Why WeChat's "Little Green Book" cannot threaten Xiaohongshu? Let's start with how to analyze a content platform

Recently, WeChat has made another big move. WeChat has launched Little Green Book! Of course, the counterpart is Little Red Book. Then someone will definitely ask, will WeChat Little Green Book threaten Little Red Book? In this article, the author explains how to analyze a content platform and gives a good answer to this question. Let's take a look.

WeChat has launched the "Little Green Book" and Toutiao has launched "Discover", both of which are in the form of double-column pictures and text.

Some people say: Isn’t this Xiaohongshu?

The left picture shows WeChat's "Little Green Book" and the right picture shows Toutiao's "Discovery"

What a content platform ultimately looks like is determined by production, distribution, and consumption.

WeChat and Toutiao simply chose Xiaohongshu's way of distributing content, but the differences in content production and consumption are huge, so they will not pose any threat to Xiaohongshu.

1. Let’s start with content producers

For text and image producers on WeChat, the majority of traffic comes from media accounts, as can be seen from the rankings in Xinbang. The same is true for Toutiao.

1. The biggest feature of media accounts: they are not human

In other words, there is no character setting, no fixed characters appearing on screen, but content similar to that of newspapers and TV stations. For example, news about heavy rains, holiday notices, fights, car accidents, funny jokes, etc. Most accounts are not original content, but just edited and pieced together.

Most of the content producers on Xiaohongshu are people, bloggers who appear on camera. To distribute this type of content using Xiaohongshu's double-column text and picture format, you need to grab pictures from the text as the cover. But the pictures here are usually unimportant auxiliary information, non-original, and rough.

Therefore, the final effect is very different from Xiaohongshu.

2. Can we bring bloggers from Xiaohongshu to WeChat and Toutiao?

The answer is a drop in the bucket. Even if you attract 1,000 Xiaohongshu bloggers in a short period of time, once they are thrown into WeChat and Toutiao, they will no longer be seen.

The volume is too small, and the original market is too large to be distributed. The advantage of the recommendation algorithm is that it is optimal overall, not local, and it cannot recognize such segmented and small-scale content.

2. Let’s talk about content consumers

In Xiaohongshu's double-column feed model, users are essentially "voting" when browsing content.

First look at the cover, then select the content you are interested in and click to read, and finally forward, comment and like. The more votes a content receives, the more distribution it is likely to receive (there are many other factors).

The difference here is that because the voting groups are different, the content they vote for is also different. Xiaohongshu's core audience is young women with purchasing power in first- and second-tier cities. The audiences of WeChat and Toutiao are close to the majority of domestic netizens, so the proportion of sinking users is larger.

These are two completely different groups with very different preferences for content.

Don’t the people at WeChat and Toutiao understand this truth? Of course they do. External speculation is often very different from internal opinions. It’s blind analysis.

Since this is all just random analysis, I'll join in the fun and share my opinion.

1. Peer pressure, forced to learn

Xiaohongshu is one of the most popular products at the moment, with good growth rate and reputation. This double-column distribution format will be considered feasible and even the key to rapid growth.

As a competitor, if you turn a blind eye to this and do nothing, it will be hard to justify it within the company and you will easily be challenged. This is determined by the decision-making method within large companies.

So we still have to take out resources and follow up to try. Even if it doesn't work in the end, it can still shut others up.

2. New content distribution methods are conducive to enhancing ecological vitality.

Previously, when reading content on WeChat public accounts and Toutiao, users decided whether to click based on the title, which is the voting behavior mentioned above.

Therefore, the content that is voted for is more attractive in terms of text titles.

Now with Xiaohongshu's double-column distribution method, users will decide whether to click based on the cover image, because from a visual perspective, images are more attractive than text.

Therefore, the content that is voted for is more attractive in the picture.

One is text, the other is pictures, and the content with advantages is likely to have a lower degree of overlap. This will allow more content that has not been distributed before to be distributed.

Even the amount of content exposed will increase.

This is a good thing for the content ecosystem, as it makes it more dynamic. It is a bit like the sales-to-activity ratio in e-commerce.

Author: Han Xu, WeChat public account: "Operation Dog Work Diary".