Content seeding community race track, welcoming new contestants.
Recently, NetEase launched a content community app called "NetEase Little Bee", which is highly benchmarked against Xiaohongshu in terms of design and functionality, and is known as the NetEase version of "Xiaohongshu" by the outside world.
According to the Apple App Store, the developer of the NetEase Little Bee App is Shanghai Binhe Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Binhe"), who currently only releases one NetEase Little Bee app. According to Tianyancha information, Shanghai Binhe was established in 2019 with a registered capital of 10 million yuan.
The reporter of China Business Daily noticed that no matter whether it is a new grass growing community on the platform or the launch of an independent app, the determination of Internet giants to "rebuild a small red book" has never changed. At present, ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba and other major manufacturers have successively entered the content grass growing race, such as Lemon8 with ByteDance, WeChat's small green book, the oasis of Weibo, Alibaba's State Stick and Meituan's "local eating".
Among the domestic Internet giants, NetEase is later than its rivals. How do we build our own version of content grass growing community? Regarding Little Bee, we are currently in the trial stage and have not officially spoken out yet, "NetEase Little Bee told reporters
Zhang Shule, an analyst of the Internet industry, told the reporter: "Grass planting experience has always been an efficient scene of converting traffic into consumption. In fact, it is not just NetEase. ByteDance has also made products similar to Little Red Book overseas, and has achieved considerable success. NetEase is still trying and making mistakes when it is making content community products, just like previous exploration of various vertical content communities, but only NetEase Cloud Music can be considered successful for many years."
NetEase version of "Little Red Book"
The reporter found through actual testing and experience that NetEase Little Bee can only register and log in through a mobile phone number at present. As a novice user, after opening the NetEase Little Bee App, the reporter enters the default homepage's "Discovery Page", which adopts a double column waterfall flow form, giving people an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
On the homepage, content recommended by algorithms such as graphics, short videos, etc. are presented through a "familiar recipe". For example, after clicking on a graphic and textual post, users can see that the layout of the entire content is similar to that of Xiaohongshu. Above is the image, below is the text content and topic, and at the bottom is the interactive comments between users.
After the initial experience, the reporter found that NetEase Little Bee is aligned with Xiaohongshu in terms of overall experience and functionality.
Of course, NetEase Little Bee also has some differences. The most obvious thing is that NetEase's Little Bee supports academic/professional certification, and many posts on the page are labeled with "V" for schools and companies. In addition, in some small details, although NetEase Little Bee does not have a shopping function, it has introduced a note tipping mechanism, where users can tip their favorite notes and the gift price is affordable.
In terms of content operation, NetEase Little Bee drew inspiration from Hupu's rating column and innovatively added a square page, allowing users to rate and discuss different topics. At present, the popular rating list of NetEase's Little Bee can be divided into three categories (the list of "knowing brothers", the list of "campus" and the list of "roast"). The list and topics with a large number of participants include "I am a millionaire blogger in Little Bee", "which one is strong in practice", and "MBTI personality ranking".
In addition, NetEase's Little Bee is also leveraging its cash capabilities to attract new users and has launched the slogan "Become a Honey and Get 10000 RMB in Cash", focusing on attracting college students to settle in. On the issue of "how to make content more attractive", the official also thoughtfully provides a creative guide, teaching new users how to create titles, select images, write text, etc. step by step.
It should be pointed out that the background of the launch of NetEase Little Bee is worth noting. On November 6th, the official account of Xiaohongshu, "Commercial Advertising Potato," released a notice on the governance rules of transaction diversion business order for merchants and creators. The announcement stated that providing WeChat/phone or guiding the addition of WeChat/phone and other contact information for off-site transactions, sending links to other platforms for off-site transactions, etc., will be deemed a violation.
And the platform is even more ruthless in punishing illegal traffic diversion: according to the severity of the situation, measures such as restricting account traffic, restricting content publishing, paying liquidated damages, clearing stores or account suspension will be taken. Some ordinary users have been banned due to being wrongly accused of violating rules, and some of them have switched to other platforms, which undoubtedly provides an opportunity for the development of NetEase's Little Bee.
A typical user attitude reflection is the comment under the topic of "Little Bee Rebirth" that says "Little Red Book can't do it, can't I do Little Yellow Book. It can be said that the runaway on Xiaohongshu found a pure land here at NetEase's Little Bee. However, this has also attracted attention from Xiaohongshu.
An employee of Xiaohongshu expressed on social media that they will pursue "traitors" across platforms in an attempt to recover lost users. Of course, this can be seen as a joke, indirectly reflecting the open network scope of NetEase's Little Bee platform. However, as mentioned earlier, NetEase's Little Bee has not yet explained their strategy for developing a content platform, only stating that they will announce it in a timely manner when it is officially released.
"If we simply use Xiaohongshu as a reference, under the background of the buying e-commerce scene (live broadcast with word of mouth) in which friends have formed a scale and opened a certain market, NetEase is difficult to succeed, and must have some new perspectives." Zhang Shule said that new perspectives include but are not limited to anime, hip-hop, or other areas where young people like but the content community is not strong enough, and NetEase may still have the power to fight.
At present, Little Bee is still in its early stages of development, and whether it can become a phenomenal app in the future still needs time to verify.
Commercialization Acceleration Run
The reporter learned that NetEase Little Bee is under NetEase Media and developed by NetEase Beijing's R&D team. According to NetEase's third quarter 2024 financial report, the net revenue of NetEase Media's innovation and other businesses for the quarter was 1.8 billion yuan. NetEase Media has improved its content quality through a big language model, with a phenomenal output rate of 30% for popular and high-quality products, a year-on-year increase of 34% in new creators, and a year-on-year increase of 27.49% in post interaction volume.
In the eyes of the outside world, NetEase's strategic intention of launching the "NetEase Little Bee" at this time is mainly to find new growth points outside of core businesses such as gaming, music, and education.
However, NetEase has been slow to get involved in the content grass community. Previously, Internet giants and emerging platforms have laid out the track, such as Tiktok's "Kesong", Taobao's "stroll", and JD's "discovery".
Once a content community can form a strong vertical aggregation based on interests, it has the potential to create huge social stickiness, just like how NetEase Cloud Music was unable to compete with Tencent in terms of copyright back then, but relied on the creative power of original reviews, playlists, and other content communities to ultimately become the only two entities, "said Zhang Shule.
In his opinion, NetEase's attack this time should still choose to strike vertically rather than spreading everywhere. In fact, not only NetEase, but also ByteDance has made products similar to Little Red Book overseas and achieved considerable success.
It is understood that the Lemon8 app was created by ByteDance, and the domestic media regard it as an "overseas little red book". According to data, since September this year, Lemon8 has been the most downloaded lifestyle app on iOS devices in the United States, ranking among the top 7 lifestyle apps on Android devices.
Although there is currently no similar product in China that can surpass Xiaohongshu in terms of volume, Xiaohongshu undoubtedly provides these newcomers with experience and samples for commercial monetization of content seeding communities.
In mid November, Xiaohongshu released the final report of its "Shopping Carnival Once a Year" campaign: During this year's "Double 11" period, the number of merchants with a GMV (total merchandise transaction volume) of tens of millions on Xiaohongshu was 5.4 times that of the same period last year, the number of buyers with a single transaction exceeding tens of millions of GMV was 3.6 times that of the same period last year, and the number of live streaming rooms with a single transaction exceeding one million GMV was 8.5 times that of the same period last year.
As traditional e-commerce platforms become increasingly disillusioned with the "Double 11" battle, Xiaohongshu is one of the few platforms that dares to "show off their achievements". In mid October, according to foreign media reports, Xiaohongshu's revenue surged to $1 billion in the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 67%, and its net profit reached $200 million, a year-on-year increase of 400%; As a comparison, Xiaohongshu's annual revenue for 2023 was 3.7 billion US dollars, with a net profit of 500 million US dollars; For the full year of 2022, its revenue was approximately $2 billion, with a loss of $200 million.
Since 2023, Xiaohongshu has accelerated its layout in the e-commerce field with continuous actions.
Firstly, the live streaming business was upgraded to an independent department, achieving unified management of live streaming content and live streaming e-commerce. Subsequently, e-commerce and live streaming business were further integrated, and a new trading department was jointly established to work alongside the community department and commercial department, jointly promoting the company's commercial development.
This year, Xiaohongshu has merged its buyer and merchant operations into an e-commerce operations department, strengthening the integration of its e-commerce sector. In an interview, COO Conan of Xiaohongshu defined Xiaohongshu e-commerce as "lifestyle e-commerce" for the first time. This is a further clarification of the platform's business positioning after the "buyer e-commerce".
In the eyes of investor Huang Hai, the validated business model of Xiaohongshu is advertising seeding. Xiaohongshu has a significant advantage in grass planting marketing, which is the lower cost of trial and error. And live streaming e-commerce sales is a profit model that Xiaohongshu has not yet verified.
"Unlike Kwai and Tiktok, Xiaohongshu is difficult to make users directly attracted by the immersive live broadcast room when they are going up and down, forming impulsive consumption." Huang Hai said that the insistence on being a community makes Xiaohongshu unique in China's social media platforms, but also made sacrifices in the market ceiling and commercial efficiency, especially in the field of live broadcast e-commerce.
Lifestyle e-commerce anchors the personalized needs of a very precise audience. In this niche track, one must make their products very good and receive good user feedback. Even small needs can make good business, "Conan once said.
In the eyes of industry insiders, as live streaming e-commerce enters the second half, the value that high-quality live streaming content can provide has become a key factor in establishing a fan system. The entire industry needs active participation from all participants in the ecosystem to move towards a new level and promote the smoothness and refinement of live streaming.