"Stop more, goodbye."
On March 31st, bilibili’s UP owner "King Xu who lives by his face" with 3.854 million fans released a video announcing that the update would be temporarily stopped.
In this video with a broadcast volume of nearly 5 million, he admits that the reason for suspending the update is firstly "not making money or even losing money", and secondly "being a little tired" for maintaining continuous update.
Just the day before, "-LKs-", one of the top 2022 UPs with 3.112 million fans, just released the video "Notes on Temporary Stop". Since then, some UP owners have announced "stopping the shift" one after another. On April 2nd, "bilibili UP Master Initiates Stop Watch Tide" rushed to the hot search list. Not long ago, bilibili was called a "conscience platform" by many netizens because of the news that "the loss was 7.5 billion to the UP owner and 9.1 billion".
At the time of hot search, the main response from UP indicated that "stopping is a personal behavior" and "everything is normal". People close to bilibili told reporters that at present, there are nearly 10,000 UP owners with more than 500,000 fans in bilibili. On this base, "single-digit stop is more normal".
The reporter visited some users of UPs and bilibili, and found that "stopping watch" may be a personal choice, but when a large amount of traffic strikes, content quality, creative ecology and incentive mechanism are all problems faced by various content communities and video platforms with increasingly fierce competition.
Although it is not more "tidal", there are more choices.
Found that after boarding the hot search, "-LKs-" immediately inHe said that he was "lying down". But under the video of bilibili himself announcing the suspension of updating, he put his message on the top, emphasizing that the suspension of updating is "completely random personal vacation+decoration", and said that "this channel is developing normally this year, and the income is no less than last year", and he bluntly said "maybe this is a coincidence" for the hot search.
"-LKs-" emphasizes "normal development"
Even King Xu, who made it clear that he was "losing money", publicly thought that the hot search was "inexplicable" and "I don’t know who arranged it", and said that bilibili was only a publishing platform for himself, and whether he stopped or not had nothing to do with bilibili. "There is no difference between content creation and ordinary work. It is normal for some people to make money and others to lose money. There is no need to make a fuss about people from all walks of life."
The reporter visited and found that some temporarily updated UP owners also have different personal situations. With 1.865 million fans, "Xu Yun Wandering in China", the travel leader, almost kept the frequency of "daily shift" during his cycling trip to Northeast China in February this year, but he didn’t update it after March 25th. However, he had previously indicated that the update would not be frequent when he returned to his hometown for rest after cycling, and said in the video commentary that "it hasn’t been updated in recent days, and there is nothing".
Some netizens also found that there are only a few UP owners who have been repeatedly cited as "stopping the tide", but the update situation of UP owners they are concerned about is still relatively normal. "I am used to refreshing and clicking from the homepage casually. Maybe I missed some UP master updates in the recent homepage push." Mr. Lu, who is engaged in brand marketing, looked at the UP owners he was concerned about and found that all of them were normal. "For example, a film and television top 100 UP owner in 2018, I thought he hadn’t updated recently. I clicked on his personal homepage and found that he updated every day recently." Some netizens said, "It should be normal for such a large platform that some people are stationed and some people stop." Some netizens bluntly said: "bilibili’s hot search on Sina is a bit funny."
Playing Doraemon by Hanfu and Folk Music in Zidu Qinshe.
"Since the hot search rushed to the first place, it shows that it really poked the feelings of some users." Chang Min, 31, is a senior user of bilibili. During the lunch break, she will brush bilibili’s video to "eat", but recently it is obvious that many UP owners who have created with their heart have started to "water video": "In the past, shop-visiting bloggers also shared professional knowledge such as cloth and tailoring, but now it is more like advertising boasting blindly; In the past, the comments in the film and television area were mainly output, but now they are like words.. "She remembers an UP owner who is famous for his sharp views, but now his main style is" every sentence rhymes ",even if the grammar is not fluent.
Lv Bo, a tourism practitioner, pays close attention to the tourism, evaluation and film and television programs on bilibili. Recently, he found that the sound of many videos is exactly the same as that of Tik Tok and other platforms. "The quality of AI reading manuscripts and putting them on various platforms at the same time is really not high." On the Internet, some senior users in bilibili also complained that "it is difficult to find a video with more than 6 minutes on the homepage now".
In the view of Wang Zhe, an associate professor in the Department of Communication of Zhejiang Media College, the dispute of stopping work has made everyone see the very unstable working conditions of "digital linggong" who make a living from content creation. "The power relationship between them and the platform was often obscured by’ power generation with love’ in the past." She said that any minor rule changes in platform algorithms, interface functions and background review will lead to changes in creators’ income, but individual UP owners often have no bargaining power.
At the same time, Tik Tok, Xiaohongshu and other platforms have launched support incentive plans to support content creation from traffic, funds and other aspects. Take Xiaohongshu as an example. In 2020, the platform will provide targeted support to video creators, live creators and creators of pan-knowledge and pan-entertainment categories with 10 billion flows. This year, it will provide tens of billions of traffic support for fashion merchants and anchors.
"Ahalolo", the top 100 UPs in 2022, is a fashion blogger based on bilibili. On their homepage, the first 13-minute video was released on July 28, 2019, and 239 videos are currently updated. In Xiaohongshu, they didn’t start updating until February 15th, 2020. At present, there are 360 notes. Although the profile says "Update on Wednesday and Saturday", some fans find that the update frequency is irregular now, and bilibili is often later than other platforms. For example, The Designer of China in Fashion Week, which was updated at 22: 00 on March 18th, was published in Little Red Book at 22: 00 on March 17th. "Their previous videos were specially made for bilibili, and they often directly mentioned bilibili terms such as’ barrage one’ and’ one key three links’." Vagrancy, a fan who has been paying attention to their growth, found that even the signboard column "Red Carpet Review" recently began to try vertical screen shooting.
He Tianping, a lecturer at the School of Journalism, Renmin University of China, believes that "short video platforms and emerging platforms are supporting Chinese video, and the mobility of high-quality content creators may become stronger. On what platform to publish video creation content, the optional space for UP owners has increased. "
Platform and UP owners need to build revenue closed loop.
"One day when I went out to throw garbage, I felt that the weather was particularly good. I haven’t felt this sunny feeling for a long time." After becoming a full-time UP owner in August 2019, "-LKs-" will be open all year round, "there will be no complete rest day for more than two days", even eating, bathing and shopping are thinking about new content, and traveling should also bring equipment "in case you want to shoot materials". He bluntly said, "I want to try to travel without a camera and what it’s like to just play." It happened that there was no shooting location in the home decoration, which became an opportunity to stop and rest. "I hope it is a very positive and healthy rest."
UP owners are so tired, which is related to the video "creation" becoming "career". Bilibili, who focused on niche areas such as e-sports and secondary elements in the early days, mostly relied on UP owners to "generate electricity with love". "Although the video production is rough, the content is original and personal." Hu Wei (pseudonym), an enthusiast who has stopped working in 2018, believes that the main reason for making videos at that time was "expressing desire" and "hoping to communicate with colleagues". However, as video production has gradually become a profession, early UP owners like him "can’t compete with full-time UP owners in terms of update frequency, overall quality and traffic interaction".
With the development of professional users’ production content, many UP owners who seem to be personal accounts have teams and companies behind them. He Tianping said, "It has formed a very complete and deep industrial structure, which will inevitably bring about the increase of operating costs and the increase of market competition pressure." Master Wang and Mao Mao Jr., the top 100 UP owners in 2022, once revealed in the video "I spent 5 million yuan to make an account for three years" that counting five insurances and one gold, the studio needs 1.34 million yuan to pay employees a year, and the annual cost is more than 2 million yuan.
Bilibili is an early platform to directly provide support and incentives to creators. In 2018, it launched the "bilibili Creative Incentive Plan" to enable UPs who create original content to make profits through content creation. In 2018, "-LKS-"will earn an average monthly income from 1000 yuan in bilibili, "equivalent to an hourly wage of more than 20 yuan". "Although it is only an intern level, I am happy that my efforts can be rewarded." In his view, the bilibili incentive fund represents a kind of recognition from the platform: the incentive fund encourages originality, and the video of advertising business orders will not be obtained, which can not only prevent the UP owners from receiving advertisements to make money, but also ensure that the UP owners who do not receive advertisements get a little compensation.
Once creation becomes a profession, the benefits cannot be avoided. The reporter learned from many UP owners that the video revenue from bilibili is mainly divided into two parts: platform revenue and advertising revenue. On the bilibili, videos can participate in punching challenges, video creation incentives and other projects, as well as fans who are similar to rewards to "charge"; And many UP owners leave contact information "business cooperation" to contact advertisements, and the platform also has advertising revenue sharing, fireworks business list and so on.
Unique UP owners are important providers of content products in bilibili.
The dispute of "stopping the shift" that has attracted attention this time has been expressed by the UP owner. The direct reason is that the adjustment of internal incentive mechanism in bilibili last year led to less and less platform income for the UP owner. Le Lin (a pseudonym), a music master with tens of thousands of fans in bilibili, felt the decrease of motivation at the end of last year. "Some people even have only 1/10 of what they used to have." Now his update frequency is measured by months. "Some good works have to be invited to post-production and photographers, which will generate expenses. In the past, if the video clicks were considerable, I could make ends meet by creating incentives, but now I can’t, I can only reduce the works with higher costs. "
At the same time, advertising revenue also began to decline. A category UP owner recently received only 300 yuan’s advertising quotation. "Not only in bilibili, on some platforms, advertisers even directly request live broadcasts."
Not long ago, bilibili announced 2022.It has surprised many people: the annual net loss is 7.5 billion yuan, while the incentive share for UP owners is as high as 9.1 billion yuan. "In fact, bilibili’s video playback revenue was the most generous of all platforms." Some insiders have analyzed that financial pressure may be one of the reasons for changing the creator’s income sharing.
He Tianping believes that in the past few years, bilibili invested a lot of money and manpower to support original UP owners, which is actually "far beyond the normal situation". Now, various video platforms are reducing costs and improving efficiency, which will inevitably lead to UP owners not getting the expected returns in the past. In his view, the dispute over stopping the shift exposed the problem of realizing the original content. He believes that the suspension or loss of some high-quality UPs is a phased situation, which responds to the fact that the industrial structure represented by the ecological development of the Chinese video industry is undergoing transformation.
Some UP owners have started the road to transformation. The video of Trend UP owner "Kevin Strange Oh" in bilibili includes shop visiting, wearing and so on. Although 80,000 fans are not many in bilibili, the trend brand clothing launched by him has just been updated again on April 2nd. UP owners in some fashion districts in bilibili have launched their own brands, and video is like a platform for them to interpret their ideas and express their opinions. In the eyes of some fans, video is more like a moving "magazine" to attract them to consume products.
Longing for the "return" of creative environment
"In bilibili, it is not difficult to receive advertisements." Upmaster Xiaoqing, a newcomer with games as the main content, began to update in June last year. Although the number of fans stayed at 100, the broadcast volume was good, and many game manufacturers have come to talk about promotion and cooperation. However, she refused after repeated thinking. "It takes a lot of thought to make the audience not see the traces of advertisements, otherwise it will be branded as’ just a meal’ (receiving advertisements) and hit the signboard."
Once the meal is just right, reasonable content can easily become the target of attack. Xiaoqing launched 10 videos from June to November last year, with the highest click rate reaching 160,000. The popularity has not been transformed into creative motivation. Since the end of last year, she has been in a stagnant stage. "The most important thing is the ecological impact of the comment area."
"The content that is flat and steady is not pleasing. The more extreme the title and content are, the more traffic there will be, and the comment area will be different." Xiaoqing found that many commentators often argued over a detail. Supporters praised her as "my Internet mouthpiece", opponents denounced her as "nonsense", and others pretended that their comments were deleted and accused her of "losing". "It can be seen from many messages that these people are eager to comment without watching the video at all."
This experience is not unique to newcomers. A former "Top 100 UP Master" has stopped working for two or three years, and he told reporters that stopping working "has something to do with the deterioration of the community environment and too many black-and-white debates". "Ahalolo" has mentioned more than once that the original normal design elements have become "unspeakable" because of some extreme views. Their updated "China Watch and Show Corps Sweeps Paris Fashion Week" in mid-March commented on the clothes worn by many stars, and some people were worried that they would be "reported". There is also a well-known game UP owner who made a raiders video for an open-world mobile game, carefully without any opinions, and was attacked by the "black powder" tree of the game because of its high playback volume, exposing his real information such as name and address, which is called "opening the box" on the Internet.
"The most beautiful night in 2019" Douban scored 9.0, which is known as bilibili’s "Broken Circle".
As a senior user of bilibili, the most important reason why Xiaoqing is willing to upload videos here is that the rich community atmosphere is completely different from other platforms. However, this atmosphere gradually disappeared after the rapid "breaking circle" of the New Year’s Eve party in bilibili in 2019. "An obvious example is this New Year’s Eve party. The Douban score of’ the most beautiful night bilibili party in 2019′ was as high as 9.0, once dropped to 6.7, and rose to 7.9 this year." In her view. Compared with the clearer positioning of other platforms, bilibili under the blessing of traffic needs to be clearly positioned again, so that creators can have a more relaxed and pleasant creative atmosphere, not just a platform for storing videos.
Passerby A, the upmaster who hasn’t been updated since October 25th, 2022, publicly listed seven major problems in bilibili, including frequent replacement of docking personnel, encouraging new people to eliminate old people and encouraging vicious competition. Lelin is also quite touched by this. "Some people around me stopped slowly before the creative incentives fell, mainly because they felt that the quality of content was not the priority of resources, and the whole creative ecology we liked was changing." For example, he said that some docking staff and new users were not familiar with bilibili’s creative ecology, which led to "more and more similarity" between bilibili and other platforms. However, he is still unwilling to sign an "exclusive" contract with other platforms to give up here: "bilibili does have some irreplaceable things, such as various activities and performances, and I like the atmosphere of gathering together very much."
Like Lv Bo, Xiaoqing found many voices in the game area with the same paragraph as the travel video. "For example, a clear and urgent male voice, a female voice that imitates the voice of Hong Kong opera, I feel uncomfortable as soon as I hear it." She said that she was looking for a kind of "meaning" when making videos in bilibili: "If you make videos with your own heart, the user feedback will become more and more extreme; I spent a long time recording the sound of my throat congestion. AI can synthesize it in a few minutes, and even make a video directly in the future. Who is willing to check the information and write a text to shoot the material? "
However, He Tianping believes that AI will not have much impact on the original content production of UP owners in the short term, but it cannot be ignored in the future. "Between algorithm and experience, is there a possibility to balance the creation of the two? This market encourages a hundred flowers to blossom, and our demand for quality content is very great. " He Tianping said, "With the maturity of technology, people and the whole industrial ecology, the video threshold has become higher and higher, users’ output expectations for good content will also become higher, and the feedback brought by good content to the market will become higher. Technological development is to develop a better ecology, not to return to that stage of staking. "
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