Sina Weibo's user activity has fallen by nearly 40%.

A kilo of iron and one kilogram of cotton, which is heavier? This is a word trap, the use of people's natural perception of the material itself and the impression that the orange is sour, sweet candy, grassland is fresh, the seaside is humid, iron is heavy, and cotton is

"One kilogram of iron and one kilogram of cotton, which is heavier?" This is a word trap, the use of the material itself is the inherent perception and impression, oranges are sour, sweet candy, grassland is fresh, the seaside is humid, iron is heavy, and cotton is a blow can float up.

GlobalWebIndex, a market research agency, has just released the data on user activity in the global social network, and Facebook is still top of the table, sitting on a whopping 700 million of active users, surprisingly, after years of quiet work, the irony of the "ghost town" of Google + Climbed to the world's second-largest social network with 343 million active users, and in the report, GlobalWebIndex noted that Sina Weibo's user activity has fallen by nearly 40% per cent in the Chinese market, and Chinese social networks are becoming quieter.

A lot of people to the trend of 51.com to query the accuracy of the report, most of them ignored the Shengdong East 2012 in the Web game of input, 51 intermodal web game performance is quite good, which in turn pulled up 51 of the user stickiness.

Warren Buffett's famously popular quote can be quoted once again: "You don't know who is swimming naked as long as it's low tide." "When the number of microblogging users can no longer continue to blow up--and continue to grow the number of Weibo users are more than the number of Chinese netizens, Weibo as a business, is still in a sustained loss of money."

Everyone is saying that the social network is a jinshan, everyone knows, no user's social behavior, there is no so-called "big data", "mobile internet." Everyone envy, the relatively weak revenue capacity of Sina to create a timely microblogging of the future of the unlimited products, and everyone regrets, Sina Weibo has lost the transition to a mature platform for social networking opportunities. A chicken can only have golden eggs, because the long-term consumption of unhealthy feed, has lost the function of laying eggs.

One of the Micro blogs: social media or social networking?

I have said that Sina Weibo is "the skin of Twitter, carrying the heart of Facebook, doing Tencent QQ Dream", Cao Chao in the interview often do not forget to boast his wise, had decisively killed the product of Facebook form "Sina Friend", and the Apprentice Twitter did "Sina Weibo", The so-called "Chengye, Xiao", the media operation so that Sina's own inherent media attributes in the development of Sina Weibo has played a very good driving force, Sina's blog almost copied the operation of the experience, the number of celebrity indicators distributed to the head, one of the pull, teach, push, and finally wait for earshot fans. However, the central form of "media" itself is going downhill around the world, and Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo once said that Twitter "is going to be a media company," and later found that the American media were closed down in one after another, Twitter's apps have all started making money, and Twitter's profits are still on the line, and they say Twitter is "a technology company in the media sector", abandoning its content-provider strategy and letting engineers use Twitter to dig data.

The fundamental difference between social media and social networking lies in the definition of "relationship" and the role of "relationship" at both ends, Tencent Weibo was initially used to compare Sina Weibo's product hype (though later, because of its own reasons, Tencent Weibo): "Instead of looking elsewhere, it's better to be here." When Sina defines the relationship between users and users as "fans," is doomed to its deep-rooted media attributes, you focus on another microblogging user, because the other is a celebrity or star, the other side of the writing good jokes, the other often hair sexy photo, the other is free Democrats ... The rule of the social network is that you become "good friends" with each other because of who you are--classmates, co-workers, chat friends, friends, family, crush objects ... So what you see on Sina Weibo is the scrolling of information, the hot topics that have been swamped seem to have been "new every day", but few of them are really relevant, and Sina Weibo has never been able to start, prepare, argue, and, as Facebook did, from scratch. Interaction and other processes.

From a sociological point of view, this can also explain why Weibo and reality are disjointed, micro-blog everywhere is enthusiastic people, in reality you do not get the smile of strangers, microblogging on the good news do not forward to feel sorry for the people, the reality of China's not much of the NGO mostly trapped in economic ability to difficult, Weibo evil let evil forces nowhere, in reality even a few years ago, "anti-grilled volunteers" have died out. Because Weibo is just a media, the media map is always a case, it has nothing to do with your life.

At the same time, unlike Twitter as an independent enterprise, Sina Weibo is backed by Sina, whether in resources or capital, without the support of the owner, which is one of the reasons why Sina Weibo could not be split into a listing, once it has been split, income and expenditure independent, Previously has been from the Sina side of the free guide to the resources to be included in the cost accounting, the loss of money to lose the heartburn of Sina Weibo can also withstand higher operating costs?

So Sina Weibo was pressed to death in the "media" form, said good point, which is responsible for Sina and shareholders, said not to listen to the point, this is a subversive but less a subversive heart.

In business terms, social networks are far more profitable than social media, and Facebook has 12 times times as much revenue as Twitter (3.15 billion dollars: 260 million dollars) in 2011, and Facebook's users are twice times more than Twitter.

The second inquiry: the flow of the current or the user to become present?

As a mass media, a newspaper, a magazine, a radio advertising price, is determined by the circulation, its users and users do not exist, it can give advertisers at best, only the proportion of users, levels, etc., which is "you know that your advertising spending is half wasted, But you don't know which half of the waste is the root of it. Weibo in the original promotion, also said "when you have more than 100 fans, you are a magazine; When you have more than 1000 fans, you are a bulletin board; When you have more than 10,000 fans, you are a journal; When you have more than 100,000 fans, you are an urban newspaper; When you have more than 100 million fans, You're CCTV. "It looks like the metric is for the user, which actually sells the exposure. This is the flow of cash, the higher your flow, the higher the price of advertising sales.

As a Life network, Facebook-represented social platforms are the real dynamics of every user, that's why Mark Zuckerberg has to do the timeline, the search map, the more you let users project their lives on the web, the more you can tap the needs of individual users and the value of a single user, Who needs to replace the home coffee machine, who is going to abandon the iphone to the Android camp, who plans to three days after the party to book 30 People's Pizza ... Facebook collects these, collated, categorized, and resold them to advertisers, building bridges between user needs and business services, which Facebook collects for tolls. This is how much money you can earn from users, depending on how much value you can dig out of them.

Let's take a look at the commercial product model offered by Sina Weibo:

1, Sina Advertising delivery: In the Sina network advertising, to reach the designated level, the distribution of micro-BO cooperation resources, at this time, Sina Weibo is a DM;

2, Micro-blog page of the various points revealed: including micro-blog release box under the banner, the right of the recommendation, mobile app on the map signed ads, and so on, Sina Weibo directly gave the media published case Price, at this time, Sina Weibo is another Sina network;

3, Fan headlines: corporate micro-blog can pay for their own information content in all of their own fans of the headline microblogging position, the price is CPM, the more fans, pay higher, at this time, Sina Weibo is a forum.

4, the flow of information into the promotion: the Enterprise of a micro-bo strong inserted into the information flow of ordinary users to be exposed, the price is also a CPM, at present, to see its user experience is really ... To see those who use the information flow promotion of the Enterprise microblog page comments, let me seem to feel that Sina to the money companies let the latter pay the cost of Word-of-mouth to use this promotion, at this time, Sina Weibo is a group of mobile operators to provide mass messaging services.

5, the microblogging home page plug-in application: Enterprise Micro-Blog can customize some personalized pages, inserted in the enterprise's microblog homepage, such as window display, slides, interactive activities, according to the price, at this time, Sina Weibo is a company to provide creative implementation of the PR/advertising team.

6, micro-task: soliciting enterprise users and micro-blog users two-way join, the former to select the latter to publish business information, and pay a certain fee, Sina to extract 30% of the Commission, at this time, Sina Weibo thought it was itunes, in fact it is a cottage micro-chih.

7, No.

The single media attribute has made Sina Weibo a lively tea house, everyone on the teahouse to hear the book, today who and who broke up, tomorrow who and who fight, Sina Weibo is also good at even enjoy this topic-like operation, a hot day, 10 days a case, "onlookers change China." But the more it is, the farther away from life, when people open Weibo has been trained by Sina Weibo to be the same as the purpose of turning on the TV, Weibo has really become a pure onlookers, even on an overpass, people around to watch the play monkey, and ultimately make money is also playing monkey artists, Definitely not an overpass.

In the United States, Pinterest, the social networking site that featured picture sharing, has emerged as the fourth-largest social networking site in the US after Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and many investors have shown a keen interest in it, Just because the tumblr,pinterest is closer to the user's life form than simply sharing the beauty map, Pinterest users will list the items they need to buy for their wedding, as well as the Office list, based on the American user's custom. and Pinterest can gain insights into and offer these potential business opportunities to e-commerce companies, which makes Pinterest's business model universally bullish.

More importantly, the flow of liquidity needs to have a significant "conversion rate" to support the results, Sina Weibo's "fan economy" in excess of moisture, but also let advertisers dissatisfied with the price of the CPM Sina Weibo, micro-letter users now can not do Sina Weibo how much, but in those underground marketing company's quotation system, Micro-letter of individual fans to get the cost of Sina Weibo to get 300 fans, why the gap is so big, Sina Weibo should be aware of, if not clear enough, please see the following interrogation microblogging three.

The third inquiry: forwarding or ROI-oriented?

A friend of mine (hereinafter called Small d) is a connoisseur of trading flow, in addition to operating hand hundreds of collecting stations to sell traffic to others, he also himself agent a number of Adidas fakes (mainly shoes) in the sale of Taobao, the specific method does not elaborate, probably the principle is that he a pair of false shoes price of 100 yuan, the cost of logistics 30 yuan, Through the Taobao through train drainage, an average of 1.2 yuan clicks up and down, basically as long as 50 visitors have a single purchase he even earn, it seems that the risk is very large, but because the goods show done well, and the through train to attract the flow of quality are very high, so basically is a steady profit.

Later, Little D also tried to do micro-blog, looking for micro-Bo Yi, the other side clap breasts promised that we have millions of large fans here, count forwarding you a pair of shoes exposure and arrived absolutely scared dead, small D Smart First wise, on the tens of thousands of dollars to do a few rounds of promotion, the final effect, with the summary of the micro-blog that is: "Brother you see , the cumulative number of your sneakers about 300,000, we use these micro-broad fan groups are young groups, they must be impressed by your Taobao shop, we always talk about sales are not interesting, the last thing to see brand loyalty, no, you come here to do a round of promotion, I send you extra 5 million fans of the large forwarding , what do you think?

In small D words, is: "I dig 500 dollars to hire a bald head in the back of my hair to write my Taobao address to stroll around the city center, bring orders than in the micro-Bo hit 50,000 dollars to find a large post to be high!"

But the Fucqua of Weibo's marketing circle is blamed on micro-blogging, a small group of people who want to earn a little agency in the microblogging community, is not fair, because the originator or Sina Weibo, no Sina Weibo over the ages of the God-making movement, any talk about the marketing effect to take out "forwarding growth xxx, fans overnight boom xxx" A set of communication on the rhetoric, micro-blogging will not follow the move, after all, is relying on micro-bo to eat, it is not possible Sina Weibo official talk about a set of indicators, you go to the customer to speak another set of indicators, not workable.

In my opinion, Sina Weibo is too obsessed with its "influence", and just like when it comes to why Alibaba wants to take a stake in Sina Weibo, someone always takes out a photo to tease: Photo Rimayun wearing no collar T-shirt, looking askance at the side of Cao Chao cheerfully and xiaoming and other stars with mobile phone photo. However, in fact, everyone knows that the real change in China and even every person's way of life, is Ma Yun's empire, if there is no micro-bo, we will still be in the end of the world controversy Small Yue Yue event, in the Watercress play Du Fu is busy, in Renren sharing jokes, Take your phone out of the subway and open up various RSS aggregators to see what's happening today.

And, "influence" is good, but it has two fatal weaknesses in the marketing process, first, there is no degree, the second is lack of depth, so whether it is Sina or Sina Weibo, the former portal income is being search engines and vertical web site plunder, the latter's marketing effect there is a wide range of questions and negative, more importantly, Sina Weibo has no technical strength to come up with targeted solutions, Google provides advertisers with a popular Google Analytics,facebook has just launched the conversion tracking tool, Even Twitter has asked Nielsen to develop an ROI measurement tool for all corporate accounts, and what is Sina Weibo? (not to mention the "micro-data" app, which is the only one produced by Sina Weibo, whether accurate or practical)

So even the big clients of Sina, also dare not rashly on micro-blog to make large-scale launch plan, "financial World" weekly interview to Coca-Cola Interactive marketing director Chenhui, the latter's feedback is very straightforward: "The new media variables too much, if the micro-bo halfway out a good product, we will not buy." Now it seems that the next year in the micro-blog launch or activity-oriented. The commercialization of Sina Weibo, for enterprises is the door of a new restaurant opened, I will not immediately decide to go there to eat, this is the same truth. Besides, Sina Weibo's advertising offer is not cheap. ”

The 4:28 Law of micro-blogging or the long tail theory?

News portals and search engines are 28 of the law and the long tail of the representative product, then Weibo?

In the 2012 presidential election, Obama won the election with the same winning speech on Facebook and Twitter: A picture of his hug with his wife, and a short word for "four more years". On Twitter, the message was forwarded at a record high of 760,000 times, with Facebook sharing only 470,000 times. You know, Twitter has less than half of Facebook's users, and Obama himself has 32 million fans on Facebook and only 23 million fans on Twitter!

The American tech media VentureBeat's view is that Facebook wants users to bring news into their world, that Obama wins the election and that your neighbour is part of your life, and Twitter wants users to participate and follow the news. Show your position and attitude. This subtle difference has also created the difference between these two social networking site election night data.

So, Sina Weibo is clearly on the Twitter side, in the "28 law" in the "second" in the operation and operations, Sina Weibo is the same as Twitter, there are a group of employees within Twitter is full-time responsible for celebrities, politicians, athletes and the media to engage, So that they can maximize the use of Twitter. "We call them V.I.T internally, which is very important tweet (users who use Twitter). "--twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

But the problem is that, based on the commercial nature of profit, celebrities and stars will never be the assets of the site, when MySpace was at its zenith, almost all the pop bands and entertainers in North America put their MySpace pages on any print promotional object, so ... Who else was left in MySpace?

It cannot be said that Sina is not "born in a sense of anxiety", as early as the blog era. Sina has designed a very wonderful product: Grassroots Bo, the logic of the birth of this product is probably because the recommended location of blog channels compared to a large number of celebrity blog, it is limited can no longer limited, even celebrities are lined up to recommend the team, write the ordinary users of the blog where there is a chance to expose it? Simply simply under the blog Channel to open a new "grassroots bo" sub channel, the ordinary people to go there to play. It is obvious that such a perfunctory product, the last logical degenerate into the entertainment, in addition to Sina itself intends to launch a now no one remembers the grassroots Bo Acosta, there is no bright spot to speak.

Sina Weibo is also the same problem, not easy to create a Vanity Fair, abandoned too pity, the other 80% users need to do the market? Almost completely copied the pattern of grassroots Bo, Sina Weibo has launched a high-profile "micro-bo Reds" products, The project, which has been in operation for nearly two years, is almost a replay of the failure of the grassroots, which was cut down in 2012. In addition, micro-group, micro-bar, micro-magazine, micro-what, micro-disk ... All kinds of products that want to improve user stickiness and capture long tail information come into being, but these products are different from Weibo, they are not irreplaceable, even within the microblog, how to inject users is a big problem, let alone the production of social relations.

Inquiry microblog five: is the brand cheap or brand premium?

Sina Weibo marketing case only two, one is occasion, one is the momentum, in the final analysis, will eventually confluence together, written language called "Event Marketing", we privately called "hype." Durex's "Rain Boots", sea-fishing "humans have been unable to stop the body", even the elegance of the harem, which everyone may not remember, is known for a short period of time, and the value of Sina Weibo throughout the marketing process is simply "content publishing platform" and "Content publishing platform" is the lowest-value role played in the marketing chain, from the forum to the blog, to Happy/Renren, and then to micro-blog, the user's attention to the migratory rhythm is very fast, Tianya fire, a moderator can be the public relations companies to give up, blog momentum is fierce, A famous Bo to attend business activities take a red envelope than can be a journalist thicker, now everyone is playing Weibo, a time micro Bo no two, but the forum is not the end, the blog is not the end, Micro Bo, also can not become a social terminal platform, if only as a "content publishing platform", then when the Subversion of micro-blog products appear, Where is the core competitiveness of Weibo's retention of users?

Also as a "content publishing platform", from "Old boy" to "Bad Future", Youku will be persistent put Koo in each film before the "producer" column, Know why?

Also as a "content publishing platform," Tencent to the industry's opinion leader one of 100,000 yuan to buy 50 articles a year, together to form a "Everyone" column, know why?

are making brands.

In a rapidly changing business society, enterprises or products in the development of never make mistakes is impossible, only the brand can be in the process of making mistakes, for the enterprise or product offset part of the negative impact, this is also the brand as a strategic asset of the important role and value.

If you don't have your own brand image, your platform will be occupied by the messy marketing team, you have to rely on them for popularity, and the more you rely on them, the harder it will be for you to build your own rules in a messy situation.

Frankly speaking, Sina is a company with little temper. Tencent by technology-led, NetEase very attitude, Sohu continued pioneer occasional show tease, Sina ... Looks like a lot of celebrities on it, right?

This brand value, really not buy a domain name renamed "bread Bread" can be achieved.

Interrogation of Weibo six: pretending to prosper or to burst bubbles?

China has about hundreds of small companies engaged in micro-blogging marketing:

Unified running a dedicated software hundreds of computers, each computer automatically maintained tens of thousands of micro-blog accounts, these accounts have already been separated from the no profile without a micro-bo "zombie powder" level, each account will not only according to the contents of the database regularly automatically replace the avatar and profile, but also collect micro-blog on the "latest microblogging" To post the original message-for example, a real user, Xiao Zhang, sent a "traffic jam today, really irritable", this micro-Bojo is collected, it will be randomly distributed to the marketing company of a microblog account, the same content, so over the last few, these accounts look like the real user does not have any difference, Can even attract the attention of real users, and these large number of accounts can help marketing companies to complete various types of outsourced orders, they forward the activities of micro-blog, comment on the designated Enterprise Weibo Daily News, focus on corporate leadership, release "XX body" to increase the search heat ... Behind the hefty income, the cost of paying is almost insignificant.

This is the truth that Sina Weibo has so far avoided. In fact, a lot of such marketing company's boss, Sina Weibo is a guest, and Sina at all levels of leadership is very familiar, a year down hundreds speech, carrying the Sina Weibo market value future Sina Weibo, they can not move the hand, after all, Sina on the Nasdaq's retail investors are also staring at micro-bo, really want to cut the meridians, the impact of Sina Weibo data performance, implicated in the share price, the responsibility I am afraid even Cao accounting can not afford to carry.

The cost of this "containment" is to make Sina more uncomfortable in business development, persuade customers to increase investment in micro-blog often encounter a rhetorical, said you sina price too expensive, I know another enterprise micro-Bo please agent company a year to spend how much, now fans are how many million, you want so much money, still do not guarantee the effect, How am I going to give my leadership a pass? Sina Weibo this side is to break the teeth to swallow, really dare to tell customers that we also help you brush powder bai, because they do not know how much regular brush powder resources and point (usually the new registered user's default attention recommended location, the best effect), The company that can only scold those Weibo marketing has spoiled the ethos.

Oh, without the acquiescence of Sina Weibo, how dare people in your Sina site on what "ethos", beautiful said and Mushroom Street "viral marketing" means in the micro-letter copy a back, you see how Tencent is treated?

Now on Weibo the number of fans "first" of the grassroots large cold jokes selected master Yin Guangxu, formerly a person in the webmaster circle can not go on the guy, he is best at home in a day to repeatedly add thousands of QQ group to throw a Web site link back, very other webmaster contempt, Sina Weibo before the birth, he sniffed the value of rice, So I stayed up all night in the meal is not registered 3,000 vest account all concerned about their own large, did not expect the next day meal no Wang sent him a letters, said "Your trumpet has disappeared, your large fans have been I came back, be careful ah". Then Yin Guangxu went to Sina Weibo and staged the same trick, Sina Weibo at that time in particular hope to get recognition of the stage, see there is such a loyal and optimistic about the value of micro-Bo brother, Natural overjoyed, early also deadly help push it, and finally found that their profit model is this marketing large to block the time of death, Regrets are already late.

Third party developer platform, the key to the success of Facebook and Twitter, Sina Weibo has not been able to learn, the 2010 held a "first" micro-blogging developer conference, Sina Weibo has so far no "second" developer conference, and the application of micro-blog ecology, Also basically stalled innovation and change.

Inquiry microblog seven: Go left or right?

What is left?

Left is to keep the city, the cultivation of internal strength, enhance immunity, one, to prevent the micro-letter at the mobile end of the erosion; second, build the social circle layer around the user experience; third, carry the board in the profit pressure, fish first, fishing postponed; four, pay attention to the role of open platform, find some real "partner"; its five, Let the user through the natural market way to produce hot topics, less intervention, not guidance, to reduce the impetuous, so that micro-blog really become a user's life projection.

What is right?

To the right is to pull the village, proactive, improve competitiveness, cut off the micro Bo structure of 80% ineffective or inefficient functions, from the user needs to start thinking about the next killer application, embrace the Big data era, let Sina Weibo led Sina back to technology-driven enterprises, internal can strengthen and Baidu, Alibaba contact, By studying the trend of the geeks in Silicon Valley for social networks such as Facebook, it is necessary to be brave enough to die in the end, but the social needs of the people are eternal.

Of course, ideally, is left and right parallel, but soft and soft and Ji Tai Chi Kung Fu, need to be very high people to control, whether Sina Weibo or Sina has not yet appeared such a figure, the Internet growth in this piece of soil, the inevitable also contaminated with some of the Chinese characteristics of the habit. Weibo carrying Sina's interior too big also too much hope, when a great ship without the captain but everyone can go to the helm, its route doomed variable too big, can't be trusted, even after the apple of the jobs era is not spared, not to mention Sina Weibo.