Who made money on Xiaohongshu by being "abstract"?

"Xiaohongshu's 'abstract' style, a new code for making money?" On the Xiaohongshu platform, "abstract" has become the keyword of 2024, and related content has exploded. Why did this "abstract" trend emerge? Who has found a way to make money from it? This article will conduct an in-depth analysis to reveal the mystery behind Xiaohongshu's "abstract" phenomenon.

This week, Xiaohongshu officially released the keyword for 2024 - "abstract".

One set of data is that in 2024, Xiaohongshu had more than 10 million notes about abstraction, and the note reading volume was 7.2 times that of last year; the number of "abstract" comments in the community exceeded 160 million, which was 102 times that of last year.

This is a very interesting topic. Xiaohongshu is a platform with over 100 million DAU (daily active users), which is enough to give birth to some public behaviors, events and value orientations. What a company chooses to let its users see, spread and retain is not only the individual power of text and creation, but also the orientation and logic of the platform.

So, we decided to seriously discuss the "abstraction" of Xiaohongshu - who is doing abstraction, what is abstraction in 2024, who makes money on Xiaohongshu through abstraction, and what does abstraction mean to Xiaohongshu?

Image source: Xiaohongshu

1. What is abstraction?

First, let's briefly understand what abstraction is.

In 2024, abstraction is no longer the representative technique of the genius painter Picasso. Now it is more gentle, mostly initiated by young people, and has become a state of the Internet.

It can be a reversal of the order of values—

"There's really no need to buy Mixue Bingcheng just to save face. You should buy it to drink it, not to impress your friends."

"Primary school student unboxes Luckin ice cubes, receipts are all there, straws are not provided, please don't steal the pictures if you haven't tried it."

It can also be a way to dispel negative emotions.

"There are so many shadows in life, it's really cool."

"I finally live the life in a novel written by Yu Hua."

It can also be a confrontation with the daily mediocrity——

"Looking for a partner to do mutual fanning, Master's degree preferred, fluent in English, legitimate son is preferred, hope to be able to do mutual fanning work well."

"Remember, the bigger the fish, the bigger the bone, the bigger the bone, the less meat, the less meat, the smaller the bone, the smaller the bone, the smaller the fish, so the bigger the fish, the smaller the fish."

Not only simple and reversed texts, any real events and characters can become the source of abstraction. Earlier this year, rapper Nomi was eliminated in the audition of a music variety show, and he wrote a song to tease the judge Xie Di, "Xie Di Xie Di, I want to diss you", and Chengdu Disney was born.

Because of his long association with 12 super-long titles, Da Bing, who is also a writer, host, folk singer, bartender, oil painter, leatherworker, tambourine artist, golden left face, old backpacker, investment consultant, French knight, and Zen disciple, is teased as 1 Bing = 12 people, an existence that will overload the elevator. The abstract meme directly made Da Bing's comeback live broadcast a hit. The more you learn about Bing, the more delicious it is. It easily crosses the cycle of Internet celebrities, making your peers envious.

Wang Meng once commented on the genius Wang Shuo in his article "Avoiding the Sublime" in this way: "When you read his works, you feel as relaxed as smoking a cigarette or playing a round of mahjong. It is not nutritious, does not conform to the principles of hygiene and the call of superiors, and is not touching... But it also satisfies my personal interests to some extent, and even gives me a taste of the joy of violating norms and being naughty, and I am no longer living such a foolish and tiring life."

It is also quite insightful when used in today's abstraction.

Sleep where you fall (Photo source: Xiaohongshu)

2. Who has made money on Xiaohongshu by being abstract?

Abstraction is not only about playing around, it can also make money.

The representative of this track is Li Dan. After trying out Make Friends and Taobao, Li Dan started to live broadcast on Xiaohongshu this year. He gave the audience a "spiritual massage" by answering readers' emotional letters in the old-fashioned way, and sold products in between.

Readers' questions are often very abstract, "My boyfriend's ex-girlfriend gave birth to his child without telling him, what should I do?" "What is the value of our relationship of so many years?"

Li Dan's answer was also very abstract, "You're out of luck."

His live broadcast is like an absurd drama, with jokes and seriousness coexisting. While giving emotional value, he is also good at using humor to dispel opposition and conflict. In Li Dan's live broadcast room, content is more important than selling goods, and most products appear in the form of props.

Li Dan rarely stands during live broadcasts. He has to sit down to talk about emotional issues. If he encounters a day to sell mattresses, he simply lies down the whole time. His abstraction can be seen everywhere. When someone says that it is difficult for them to get over their last relationship, Li Dan picks up a pair of black slippers, posts a link, and asks the other person to "get out" of the relationship by wearing the shoes. Sometimes, Li Dan simply asks netizens to help sell goods, "Place an order yourself, and recommend it to my family by the way."

From May this year to now, the total number of viewers in Li Dan's live broadcast room has increased from hundreds of thousands to millions. 90% of the products in the live broadcast room are food and beverages. This type of product selection decision-making cost is low, the consumption frequency is high, and the repurchase rate is high, which is very consistent with Li Dan's positioning of "chatting and buying at the same time".

Li Dan may have also measured the compatibility between himself and the platform. Compared with the GMV records of several thousand at the beginning of Taobao and Douyin, Li Dan's Xiaohongshu's actual performance has been fluctuating around several million GMV (it did not break 10 million until after August). However, Xiaohongshu is the platform where Li Dan sells goods most continuously. After all, only here will he be allowed to speak slowly and sell goods at will.

Because of his abstract personality, Li Dan doesn't even need to care about the price comparison system of e-commerce. The price of Niucuicui in Xiaohongshu's live broadcast room is 2 yuan higher than that of Taobao, but it has become the best-selling product. His prices have almost no chance of winning on other platforms, but on Xiaohongshu, which is willing to pay for emotional value, even if someone complains that Li Dan's Niucuicui is expensive and unpalatable, they will eventually seek self-consistency, "Forget it, just treat it as buying a talk show ticket" - it can be called an Internet spectacle.

When encountering unusual letters from readers, Li Dan usually smokes a Niu Crunchy cigarette to keep himself calm (Photo source: Li Dan's live broadcast room)

Li Dan's abstraction is also quite successful. His live broadcast clips have been circulated on major social platforms with high traffic. In terms of monetization, the "Buyer Commercial Value List" previously released by Xiaohongshu E-commerce shows that Li Dan has ranked first in the food buyer list, adjacent to him are Dong Jie, who ranks first in the fashion buyer list, and Zhang Xiaohui, who ranks first in the beauty buyer list.

Another abstract representative is Jiang Sida.

If you are not a long-term fan of Jiang Sida, you may not recognize his Xiaohongshu account now - Jiang Sida likes to use old-age special effects and calls himself "grandma". He used to be a well-known debater on "QiPaShuo". Because he fell in love with outdoor sports, he is now a well-known outdoor shopping anchor on Xiaohongshu. His style is extroverted and eccentric, narcissistic and generous. The name of his live broadcast room is "Meishen Supermarket".

With long hair and flat bangs, he often wears women's clothing. Some people say that Jiang Sida's style is "abstract and real". Different from others' "123", Jiang Sida's style is "789 link". In March this year, Jiang Sida's first live broadcast finally gained nearly 13 million GMV, with an average customer unit price of 900 yuan, and even sold millions of sales-level items such as Merrell barefoot shoes and Asics Kahana.

To some extent, Li Dan and Jiang Sida are both people who fit the "Xiaohongshu style". They have a strong and precise desire to express themselves, have output, are unique, and have a sense of interaction. Xiaohongshu also intends to pave the way for Li Dan. Li Dan was invited to attend the Familiarity Festival event held a while ago and won the only "Annual Interactive Anchor Award" on the scene. A small episode was that when asked how long he would broadcast live, Li Dan also gave Xiaohongshu enough face and shouted "Ten thousand years".

Although the success of Li Dan and Jiang Sida is strongly related to their past work experience, for Xiaohongshu, as atypical buyers, the demonstration effect they possess is exactly the value that the platform values.

3. Why does Xiaohongshu need abstraction?

Abstract culture is an original subculture spirit, and its birth and gathering require a more active and free community environment. Grasping it, forming it, and amplifying it, from a niche to a circle to a mass context, has become an annual keyword, and it is inseparable from the promotion of the Xiaohongshu platform.

The reason why abstraction can grow on Xiaohongshu is related to traffic equality. Xiaohongshu's UGC orientation has long been no secret. A set of publicly reported data shows that Xiaohongshu users with less than 1,000 fans produce more than 90% of the note content and take away 50% of the platform's traffic.

Some media have reported on the difference between Douyin and Xiaohongshu. Douyin has conducted internal user research and found that their users cannot express their preferences for content. In an algorithm-driven platform, users watch whatever PGC produces. However, 70% of Xiaohongshu's monthly active users use the search function. Compared with the former, users here have stronger subjectivity.

Huxiu has also reported that in order to allow amateur high-quality content to be exposed, Xiaohongshu has a special scoring system for traffic distribution, namely effectiveness, quality and interaction. Therefore, those who produce differentiated content, that is, those unique and in-depth areas that others rarely touch or do poorly, such exclusive content is more likely to receive platform traffic support.

On this point, despite constant criticism of e-commerce and communities pulling at or even restraining each other, it is undeniable that Xiaohongshu is indeed very sensitive and good at creating popular terms - citywalk is a typical example.

On the other hand, Xiaohongshu itself also needs new cultural phenomena such as "abstraction" to stimulate the activity of the community.

Last year, Xiaohongshu's average monthly DAU showed a slight decline several times compared with the previous month, and the impact of e-commerce and advertising business on the community atmosphere has become apparent. At a strategic co-creation meeting in the same year, Xiaohongshu's executives made clear the plan of "sitting one and watching three", that is, sitting on 100 million DAU and launching an attack on 300 million DAU. Xiaohongshu officially bid farewell to the era of slow expansion.

In order to attract more daily active users, Xiaohongshu must provide richer content to retain users. In the past two years, Xiaohongshu has begun to focus on vertical communities, sports, games, pan-entertainment and video fields, which are essentially expanding the ecosystem and increasing advertising monetization rates. If the goal is to reach 300 million DAU, Xiaohongshu must provide more options besides the usefulness of a "life guide".

Abstraction, full of deconstruction and rebellion, can not only provide fun to the community, but also dilute the transactional nature of buyers to some extent. Xiaohongshu once expressed the most ideal buyer model - in addition to transactions, continue to provide cognitive and emotional value. Perhaps the abstract Li Dan will also be a beautiful example.

However, just like the word itself, it will take time to verify whether the image of being out of control is a fleeting subculture trend or a valuable legacy.

Author | Zhong Yixuan Editor | Qiao Qian