Weibo seems to welcome a warmer spring, is it true?

Weibo recently released its annual earnings report, as always, we sigh around the use of micro-bo friends less and fewer, microblogging activity is getting worse, while the microblogging active users again, and this time there are some different means, that is Weibo's first profit.

The latest data from Weibo show that as of the end of the four quarter of 2014, the number of active users in micro-blogging month reached 176 million, with a net increase of 47 million throughout the year. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Weibo's net profit was $9.4 million trillion, the first quarterly gain since microblog listings. By everyone to sing the decline of the micro Bo, as if to a warmer spring, but the truth is it?

is the micro-blogging spring really coming?
So I was skeptical when I saw the number of active Twitter users going high. By eliminating the false exuberance of a series of zombie powders, it's hard to say whether Weibo is really making progress. But Twitter may be a good reference.

Let's go back and look at Twitter's earnings for the last two quarters.

Twitter's monthly average active subscribers were 284 million in the third quarter of 2014, with a timeline view of 181 billion, with advertising revenue reaching $1.77 per thousand times. Third-quarter revenue of 361.3 million U.S. dollars, net loss of 175 million U.S. dollars. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Twitter's monthly average number of active users was 288 million, and the timeline browsed 182 billion times, with advertising revenue reaching $2.37 per thousand times. The quarterly revenue was 479 million U.S. dollars, with a net loss of $125 million.

Twitter's monthly average number of active users and time-axis browsing were almost unchanged, with growth already stagnating to some extent. Revenue growth has largely come from ad revenue from thousands of timeline browsing. Twitter has increased the efficiency of their advertising, but the number of users is no longer growing. The mobile end of a large number of emerging platforms to divert users belonging to Twitter, today also spread, Alibaba plans 200 million U.S. dollars investment Snapchat news.

As with Twitter's plight, I have to suspect that Weibo has also counted as a monthly active user of Weibo, with a large number of users landing on Third-party apps. This group of users never log on to microblogging sites or clients, and they use hundreds of thousands of third-party applications to log on to Weibo accounts and share information about these applications on Weibo.

For example, one of the things that Twitter has to relish is that today's headlines are the biggest source of traffic for microblogs in Third-party apps for all the microblogging mandates, based on the C-round fundraising that Sina took on today's headline. Today's headlines are about sharing content on Twitter and getting information from clients. However, they are likely not to log on to Twitter, because some of the social attributes that have been watered down by the media attributes have been enhanced, and the headlines that have gradually strengthened their social attributes have converged in nature.

For Weibo, the most important thing is its information flow ads, but once the number of users of these third parties is increasing, this would be a disaster. This group of users, because they no longer log on Weibo, can hardly give Weibo a penny income.

So we generally feel this kind of atmosphere, micro-blogging user participation in the decline, while the microblogging monthly active users have increased.

This morning, I accidentally brushed a fan-headline microblog

Sorrow Die vermicelli June, I wave to launch an official pay to increase the fan tool (note: Not you want to buy powder, Weibo will recommend you to the user, and then let the user decide whether to pay attention to you)

This tool was later named by Weibo official as "passers-by turn powder", and hope to be able to use this tool, make the high-quality content that the user produces can be more recommend to potential user, and realize user activity degree promotion. But the one thing that never comes to mind is that this should be a platform for free resources to give strong support for a thing, but become a micro-blogging tool to make money.

Before I saw this micro-blog, in fact, has tried several so-called passers-by turn powder function, not only completely without any effect, and the price is extremely expensive. A friend evaluation way, all do not and you say money is how to spend the promotion are bullying!

How many real users does Weibo have now?
Why microblogging earnings no longer mention the number of registered users, but only to say that the number of active users, this is a very worthwhile thing to explore. To know that now the new registered users choose a label will be directly to the default focus on 30 or so number of Weibo accounts. And I looked at a Sina official account, because the Sina set as a new user, once selected "anime" label will be the default attention, the past week, the Weibo account in the absence of a tweet, the situation, rapid growth of about 200,000 fans.

(The new fans are basically like this, from the nickname to see it is very easy to see that this is a mass-produced zombie powder)

This is just a new user who chooses the "Anime" tab. In the Weibo new user guide, there are about 30 tags, aside some users will choose multiple tags, considering the weight factor, microblogging week's "new users" may increase by 2 million. If conservatively estimated at this rate, Weibo's new subscribers will reach 24 million a quarter.

There may be omissions, but this is probably the last time Sina has publicly registered users of Weibo--the total number of registered subscribers to Sina Weibo has reached 503 million in December 2013. The number of registered users of Sina Weibo has increased by 96 million in the past year, as estimated by the new user data model above. These new users are, to a large extent, what we often call zombie powder, and while Sina officials have been claiming to clean up their low-quality fans, the authorities have created about 100 million of zombie powder in the past year, making it hard to doubt Weibo's efforts.

If you count some of the zombie powder produced by a third party, the amount of zombie powder that the entire microblogging platform produces in one year may have to be doubled. Familiar with the micro-bo zombie powder industry chain should be clear, in a large fan sales platform will be the level of zombie powder classification. The highest level of V users, the second level is the people, these high-level zombie powder can automatically release random microblogging, from the surface and true fans do not have the slightest difference. Of course, these zombie powder is very natural to be divided into a monthly active Sina users.

Zombie Powder brings false prosperity
I know a big V friend, around December last year about 100,000 fans, and in just one months after the number of fans to increase to a surprising millions, but its and released each of the microblogging activity has shown a different degree of decline. In 2013, even with just 100,000 fans, casually published a micro-blog reading can easily break through the 5~20 million, and now although the number of fans has exceeded 1 million, but its micro-Bo either interactive or forwarding is far less than before, and even sometimes appear to read less than 7000 of the situation. In this context, in order to cope with advertisers, all can only buy a large number of false forwarding and comments, to maintain the micro-bo on the surface of the active degree.

As far as I am concerned, every day I am presented with a 20~30 of zombie powder, which not only satisfies my vanity but also causes me great trouble. One is that the arrival of this group of fans will not satisfy any of my vanity, and the forwarding of my tweets and comments can not bring any help at the same time, but I can give others I am a stereotype of fans. Second, the arrival of this group of fans has also deepened my awareness of microblogging activity, why so many content, not attracted to a real fan?

Know that there is a netizen to ask a question, Advanced zombie powder is how to operate? A man named Kei the industry chain.

I've done a similar operation with a client in an ad agency before, will be customized to operate the background (of course, you can also directly find operating micro-Bo under the next buy), can be a daily review of a number of original micro-blog (heard that there are now advanced procedures, even forwarded micro-blog can be smart comments), paste a single micro-blog link in, Each can be set to forward the number of comments, and then is to import a large number of stored zombie (also can buy), the key words will have a copy prepared in advance, seventy or eighty comments in fact very simple, minutes will be written. Then is the random start forwarding, general 10 minutes forward on hundreds of comments hundreds of, light from the text of the general people can not see a flaw, unless the same as the landlord closely pay attention to the micro-blog release time and the quality of his fans.

I have previously operated the star, entrepreneur's personal microblog, basically in this way, but this is also the initial means, after all, they still have real fans, a lot of comments will attract the latter's follow-up, gradually replace the comments of zombie powder. And then we don't have to do it, it's all real fans. But business microblogging is more difficult, and fans have little loyalty.

In addition, similar marketing account fans are basically fake, a few days ago with a 100,000 fans around the marketing number to play a bit of the micro-Bo anti-spam powder, the results directly extinguished 90,000 powder. The boss may be crying.

You think it's tiring to keep so many smart zombie powders, in fact, a monthly salary of 2000 copy every day to write dozens of comments on the content can be done, as for the content of micro-blog, if you have used similar to the leather time machine, such as publishing tools to know that the basic is click, select the microblogging category to publish, then chicken Soup philosophy Constellation Travel, All kinds of fine sentences have everything, do not need copy to write. Price, the cost is actually very low, hundreds of can let you brush one months, but to different customers can report tens of thousands of. In the KPI, the enterprise boss basically cannot see out, he also has no time to see every day (and most of the staff of the party is to deal with the errand, not a few of them, and not a few really understand, I know a lot of party a company's propaganda director, himself even micro-Bo did not, basic two eyes a smear, but the effect of the real can be OH.

See here, tell you actually my friend's millions of fans are actually bought, on the basis of buying fans, he will buy a lot of tweets and comments for each Weibo. But because these false booms are operated by machines, it is easy to see some clues through the Weibo tail. Later, through a number of professional team, the pure manual operation.

The reason for this is also very simple answer, the more fans, the number of forwarding and comments, the higher the sale of advertising prices naturally higher. The advertisers will pay for everything. Now Weibo inside that group of fans are many, every day the Big V of the advertisement is actually not a brush active degree.

Yesterday Feng Dahui also on Weibo on the Twitter user activity dropped, I think it will not be accidental, perhaps this is because he did not know how to the big V to learn how to brush powder.

Twitter is doing everything it can to get more traffic from outside to help the content producers on the platform get better exposure. While micro-blogging is trying every means to squeeze benefits from users, the user's attitude is completely disregard.

How far such a microblog can go, I can't help but be immersed in meditation ...