While some "hardcore" netizens are leaving, the craze of Chinese-style SNS websites may be in its infancy. According to statistics, the current number of SNS netizens in China is about 80 million, but compared to the total number of netizens of nearly 300 million, there is obviously a lot of room for imagination.
On June 10, the foreign blog index website Technorati released a survey report. In the past 120 days, only 7.7 million blogs among the 133 million blogs tracked by the website have continued to be updated, which means that 95% of the blogs have actually been abandoned. . Jalichandra, the company's executive officer, believes that some blogs that give up updating are due to the discovery of new platforms, such as SNS websites. The former glory of "National Blog" strongly aroused people's expectations for the value of SNS websites.
Websites compete for SNS projects
In China's Internet world, the trend of SNS is becoming increasingly obvious. "It's like you go hunting for treasure on a mountain. There are many stones. If you press a stone, the door may open. But it's hard to find where the stone is. Kaixin.com may have found such a stone, and then the door will open. ." said Zhang Chaoyang, Chairman of Sohu's Board of Directors.
Since last month, Sina's "Friends" and Sohu's "White Society" have officially entered the internal testing stage. Together with Tencent alumni QQ and NetEase Blog, the largest business portals in China have successively entered the SNS market. At the same time, Alibaba is planning to launch "People's Network", Business Bao is launching "Business Network", and China Mobile 139.com and China Unicom are also planning to enter the SNS position. In addition, Kaixin.com, Xiaonei.com, Zhanzui.com, Tianji.com, Hainei.com, 5G, Ant.com, Colleagues.com, which have been quietly developing over the past year... In the eyes of many people, the melee of domestic SNS websites is about to begin.
"Facebook is currently the most popular social networking site in Europe and the United States. However, due to regional and cultural differences, the user base is bound to be more or less different from the user base of domestic social networking sites. As far as social networking sites are concerned, advocating social networking will never change. "But compared to websites like Facebook, which focus on keeping users connected and emphasizing real social interaction, domestic users prefer entertaining and open-ended social interaction." Chen Pingchuan, product director of NetEase Hangzhou Research Institute, believes that entertainment and design are at the same time. ——"There will also be great opportunities to apply this concept to community websites."
A manager of Kaixin.com believes that Kaixin.com is a Chinese-style innovation, and the name of the website "Kaixin.com" reflects the unique values and life philosophy of the Chinese people, and is in line with the Chinese people's philosophy of life of "being happy is good."
In fact, this is the biggest expectation that users have for the future of Kaixin.com. "Being able to keep the game fresh is one of the reasons why I insist on playing." However, Luo Hong, who claims that his "enthusiasm for SNS websites has waned," said that he still needs a necessary reason to stay: "There is substance." "The helpful role", this refers to strengthening the social tool role of current domestic SNS websites.
Novices and veterans seek breakthroughs
Are all the people gearing up to enter the SNS market mentally prepared? "First of all, the SNS components on the market are not a whole in themselves and must be based on a solid community foundation, otherwise they will inevitably be short-lived. In recent years, In recent years, the user base of social networking sites has been greatly developed, but the social products themselves have not improved much," Chen Pingchuan believes.
"SNS components will still be popular among netizens now and in the future. But overall, the SNS components currently on the market are seriously homogenized and lack fresh works. In future development, there must be more excellent components with themes. The emergence of SNS components can drive the long-term development and overall value improvement of SNS components." Chen Pingchuan is still full of confidence in NetEase's upcoming SNS components.
Alibaba's upcoming trial version of "Renmaotong" shows that it will take a very different path from existing SNS websites. "Our original intention is not to build an SNS, but to build a platform where businessmen can exchange business opportunities. If we say it is an SNS, it actually draws on the concept of a communication platform." Lin Kai, head of Alibaba's community development department, said that the direction of this project It is very clear that it must provide actual value to users.
"Businessmen will not be willing to spend even a little extra energy on inputs that cannot get the output. Therefore, this SNS project does not require any game components, and since it involves business secrets, special attention will be paid to privacy protection."
Profit model debate continues
Since the end of last year, the first product placement advertisement has appeared on Kaixin.com - in the "car market" of the "competition for parking space" component, the Buick New Regal ranked first. In the following five or six days, Kaixin.com users " "Bought" more than 400,000 vehicles. This attracted the attention of many users, and since then the number of product placement ads on the network has continued to increase.
For the future development of Chinese-style SNS websites, profit-making methods are currently one of the biggest debates. Cheng Binghao believes that the main purpose of product placement is to explore a unique SNS advertising and marketing model. We hope that through exploration, we can introduce advertisers while also improving user experience. "SNS is a revolutionary new thing. SNS can try all the previous mainstream business models on the Internet. Through the unique role of SNS, the previous mainstream business models on the Internet have become different and more interesting."
He emphasized that Kaixin.com is now mainly in the stage of developing users and has no pressure on income. At the same time, it has also introduced venture capital to support the early development of the website. So there is no financial pressure.
It is understood that Facebook has begun to obtain new revenue by launching an on-site payment system. This move may find a sustainable way for the rapidly growing social networking site to achieve profitability.
Chen Pingchuan believes that product placement is a relatively clear business model of major SNS websites at present, but whether this model can be expanded into a combination of e-commerce and SNS and evolved into the core business model of SNS is still difficult to observe at present. Conclusion below.
“For a successful product, the first thing to consider is not how to tap commercial benefits, but should focus on improving its own services and optimizing user experience. If you ignore user experience and deliberately emphasize commercial benefits, the product itself will definitely be damaged in the end. There is no longer-term development possible," he stressed.