exchange of technology, peace of mind and learning.
In order to create a relatively clean and quiet place for technology exchange, Fan Kai began to adopt a relatively strict management system in December 2003. Most websites have these management systems, but few can actually implement them like JavaEye. "Other webmasters are afraid of offending users and fearing that others will stop coming. I'm not afraid. I don't even want this kind of low-quality traffic. First of all, you must agree with these values to be a member of JavaEye."
New users of JavaEye are required to take mandatory questions when registering. Take 13 multiple-choice questions related to the forum rules. If you answer incorrectly, you will not be approved. Fan Kai gave an example: A user saw a very good post and wanted to reply. If you want to register, just register. If you want to activate your email, just activate it. Then, when you come back to post, if it still doesn't work, you have to ask a question. Even if I got the question right, it still didn't work. It said that newly registered users would have to wait 3 days before they could post. So this user scolded javaeye and said it was very unfriendly.
Fan Kai’s explanation is: For javaEye, the guarantee of orderly discussion is the best user experience for core users.
Fan Kai believes that establishing the core value of a website is to ask yourself: "What kind of website do you want to make?" and then examine "whether this website has value to other people." If you have a clear answer to these two points, then remember this sentence:
Go your own way and let others tell you. Many friends have urged me and many netizens have cursed me, but please remain unmoved. Please be persistent and stop being influenced by others.
Brand building of professional BBS: “Good money drives out bad money”
In December 2003, Fan Kai decided to implement a strict forum management system, which many people questioned. But in fact, the website actually developed rapidly in early 2004, and word of mouth spread instantly.
Although 10,000 non-target users were purged, 100 core users were retained. And the content generated by these 100 core users attracted 100,000 members. Because these 100 users can create a lot of valuable content and interact well with each other. The seemingly suicidal management system actually brings about the core competitiveness of the forum.
The charm and flaws of BBS all come from the "upvoting system". Posts with the latest replies are placed at the top, so these posts will be followed by more people, get more comments, and can quickly stir up a topic. It can be said that BBS is easier to prosper than SNS, blogs, Baidu Q&A, etc. Replies are like equal voting rights. Novices and experienced users alike have this right to push a post to the top by replying. In the early stages of website operation, this mechanism can quickly help BBS gain popularity and reach the climax of user interaction. However, reply trolling and clickbaiting have also become the inevitable products of this upvoting system. But this is very bad for professional BBS and will destroy professional and high-quality discussions.
Therefore, BBS will generally have a similar curve: it will rise quickly and there will be a very prosperous period; but as the number of members increases, the core users will be diluted; many of the rights of old users with credibility will be lost. If it is not reflected, there will be an effect of "bad money drives out good money"; when the core users are gone, this BBS will be replaced by a new BBS, and it will face extinction.
Fan Kai's strict management system for JavaEye, a dedicated BBS, firmly rejects non-target users and uses core users to attract more members.
In addition to the test set for new registered users mentioned above, you can also give an example of how to attract core users. In BBS, you can often see repetitive introductory question posts such as "Kneel to beg" and "Weak question", but this will tire the core members, so Fan Kai simply opened a Q&A channel to divert the need for questions and answers. The forum is only positioned for "communication" and "sharing" and does not allow questions.
Product innovation: from relying on star members to improving the overall competitiveness of the community
By 2006, innovation in the Java field dropped sharply, so there were fewer topics for discussion. Coupled with the strict management system and insufficient content production, the community began to become silent.
However, the lack of content is not a problem in itself. Instead, the problem arises with the "star members" who once relied on them. The old members became very familiar with each other and began to form an internal political force, dominating the forum and excluding new members. Celebrity members respond to every call and can even create public opinion that is not conducive to the forum. Conflicts between the website and them are inevitable.
Star members are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can attract many people and are one of the core competitiveness of a website. However, if they are too strong, they will hinder the entry of new people, have an inflated mentality, and become self-centered, becoming the owner that the website cannot afford to offend, and even cause divisions and draw away users.
In 2006, Fan Kai began to rewrite the website. In January 2008, the website was rewritten for the second time and gradually transformed into a comprehensive community portal.
On the one hand, we are innovating BBS products, and on the other hand, we have opened up news channels, blogs, anthologies, circles and other sections, gradually reducing the proportion of BBS traffic. Now BBS traffic only accounts for about 25% of the entire site. The impact is not that big. 1. BBS product innovation:
1. Abolish the forum moderator system and replace it with "voting" democratic resolutions
A very important thing about BBS is the right to set top posts and highlights. These rights are originally only in the hands of the moderators. But now JavaEye has abolished the forum moderator system. It should be said that it has abolished the hegemony of discourse, and only retains "administrators" to delete posts, block IDs, etc. in accordance with the forum management system. For the original core members, levels are only set based on points, and a differentiated voting system with different level weights is set up. For example, new members cast one vote, and old members cast one vote for a weight of 10 votes. The generation of essence posts is that when a certain post reaches a certain voting point, it is automatically generated and automatically adds points to the poster.
2. Edition
If the forum is not divided into different sections, the content will be mixed and users with niche needs will be squeezed out; if the forum is divided into too many sections, the popularity of the small section will be low, and users will still go to the large section to post.
JavaEye's solution: only divide it into 14 large versions, not small versions, and use tags to implement small categories (a total of 120 small categories). For example, mobile application development is a large version, and this large version contains several tags. , such as iphone, android.
If there are more niche needs, JavaEye will use "circles" to meet them.
3. Integration and unification of forums and blogs
Forums are public places, and users lack a sense of belonging to their own content and are difficult to centrally manage; blogs are more sustainable, and the author's writing is more durable and more personalized.
When rewriting the website, Fan Kai connected the two underlying databases. A post can be published as a blog at the same time, and vice versa. And it is mandatory to unify the classification. Fan Kai made a statistics and found that about 40% of the posts are user blogs.
2. Comprehensive content construction of JavaEye
Editorial leadership: news, columns
User autonomy: forum, Q&A
Complete user autonomy: blogs, circles
Next step:
1. Vertical aggregation by content:
For example, if I want to read Android, I don’t care about the form of the content, whether it is a blog, Q&A, column, or forum. Now the classification of JavaEye's entire site is unified, which lays a good foundation for content aggregation.
2. Intelligent analysis of user access behavior
Being able to have specific data on user behavior is of value to users in obtaining more intelligent content recommendations; for websites, it can do more in business. If you are interested in learning about the future prospects of JavaEye development ( http://robbin.javaeye.com/blog/602354 ), you can go to Fan Kai's personal blog.
To summarize the keys to JavaEye’s success:
1. Values:
Serve the target user groups unswervingly; ruthlessly abandon non-target users
2. Technology as the core driving force
3. Agile product design and website operation
Design and development will be online in 2 to 3 weeks at most. The key is to go online and operate, and it takes at least 2 to 3 months for the product to be perfected. The blog product has undergone 1 year of revision. The modifications after going online are much more important than the previous behind-closed-doors work.
For example, blog comments are written in reverse order.
Most users' demand suggestions are pseudo-needs. They do not see them from your perspective.
Why should users come to your blog? The blogging community does a good job of promoting his articles, the community atmosphere is good, etc. It’s definitely not for a lot of functions, because no matter how many functions you make, you can’t beat WordPress. Users who pursue functionality will still be dissatisfied with you. It is better to do a good job in blog SEO and a good community.
Don’t let a good deed be too small: go deep inside the website and understand every detail.
There are no experts on the Internet. Yu Jun (former product president of Baidu) searches for 1,000 words every day. After years of persistence, the workload is huge, but it is this accumulation that creates a product.