When Xiaohongshu first mentioned “individual video creators”, what exactly did it want to express?

Xiaohongshu held its first “Team-building Meeting of 300 Acquaintances”, with the gathering focusing on “individual video creators”, attaching importance to the video content ecology and tapping into the potential of creators.

Just last Friday, Xiaohongshu officially announced its own “Top 100”.

This is the first time that Xiaohongshu has awarded awards to creators in an official name, and this group of creators also has their own unique title - "Acquaintances 300".

According to the official information of Xiaohongshu, the "300 Acquaintances" are selected from the creators who best represent the Xiaohongshu community in the past year, and will become a continuously changing list that is evaluated once a year.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu chose the theme of "Team-building meeting of 300 acquaintances" for this creator award ceremony. This is also the first time that Xiaohongshu has held a creator open day event in 5 years.

The event site was decorated like a resort beach. More than 70 acquaintance representatives from the "Acquaintances 300" received trophies from the treasure chest on their own, as if completing a ceremony.

Photographed by: Xinbang Editorial Department

Although it was not emphasized in the speeches on the spot, the implicit message of this Creator Open Day is that "posting videos and live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu are the opportunities now for creators."

The "2024 Xiaohongshu Creator Trend Report" released on the spot by Xiaohongshu shows that among the creators shortlisted for the "300 Familiar People", more than 90% of the creators' video notes account for more than 30%.

In this report, Xiaohongshu also proposed to build the preferred platform for "individual video creators".

What is an “individual video creator”?

According to Xiaohongshu's official introduction, this refers to creators who continuously use videos or live broadcasts to share their lifestyles. They use videos or live broadcasts as their first language for creation and sharing, expressing their real life attitudes and showing their personal lifestyles. Their creation and operation costs are healthy, and they can continuously gain recognition and rewards, and continue to share updates.

In the term “individual video creator”, “individual” is the key differentiating point among the creator group.

If we compare Xiaohongshu to an urban community based on UGC content, the "individual" has a stronger sense of real-life interaction and is as familiar as neighbors and friends, while the "acquaintance" echoes the theme of this Xiaohongshu Creator Open Day.

"Video" is one of the main goals of Xiaohongshu's creator meeting event.

Although it is called "team building", we can still get a glimpse of Xiaohongshu's content creation ecology from the names of "300 acquaintances" and "individual video creators" on Xiaohongshu, and understand what the diverse creative groups of Xiaohongshu are like? Why did Xiaohongshu propose the concept of "individual video creators"? What signals does it mean to creators?

01 “Individual Video Creators” Emerge on Xiaohongshu

"Individual" is not a new concept.

From the perspective of the Xinbang editorial department, the "individual" proposed by Xiaohongshu does not refer to a single creator, but to the smallest creative unit, which can be a person, a small team, or even an organization.

The "300 Familiar People" selected by Xiaohongshu this time are actually a group of representatives of individual video creators. From these "familiar people", we can already see the content and creators that Xiaohongshu encourages.

The reason why "julia_ty" was selected into the "300 Acquaintances" is that "sincerity is the ultimate skill." She is a 17-year-old high school student studying in the United States.

In her daily life, like most students, she would stay up late to prepare for final exams and make fun of differences in food culture. But when she creates content through videos, she uses the unique avant-garde expression of a post-05 generation to explain herself, showing a rich, quirky inner world.

At the end of the video "Your life, actually doesn't have many viewers?" posted by "julia_ty", she said: "I decided to jump into the water and find freedom there. Under water, I shouldn't have any viewers." However, the scene changed and she was sitting at the computer desk looking at herself in the water.

The wonderful transition also made netizens in the comment section understand the point that "julia_ty" wanted to express: "The only audience of your life is yourself." As of now, this video has received 57,000 likes on Xiaohongshu.

Image source: Xiaohongshu "julia_ty"

The opportunity for "julia_ty" to create videos originated from her English mini vlog recording "What to eat in a day", which accumulated about 100,000 fans. After that, she began to enrich the video content and editing techniques, explored the field of long videos, and gradually formed a horizontal screen video style with her own characteristics.

In August 2023, she received an invitation from Apple to serve as a "director for a day" and truly experienced the feeling of directing a film.

As of now, "julia_ty" has accumulated 1.08 million followers on Xiaohongshu, and almost every video of hers has received tens of thousands of likes. Every video is conceived, shot, and edited by herself. She is also praised by Xiaohongshu netizens as a "genius female high school student."

Videos not only increase the number of fans for creators, but also provide direct commercial realization, which makes creation sustainable. With the conditions for continuous sharing, creators can better share every possibility of their lives on Xiaohongshu.

The Xiaohongshu account "铁当鱼蛋" is jointly operated by Yudan and her boyfriend, and has accumulated 500,000 followers.

Yudan majored in animation, while her boyfriend majored in film and television. In June 2023, the two of them used the time between selling paintings at the stall to become street painting bloggers, and created videos with the themes such as "Challenge to Draw for 999 Strangers" and "Send You a Painting".

In the early stage of creation, "Iron Fish Egg" published the content on Xiaohongshu, and it received thousands of likes within a few days. In conjunction with the platform support activities launched by the official "Chaoliushu", "Iron Fish Egg" gained 5,000 followers within half a month, and then steadily increased by 10,000 followers per month.

After watching the video of "Tie Da Yu Dan", many netizens left messages saying that they also wanted to get such a painting. So "Tie Da Yu Dan" also opened a store on Xiaohongshu, providing customized painting avatar services, with unit prices ranging from 98 to 208 yuan, and a total of 488 copies have been sold.

The genres available to "acquaintances" include not only videos but also live broadcasts. In the live broadcast room, users' desire to pay attention and communicate is often stronger.

"Wangwang cousin" was originally an e-commerce anchor. He was used to working in front of the blackboard and integrated it into his Xiaohongshu live broadcast room. However, he did not live broadcast and sell goods on Xiaohongshu, but used the form of "blackboard lecture + real-time microphone connection" to help netizens analyze "Is this boy marryable?"

In the live broadcast room, he also pioneered the "boys' height formula", which is "five minus four, five equals zero", to infer the boys' real height. This not only encouraged other bloggers to use this formula to give lectures, but also made it to the hot search on Weibo.

According to official data from Xiaohongshu, "Wangwang Cousin" gained 300,000 followers in four months and currently maintains a stable frequency of once a day.

Game live streaming has also carved out a niche on Xiaohongshu.

"Wenshui Xiaokai" is a male college student majoring in broadcasting. When he was a junior, he noticed the popularity of the game "Egg Party", so he edited a screen recording of himself playing the game and shared it on Xiaohongshu. The number of followers for a single note increased by more than 500, which made him feel the positive feedback, so he tried to live broadcast the game on Xiaohongshu.

In a year and a half, "Wenshui Xiaokai" has accumulated 850,000 fans on Xiaohongshu, with an average of about 25,000 viewers for each show.

Among all these, what impressed him most was the friendly interactive atmosphere of Xiaohongshu. "When I had a new account with few fans, fans on other platforms might seldom communicate with me, but on Xiaohongshu, there were many real fans interacting with me from the very beginning, which gave me great motivation."

At present, "Wenshui Xiaokai" has basically maintained a fixed frequency of daily broadcasts and has accumulated a group of stable audiences.

Using videos and live broadcasts to truly record their own lives, interests or experiences, they are not eager for quick success and instant benefits, nor are they shortsighted. "julia_ty", "Iron Fish Balls", "Wangwang Cousin" and "Wenshui Xiaokai" are not only representatives of "acquaintances", but also representatives of Xiaohongshu's "individual video creators". What they show is the true appearance of the creators that Xiaohongshu expects.

02 Picture, text, video and live broadcast, Xiaohongshu builds a "three-horse team"

Another meaning of "individual" is UGC (user-generated content). If Xiaohongshu has been able to make steady progress in the Internet wave over the past eleven years, UGC is the most important difference.

At the event, Bai Ban, head of the marketing department of Xiaohongshu Community, emphasized that "the UGC core of the community will not change at any time."

The vocabulary combination of individual + video creator ultimately points to a video UGC content community, which encourages every ordinary person to produce content and also provides traffic to ordinary people so that they can express themselves relatively equally.

Although the content supply of medium and short video platforms is already rich enough, these platforms are not UGC-oriented.

As a UGC community, Xiaohongshu has established a unique mindset for graphic content, and another important form of content expression - video and live broadcast - is also taking shape on Xiaohongshu.

The "2024 Xiaohongshu Creator Trend Report" shows that the number of monthly active creators in August this year was 1.35 times that of the same period last year, among which the number of video-preferred creators was 1.43 times that of the same period last year.

In terms of live streaming, the total number of live streaming creators in the first half of this year was 2.48 times that of the same period last year. The growth rate of video and live streaming creators was higher than the overall creator market.

Based on this background, Xiaohongshu is betting on "individual video creators", which is essentially building a troika of "pictures + video + live broadcast" to make it run more balanced and smooth in the future. This is also to encourage "individual video creators" to continue sharing content through videos and live broadcasts in the future.

For creators, this means a clear creative direction.

As "julia_ty" sees it, every individual on Xiaohongshu is three-dimensional and a living being, with distinct characteristics like cartoon characters. "We are not so afraid of showing our imperfect side. Sincerity is always the ultimate weapon."

It is based on this kind of cognitive atmosphere that more users are directly encouraged to join and become "individual video creators" and become builders of the diverse culture of the Xiaohongshu community.

The editorial department of Xinbang recently published an article titled "Who has gained followers on Xiaohongshu crazily in the first half of 2024? | Mid-year Observation", in which many bloggers listed have gained followers through videos or live broadcasts, such as "Awen is Aya", which gained 740,000 followers in the first half of the year and focuses on the topic of women's growth, and "Cookie's Shoe Cabinet", which gained 670,000 followers in the first half of the year and mainly sells goods through live broadcasts.

It is worth mentioning that although Xiaohongshu mentioned the concept of "individual video creator" for the first time this time, it does not mean that Xiaohongshu will weaken pictures and texts. The two are equally important sections.

Xiaohongshu also emphasized many times at the event that it is committed to building a diversified content community that integrates pictures, texts and videos.

"Xiaohongshu has very rich text and picture content and has established a unique user mindset. The development of videos, live broadcasts, etc. can provide users with more options for sharing their lives and achieve balanced development of pictures, texts, videos, and live broadcasts," Baiban said at the event.

Back to this "300 Familiar People Team Building Meeting", this is not just a collection of stories of 300 creators, but a vivid miniature of Xiaohongshu creators. In them, perhaps the direction of Xiaohongshu's future creators is hidden.

Author | Xiaoba Editor | Zhang Jie This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Xinbang], WeChat public account: [Xinbang], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and reproduction is prohibited without permission.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.