The content world is mainly divided into three layers.

The top is the content platform.

A core feature of the content platform is that it has no limits and strives to serve all people. What the content platform pursues is immersive browsing, which requires the content platform to have a large number of users and a large amount of content.

Only with a large amount of content can I have enough content no matter what type of content you like.

Only with a large number of users can I ensure that no matter how unique your preferences are, I can find a group of people like you, and through the collaborative filtering of recommendations, the content can be pushed accurately enough.

More + accurate = immersive browsing

Therefore, the larger the content platform, the better the experience, which is inevitable. Winner take all.

Because of this, Kuaishou will not say that I only belong to the young people in small towns in the third and fourth tier cities, and Bilibili will not say that I only belong to the second dimension. Everyone is busy breaking the circle, generalizing, and desperately introducing various types of content and users.

In the middle, there are various vertical platforms.

If the content platform is long horizontally, the vertical platform is long vertically, that is, it fully meets the vertical needs of a type of users. This requires the platform to have many personalized functions, and even self-developed certain content.

The most typical example is Keep, whose fitness content is all self-developed and highly structured. You can choose your own courses based on the physical test results, and you can also easily learn some tips for movements, or extend the rest time. These functions actually deeply meet the needs of users who take exercise classes at home.

These functions and content, as well as the user mindset accumulated over a long period of time, have become the barriers of vertical platforms.

At the bottom, there is the transaction platform.

Transactions based on content are basically achieved at the bottom. For example, Mafengwo, a considerable part of its annual profit is achieved by doing cps for platforms such as Ctrip. Another example is the e-commerce of Kuaishou and Douyin, a considerable part of the turnover is achieved by Taobao.

The transaction platform also has a certain bilateral network effect, but it may be slightly weaker than the content platform.

After a content platform grows big enough, it will definitely do two things in order to pursue more user time and more commercial benefits.

One is to verticalize, or verticalize, and occupy the scenes of vertical platforms.

The second is to create its own closed transaction loop as much as possible, and no longer divert traffic to the transaction platform. You can clearly observe this trend for Douyin and Kuaishou.

After the vertical platform stabilizes, it will also strive to do two things.

One is to try to generalize, or increase the frequency of use (the scenes of vertical platforms are often very fixed, so the frequency is relatively low). In essence, it wants to grab users from the first-tier content platforms. For example, Xiaohongshu is trying to generalize and do POI information at the same time. Mafengwo is doing content in the same city. Although Keep's community has not been established, it has never given up.

The second is to work hard to do its own e-commerce or supply chain, and no longer rely on the transaction platform. For example, Keep's mall, Xiaohongshu has also done self-operated e-commerce before.

The third-tier transaction platform is also continuing to do two things.

First, we should work hard to create content. For example, Taobao has been working hard to create content, from the initial search tools to various topics, to recommendations in front of thousands of people, and Taobao live broadcasts. The reason is that we don’t want users to go through the content platform. Of course, the effect is also quite significant, from buying on Taobao to browsing on Taobao.

Second, private domain traffic. The traffic that has been bought with great effort must not be wasted, and we must retain them. Taobao provides merchants with a large number of fan operation tools to help merchants operate their own fans.

Among these platforms, there is a special case, that is Meituan.

Meituan was originally a vertical trading platform, similar to Ctrip. In order to be able to cut into vertical content, it acquired Dianping. But after the acquisition, the large amount of content accumulated by Dianping is essentially similar to Taobao’s order sharing, which can only meet scenarios with clear needs. Meituan incubated a large amount of grass-seeking content with the help of Dianping’s content production system, and finally integrated it into the Meituan App.

So Meituan is a relatively good example of the connection between the second and third layers.

Of course, there are some content products that live more freely. For example, Douban and Hupu. They are all communities, divided by the attributes of the crowd. This determines that it is difficult for them to generalize upwards, because the community is actually very exclusive. Douban and Hupu are both in the millions.

Author: Sun Jinlong, Operation Manager of ByteDance