Interview With Qu Fang, Founder Of Xiaohong Book: Xiaohong Book Still Needs To Be "Lifestyle Community".

The commercialization of social networking business Xiao Hong book is accelerating, but how to grasp the delicate balance between commercialization and content ecology is a thorny problem.

What does the little red book do in the future? Is it a UGC content platform or a commercial platform? Qu Fang told reporters on Chinese entrepreneurs that little red book will not change as a "Lifestyle Community".

Before the interview officially started, Qu Fang asked the staff for a glass of ice water without sugar, refreshing. There were too many recent meetings.

In the past year or so, Qu Fang has almost disappeared in public view.

In May 10th, Xiaohong Book upgraded the brand cooperative rule in the form of open letter. At one time, the voices of KOL and MCN came to the surface, and the little red book caught in the public opinion storm of "cleaning KOL".

May 14th, 4 p.m., Beijing Zhonghai International Center.

As the founder of this company, Qu Fang felt that it was time to go out and have a chat with the outside world.

In the quiet time of the two founders of Qu Fang and Mao Wenchao, Xiao Hong is rapidly breaking through and growing up.

In 2018, the star brought goods into the trend of Xiao Hong's book. Then, with the help of the hot topics such as "idol trainee" and "create 101", Xiao Hong achieved a breakthrough in user circles.

Qu Fang said that in the past year, the number of active users of Xiao Hong has increased by four to five times.

In the middle of last year, the D round of financing of Ali's red book was valued at over $3 billion.

After tearing up the label of cross-border electricity providers, Xiaohong book is defined as "Lifestyle Community". Meanwhile, Xiao Hong's Slogan has also changed from "finding good things in the world" to "marking my life".

The pace of growth is too fast. Qu Fang clearly feels that the outside world is expecting more and greater challenges will follow.

2019 is the key year for the commercialization of Xiao Hong's book. However, from the involvement of the "tobacco gate", the notes were falsification, and the brand cooperative event was upgraded. Xiao Hong's book was questioned by the outside world.

According to previous reports of Chinese entrepreneurs, the KOL has already reached 12000 people, with a qualification rate of only about 5000.

The upgrading of rules may affect the enthusiasm of KOL production and the richness of the content of Xiaohong book.

In an exclusive interview with Chinese entrepreneur, Qu Fang gave a set of data and expressed different opinions on the matter.

She said that the content of Xiaohong book 97% was contributed by UGC, and UGC content accounted for 70% of the daily exposure.

"This is a very healthy community data presentation.

Upgrading does not have much impact on our content ecology, because the number of KOL is smaller than that of the user level.

I still want to listen to KOL and MCN's advice. They also contribute a lot of quality content, but we must not forget what their surnames are. The little red book is the UGC platform, which is the definiteness of our platform.

Qu Fang believes that the commercialization steps of Xiao Hong's book are just beginning. It proves that there is a huge commercial potential here. "Now we are like a gold mine. Many people want to dig gold mines. This really poses great challenges for us, and we need to move faster."

Beginning in the second half of 2018, Xiao Hong has opened up advertising campaigns, conducted traffic tests with Taobao, set up a platform for brand partners, and adjusted the internal organizational structure. A series of actions have been made clear to the outside world, and the pace of commercialization of Xiaohong book is accelerating.

Why is it so vigorously advancing? Qu Fang explains that the number of users of Xiao Hong has reached a certain magnitude, which can be used for advertising pactions and even more innovative models.

"This year, we saw a lot of interesting advertising forms, and also achieved some results.

Some customers, for example, are shocked by the high rate of online advertising.

However, how to achieve a delicate balance between content ecology building and commercialization is still a puzzle for Qu Fang and his management team.

According to the feedback from the Chinese entrepreneurs, it is not clear enough for the book to judge the authenticity of the content. For example, how to define the black product and how to define the illegal advertisement, so that users can share the brand products they use, and they are likely to be killed as advertisements.

Qu Fang also reflected on this very much. She admits that the rules of Xiaohong book are not perfect enough and immature enough, and the team is slow.

"So we have done a lot of organizational upgrading and so on. I hope you can give us a little more time and urge us to do better."

In addition, in the face of the user voice that "more and more advertising," Qu Fang said, Xiaohong book is also doing further research, to see if there is a sense of misleading, such as Xiaohong book is to see all posts data, users may be more likely to be the first page to brush out the first post.

"We are still doing more data mining, we hope to help you find these reasons."

During the interview, Qu Fang has been emphasizing that users are the foundation of Xiao Hong's book.

The content ecology of Xiao Hong's book is born for users, all rules from establishment to iteration are designed to ensure the usefulness of content to users, which has been running through the beginning of the 2013.

Users are also the bottom line of Xiao Hong's book. In terms of commercialization, Qu Fang is not worried. "The bottom line is from the rapid growth of the front-end users. The platform is meant to give first priority to others and give them more benefits. First, give them more energy, so that they can find business value, and eventually they will gradually enter our trading ecosystem."

What is the future of Xiao Hong's book? It's UGC content platform or commercial platform. Qu Fang firmly told the reporter of Chinese entrepreneur that Xiao Hong's book should not be changed as a "Lifestyle Community".

The following is the exclusive interview of the Chinese entrepreneur to Qu Fang.

"Don't forget your surname."

CE: how does the action of brand partners upgrade?

Qu Fang: to be honest, in my mind, the feedback I received is normal.

First, as a certain level of platform, any rule upgrades will affect all parties, so there will be voices, and we tend to listen more to them. Secondly, we have little communication in the media.

I also talked to the team last night to replay and reflect on it. We should listen to your suggestions earlier and make some advance communication. From the feedback point of view, I think it is expected.

CE: what is the basis for this upgrading of the brand cooperative rule?

Qu Fang: it may be difficult to understand from a single point of view. I also understand that everyone has a variety of interpretations of our rule upgrades, which is normal.

Perhaps I myself would like to go back and talk about what we did in this year's content ecology and find some answers.

For the little red book, our content ecology is the most important thing.

Take a small example, the 12 point mechanism (Note: according to the official rules of Xiao Hong book, the initial score of the brand collaborator is 12 points, the private purchase will be deducted 12 points directly, and the contract is terminated, and it can not become a brand partner again within one year). It should have been in 2013 for five or six years.

Why do we have this mechanism? Or because we feel that any content creator on this platform must provide user value. If you violate these rules, we will punish you.

Penalty penalty has always been a continuous rule, but now that the platform has become larger and the participants have become more diverse, we have put forward different requirements for different participants.

The first point I want to talk about is that the content ecology of Xiao Hong's book is born for users. All our rules, from establishment to iteration, are designed to ensure the usefulness of our content to users. This is from the 2013 entrepreneurship to the present.

I feel that in fact, for a very long time in my past, I did not speak very much about Xiao Hong's book, so it also caused various interpretations of us in the market.

But in terms of the company's current magnitude, the market's attention to us is in a particularly high position, so there will be a huge gap.

In fact, in my mind, the change of this rule is a step in the iteration of many products we are doing.

I know that we are not doing a good job, so we hope to do more things from now on to improve.

Our first principle is the persistence of user value, which has not changed since the beginning.

Now we are upgrading our products, including using some small dimensions, such as paying attention to data. I can talk about our thinking behind this.

For example, why do we have some demands on this matter? In fact, my own understanding is a concrete manifestation of our adherence to user value.

We feel that anyone should be altruistic in the little red book, and the user will give you the vote that you are concerned about. Only enough users will vote for you. In your mind, you can finish it, and turn it into an altruistic and selfish thing.

Our standard is actually iterative, and because the magnitude of this platform is changing. Two years ago, there were 5000 fans in Xiao Hong's book. It's really amazing.

Over the past few years, the number of active users of Xiao Hong has increased four or five times, and we have made some improvements in the magnitude of concern.

In fact, I think this is a normal phenomenon. Our aim is to improve user value. I think the user's eyes are bright and will vote for you.

When we make any rules and make any choices, we first consider the interests of users.

CE: with regard to the upgrading of this brand partnership platform, I have talked with many KOL and MCN, and we have different feedback. Some of them have been screened out because of the improvement of the threshold, and the complaint is relatively large. Xiao Hong has always stressed the importance of ecology. What kind of prediction do you have for the result of the regulation adjustment?

Qu Fang: we hope to be able to collect more feedback.

As for today's content ecology, 97% of our content is contributed by UGC.

The adjustment of rules does not have much impact on our content ecology.

But we would like to hear more about KOL and MCN.

The little red book is the UGC platform, and some KOL are grown on the original platform of the little red book. We have been looking at the proportion of UGC contribution. This is the nature of our platform. We know very well that when KOL is contributing a lot of quality content to us, we must not forget our surname.

A lot of people around me will be misled. For example, you can see a lot of KOL content on the front page, because they are more professional, so they get a lot of attention. But if you click in and pull down, you will see the content of UGC or the regular quality content of KOL.

Many people came to ask me, are you now a lot of content properties have changed? For me, the most important thing is to look at the data.

CE: from the data point of view, is UGC still dominant?

Qu Fang: I think we have no change in our roots. 97% is a very absolute quantity.

Although the number of KOL is not small, it is still quite small compared with this user level.

And our daily exposure accounts for 70% of our UGC.

Most of the posts you see are UGC content.

The challenge is great and not enough.

CE: some KOL said that the tilt of platform traffic is very important, not tilted and powerless. How does Xiao Hong encourage KOL to produce content?

Qu Fang: I know very well what motive they are driving to Xiao Hong's book.

It's easy for people to forget their original intentions.

There are two kinds of KOL in Xiao Hong's book, one is KOL that grows up, and another is that there is not a fan in Xiao Hong's book from scratch, he is just an office worker and a student.

In my mind, KOL with fans has moved in because there are a large number of users and a large number of users who are not able to reach other platforms. The rule of our platform is to enable them to better serve users, which is what I call altruism or self interest.

As long as our rules remain unchanged and enable them to serve users better, they will stay and hope that the producers who create value in the medium and long term will stay behind, which is why they moved there.

To this day, we will not tilt the traffic to creators. This is something we have always been proud of, even stars.

As we all know, we do not use commercial contracts or traffic enrichment.

Why are there nearly 1000 celebrities here? We have a large number of users at the front end to interact with them in depth, so that they can see that their content has produced value.

Why do some people come? It's because our commercialization is just beginning. We can see that a large number of commercial treasures have not been exploited, and even some people are making use of the imperfect rules of the platform, making use of some loopholes to get more and faster commercial benefits.

What we need to do is to constantly improve the rules of the platform. We have made a lot of efforts on this.

There is also a kind of person who grew up from the little red book. They may be a student, an ordinary person, an ordinary person, but they really create user value and can achieve some commercial value.

I think this is also the power of a platform, because they do a lot of altruistic content, they can be selfish, this is a very healthy phenomenon.

CE: so in fact, Xiao Hong's future is still UGC community.

Qu Fang: the way to make a lifestyle community will not change.

CE: some people say that your rules are not clear. Even the user's share of brand experience may be regarded as advertising and killed. Is that so? What is the standard of judging content compliance?

Qu Fang: in this direction, we have been drawing lessons from more successful practices. This is not a unique phenomenon in our ecosystem, but a problem that we will encounter in any platform that has large commercial value. We are actively solving it.

I think there are two most important principles: first, who are we serving?

If we are a platform to pry the two sides, is it to serve the users first or to serve the commercial side first? We serve the users first.

We come all the way to have other users first.

When we do all the governance, our principle is to stick to our value to the user.

Second, to see the future trend, we should make more use of the power of products and technology to make these quality content more exposed, and distribute useful content to more people.

We have been in control, from the product, technology, from the manual review, based on the content, praise, collection, clear out some abnormal account.

Finally, the purpose of governance is to let good content and good word-of-mouth be seen by more people. The final result is whether more users will gather on this platform. This is the simplest truth.

CE: what is the current growth of users?

Qu Fang: in the past year, the active users of Xiao Hong books have increased by four to five times, not that KOL has increased five times, but that active users have gone up. Some of them have come and left before they come back.

I believe you will tell me that I see the useful content coming back. This is the most direct result. I think users are voting with us every time they click.

At present, the challenges are great. We are not doing enough, and we need to do more, whether from technology or labor.

Measuring the fundamentals of a community sometimes may not be from the perspective of many organizations, but from the user's point of view. When the users are growing fast, when the people around you are still using the little red book, when the little red book creates huge user value, the users will come back again.

At the commercialization level, we are very committed to the principles. The red line is very clear. Indeed, we need to speed up our actions.

CE: what kind of cooperation is between Xiao Hong book and KOL and MCN?

Qu Fang: between MCN and us, we are better served. The premise that we serve them is that they create user value here.

Many problems I really have no way to answer, for example, when a MCN's KOL has created huge user value here, he can not need my traffic enrichment, then we will do better platform products, so that they can create user value more conveniently here.

For others, we do have the elimination mechanism.

This is dynamic.

We provide them with product oriented services, so that they can better create user value and harvest business interests. This is a basic cooperative relationship.

About KOL, I want to talk about the values of little red books.

I particularly understand KOL, because many people are living on our platforms. They should understand our bottom values and know what kind of team we are.

Our rules are not perfect and complete, but the direction of this rule will not change.

Exploration of commercialization and new business

CE: the rhythm of commercialization of Xiaohong book is accelerating. Besides what has been seen, what other plans are about to be launched?

Qu Fang: we are positioning ourselves as a lifestyle community. I think there are businesses where there are people, and we are growing at a fast pace on the user side.

We really started our commercial exploration and made some small flowers.

The number of users has reached this magnitude. We value user value first. To such user level, we can better serve users' value by advertising, trading or even more innovative mode.

I think this exploration has begun.

We saw many interesting advertisements this year, such as the fact that some customers are now on the high side of the online advertising.

In content ecology, it is not just UGC, it grows PGC from UGC, grows stars, and finds value.

Now there are nearly 1000 stars on the platform.

Some time ago, a broker told me that in fact, we discovered many star values here. We could make stars ourselves and make breakthroughs in the mode of commercialization.

Although we have not yet gained any commercial profits from it, our principle is that we are the platform. The platform means to give first place to others, and let them find business value first.

As long as we find business value here, we will make a lot of contribution to the ecosystem of the front end, and even they will slowly enter our trading ecosystem. We are not in a hurry.

The bottom gas comes from the high speed growth of the front end.

This is a gold mine.

CE: what will Xiao Hong store do in the future?

Qu Fang: no answer.

I can talk about the innovative mechanism of Xiao Hong's book.

Xiaohong book is a platform for the community. Xiao Hong APP is a product.

In my opinion, this company is also a product. Xiao Hong store is also an innovative product. We will give it some strategic support, and they have full autonomy.

They are mining user needs, trying to make this product grow, just like that when Xiaohong book started business, it is more of our internal incubation project.

Inside, we want ourselves to be a platform, not to tell them what to do, but to let them do it themselves.

Logic is the same. We are all doing users, and we can grow some business models. What is the strategy of this product, how to quickly iterate, and how to find the real market pain is the problem that the team is solving, rather than we tell them.

CE:AI is the underlying technology of all major Internet platforms. The little red book also has actions. How do you do it?

Qu Fang: since 2016, in the field of content distribution, we have no artificial intervention. Thousands of people are facing thousands of faces.

For example, in the front end of the community, we are constantly matching people and content, we are deepening the digitization of people and content, we are doing the label of three-dimensional.

Simply speaking, match people on finer graininess.

The principle is to let the right person see the right content.

Technology is always the most important thing for our company.

Our CTO used to serve Google. After he came, we had a new round of updating of our whole underlying technology.

I believe that as we continue to invest in technology, we will see an explosive effect next.