Weibo, traditional forum/bbs the way out where

In the Internet Age, forum also known as BBS, the forum covers almost every aspect of our lives, almost everyone can find their own interest or need to understand the thematic forums, and various types of websites, comprehensive portals or functional special sites are also favored to open their own forums to promote the exchange between users To increase interactivity and enrich the content of the site.

But in the past two years, Weibo has greatly influenced the breadth and intensity of internet public opinion. The rise of micro-blogging, the first impact of the previous years forum/bbs in the network of public opinion in the "Overlord" status, the decline in activity, "opinion leader" mass loss, many people moved to micro-blog, or retreated to personal blogs, many forums faced the danger of closure. Where will the forum go in the future?

So far there has been no stable to the BBS this product Form view. BBS and mailbox is the oldest product, the comprehensive introduction of the analysis is not only a vast project, but also very few people can do.

Here impromptu say I to BBS this product form feeling:

1, the Chinese Internet market most of the time is affected by the capital will, and the most optimistic about the capital of the BBS is only the peak period of sing, after all will be recognized as a point of view is BBS difficult to change, BBS craze also receded.

2, BBS this ancient product form, although never become the protagonist of the Internet industry development, but its existence has been relatively stable, never because of the rise of any trend is completely replaced. BBS in China and even the world has not been cold, so there is no "warmer" one said.

3, from UGC This large range, take BBS and other products compare UGC product three elements-the main information filtering mechanism, the user's main interactive mechanism, the main communication mechanism of information, Twitter is follow, @ and Rt,bbs are replies, replies, replies. It can be seen that the BBS is in a product design to achieve a variety of products purposes: filtering information by the replies, interaction between users by replies, the content of the message by replies, Twitter is a very simple product, but the BBS is actually simpler than Twitter-simple means that the threshold is low, Simplicity means more stability.

4, if the content of the forum, post, replies to these elements of the products are counted as BBS words, then the domestic BBS market by Baidu Bar (forum platform), Discuz!/phpwind (General forum Procedures), MOP/Tianya (Independent forum Community) composition.

5, single from the flow of view, Baidu Bar is the world's largest BBS platform, hundreds of millions of of visits per day, from the birth has been growing, even if the outbreak of micro-bo, paste the flow has not declined. In addition to the horizon, although last year down a period of time, but overall still very stable. In recent years, the rise of micro-blogging and other social media has different degrees of influence on all kinds of traditional forum-type communities, but overall its impact is limited to the user's total Internet time preemption, there is no essential substitution relationship.

6, the vast majority of domestic commercial websites use discuz! or phpwind to build their own forum, because discuz! and phpwind are not very reliable data disclosure, so can only speculate estimates. Discus! global usage appears to be over 2 million, phpwind more than 1 million. The personal observation is that Phpwind has grown more than discuz! in the last two years, according to the effective web site, the current market share between the two may be between 6:4 and 5:5 (very rough estimate, I personally not responsible for this number). Say one more: Sing put discuz! free, so big, but he did not pack the server space together, so did not do very big.

7, different BBS services, in addition to posting, replies to these backbone functions, peripheral function Design differences will also cause a huge difference between different products (not the community atmosphere, and so on). For example, the post bar and the group's newsfeed page-"My I Bar" is very weak, "my group's latest topic" is very strong, the other BBS does not have such a page. There are replies to the content of the presentation is not the same as the main post, whether the replies have a separate interactive operation ... The difference between the main function of the product, the impact on the "BBS" is much greater than other product categories (such as Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo, in response to forwarding mechanism for a long time is not the same). So in my view, rather than "BBS" is a product form (and "microblogging", "network Disk" similar), it is more like a service category (and "SNS" peer).

8, do BBS related product personnel must see clearly: Although BBS appears to be a product form, but in fact different BBS services have very big differences, the overall can be divided into the above said: BBS platform, General BBS program, Independent BBS, some products will be used as a discussion of BBS as the auxiliary, For example, news portal comments and so on, but here's "BBS" is not an independent product, just auxiliary function, so not counted.

9, the General BBS program is not essentially to C products, closer to B; Independent BBS has its own life cycle, is often affected by the operation rather than product impact. Interesting is the BBS platform. The two main representatives of the domestic BBS platform are Baidu Bar and watercress Group. Posted by the search to bring the huge, perfect flow, the difference between the bar is very strong, paste the core is the key words, so the vast majority of the subject is a word can accurately describe the specific things, such as World of Warcraft, Li Yuchun; Watercress group flow from the watercress, different groups between the district is not so strong, The core of the group is the human trait, so most teams are subject to a descriptive statement--especially a description of the crowd--such as "I always feel like a jerk" and "we love to toss a boyfriend." Relative to the bar, the Panel's platform features are not particularly obvious, and all groups of users are more common than the differences between groups. But the group is relatively loose and human-centred, so the interesting result is the relative bar:

This is a watercress user joined part of the group, you can see that this person has been working, may graduate from Beijing Normal University, Virgo, a type of blood, Chinese control, the main means of transport are bicycles, pay attention to watercress, like Silver soul, Fuji camera, Master Dog, reading, Opera ...

It is clear that the group has labeled individual interests, characteristics, and information relating to education, work, personal data and so on. This is the difference between the bar and the group-it looks like the product is similar in shape, but in fact it is very different.

10, heard that Tencent's requirements for the PM is to often bubble forum, I have a similar metaphysical conclusion-observe user behavior, mining user needs, there is no better place than the forum. This is because, BBS almost omnipotent, pay attention to the words you can see, some people put their own BBS when the vertical portal, and some people use BBS to do data collation, some people with BBS version chat, some people with posts open shop, some people in the BBS on the launch of group buying, some people with BBS to find girlfriend, In many of the Forum's water areas, you can see the headlines of popular posts are mostly "?" As the end (my observation is between the 20%~30%, the more closely the membership of the forum ratio is usually higher, these behaviors are extended for more than 10 years, and then gradually have a specialized database, specialized IM, special electric Business website, special Group purchase website, special question and answer website ... Appear。

Then take the Watercress group as an example, watercress now has a 40多万个 group, study the user behavior and information characteristics is very interesting. In essence it is a collection of products that meet a variety of needs, with squares (eg: Little woman help), subculture (eg: Jingtao group), Vertical forum (eg: poor tour world), club (eg: star), topic discussion (eg: friends), Marketing forum (eg: the circle recruit), Private circle ( Eg: Moon Group), personal label (eg: I swear I don't have children), even some behavioral art (eg: Watercress Crematorium, join this group you will be very rich) and so on

This is a few days before the creation of the group, the BBS when the game, are quickly the user play out Xiang: http://www.douban.com/group/kick/

11, BBS In fact, they are also slowly evolving, such as live posts, the previous years are not visible, in recent years but more and more. I interpret this phenomenon as the result of BBS's own products and information against fragmentation information. Live posts such content, absorbing the advantages of fragmentation of information, but also promote the community crowd of the advantages, and finally produced a other product can not do the content--in the N-person onlookers, with a number of fragments of information, composed of a complete story.

Also, the use of their own set up the forum as a source of revenue, through the opening of the official forum Taobao store to profit, is as early as 06, 07 has been a lot of webmaster attempts to successful business model, community E-commerce budding in fact originated from the grassroots.

Now even some people use BBS as a source, with YY to profit it.

12, the natural defects of the BBS is roughly 4, the first is for a single BBS need a strong operational investment, the product itself can not continue to operate; the second is a single BBS has a life cycle, 3 years and 5 years is the most important forum node; Third, everything is loose, what needs can be satisfied, But they are not enough to be satisfied, and the content is difficult to structure (so it is difficult to form a profit model that is hard and wide).

13, a product form has been tepid, and then one day suddenly glow second spring, this kind of thing is very strange, isn't it? We saw 8848 early days of death, and then Ali bigger, and Facebook had a lot of social services to be martyrs, but to be clear, e-commerce and social services are all service types, is not a specific product form, this is very important--the BBS as a product form, foreseeable future, it will always be like this, but if the BBS as a service type, it will evolve, I believe that the BBS in the near future will have an evolutionary form, and then trigger a boom.

Look at the blog, and then see Tumblr, you can say Tumblr is not a blog, but you can say Tumblr is a traditional blog. You may want to simulate the initial design of the founder of the Tumblr, and then reuse to the BBS up to think about, may be harvested.

Ps:reddit is actually a BBS platform, the last two years thanks to Digg's disappointing, Reddit popularity soared, heard that now has been valued 400 million dollars.