How will these 10 predicted trends affect the internet celebrity landscape in 2024?

In the past 2023, many influencers with our model have emerged, and they are constantly creating alternative ways to break out of the circle. In 2024, what trends in the influencer circle will hide the next round of detonation points? This article summarizes 10 predicted trends, let's take a look.

Only half a month into 2024, the internet celebrity circle has created a hot topic for after-dinner chats - "Who is Cheng Qian?" A business interview host who became popular on Douyin in 2023 caused controversy across the Internet due to his low emotional intelligence and lack of real business understanding at a roundtable forum with Zhou Hongyi, Wang Shi, and Feng Lun.

This internet celebrity topic then occupied Weibo's hot searches and various WeChat headlines, breaking through the original community circle, not only creating a greater dissemination effect, but also involving more Internet users who had never paid attention to internet celebrity topics. Even though Cheng Qian has over 6 million fans on Douyin, few people know him outside of Douyin. The comments in the comment area focus more on "Who is Cheng Qian" and "Why was he able to interview several business leaders."

Image source: TikTok

In 2023, people kept finding the name of a certain internet celebrity at the top of the Weibo hot search list, and the comments that followed were all puzzled voices such as "Who is he?" However, what cannot be ignored is that the top internet celebrities who have truly broken through the circle have set off a "common" phenomenon of dominating the social media hot search list and being discussed more by the public than celebrities. From Li Jiaqi and crazy Xiao Yangge on Double Eleven to Dong Yuhui at the end of the year, the hot discussions about them have been overwhelming. 2023 can be said to be the year when internet celebrities surpassed celebrities, whether in terms of popularity or earning ability. The joke that "celebrity daily salary is 2.08 million and internet celebrities hourly salary is 1.86 million" has turned into a sigh from workers across the Internet.

Internet celebrities are constantly creating alternative ways to break out of the circle, which also indicates that the number of national discussions and hot topics about them will only increase in 2024. So, what trends in the Internet celebrity circle in 2024 hide the next round of detonation points? Perhaps these ten judgments can provide a reference in advance.

01 The differentiation between MCN and top anchors is intensifying. Is the “studio” system the solution?

As luck would have it, just one week after Cheng Qian’s character was overturned, many entrepreneurs including Zhou Hongyi and Feng Lun, the other protagonists of the incident, went to Dongfang Selection to learn about the internet celebrity economy. Yu Minhong even brought out Dong Yuhui to share. In this sharing, Dong Yuhui, who also has the attributes of an internet celebrity, was very humble. He did not talk too much about himself, but attributed the success of Dongfang Selection to Yu Minhong’s choice and the group’s persistence. Before this sharing, Dong Yuhui’s new personal account "Walk with Hui" completed its premiere on January 9. In two hours, the number of online viewers exceeded 30 million, and the sales of live broadcasts exceeded 150 million in three hours.

Image source: Internet

At the same time on the same day, Dongfang Zhenxuan also started broadcasting on Douyin, but the cumulative number of viewers of "Walking with Hui" was 3.5 times that of Dongfang Zhenxuan, and the peak number of online users was 15 times that of Dongfang Zhenxuan. During the Xiaozuowen incident, Yu Minhong once revealed that Dong Yuhui's appearance frequency in Dongfang Zhenxuan's live broadcast room would be reduced in the future, and New Oriental would set up a personal studio for Dong Yuhui to focus on cultural and tourism projects.

From a current perspective, the launch of "Along with Hui" means that both Dongfang Zhenxuan and Dong Yuhui have opened a new chapter. This similar system of retaining top anchors through the "studio" system is being extended to other live broadcast rooms. For example, the president of Xueersi once announced in the live broadcast room that his female anchor Chengcheng was promoted to level four, joined the executive team, and received a salary increase and stock rewards. She was also awarded the title of "Xueersi Princess".

02 Crazy Xiao Yangge is becoming more like Simba, and the master-apprentice system of internet celebrities is further "spreading"

He spent 100 million yuan on a house, 200 million yuan in taxes, 50 million yuan in monthly wages, and 30 million yuan on concerts. Crazy Xiao Yangge, a short video expert born in 1995, has more than 100 million fans on Douyin. Along with the growth of fans, the number of apprentices that Crazy Xiao Yangge has also increased.

This kind of Simba-like master-apprentice system of selling goods has been fully implemented by Brother Xiao Yang in the Three Sheep Matrix Live Broadcast Room: Boss Qi, Xiao Huang (the yellow in the traffic light), Brother Zui, Qiao Mei, and Li Paoer, Zhuo Shilin, and Chen Yili who signed contracts later. They have all contributed huge sales to the Three Sheep. Taking September 2023 as an example, Boss Qi sold more than 100 million yuan in sales, Brother Zui sold more than 50 million yuan in sales, and Brother Xiao Huang sold more than 25 million yuan in sales. In their Douyin profiles, they all clearly marked "learned from Brother Xiao Yang/Brother Da Yang."

Image source: TikTok

In the live broadcast room, these apprentices and their master Brother Yang have their usual funny and nonsensical live broadcast style, which also sows the seeds of controversy.

Finally, the fuse was ignited when Xiao Huang was promoting YSL air cushion products, and the keyword associated with her was "the promotional style is too vulgar." After being banned for nearly a month, Xiao Huang resumed broadcasting, with 480,000 people online in 5 minutes and sales of nearly 10 million. Yang Ge also responded to the fact that he did not personally accompany Xiao Huang on the broadcast, saying: "It is not necessarily good to praise her too much, just let her broadcast quietly there, and pushing her to the peak will harm her instead."

Compared with commercial contracts, the master-apprentice system is mixed with more emotional factors. It is more stable in the long run and can better impress the "brothers" that Brother Yang is targeting.

03 Internet celebrities are becoming more like ordinary people

From Taozi and Huang, who became famous through "Wa Ya Wa", to Yu Wenliang, who casually recorded his daily life, to Wen Huijun, who dominated the WeChat Moments at the end of the year, these Internet celebrities have stronger "amateur" attributes. And they have stronger grassroots attributes, which are also the counterattack scripts that Internet users love to watch, and the projection that is closer to the realization of their own dreams.

At the same time, the rapid spread of short videos on the Internet has made this prophecy a reality, but the time it takes for these amateur Internet celebrities to become famous seems to stop at "15 minutes".

Teacher Taozi and Teacher Huang

Andy Warhol once made a prediction: "Everyone can be a celebrity for 15 minutes." After the explosion, Wen Huijun's popularity only lasted for three days. The number of viewers for the first five shows was over 20 million, but the number of viewers for the last live show dropped to 8 million.

After that, Wen Huijun suspended his live broadcasting activities. Based on the highly centralized distribution mechanism of the Internet, the platform can decide who is popular. When netizens wonder why such an ordinary person can become popular, they become curious, speculate, and try to rationalize it... This series of processes subtly helps the platform to achieve the behavior of "creating stars".

04 Super Internet celebrities tend to disappear, and the myth of increasing followers is unlikely to appear again

In 2023, the speed at which internet celebrities’ followers increased has shrunk significantly, from “10 million followers in 2 days” during the peak period to “1 million followers in a month” today. The myth of super internet celebrities’ fan growth has disappeared without anyone noticing.

Looking back at the birth stories of those super internet celebrities, whether it is Liu Genghong who became popular for his home fitness or Zhang Tongxue who filmed videos of rural life in Northeast China, they were all born out of luck. When the direction of the entire society and the content of the creators just happen to fit in with the same frequency, a super internet celebrity is born.

Screenshot of Liu Genghong's live broadcast

Nowadays, although there are internet celebrities, few of them can become phenomenal super internet celebrities. Essentially, this is because the events that made them become top internet celebrities themselves failed to reach a wider audience.

Li Paoer, who ranked at the top of Douyin's fan increase in 2023, is in a similar situation. Although he has tens of millions of fans on Douyin, he has not formed a discussion outside the circle. In addition, the increasing involution and assembly line creation of the short video track also means that after the birth of a hit, there will be endless imitators, and the ceiling of creation is also being raised higher and higher. In ancient times, it was important to have the right time, the right place, and the right people. Now, the right time and the right place provide a greater chance of success.

05 Mid-level bloggers are more popular, and small V marketing becomes the main promotion platform

For a long time, although top bloggers have a wide audience, the tight cooperation schedule and high cooperation fees have discouraged many brands. As brand marketing budgets are tight, mid-level bloggers who focus on cost-effectiveness have become the best choice. In this context, the number of fans is no longer the only criterion for measuring the commercial value of influencers. With the rise of the Internet traffic economy, mid-level bloggers also have a strong desire to monetize their traffic.

Compared with top bloggers, their e-commerce attributes are stronger. For example, housewives, yoga instructors, etc. are often the targets of brands’ interest. They are closer to life, and the content they share is more integrated with the attributes of the products. The most important thing is that the mid-level bloggers have lower quotes, and they are more preferential for large quantities. Their explosive rate is not necessarily lower than that of top bloggers. Brands can apply for promotion authorization for videos they are satisfied with, so that they can be used for promotion across the entire network. In addition, since mid-level bloggers are often not at the forefront of public opinion, brands can also reduce the cost of trial and error and avoid the risk of rollover.

06 Internet celebrities are becoming more and more vertical, not all-inclusive

With the continuous growth of short video users and the increasing diversification of content demand, in addition to the conventional food, beauty, and automobile vertical categories, more vertical sub-fields of content have emerged in the Internet celebrity circle. They are familiar with things that the general public is familiar with and curious about but have certain thresholds, and have attracted many interested audiences. For example, the vertical category of home furnishings can be derived into sub-categories such as decoration hard knowledge, home furnishings, and sharing of home furnishings. If the Internet celebrity has corresponding professional skills in this sub-field, the data performance will be even more impressive.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Users often follow such accounts because they have relevant needs or interests and are more purposeful. When vertical influencers win the trust of users, their account stickiness and commercial value will be magnified proportionally.

In contrast, a general lifestyle account with a wide audience may have over a million fans, but in terms of commercial monetization capabilities and personal business value, it may not be as accurate as a vertical professional evaluation account with a small number of fans.

07 Internet celebrities are accelerating towards full platformization

Whether leaving Kuaishou and entering Douyin, or leaving Douyin and entering Taobao, the mobility of internet celebrities between platforms has increased significantly. While testing new platforms, it also provides internet celebrities with opportunities to increase their followers and commercial space.

On the content side, by the end of 2023, "Outdoor Hair (Dongfang Abao)" had gained more than 5 million followers on Douyin in 30 days. He had previously been active in the Kuaishou outdoor live broadcasting circle, and then switched to Douyin, gradually clarifying the format of outdoor quiz live broadcasting, which enabled him to gain followers. In the live broadcast e-commerce sector, leading institutions such as Jiaogepengyou and Dongfangzhenxuan are competing to deploy on all platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, and not putting all their eggs in one basket.

The four top streamers of outdoor quiz live broadcast

Other big internet celebrities who became famous on Douyin, such as Zhang Lan and Yili Xiaoshazi, also took the initiative to unbind their accounts, and went to Taobao or other platforms to live broadcast shortly after becoming popular.

At the same time, in order to maintain the platform ecology, the short video platform adopts a decentralized traffic distribution mechanism, firmly controls the life and death of the platform traffic, and focuses on supporting merchant store broadcasts to avoid the phenomenon of super-head anchors dominating the market.

08 Brand successor becomes an internet celebrity

With marketing costs remaining high and brand marketing becoming more sophisticated, the move of brand successors towards becoming internet celebrities is essentially an experiment in brand rejuvenation, transformation and upgrading.

Whether it's Luo Cheng, the second son of Holiland who plays up the persona of a "socially phobic boss", or Ding Jiamin, the daughter of Xtep, who attracted a lot of attention on social platforms with her wealthy wedding, or Cai Wangjia, the second son of Want Want who became the "Internet mouthpiece" of netizens, these brand successors born in the 1990s and 1995s have bid farewell to sticking to the old ways, and have personally established their own personas and become Internet celebrities, focusing on brand marketing in a younger and more flexible way.

Luo Cheng, the second son of Holiland

This trend has also spread to the "factory second generation". Although they do not have the same prominent family background as the brand successors, they have attended good schools and returned to inherit the factory. They are not like the rich second generation who spend money lavishly, but work diligently in the factory. This contrast has won the favor of many fans. More importantly, the factory second generation can gain the trust and endorsement of netizens through this label and open up new sales channels for their own business on social platforms.

09 Douyin, Kuaishou, and B are becoming more and more similar

Nowadays, algorithm-driven video content platforms are becoming more and more similar.

"Generalization" has become the inevitable path for the development of all platforms. From the user data alone, Kuaishou has nearly 400 million daily active users and over 600 million monthly active users; Douyin has over 700 million monthly active users; Bilibili has over 300 million; Xiaohongshu has just exceeded 300 million. Among these basic data of hundreds of millions, there is a certain degree of user overlap.

As platforms become more and more similar, influencers’ angles of entry are also becoming more similar. Almost all influencers have established unified accounts for all-platform distribution on Douyin, Kuaishou, and Baidu, and almost all of them have been released online. However, some bloggers will make content adjustments, such as adjusting different cover images, titles, and ending credits, and make small-dimensional content edits without destroying the overall content.

10 AI Beauty Blogger

AIGC is undoubtedly the biggest trend in 2023, and AI beauty bloggers created by AIGC technology are also becoming popular on social platforms.

Pure style, pure desire style, hot girl style...As long as you feed AI a few more pictures and adjust the parameters a few more times, AI can always generate a beautiful woman who is pleasing to the eye among 100 pictures. The only difference from the real beauty bloggers is that these beauty bloggers created by AI mostly appear in the form of two-dimensional pictures, and there are almost no beauties that can "move".

At present, the monetization methods of AI beauty bloggers include traffic conversion, rewards, brand cooperation, advertising, e-commerce promotion and private domain course selling, etc. Among them, course selling is the fastest way to monetize and is also the most commonly used method by bloggers, mainly selling AI painting courses.

AI beauty blogger Source: Xiaohongshu

At the same time, some AI beauty bloggers have received advertising invitations from brands and customized orders from Taobao merchants. For brands, AI beauty bloggers have a natural advantage in that they produce stable pictures without any mistakes, but the lack of real emotional connection will also discourage some fans who expect real emotional investment.

Summarize

In uncertain times, internet celebrities and bloggers are more inclined to a "small steps and fast progress" development model, no longer hoping to gain millions of followers overnight or have a GMV of over 100 million in a live broadcast.

At the same time, the life cycle of Internet celebrities is further shortened. The rise of more and more niche vertical Internet celebrities is a new opportunity and a new challenge. For platforms, live e-commerce has further become a weapon for more and more platforms to write commercialization, and the competition for Internet celebrities will become more and more fierce. Whether it is Xiaohongshu amateur bloggers or video accounts, they still need a benchmark to make them famous. Such opportunities are also attracting the ambitions of Internet celebrities.

What internet celebrity stories will appear in 2024, who will be unexpectedly popular, and who will fall sadly, let us wait and see.

Author: Thick Code

Source: Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha), the telescope and sonar of the pan-entertainment industry.