Sina Weibo is in a dilemma

Without more forceful political, economic and technical support, Weibo, the main platform of public opinion in China, will decline. But social media itself echoes the transcendental desire of Chinese citizens to be self-organizing and free speech, and should evolve through market competition and win the power to change the society with a more courageous posture.

Sina Weibo, a veteran Nasdaq-listed company that has been on the market for 4 years, has been churning out a social product that is rapidly sweeping China's white-collar class-the highest peak in 20 months. Since then, business liquidity and political risk have plagued the former portal, the "business-made public opinion platform," and the seven or eight Chinese companies that have followed suit to launch similar microblogging services.

The popularity of Weibo, which has been swept away by the darling of the mobile-Internet era, has been lost in the competition of clients and the bombardment of small-brand advertising. However, Weibo, as the leader of the Web 2.0 era, is still a rare benchmark in the process of self-organization of Chinese society. It is not only listed companies, but also users. Concern about the fate of Weibo, that is, in favor of our own speech space.

After the climax

As a fact and opinion of the spread of Highland, Weibo in 2011 leaped into China's first public opinion platform, 2012 became the first platform for mainland netizens to obtain information. In the event of micro-blog, group events to see micro-bo, petition for Micro Bo, civil disputes to find micro-bo, anti-corruption by micro-blog, Enlightenment by micro-blog ... The platform has been carrying too much anticipation. In fact, in the past few years just sing the traditional media, and now even the new media representative Weibo is also seen decline.

A big reason to see the decline is that you can't find a good business model. "Not bad money" Tencent Weibo, is now satisfied with as a successful "card-bit" products, and anxious to realize the business of Sina Weibo, the early marketing market by the grassroots large occupy and corrupt, delayed recovery, and its own commercial exploration-whether micro-games, micro-mall, micro-interview, or real-time search, "micro-task" fee- Have not been able to make killer products, hand Alibaba, to E-commerce direction, the user may be a boycott of the future is uncertain.

In addition to the bad reviews from Wall Street, the people who sang about the decline were the users who experienced the destruction. All kinds of reincarnation of the party, trumpet is also considered nostalgia type, after all, as a force majeure rather than platform trouble, call for fans to move to micro-mail or other micro-blog, most of the platform is disappointed. The recent Tiger olfactory network because of the enmity with a platform and a Chinese network due to offend Tiantiao pin number, but the tip of the iceberg. More users are resentful because their main posts are invisible, committed suicide, and their own or fans difficult to identify, can not prosecute those overlord clause.

All this may be rooted in the micro-BO media attributes, the greater the impact on the reality of society, so in the official eyes became the source of instability factors, gradually obtained the traditional media "political treatment." For example, Sina for 24-hour monitoring micro Bo equipped with hundreds of small secretaries shift down, daily can achieve 30% violations sensitive micro-bo in the issuance of 10 minutes after the removal of processing; for example, Sina Baidu to crawl the micro-blog agreement was stopped.

As a social network, micro-blog on the average user viscosity decline, external cause is the enemy from the beginning, internal factors are a wide variety. For example, the focus on the formation of "stranger Community", resulting in weak joint relations, coupled with public topics than private topics popular, enthusiasts will lose their sense of belonging. Another example, Big V millions fans reflect the broke, but Big V qishidaoming, posturing, its fans may be from buying powder, cheat powder or send powder, if "a bowl of powder can buy 10,000 powder", it is bound to hurt the enthusiasm of weaving scarf. Another example, the micro-blog reversal drama "About 8:20" a class of large v employed posts repeatedly caught in the current, challenged the user's trust bottom line. In addition, there are a number of users due to the brick after the complaint, angry away.

Micro Bo fire for two years, and Wen swallowed two years, there is a destiny. On the one hand, micro-blogging product evolution speed can't keep up with the pace of Internet users, the situation of oligopoly also makes the social circle on the microblog of each other isolated, unable to integrate, watched the micro-letter in 2.5 time rise, on the other hand, the political minefield, data mining is not in place, the company's organizational structure is not conducive to strategic cooperation and other factors, Delayed the commercialization of Sina Weibo, making it a quick success in the late stages. And in the big brand recognition before, micro-bo marketing to vibration weak.

The trap of becoming present

Sina Weibo was born 4 years ago, attracting many celebrities, nearly 20,000 media, more than 70,000 government agencies and hundreds of thousands of enterprises stationed, and has tens of millions of relatively elite active users. Although Tencent Weibo, which was born in late 8 months, has been ahead of Sina Weibo since last year in the number of registered users and daily active users, the latter remains China's premier public opinion field. Sina Weibo accounted for nearly 80% of all Weibo visits in the second half of last year, according to authoritative reports. There is a saying, even if the parties (such as Beijing temperature jumped, arson shui total, the victims of Hana and their classmates) are on Tencent, the preferred occasion to discuss these events is Sina Weibo.

But such a myriad of eyeballs in the platform of public opinion to carry out business, but Sina management headaches unceasingly. Generation to post is the most easy to think of the transformation of the way, but in micro-bo marketing, the dominant right is not in the hands of Sina, but by a group of main push jokes, quotations, the United States and the grassroots marketing large control. Like "Fujian Gang" Cai (under the "85" Yin Guangxu "cold jokes selected", etc.), once opened the Tianya Forum 4 sections of Guizhou people Du Zijian (Shire to its indirect investment), to provide business services to the Xiaojunli (net name "Wine Red Ice Blue"), have a number of the top 50 in the grassroots list of large.

After entering 2012, under the pressure of profit, Sina's family was determined to clean up the "eat" grassroots large, forcing them to reduce the frequency of advertising posts or agree to share with Sina. Control action also includes "dusting" (Removal of zombie powder), to combat content plagiarism, yellow jokes and so on. A batch of content is shoddy, the root of making money is dead, and survived, also faced with the third party microblogging marketing company "Micro Bo Yi" (with thousands of account signed a deal) price war. After running into trouble, Du Zijian and others were forced to transform.

Sina has suppressed the grassroots marketing of large, attempts to acquire micro-blog, their own cooperation of those large commercial value is limited, micro-blog income was heavily dependent on Sina network tying the Web page display ads, and Sina was drawn after the blood revenue gradually Tencent network catch-up, starting in the second half of 2012, the company began to have bitter days.

This April, Sina finally introduced Alibaba nearly 600 million dollar strategic investment, to solve the urgent. This marriage triggers about the social electric quotient, big data and so on the product imagination, the reality is a "do not fight not to know" the outcome of the negotiations: Ali Taobao merchants on Sina Weibo promotion, Sina threatens to seal all Taobao outside the chain. Both sides seek compromise, at the beginning of the early Sina clear portal and micro Bo two large chunks of the foundation, Ali won Sina Weibo 18% of the shares, no longer worry about the latter blocked Taobao store ads and links.

The problem is that, with investment coming in, Sina Weibo has had to make its own profit and cannot expect the share of traditional mobile advertising. At present, it is mainly aimed at the cat and Taobao shop "fan-tong" advertising service system, sales are inserted into the flow of advertising, such as the recent frequency of the marked "micro-bo promotion" of the post. It is said that this than the blunt side of the advertising effect of "good 10 times times", but want to allow users to adapt to the big brands to join, but also to improve the accuracy of advertising. In the future, if Sina Weibo and Taobao account interoperability, more "data mining" forecast consumption trend. If the social map search technology can't keep up, give the micro-Boga to carry the power quotient function only can let the user be puzzled.

Contest the Micro-letter

Chao often admire himself for having stopped Sina "friend", to push Sina Weibo's decision, because then Sohu Zhang is not optimistic about this piece, the industry more fashionable herd Facebook. Twitter, which is two years behind Facebook, has a regulatory bottleneck in China's shanzhai version of rice, babbling and muttering. Sina Weibo was once forced to hang out with a beta name, even after the two-Year-old was rumoured to have lost its licence.

The success of Sina Weibo is to capitalize on the blogging experience of the previous 4 years and the "Micro-Forum" feature, and quickly enlarge the plate as the regulators have not yet done so. The star accounts, which are placed on the registration page, have both attracted a wide range of fans and covered the debate on the pan-political agenda. China's free speech enthusiasm, I am afraid the Peng Shaobin in charge of the Sina Weibo division did not expect to be on the micro-blog like lava gushing out. Until the second year NetEase, people, Tencent, Sohu successively opened micro-blogging business, Sina has been the champion.

However, the paper is unable to wrap fire, after the Chinese New year after the Wang Lijun incident detonated public opinion, the results of April Fool's day before Sina and Tencent two micro-bo because of the rumor with the reorganization, the ban on 3 days. At this time, Tencent Micro Bo, Sina Weibo has entered the fatigue period, the overall popularity than the summer peak in 2011 when a lot of decline. On the eve of 18, despite the "7 21" Beijing Rainstorm, September mid-April anti-Japan hit the burning events such as stimulation, but because of the deletion of the scale of the sharp tightening, many people migrate to Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo overall popularity or turned to the downward, and continues to this day.

Into the 2013, the entire micro-blogging industry felt the threat of micro-trust. The social product, launched by Tencent in early 2011, has a global register of 500 million subscribers and more active users than Sina Weibo. Weibo is better used on the PC side, and the micro-letter was born to bind the smartphone, its cool features, first conquered the hearts of the younger generation. In addition, the micro-credit platform to accommodate the 100多万个 public number, although the same account of unfamiliar subscribers can not interact, but this has the benefit of private communication.

Micro-blog and micro-letter originally competing for mobile phone users online time, but because many large transfer micro-letter public number, in order to save the reputation of micro-bo Shuzu forest, attract more fans to take refuge in the micro-letter, the competition between the two platforms has begun to enter the hand-hand stage. Given the lessons of Sina Weibo, Weibo is wary of marketing large disruptions to the ad market that has just been developed by the media, while also tightening content reviews and closing a handful of sensitive accounts.

As planned, the micro-letter 5.0 version, in addition to the introduction of payment, gaming platform, will be the public number of information pushed to the unified fold to the subscription number (celebrities, media, institutions, etc.) and enterprise two folders, and further limit the public number of push frequency, while encouraging enterprise to improve customer service applications. The downgrade of public status, while damaging the instant arrival rate of information, helps users subscribe to more public numbers. The micro-credit platform has not weakened the blood-pumping effect of Sina Weibo. This is the micro-letter in the retreat, limited media.

Future Battlefield

In the midst of adversity, Sina Weibo is also seeking change. One is to increase the user's "read" experience: Since the user's regular interaction (forwarding, comment) Day with sparse, then show "reading" People, add "praise" button, adjust the amount of forwarding calculation formula (will be forwarded from a "solitaire" spread out of the previous forwarding quantity plus total count as the forwarding post of the forwarded amount); The atmosphere, lets the user sends the letters no longer has the authority obstacle, but to not pay attention to their own users letters will enter the other side of the message box (Sina Vice President Wang Gaofei called "Stranger Trash Box"), will not automatically remind each other; three is to create "from the media", the pilot Open Letters Group to Blue v certification users, reverse-dug micro-letter wall.

As the micro-letter 5.0 menacing, Sina Weibo launched the first 3.6.0 version of the mobile phone client: Information flow to change the card-type presentation, simplify the operation of the steps, improve the function menu to complete the line to the offline marketing closed loop, and eyeing the war to the enemy positions.

For the moment, mobile phone information flow advertising market has just begun, mobile electric business localization payment is not mature, micro-bo may be with the micro-letter mutual reference. Sina Weibo is not the ultimate adversary of micro-trust, in view of the ambition of the micro-letter to move the internet's first entrance. But at these two points in the middle stage, the two sides or will produce violent friction. The current Sina Weibo and micro-letter struggle to pull from the media people, is only a piece of cake, the future of the war is the survival of the battle.

As the internet era of mass products MySpace, MSN, Google Reader has fallen, without more powerful political, economic, technical support, Weibo, China's main platform for public opinion will decline. But social media itself echoes the transcendental desire of Chinese citizens to be self-organizing and free speech, and should evolve through market competition and win the power to change the society with a more courageous posture.

This paper is from the "southerly Window" 2013 16th (published in 2013.07.31), the author: Sinorama reporter Shei