The commercialization of watercress can not be a stink

Wen/Zhang Shule

Published in the November 2013 issue of the era of innovation

September 17, watercress electric business shopping Products "things" officially online. Users can browse, comment on and share products including digital, beauty, food, apparel and other categories on the platform. The move means that watercress officially extends from the book film Music Market to a more complete category of electric dealers.

However, in the network culture to take the most pure literary and artistic route of the Douban, its survival and must be carried out by the commercial route, in the end how far away from the stink of it?

Business dream of literary cavity

"Things" on the line, does not exceed the Internet industry's expectations. "Douban is the first time from the literary youth into the ordinary youth." "Some micro bloggers have made sense of what they are when they are online," he said.

There is no reason to feel this way. Douban in China's internet industry itself is a wonderful existence. In the Chinese Internet industry, which is rife with shanzhai, watercress belongs to a site without the shadow of the US Silicon Valley and is mainstream.

In everything to "fast" for the purpose of the development of the Internet industry, watercress, "slow" culture, successfully gathered some loyal high-quality users, "Watercress books huge database, the number of users and groups of watercress, are in the" slow "culture under the influence of accumulation. "In the Wisdom Net Laboratory founder Zhu Zidan, the bean paste of this product's character is to the success of watercress to play a decisive," Tianya, mop these predecessors because of the rapid impact of the amount of information to take away the nutrients in the soil, and lead to the end of the product consumption. ”

However, this huge to a variety of literary and artistic youth polymerization, to quite like the Wei-jin demeanor of the main line of the Web site literature and art model, but inevitably has the problem of profitability. Especially when watercress from a founder Yang Bo a person in Beijing Watercress Alley next to the creation of a program can create an independent website, become a need to feed more than 300 employees, carrying 70 million literary youth social life of a huge community, money is an imminent big problem.

Watercress is not never tried. 2012 began, watercress online a number of paid items, such as watercress reading of paid e-books, watercress FM and Watercress film ticket function, but has been douban their own some of the world's not eating the fireworks of the watercress powder on this but not ungrateful. In the face of the royal literature rely on fantasy, through the main line and the success of the network literature market, watercress powder is dismissed as the literature. and "High-end atmospheric grade" of the Orthodox literary works, and often not for the watercress powder hi. Small-audience, personalized, and the characteristics of the pop people are obviously not too happy to get involved in the stink of the coin.

Internet independent review Site Titanium Media, a man who is not satisfied with the comments, even wrote: "Watercress temperament congenital exclusion of a part of the flow, read" Hundred Years Lonely "listen to soda green Zhang Hang people may click on the right link to buy a book to buy a CD, but read" teach you how to become a Warren " Listen to Hu Wangxu QQ Music Three people will not necessarily buy through the link, or even watercress on whether these product introductions are problems. ”

Douban's commercial path is doomed, of course, it is still very profitable prospects, in the absence of "things" such as direct commercial products before the advent of 2012, Douban income of about 80 million yuan, allegedly already "close to profitability." And its source of income, is mostly traditional website advertising mode or help others do "Taobao guest."

For example, when the user in the watercress browsing interested in the book, you can directly through the cooperation with the watercress website-for example, when, excellent Amazon, such as orders, watercress from each successful transaction there can receive Commission commission.

Only by this, watercress can live, but as a literary youth, can only live in a small circle.

Miracles created by the youth of literature and art

Watercress is not impossible to create miracles, and it has created a network of rare positive energy miracle.

The media relish a case is the film "lovelorn 33 days." This movie is actually from a user in the film in a group of live posts, and finally was selected by the production company, invited the author to change the post into a script, and eventually created this 2011 Dark Horse film.

Watercress achievement of a miracle, but the watercress did not get the actual benefit, this is its online watercress reading want content to become the driving force. "Watercress is not the simple idea of selling e-books to the readers to make money, they want to make literature into film and television works, games and other peripheral products, to achieve greater value-added purposes." "An IT reviewer so describes the thought of watercress:" This is what Shanda literature does, and a little bit of it. ”

However, this copy of the idea of grand literature has not yet again created the "lovelorn 33 days" miracle. This may be related to the temperament of watercress, it is too Wenqing, it is difficult to integrate with secular culture.

Literature and art fan watercress Another successful example of literary and artistic profits from Douban founder and CEO Yang Bo himself: In the Watercress brand promotion by the Watercress, brand and agent company Tripartite discussion, together to determine the final plan. In a classic case, Land Rover launched the "Most beautiful place" activity in the watercress, "discover endlessly, China's most beautiful 24 hours". This activity calls on the netizen to spread oneself thinks the most beautiful place. After the event, a total of nearly 2100 users received the work of spontaneous upload. And another case is watercress "ideal youth" station, as a watercress on an original activity, its hope to be able to dig out some active in the watercress has the ideal, talented youth. Coincidentally, Lenovo's ThinkPad Edge brand saw this activity, become the sponsor and collaborators of this station, will "ideal youth" station into a brand information dissemination platform.

These have become the core paradigm of how Douban Yang Bo in the eyes of the advertising product. However, seemingly successful cases are often only cases. As Sina Weibo, a large number of brand advertising does not need to cooperate with the platform, directly through the popular author, infiltration into the content, its success stories are numerous, and more flexible.

What's more, these are still meager profits, it is difficult to support the literary and artistic change of watercress mansion.

"Things" has become a literary fan of the shopping and another attack.

"Something" or a gas field too strong.

Online half a month later, the author first landed "Things", found watercress "things" is not generally less.

A variety of funny or geek products are "things" on the most displayed content, from the American Creative Candy book to the Bamboo Women's umbrella, from the glass butterfly spike to the benefit-style clock, do not notice that they have to play the network, in addition to the occasional embellishment of the market common instant noodles or skin lotion. To October 7 only about 5 pages of product display, forming a "thing" the overall style. This is integrated with the style of watercress, the object of service is also accurate positioning for the watercress powder-this is a group of interests and relatively distinct groups, commonly known as literary and artistic small fresh.

Is still a typical slow culture and ubiquitous petty bourgeoisie, so that "things" shopping guide may not and Mushroom street, beautiful said such a pan-popular counterparts in unison. On this, watercress seems to complacent, because this is still the watercress specially modulation of the literary fan shopping mode.

According to Watercress, in order to ensure the quality of content, watercress will initially limit the number of users to share, only a few watercress high-quality core users have the right to invite. As the user volume increases, it will be guaranteed by the mechanism user. For example, if you encounter unsatisfactory low quality, "three vulgar" content, on the one hand, the operation of Watercress and manual audit, on the other hand can be reported by the user to eliminate. As for the revenue model, in the link to increase the product tracking code, the electric business can judge the source of purchase, and then according to a certain proportion of turnover and watercress into.

Of course, more crucial is to continue the survival mode of watercress, the user in the "things" on the behavior can be selectively shared to the individual's watercress broadcast. Its watercress neighbors will also be able to see the user's commodity preferences and comments, so as to form the social promotion of goods, for others to provide decision-making assistance for consumption.

It is clear that the spring of the watercress, is still the same, and other mainstream electric dealers frequently price war, saliva war and a large amount of advertising, watercress want to do is still "inadvertently choose a small fresh" can.

Although in the commercialization of watercress, but still do not want to contaminated with the stink, still live in their own world, and 70 million of literary youth live together. Similar to this situation, watercress has occurred before, media reports said that the watercress had a short period of cooperation with the QQ space, Tencent's user groups there opened the entrance, swarming over the flow of people-most of them are not the kind of literary youth group, bringing a very noisy and poor quality of content and social, On the contrary, the experience of the primary users of watercress, the last watercress suspended with the QQ space cooperation, which means that watercress in a long period of time has not ready how to meet these "long tail" users.

The electric dealer in the watercress, still not ready, it just opened a hole, want to create a literary youth themselves to set up after the screening of a full of literary and artistic fan of the world, such as watercress extremely believe that "the strength of the recommendation", more than half of the work team are engineers rather than outside the Wenqing, they day by day perfect watercress algorithm , trying to understand the logic behind each user's behavioral traces of clicks, tags, speeches, and so on, eventually bringing the most matching recommendations to the user--as in "1000 people have 1000 hamlet in their eyes."

The survival logic of watercress, really can let small fresh away from the smell of copper? Or not at all with Congfang? After all, the book has its own golden House of the ancient adage, in fact, very unreliable.