Eight-Year-old station cool: A UGC community from small pond to large oil field

How does an ordinary personal blog evolve into a high-profile design community? Let's look at the reasons behind it. People who are not related to design, it is difficult to know how to stand cool, such a site to provide "design material." Standing cool (Zcool) just passed eight birthday, more than 2.5 million designer users, more than 10,000 new content is uploaded every day, more than 7 million daily browsing, just completed the millions of U.S. A round of financing ... How do they grow from a personal blog that shares material to a well-known designer UGC community in China? How to turn a small pond into a deep well, or even become an irreplaceable large oil field in the future? How a pond is brought together in the networked era, theoretically, you can find any material you want to find in Google. However, you will always need more discriminating material to share, through their own aesthetic, standard to filter. Liang Yaoming's 2006 establishment was cool just to collect what he liked, and when he found that his share was popular, more and more users came to the station because of the search for material, and he realized that it was time to build a bigger "pond". 2007 Station Cool forum on the line, "hungry" designers soon around the graphic design, web design, painting, photography, materials and other areas of discussion, a daily posting volume quickly reached three thousand or four thousand. For the vertical community, this is not a small number. At the beginning, standing cool through the material to attract the attention of designers, through the forum released the desire to communicate between the designers, for the station cool follow-up chemical changes to prepare the first step. From the pond to the deep wells, open the "community" era after the first batch of users, about the station cool rethink again. "How to make the exchange between designers to restore the essence?" The design content is the essence of the designers ' communication, and the forum divides the connection. "The first, Liang Yaoming choice is" to forum ", the old station cool material sharing and forum Exchange fusion for" around the design content of the exchange and discussion ", users can publish original works or stand outside the material in the community, the exchange focus on those who love the good design. From the forum to the community has undergone no small pains, including from the old user's understanding and not adapt, but it seems that this is a correct decision. It is difficult to build a design community that can really "grow up" by relying only on the traditional 1.0 editing mode. At the same time, the station cool established the "first page" mechanism, to ensure that those who create truly good original works of the station cool users, can successfully the first page, access to more users of concern and influence. With this theme to redesign the new station cool, has continued to this day. Users can upload, share or create in a cool community, with a combination of wallpaper, cool station, painting, Interaction, plane, 3D, photography, industrial design, space design and many other design topics and discussions. Third, "through the mechanism to promote the emergence of good design", when the user uploaded an original works, other users enthusiastic discussion will inspire his next creation and sharing, which formedA forward loop. The former competitor has been far behind. Station cool from a personal blog, successfully transformed into a UGC design community, it is through these three tips: "community to enhance the efficiency of communication, using the recommendation mechanism to filter content, the rules to promote user share creation." "An added bonus is that when users are highly active in the community, the cool team becomes more relaxed and can focus on market operations and new product development." They currently have image trading, design outsourcing, design and recruitment products and services, and the team still maintain a small size of 30 people. From deep wells to oilfields, the opportunity of the vertical minority community Internet development to today, the traditional all-inclusive, unified and governance of the thinking has been outdated, the major portals of the community decline is supporting. At the same time, a growing number of enthusiasts, such as music fever, hardware fever, life management, mother and child, tea, such as health, they gathered together for a highly concentrated, vertical discussion, is producing can not be ignored. For example, the shell electronics in the station cool launched the "Smart Watch UI Design Contest" in two months Time received 1455 design works, excellent works of high concentration, basically no other design site can do this effect, this is the value of vertical and focus. This wave of vertical communities, the most important features: 1, highly dependent on users to create content. 2, focus on a limited number of small areas, vertical deep excavation of the discussion. 3, based on the existing users, the vertical field of horizontal commercialization exploration attempt. And the front, is not Yimapingchuan. First, it is limited by the vertical field, the audience of some vertical communities is limited, whether it is just for fun, or there is a viable business model, the need for doubt and caution. Second, most of the minority communities are led by individuals, lack of product capacity, it is difficult to translate good ideas into practical products. From some of the vertical communities I've been exposed to, the shortage of developers and designers is basically common. But even so, we still believe that the pot culture of the traditional network community is bound to be liberated, vertical and small communities are irreversible trends, and standing cool is one of the unique samples: "The designer-led UGC community, based on specific segments of the population, How will you break the doomed of the domestic design circle and find a routine that fits your savage growth?