Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

In June, bilibili held his 10th anniversary celebration in Shanghai, and the maturing bilibili became more and more influential. Under the Weibo topic of bilibili's 10th anniversary, the exposure reached the peak of 250 million in 48 hours, and the number of discussions reached 222000. The news of "three-body" animation ignited the whole network, and this news firmly occupied the top search list of the major social platforms.

Ten-year-old bilibili is in her prime. Extremely high attention and a large user group show its strength and vitality. After ten years of development, from a penniless to today's listed company, bilibili has given himself the biggest birthday gift with a market capitalization of more than US $4 billion, and the recently released second-quarter results have also provided a qualified answer for this decade's development.

In the second quarter, bilibili performed well from a year-on-year growth of 50 per cent to 1.54 billion yuan in revenue to the performance of all major business sectors. The number of monthly active users reaches 110 million, and the net increase of 9 million is even more eye-catching. The platform of this young man glows with a brilliance that has never been seen before.

1 the ten years' ups and downs of the "Little broken Station"

The year 2005 can be regarded as the first year of the video industry, when three former PayPal employees founded YouTube, and domestic video websites also showed explosive growth in this year. Tudou, PPTV, PPS, Ku6 and other video websites have come out one after another, building a domestic network video pattern. Two years later, in the field of subdivision, the two-dimensional culture gave birth to the platform of Station A, and the barrage has since entered the domestic market. The high-quality UCG content and the user-centered operation philosophy make A stand in the limelight for a period of time.

In 2009, Xu Yi, a UP master of A Station, ran away and founded bilibili-bilibili because he was dissatisfied with the server of A Station. Bilibili was called the back garden of A Station for a long time and did not do much. But the later story is full of drama. Bilibili went public in 2018, occupying the fifth place of the domestic video website, while the once brilliant A station gradually declined and finally sold himself quickly.

When the time came in 2010, Baidu upgraded to iqiyi after it began to form Qiyi, Tencent launched Tencent Video in 2011, Youku and Tudou also merged in 2012, and was later included by Alibaba. With the entry of BAT, the three giants of the Internet industry, online video has entered a new stage, and the pattern of three-thirds of the world has been formed, while most of the first forerunners have been silent.

Bilibili this small platform, walked to the front of the senior A station, but also survived the big three wars and drastic market changes of Youku, iqiyi and Tencent Video, and got better and better.

The saying "it is impossible to plant flowers intentionally, but inadvertently insert willows into shade" seems particularly appropriate in the video industry. Countless people have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to break out a world in the online video industry, but the final results are not satisfactory, and it is hard to believe that bilibili, the last platform, had a simple purpose when he founded bilibili.

As a supplement to the A station, bilibili really did not stir up too much spray. The emergence of Chen Rui in 2011 became a turning point for bilibili, a personal website that did not even have a business license, ushered in a new journey. Chen Rui's investment has led to the rapid rise of bilibili, and the number of bilibili users has exceeded 10 million in 2013. In 2014, at the invitation of Xu Yi, Chen Rui joined bilibili as chairman of the board. With Chen Rui coming to bilibili, there was also a large amount of capital investment. With the blessing of talents and capital, bilibili's road went smoothly, and the number of users continued to grow. The scale is getting bigger and bigger, and listing has become the only way. In 2018, with many young UP owners and users, bilibili rang the bell on NASDAQ.

The eight up owners standing on Nasdaq represent bilibili's Generation Z users. Bilibili's diversified content creation ecology has firmly attracted the main force of this group of online entertainment market.

The initial animation and two-dimensional creation and dissemination successfully connected the content creator and the audience, and transformed the content produced by the mass media into new content and culture through self-creation, forming a good content ecology. On this basis, bilibili did not adopt the cash realization method commonly used in advertising, which is commonly used in video websites, there are no patch advertisements, and the content is mostly self-made by users. Bilibili's strategy has greatly enhanced the user experience of the user. and the unique user experience and community atmosphere, so that bilibili's user stickiness is far greater than other similar software, bilibili was able to stand out from the online video site.

The user is the most important link in the development of the enterprise, which directly determines the success or failure of the enterprise. Bilibili has won his own broad future as well as user loyalty. This platform, which is jokingly called "small broken station" by users, survived unexpectedly in the extremely competitive market and stood in the second echelon by relying on this group of emerging human beings of Generation Z.

2 "Generation Z" props up bilibili's sky

From the post-80s to the post-90s and then to the post-1995 and post-00s now, the generation that was once unfavored has gradually become the mainstay of the society. In this era dominated by the mobile Internet, the young post-1995 generation has become the most active crowd on the stage. Different from the previous generation of social environment and growth space, so that they have a new value system and way of life.

This group of young people who have strong self-awareness and pay more attention to subjective feelings are called "Generation Z". New humans born from 1995 to 2010, they are at the end of the Internet and the beginning of the mobile Internet in China. The rapid popularity of the Internet has brought them extremely rich information and convenient ways of shopping. At the same time, they are in a period of rapid economic development in China, and they have the highest per capita disposable income since the founding of the people's Republic of China. Material abundance brings about changes in the consumption concept of Generation Z and the pursuit of consumption upgrading.

The baton of today's era has been handed to them. The population of Generation Z is now 230 million. Mobile Internet users under the age of 24 account for more than 30% of mobile Internet users, contributing nearly half of the growth rate of the mobile Internet. Some data show that Gen Z will account for 40% of the total consumption power by 2020.

The change of the main force of consumption and the replacement of the discourse power of the consumer market mean the formation of a brand-new consumer market.

From skin care makeup, pet economy, mother-to-child chain retail to the rapid development of private education, all show the strong consumption power of generation Z, which is infinitely magnified in the field of online video.

Online video is developing rapidly, the market size is expected to reach 200 billion yuan in 2020, and the content payment is expected to grow to 30%. The number of online video users reached 612 million by December 2018, and rejuvenation is one of the most important features of the online video platform. Young users under the age of 30 account for 70% of the total online video users.

Video has become the most important way of life for young people, while bilibili, the platform, has become the world of young people. According to QuestMobile's 2018 Generation Z Insight report, bilibili has the highest proportion of Generation Z in mobile video APP, reaching 81.4%.

Correspondingly, in this report, the top 20 pan-entertainment APP stations of Generation Z and the top 20 APP B stations are both at the top of the list, with an unusually strong position among young people.

Bilibili has created a vast world for young people, and Generation Z has also achieved bilibili, making it from the original "small broken station" to the overlord of today. But in ten years, bilibili has stood on a new starting point. In the face of the predicament that the growth of young users in the Internet industry and platform will end with dividends, it has become an urgent task for bilibili to change his way of thinking and move to a market other than young people.

3 break the boundary of the word "Z"

A few days ago, bilibili released his second-quarter financial results, showing that the number of monthly active users of station B increased by 9 million in the second quarter to 110.4 million, an increase of 30 percent over the same period last year. The number of daily active users reached a record 33.2 million, up 41 per cent from a year earlier, the highest net increase since 2017. At the same time, the number of monthly paying users increased by 111% year-on-year to 6.3 million.

In this era when the dividend of the Internet industry is no longer, and maintaining the growth rate has become the most difficult time for many companies, the rapid growth of bilibili users is the result of the platform changing its operating strategy and starting to try to break the user boundary.

The original bilibili to two-dimensional, animation, game enthusiasts, "two-dimensional" can be seen as the core of bilibili. However, with the continuous development of bilibili, new categories such as life, science and technology, and entertainment have gradually become the mainstream. From movies, documentaries, the purchase of major IP to the entry of all kinds of organization numbers, Station B is getting farther and farther away from the second dimension, and the whole platform is also closer to the mainstream culture from the original sub-cultural group.

At a conference call after the announcement, Chairman Chen Rui said, "starting from the second half of this year, we will target people who have not heard of bilibili, such as older users, to make corresponding brand and market strategies." I think this is our highest priority because it will play a very important role in our subsequent growth. " Strengthening the investment in user growth has become bilibili's most important strategy, and beyond the "Z" boundary has naturally become the focus of bilibili's attention.

Targeted marketing for older and non-urban users outside Generation Z to enhance brand awareness, while optimizing the algorithm to enable users to get a better experience to improve the retention of new users, and to strengthen the acquisition ability of channel users are bilibili's specific measures. Through this series of measures, bilibili will increase the ecological and community viscosity of content, enhance the ability of products and technology, and increase investment in the market and brands, so as to break user boundaries and gain new users.

Bilibili's tradition of becoming a member will also change under the deployment of expanding the user base. From the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional world, from the minority to the public, from young people to all netizens on the mobile Internet, bilibili is expanding his territory step by step to build his own video empire.

4 focus on the content

If it is bilibili's strategic plan to focus beyond Generation Z, then creating high-quality content is the key to winning this battle.

Video sites' investment in content is destined to be a protracted sticking war, and billions of dollars from various platforms prove the important strategic position of content. Reviewing the rise of bilibili, a large number of high-quality user contributions and diversified content is the most important driving force, above a new starting point, bilibili opened up the upstream and downstream of content creation, participated in content creation, and at the same time created high-quality content ecology through the main incentive plan of UP and the introduction of IP.

In early 2018, bilibili launched the "Creative incentive Program", in which original content creators who join the incentive program can make money by producing high-quality videos. This measure has achieved remarkable results, not only enhancing the originality and verticality of the platform's works, but also helping bilibili incubate a number of full-time popular UP owners, expanding the living space for high-quality authors, helping content producers with attitudes and characteristics grow rapidly, and ensuring that high-quality content in the site has a fixed source.

According to the data, the number of main contributions of bilibili UP in 2018 exceeded 15 million, an increase of 138% over the same period last year. The total number of UP main contributors who joined the incentive program exceeded 100000, an increase of 113% over last year, and an increase of 175% in total broadcast. Under the incentive plan, the creativity of bilibili community content is increasing day by day, and the number of creators and contributors has maintained a rapid growth in this quarter.

While encouraging users to create, bilibili himself is also providing high-quality content to the audience through copyright purchase and content production.

In May, bilibili's first pet medical observation real human program "Pet Hospital" was launched, and the fifth season of "informal talks" jointly produced by Hubei Satellite TV also arrived as expected. In June, at bilibili's 10th anniversary celebration, bilibili announced that he would launch "three-body" animation and released a conceptual version of PV, a household name that has brought bilibili unprecedented popularity. Linglong, which was launched in July, exceeded 20 million on its first day of broadcast. At the same time, a series of homemade documentaries have a considerable number of broadcasts and good reviews.

Bilibili provides an open creative platform for users, attracting a large number of users to participate in content creation, and these users have made great contributions to creating content ecology on the platform. Today, on this basis, bilibili continues to expand the content boundary, attract and retain new users with higher quality content, and try his best to take off the hat of "game company".

5 take off the hat of "game company"

Bilibili, who was born on a video website, set up a game center in 2013 and launched two games, "the Story of Chivalrous things" and "the Light of Dawn". Since then, the game has become bilibili's revenue pillar. By 2018, bilibili's pre-listing games had become the main revenue segment of bilibili, accounting for 83.4%. For a long time, bilibili was called a game company dressed in a barrage. The game not only brought revenue to bilibili, but also brought a lot of trouble to bilibili.

De-gamification, optimize the overall revenue structure of the platform, balance each business sector is the inevitable choice of bilibili, according to the second quarter financial results, bilibili's de-gamification strategy achieved remarkable results.

In the second quarter, bilibili's game revenue rose 16% year-on-year to 920 million yuan, down to 59.82%. Non-game revenue reached 620 million yuan, accounting for 40% of the total, achieving a rapid growth of 162%. The share of game revenue has dropped from 82% to less than 60%. It took bilibili only two years. In these two years, bilibili has realized the rapid development of various business sectors relying on the growth of high-quality users.

In the second quarter, bilibili's revenue from live broadcast and value-added services totaled 326 million yuan, up 175% from the same period last year. Bilibili's dominant game live broadcast and the rise of Vlog life content led to the growth of learning and life live streaming, as well as as many as 6000 virtual idol anchors to build bilibili's live broadcast ecology.

Today, with the overall recession of the Internet advertising industry, bilibili relies on the increasing brand influence and the improvement of advertising efficiency, advertising business revenue reached 167.7 million yuan, achieved a good result of 75% year-on-year growth. At the same time, bilibili's revenue from e-commerce and other businesses increased by 489% over the same period last year, breaking through the "100 million yuan mark" to 124.1 million yuan for the first time since listing.

With the rapid growth of the other three major business sectors except games, the once unreasonable revenue structure is constantly tending to balance. Chen Rui once mentioned that bilibili's idealized income structure is that games and non-games account for half of each other. With the development trend of bilibili today, the realization of this goal is just around the corner, and the title of "game company" that accompanied bilibili for many years will finally be removed.

Six measures should be taken simultaneously to explore the way of commercialization.

The offline comic exhibition "BiliBili World" hosted by bilibili was held in Guangzhou from August 16 to 18. The three-day exhibition attracted 60, 000 visitors and related peripheral products were very popular. Such offline activities bilibili has been held many times, from online to offline bilibili is constantly exploring the road of commercialization.

Bilibili launched a large membership system in 2016 to reduce the revenue pressure caused by no sticker advertising and took a key step towards commercialization. Today, three years later, bilibili members have achieved fruitful results. By the end of June, bilibili's big members grew 148 per cent year-on-year to 5.3 million. In the second quarter of 2019, the average monthly paying users of site B more than doubled, and the non-game revenue generated by a single monthly active users increased by 102 per cent year-on-year.

At the end of 2018, bilibili and Taobao reached a strategic cooperation. Through UP main content marketing, IP commercial operation and other forms, the two will create a new interactive system of brands, content, goods and users online and offline, and achieve a win-win situation of content dissemination and business benefits. Taobao's e-commerce advantage has become fertile ground for bilibili's commercialization.

Since its establishment, bilibili has invested more than 60 companies in the ACG industrial chain, involving animation production, virtual idols, two-dimensional sound, comics, games and other fields. Last year alone, there were more than 20 companies investing in the field of culture and entertainment. In July this year, bilibili acquired Super Culture and integrated the business of super culture games, live streaming, advertising and e-commerce. At the same time, he will add income parts such as offline interpretation and artist brokerage to expand his commercialization ability, especially the promotion of offline two-dimensional culture.

From the large membership system to investing in related companies and then to all kinds of offline activities, bilibili has never stopped on the road of commercialization, and the road of commercialization is gradually clear in the continuous exploration.

We shouted "bilibili, cheers" to celebrate bilibili's 10th birthday, and we can see its vitality after ten years of development, but when we look at bilibili, who looks like a bright future, the road ahead is not smooth.

7 the dark clouds of the profit dilemma do not go away

After the announcement of the second quarter results, the market has a lot of praise for bilibili, this "small broken station" always brings people a surprise, but surprisingly bilibili's share price has fallen. Bilibili's plight is also clearly seen in the falling stock price.

The profitability of video websites is a problem that has not been completely solved in the development of the industry for many years. Advertising, members and other related income always seem negligible in the huge content and operational investment.

Iqiyi, the leader of the video industry, has more than 100 million subscribers and lost 2.3 billion yuan in the second quarter despite a 15 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue. Continue to slow down content cost spending, but still unable to achieve profitability, iqiyi, the leader of the situation represents the current embarrassing situation of the entire video industry.

Bilibili, who is among them, naturally cannot escape this fate. In the second quarter, bilibili's revenue was 1.54 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 50%, but the higher revenue growth rate did not bring due profits. Compared with a loss of less than 70 million in the same period last year, the loss of 315 million in this quarter does not make sense.

Compared with the earlier commercial realization of other video websites, bilibili started a lot later, and under the guidance of the concept of "opposing commercialization at the expense of user experience and forced user choice", bilibili's road to profit realization has a lot of constraints. The market competition is fierce and the industry development is sluggish now, cannot realize the commercialization and the realization as soon as possible, the company's danger will increase one point.

How to achieve profit in the process of balancing the relationship between users and commercialization will be a major problem for bilibili. Under the strategic guidance of increasing content investment and expanding new users, Station B still has a long way to go to achieve profitability.

8 the platform disturbance is difficult to put an end to.

Bilibili has given users a diversified and free creative platform, and it has also been favored by many young people, but the rapid development of bilibili has also had problems. All kinds of storms have put B in a whirlpool of public opinion, and the profit issue has become less urgent before many crises.

In July 2018, the CCTV network reported that bilibili had a large number of large-scale animation and vulgar content, some of which involved teacher-student love and incest love, which aroused parents' concern. after the incident was exposed, bilibili carried out rectification and reform, but still could not completely put an end to this problem, and there was still vulgar and non-compliant content spread on the platform. The content of non-compliance has become the pain of bilibili, and repeatedly banned, but not stiff.

Bilibili's back-end project source code main warehouse was uploaded to the GitHub event once caused an uproar, the impact is far beyond imagination. When the download project was closed, there were more than 9000 Star and more than 6000 Fork. Although the download path in GitHub has been different, the source code has spread so far that it would be a pipe dream to completely eliminate the impact.

From non-compliant content to platform security issues, similar incidents occur in bilibili from time to time. For bilibili, both corporate image and user awareness have been greatly affected. Although the development of a large company is bound to encounter a lot of problems, problems related to the bottom line of principles should be eliminated.

9 success or failure is due to quadratic

Bilibili has developed to today, has included entertainment, games, fashion and many other sectors, but also has a large number of institutions stationed in it, is no longer the original content of a single two-dimensional platform, but the brand of the two-dimensional has always been deeply engraved on bilibili.

From a small platform in 2009 to today's industry unicorn, it can be said that the two-dimensional this distinct label has achieved bilibili, but when the enterprise has developed to a certain scale, the specific label has become a shackle. The solidified cognition that is difficult to break through has become the biggest obstacle to the breakthrough of enterprise transformation.

When it comes to bilibili, the first reaction of most people is still barrage, subculture, animation, in such a stereotype, the mainstream market and audience acceptance is extremely difficult. In addition, bilibili's main audience is Generation Z, so the marketing promotion does not focus on the non-young users, so the brand awareness is not high. At present, bilibili has tried to change this situation and will break the user boundary and expand new users as one of the important strategies, but it can be predicted that it is not easy to reshape the brand image.

In the process from singleness to diversity, bilibili will also face the pressure from regular users. "bilibili is no longer the former bilibili" and "bilibili's original heart is not there" is not uncommon. Bilibili, who has obvious social attributes, user exclusivity is also particularly obvious. Users gathered together in a strong two-dimensional atmosphere are bound to lose when it is difficult to find a sense of belonging with the influx of non-two-dimensional users.

The second dimension not only brings glory to bilibili today, but also lays hidden dangers for the future development. how to balance the relationship between new and old users to break the shackles of the second dimension, this problem needs to be solved urgently.

The problems faced by bilibili can be summarized as the word balance, how to balance the old and new user experience, how to balance commercialization and feelings, and how to balance the relationship between the public and the minority. These are all problems that bilibili has to face. After solving these problems, the road ahead of Station B is naturally bright, on the contrary, if these problems can not be solved, then the future development is bound to be difficult and dangerous.

10 written in bilibili's poems and afar

Before that, an article entitled "Young people firing bullet screens late at night in bilibili" resonated with many people. the article told the stories of several ordinary young people and bilibili, insipid but true. Why bilibili captured so many young people, you can see the shadow of the answer in the message.

Because the barrage will tell me,'I'm not alone'. Ten years ago, a lonely young man created bilibili. Ten years later, thousands of lonely young people made bilibili. " Bilibili, who has been developing for ten years, is not only a simple social networking site, it means a lot to many people.

Ten years ago, bilibili gave many two-dimensional users a platform to live together. ten years later, many young people released pressure and looked for happiness here. Over the past ten years, countless people have found their own and the meaning of life here, and found many people like themselves. This "small broken station" carries a lot of people.

From the "small broken Station" to today, there are listed companies with two giants, Tencent and Ali. Bilibili grows up together with a generation of young people, but the development of the enterprise must follow the laws of the economy and the challenges of the market. Crises and opportunities are never lacking, and bilibili is no exception. In the next decade, bilibili will usher in his own brand-new future in a greater storm.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.