Weibo coverage is not only a grassroots carnival

In the current internet age, Weibo is undoubtedly the most popular social platform in China, after a tweet, it is tantamount to throwing a sentence into a vast digital world, any micro-blog theoretically exist n-level forwarding may even be able to cover hundreds of millions of users, but there is also this possibility, no one cares. What are the factors that affect the forwarding of a tweet, Tang Runhua, a researcher at the Institute of Journalism at Xinhua News agency, wrote on his microblog in October 11:

The factors that affect a Weibo forwarding number are sorted by weight: 1, the number of fans, 2, the number of fans, 3, the attraction of the topic, 4, micro-blog release time, 5, micro-blog performance skills.

Of these five factors, the first two are of the same nature: the size of the propagation node. The difference is that the first part of the blogger's own slowly working out, is the initiative results, and the second is difficult to control. Without a paid release, you don't know which forwarding person will forward your microblog. The latter three are the same as the first: The blogger initiative results, both content and time, are controllable.

Tang researcher obviously thinks the 1th most important, I basically agree. He thought that the second factor was also important, and I agreed again. But his identity and my identity are not enough to prove anything, we need a good example to do comparative analysis. But more than a year has passed, has not found a good case, until the ancient city bell tower this micro-bo suddenly burst red the arrival of the day.

The ancient city bell tower of the micro-blog every two hours, the time used by the language symbol is: clang. This is a seemingly boring microblog, which does not release any tweets other than this "clang" and ensures a precise point in time. On the morning of January 7, the microblog had more than 20,000 fans, but in less than a day it climbed up to more than 100,000, and by the time I wrote this paper-January 9-the boring microblog had 400,000 fans.

But this boredom is not its first, and I found a microblog on Weibo called "Big_ben_clock" (in fact, the Big Ben on Twitter had already been there)-a netizen told me that even this bigbenclock is not a boring one. But it doesn't matter, we've got two little, almost-similar tweets, in other words, the five factors that Tang researchers mentioned were almost the same as the latter three.

This is a near-perfect comparison case, perfect like a lab thing, which naturally helps the observer excluding some variables. I did a little information collection, "The Ancient city bell tower" the first clang is October 26, 11, and "Big_ben_clock" first sound bong is July 30, 10. The latter is apparently boring earlier. Until the tipping point of January 7, two micro-blogs had a similar number of fans: more than 20,000.

Then one of the same boring users sent a microblog, he said: "Found a history of the most boring and the most perseverance of Weibo!@ ancient city bell tower." The microblog was forwarded 130,000 times on the same day. This user is not a large size, even the V is not, how can have such a great influence? One of the most critical communication nodes is: Tsai, this man is a 20 million-fan owner.

Tsai as the first to detonate the node, but also attracted a large number of fans may not be so much but is already a big V Weibo to forward. In a short day, the ancient city bell tower fan number soared, then Sina operator intervention, as a hot topic, once again promote the number of fans of the ancient city bell tower. As it rose to 400,000 powder, it also led to the number of fans of Big_ben_clock, who now retains 70,000 fans.

What this case can tell us is that, in the same context, the popularity of a microblog or a microblog account depends on whether or not a large number is involved. The results of large participation are totally different. But if it is not to do a paid release, whether the large forwarding, belong to a very random event, or that the blogger itself can not control. This is a fairly important conclusion, in most microblogging marketing cases, buying large forwarding is a conventional way. The idea of winning by content is incidental-because good creative content is too rare.

In addition to a commercial conclusion, we may be able to introduce some social-related conclusions that are not commercially relevant: Is Twitter a grassroots carnival? At least this case is not. On the surface of a boring micro-bo grassroots can not go to the grassroots, but without the right to have a voice of the social celebrity (Tsai) to help, it can only do big_ben_clock degree. In Weibo this field, basically does not exist what discourse affirmative, celebrity is also celebrity, cock silk still is cock silk.