Stop updating for 3 years? No money? Those internet celebrities with millions of fans who "disappeared"...

This article introduces the Douyin bloggers who stopped updating in the traffic era and the reasons behind their suspension. It is recommended for friends who are interested in Douyin operations to read and learn~

In the age of traffic, no one can stay popular forever. Many internet celebrities who were once popular attracted millions of fans with their high-quality content and unique positioning. They were the traffic darlings who stood at the forefront of the short video era.

However, as time goes by, many Internet celebrities with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of fans have chosen to stop updating due to many reasons, such as difficulty in sustainable content production, insufficient monetization ability, disputes with MCN, etc. Among them are Li Ziqi, Cheng Shian, Dog Brother Jack Su, and Wonderful Museum...

How long have they been inactive? What is the current status of the accounts? What should practitioners think about? Xinbochang counted the accounts with millions of followers on Douyin that have been inactive for more than 3 months and conducted a detailed analysis.

01 Which internet celebrities with millions of fans have stopped updating?

"I found that many accounts in my follow list on TikTok have not been updated, and some have not been updated for two years."

Recently, colleagues from the editorial department of Xinbochang discovered that many top Internet celebrities and tens of millions of IPs that were once popular in the industry have rarely been active and are gradually being forgotten by the industry.

For example, "Zhu Yici's Boring Life" once became popular on the entire Internet because of its "black humor", but due to subsequent team changes and other reasons, the update time on Douyin stopped in November 2023.

"What a pity." Industry insiders lamented the suspension of this account, "This IP was so good back then, I didn't expect it to be abandoned like this."

Xinbochang found that there are many top accounts like Zhu Yici who have stopped updating. In order to understand how many top accounts have stopped updating, we used Feigua data to count the influencers with more than 10 million fans, and used the standard of "stopping for more than 3 months" (the deadline is May 15) to compile the following list:

According to incomplete statistics, there are 25 internet celebrities with tens of millions of followers on Douyin who have not updated for more than three months, including top influencers such as Liziqi and Cheng Shian.

We also counted the downtime of these influencers with millions of fans:

It can be found that there are two accounts that stopped updating in 2021, namely "Hao Yidian" and "Songsong and Ermao".

Overall, the time periods when accounts were suspended were mainly concentrated in 2022 and 2023, with 18 accounts suspended in these two years.

We also counted the types of accounts that stopped updating:

It can be seen that among the accounts that have stopped updating, the most are in the comedy and game categories, with 5 each; followed by the food category.

02 Why did they choose to stop updating?

After taking stock of these accounts with millions of followers that have stopped updating, we also analyzed the reasons for their suspension based on their development and related reports after the suspension.

The first reason is the conflict between influencers and MCN agencies.

For example, Li Ziqi stopped updating because of the uneven distribution of benefits with the MCN agency behind her, Weinian. The two sides also went to court. Although her account was finally restored, Li Ziqi also disappeared from the public eye. Her last video on Douyin was updated on April 30, 2022, and it was a lawyer's statement; the video before that was on September 8, 2021.

Cheng Shian is facing the same situation. In May 2023, Cheng Shian's Xiaohongshu account was suddenly banned, which caused heated discussions. Soon, Cheng Shian responded on Weibo, saying that it was a dispute with her former company. At the same time, she also publicly called out to her former company, MCN agency Jinjia, on Weibo: "Stop pretending."

In addition, there are many influencers such as "Hao Yidian" and "Songsong and Ermao" who changed their accounts to update after their accounts with millions of fans stopped updating. It is speculated that the reason is that they broke up with the company behind them, but they could not get the account back, so they had to open a new account to update.

Since the development of the short video industry, conflicts between MCN organizations and influencers have never stopped. However, no matter what the final result is, it is a "lose-lose" situation. The first thing to suffer is the account assets, which inevitably leads to the suspension of the account.

The second reason is the high cost of content production and insufficient monetization capabilities.

We also include "Wonderful Museum" and "I Have a Friend", two influencers with nearly 10 million followers, in the statistics because these two accounts are representative: drama accounts with outstanding content production capabilities but difficult to monetize.

In December 2019, the account "Wonderful Museum" that tells stories about various small objects appeared in front of users. In just three months, the number of fans quickly exceeded 10 million, becoming a strong competitor in the Douyin drama content track. In early 2020, affected by the overall environment, offline work was suspended, and the filming of "Wonderful Museum" also came to a halt.

Now, the update time of the "Wonderful Museum" has stopped at January 2023.

For accounts like this, the cost of content production is not low, and it also tests the creativity of the content. However, in contrast, such accounts have large traffic, but they can often only rely on advertising for monetization.

Xinbochang discovered that there is another account under the same company as the "Wonderful Museum" - Daydream Theater. This account has more than 6 million followers and is currently involved in paid short dramas, which is a new exploration of monetization.

Third, the company has transformed into live streaming to sell goods, but its original IP accounts cannot be transformed.

In order to monetize, many content influencers, such as Duoyu, Maomao Sister, and Office Ono, have chosen to stop updating short videos and focus on live streaming.

In the list we counted, there is an anime IP account - Dog Brother Jack Su. The MCN agency to which this account belongs is Zhixing Yida, which currently owns several top accounts such as Counterattack Ding Jie and focuses on live streaming.

The reason why content-based MCN organizations have transformed into live streaming sales is still inseparable from monetization. When the company focuses on live streaming sales, pure content-based accounts like this can only be abandoned.

Today, there are more than 1,000 accounts on Douyin with more than 10 million followers. The "disappearance" of 25 accounts with more than 10 million followers does not seem to occupy a large share, but it is also a "product" of various difficulties encountered in the rapid development of the industry.

Will they resume updates? Will fans still remember them?

Author: Changmei; Source public account: Xinbochang (ID: 1093973)