Standing cool: A UGC community, how to get from the pond to the oil field

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[Core Tip] A common personal blog, is how to evolve step-by-step, become a high-profile design community? Let's look at the reasons behind.

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 Chinese designer UGC community? How to turn from a small pond into a deep well, or even to become an irreplaceable big oil field in the future?

How a pond gathers.

In the age of networking, theoretically, you can find whatever 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 2005 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".

2006 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 ponds to deep wells, to the "community" era

After assembling the first batch of users, think again about standing cool.

"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. 」

First, the choice of Liang Yaoming is "to forum", the old station cool material sharing and forum Exchange integration as "around the design content of the exchange and discussion", users can publish the original works or outside the site material, the exchange to 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 good design," when the user uploaded an original work, other users enthusiastic discussion will inspire his next creation and sharing, which formed a positive cycle. The former competitor has been far behind.

Stand cool from a personal blog, successfully transformed into a UGC design community, precisely through these three tips:

"The community promotes the exchange efficiency, uses the recommendation mechanism to filter the content, the rule promotes the user to share the 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.

Opportunities for vertical niche communities from deep wells to oilfields

The development of the Internet 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 traditional Internet communities 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 a specific segment of the population, will be how to break the rigid doomed of the domestic design circle and find a routine that fits its barbaric growth?"

We will continue to be concerned with questions, encouragement and continued attention.