How to see the platform of Sina microblogging

On the Internet, nowadays the word "platform" appears at an extremely high frequency, which is staggering. A good and the fire of the game, it is necessary to play a game platform, a good little application, exploratory several downloads, some installed capacity, on the tool platform to go. Just want to build a platform, this is like Lei said a sentence, I changed a little bit: there is a pig, stood in the tuyere was blown fly up, incredibly to everyone said, I get off the plane to take you to the world.

Today, China's internet giants are claiming to build an open platform and want to open up and win together. These big players seem to want to create Albert, the essence of it? It is said that "with the flow of people to make sentient beings," said the worst threat. Flow in my this, not to come on the side of their own to play it! These "platform" turn hand for the cloud to cover hands for rain, we see too much, the participants dare not speak. But today we are not going to crusade them, but to explore together what is the reason for these platforms to go so hard.

What is a platform?

A few days ago, Facebook launched the Poke, Sina Weibo launched a "micro-friend", it is said to have a cottage of other people's things, Sina's incredibly still a partner. Of course, the user does not care about the product idea from which, but Sina's behavior is really silly to the extreme, why so say? First, Sina has launched countless innovative products on Weibo, and it is no exaggeration to say that it basically allows users to know a few, not to mention the use of. Behind the attempts of one after another, Sina did not profoundly reflect on the problem. They must have always thought the product was a problem, but the problem was that the product was innovative and mistakenly obsessed with social transformation. Secondly, in the commercialization of very uncertain circumstances, so boldly copied collaborators products, this is the loss of the loss of the posterior. This behavior does not bring obvious benefits do not say, it is important to significantly increase the Sina platform partners fear and worry, greatly weaken the credibility.

What's the real platform like? This question China may think one person clearly, he is Ma Yun. Looking at all the enterprises called platform, only Alibaba and Taobao (including the cat), the platform and the participants do not have any direct interest in competition, the demarcation of the border is very clear. Ma Yun knows that the platform is based on rules and clear benefits mechanism, the platform is the core of the participants, so the platform is responsible for the entire ecosystem backstage, never participate in the development of the front-end. Even if you want to make adjustments to the platform, but also by adjusting the rules, the participants in the competition and balance after the change, will not directly to the participants, and will not compete with them for the use of the platform.

Wrong place

In comparison, other platforms have been "thunder, rain", they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the platform. All their attempts at platform-by-nature are simply to rent out the flow, albeit with a nice mouth. Platform is like a market economy, there are many participants, to promote economic development, the individual interests and the overall interests must be tied up. Like Tencent, sharing traffic, the participants to make money, the platform is divided into the interests of the community? Yes, but the participants are speculative, because Tencent itself is also doing the same business (such as games), at any time can use self-interest rules to crush each other. This is like China's economic situation, because the legal system is not sound, many companies do not make long-term investment speculation, because at any time to face policy risk, long-term investment even if the determination of high yield but still face huge uncertainty, this makes credit can not be established. The final result is a slow market, limited corporate earnings and moral decay. The same reason that the platform companies have been entangled.

The fact that a product company cannot be truly platform-oriented is what it tells us. Product-type company proceeds to appeal to the product, this kind of lawsuit and the platform type Company's service fee, divides into the income lawsuit to be contradictory. Products to be directly from the user charges, this charging method and the purpose of the platform participants, which is tantamount to saying that if the product company platform, just like the referee in the football game directly involved in the game, this unfairness suppresses the enthusiasm of the participants, once the interests of conflict, the platform rules will tend to their own products, once this tendency occurs, The platform loses credibility. So there will be two results, either their own products to support the platform, to maintain an empty "platform" title, or the platform side of their own products must gradually exit the platform, a real transformation.

The significance of the platform

Perhaps a lot of people will have a problem, such as Tencent, an annual profit of billions of yuan company why to platform? According to what we said above, if the platform he has to gradually give up the current profit-making product-type income (game). In fact, there are three main points. First, the real platform after the overall income must be greater than the current income. Although Tencent is currently divided into a small proportion of income through the platform, but with the increase in the number of participants, the overall income will be more than the benefits of their own products. Second, the platform is the way of risk mitigation. Their investment in the product faces a huge risk of product failure, which often leads to the collapse of a giant company. The platform eliminates this risk directly, because the platform side does not need to develop the specific product, the product risk turns to the multitudinous participant to share. Third, the platform can be a good grasp of the direction of the industry development. Due to the large number of participants, the platform can get quite a lot of data on the development of the industry, these data may reveal the direction of future development, conducive to the first adjustment platform.

The mistake of Sina Weibo from the perspective of platform

Sina microblogging platform is wrong? Absolutely right, any stable, huge flow of products should seek to platform. What's the problem? Platform can not be equated with openness, due to the different product attributes, openness can not bring the same results. Platform should be a directional open, the last built ecosystem is with the platform side will, that is, the original product attributes extension. The General platform (Open) is tantamount to selling traffic. The behavior of selling traffic is actually a departure from the platform, because the purpose of the platform is to build an ecosystem to seek better and more secure development, while selling traffic is only short-term mutually beneficial cooperation, speculative obvious. Other products (for example, 360) are realistic gains, and their platform success or failure in the short term will not fundamentally shake the company's survival. But Sina Weibo is not the same as a new product, there is no existing profit point, so the success of the platform is critical. And for Sina Weibo, which has not yet seen the commercial direction, the introduction of external collaborators through the platform can in turn promote an effective attempt to commercialize.

Sina Weibo platform of the direction is scattered, do not see any guiding ideology. Sina Weibo this year's action, a considerable number of attempts are used to improve the intensity of relations, not to discuss this increase is not possible, Sina Weibo itself want to understand the significance of improving the relationship strength?! Is it because I saw the emergence of micro-letter to rob the use of micro-blog time, so Sina in order to grab back the use of time and efforts to strengthen user relations? The author once expressed a point of view: Weak media strong relationship chain and weak relationship chain strong media is to meet the purpose of Internet use two key path (represented as micro-letter and Weibo). So the use of micro-letter is not the same product to rob the use of time, but to meet the needs of the user another, and the two requirements (media and strong relationship) of the satisfaction is not unified in a product. What Sina Weibo does is ignore the difference and expend energy to make up for a flaw that cannot be remedied. The key to commercialization is swagger, rather than avoidance, and people will not abandon it because an effective product does not meet the other needs of the user, but people will not use a product that is not significantly grown. Sina Weibo is a product, a platform, but it has always wanted to do "universal goods", this kind of unclear product positioning, this is the biggest taboo in the market.

Regardless of the commercialization of Sina Weibo or platform, if not focus on the "media" this important point, then Sina can always try the wrong, forever wandering. Ali, Taobao positioning has been very clear, is the architecture of an E-commerce major ecology, so they any behavior and try to have a direction, so that trial and error efficiency greatly improved. Tencent positioning for users to improve the quality of life on the line (the author concludes), although the positioning is relatively wide, but Tencent has a realistic focus, entertainment and other business income is considerable. Sina Weibo again, it seems to love to add things to the inside, whether there is no use, users need not, it seems that the content richer, the more successful platform. Sina Weibo's trial and error direction, first of all should be based on "media", in terms of users, it is important to make it easier for users to get the information they need, to increase their focus on the content, to speed up search, information classification and collation, or to do a proper unified micro-borg work (for example, several people of your own concern forwarding the same information at the same time )。 If the information acquisition speed and efficiency, user stickiness is bound to improve. On the collaborators side, do not do shanzhai others such stupid, similar to "micro-friends" such as the edge of a new application to try, will not be useful, otherwise Sina and Tencent two ruled the world. To do is to help the "Mo Mo" such as the peripheral collaborators very good development, such as to make up for the chain of acquaintances relationship between the genetic defects. "Mo Mo" Group of O2O try also can give the reference to Sina Weibo, and Sina also can obtain data. Perhaps Sina will worry about the loss of users, viscosity drop, but this is not understanding of their own, strong media weak relationship chain This path has been their own hold, others are not past. And the scale barrier of Sina Weibo, is substituted almost impossible. To make a cliché analogy, any palace building luxury, or lack of toilets, Sina Weibo if you stop this thoroughfare, how others will dare to abandon you, it's industrial chain can not do you. Even if one day, perhaps many users do not Sina Weibo, the collaborators became the provider of UGC and the caller, Sina only do background processing, this is not the real platform of the? This time Sina became the information storage pool and the processing pool, became the bigger commercial barrier.

Of course, everything is not so easy to say. But Sina Weibo all try management should give a unified guiding ideology, rather than let its sloppy trial and error, Sina Weibo this new thing without large-scale trial and error reality support. And try more should be based on the first level of the page, take away those useless things, carefully adjust the UI, small steps to try, rather than in the user behind the user do not care about small things.