If B station cancels the display of playback volume, will it make UP hosts who do things for love no longer worry about money?

Bilibili announced that it will use the number of minutes played instead of the number of times played to evaluate UP main videos in the coming weeks. Therefore, this article comprehensively analyzes the reasons, impacts and opportunities of this major move by Bilibili. It not only provides a reference for content creators, but also allows readers to understand the latest trends and changes of video platforms such as Bilibili.

Things have changed at Station B!

Yesterday was the 14th birthday of Bilibili. Chairman and CEO Chen Rui announced a major event in due course:

In the next few weeks, the number of minutes played will be used instead of the number of views for UP masters' video submissions.

1. Judging heroes by the length of time, the clickbait is over

The number of views, or more accurately, the number of plays, is 1, whether you watch it for 10 seconds or 10 minutes.

The number of minutes of playback is the time users actually spend watching the video. To put it simply, the larger the number, the higher the probability that the content is of good quality.

This change is a first for a global video platform. The news came out three months ago and now it’s finally settled.

When he was on stage, Chen Rui, who was steady in his manner, used the user's questions as an introduction and slowly got to the point:

Will high-quality medium-length and long videos be drowned in the dazzling array of choices?

This actually explains what problem B Station hopes to solve.

Bilibili’s attitude is very clear. When there is more and more diverse content, users’ attention is distracted. The solution is not to go back to the past when content was not rich enough, but to use technology and products to make it easier for users to see better quality content.

The solution they found was the number of minutes of playback.

Chen Rui gave several examples. Whether it is mainstream videos such as "Identifying Popular Online Creatures" or more vertical and niche boutique videos such as F1 racing, they can attract viewers for a long time.

On the other hand, low-quality videos that rely on exaggerated titles and misleading covers to attract clicks are often quickly abandoned by users after being clicked. The number of playing minutes is much less than the number of play times, which is almost a death sentence.

UP host He is trying to find the traffic password of B station.

In short, the number of minutes of playback is "more valuable data" and can better reflect the actual consumption of content.

Bilibili’s traditional skill of “three clicks with one click” can also directly reflect the quality of the video, but it alone is not enough.

Because liking and coin voting are active behaviors of a minority of users, most users choose to vote silently with their feet.

The same silent viewing behavior, the number of minutes played is more indicative of the quality of the video than the number of times played. Therefore, the one-click triple-click is still the one-click triple-click. What B station has subverted this time is actually the "vote with feet" method of most users.

Why did B Station make up its mind only now? Counting the number of minutes played is much more difficult and costly than counting the number of times played.

Interruptions, progress bar jumps, repeated playback, multi-device viewing, mobile screen blackouts, web page switching, these complex interactive behaviors all need to be counted in order to get a relatively accurate number of playback minutes.

Chen Rui said that the current B station is already capable of doing this. In the near future, the arrow icon indicating the number of views in the lower left corner of the video cover will be changed to a clock icon indicating the number of minutes played.

2. Make good content, the number of views or the length of time played is not a problem

As the source of fresh water, what do UP masters think of the self-subversion of Bilibili? iFanr interviewed Ayan, a technology UP master with nearly 90,000 fans, and Zejun, a UP master with thousands of fans.

In the past, Ayan measured the quality of his videos mainly based on three dimensions: number of views, number of likes, and completion rate.

The volume of views, or the number of times the video is played, is the most intuitive data, proving whether the topic of the video is popular, whether the title and cover are appropriate, and it is the best endorsement of its commercial value.

However, Ah Yan is also very clear that a high number of views does not mean a high quality video. It may just be that the title and cover are good. If the audience really approves of the quality of the video, they will generally "like it three times in one click", but more often they will just give it a like.

Therefore, based on the number of views, Ayan will calculate the view-to-like ratio based on the number of likes to measure the quality of the video and how it is for the audience. For the same 100,000 views, the quality of a video with 5,000 likes is definitely better than that with 500 likes.

A Yan believes that this change will bring unpredictable benefits or harm to UP hosts, but it is a good thing for the audience. It will force creators to pay more attention to content, and videos with clickbait titles and cover pages will gradually fall behind.

UP main background data

At the same time, the completion rate has been placed in a more important position, and Ayan has always attached great importance to this data.

Because in addition to measuring the quality of the video, the completion rate can provide creators with trend guidance, especially on the appropriate length of the video, which can ensure that the point of view is fully output and the audience will not feel tired while watching it.

Generally, a completion rate of over 50% is considered good.

In addition, short video creators may be hit. For example, if the number of views is 100,000 and the completion rate is 50%, then it is obvious which data is better between a one-minute video and a ten-minute video.

Chen Rui also made a similar analogy in his speech. He said it in a comprehensive way, saying that there is no distinction between high and low content, and that users like high-quality content. However, he also spoke up for medium and long videos:

A half-hour video that took half a month to carefully produce may have similar number of views as a 2-minute daily life video shot with a mobile phone... The investment in the two videos is different, and users will always feel that it is not worth it for the UP hosts who make these medium and long videos.

As a Buddhist UP host with thousands of fans, Zejun’s standards are slightly different from Ayan’s. When measuring video standards, he pays more attention to the number of views, the number of barrages and the number of coins.

After all, the number of views and barrages will be displayed on the preview interface, which can intuitively show whether the video is good or not, and the number of coins will only increase by one every day. Users need to pay a small cost to insert coins, and generally they will only insert coins if they really like it.

Now, the number of views has been changed to the number of minutes played, and Zejun has mixed feelings. He is worried that the UP host may keep the audience in suspense in the video in order to increase the retention rate of the audience, which will cause the content to become dragged out.

Displaying the number of minutes of playback is generally considered to be beneficial to medium and long videos, but in Zejun's opinion, this is not entirely true.

UP main background data

With the erosion of short videos, the audience's patience is getting lower and lower. Most people may only have 10 minutes of patience at most. So, if you make content within 10 minutes, the completion rate will be high. For in-depth content of 20 to 30 minutes, people may not be able to finish watching it and it may still be unpopular.

Therefore, it is uncertain what users want, but it is almost certain what they don’t want. The shoddy clickbait has been declared doomed, and how the landscape of medium and long videos will develop is still full of unknowns. Let’s leave the human work to the human work, and leave the market to the market.

Ah Yan, who is trying to figure out how to increase his followers, is not very anxious:

All I can say is that as long as you create great content, you won’t have to worry about the number of views or the length of time it’s played.

3. Play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses, medium and long videos are still the foundation

The number of plays was changed to playing minutes, which was unexpected but not so unexpected.

Medium and long videos are still the basic foundation of Bilibili and its core competitiveness.

As of the first quarter of this year, B station's PUGC (professional user-generated content) medium and long videos accounted for about 70% of the total playback volume, which is still the most mainstream content of B station and is still growing.

In April this year, "Bilibili's suspension of updates" became a hot topic. Although several major UP hosts spoke out one after another, emphasizing that the suspension was due to their own reasons and the claim of suspension was not true, it still aroused the outside world's scrutiny of Bilibili's creative ecology.

The monetization channels of UP masters can be roughly divided into four parts: business orders, live broadcasts, incentive sharing, and charging plans.

At present, business orders are still Ayan’s main source of income:

There are basically no other channels, and it is too difficult to survive on creative incentives.

Specifically, Party A sets the price for commercial orders mainly based on the number of fans, and some orders also require the average number of views.

Many mid-level UP hosts on Bilibili have made high-quality medium- and long-length videos. However, how to demonstrate commercial value to brands and receive business orders like the small and medium-sized bloggers on Xiaohongshu is still a problem. The number of minutes of playback may be the beginning of a positive cycle.

The business model of short videos has been proven. If we can explore a way to monetize medium and long videos, without concentrating on the head but also allowing the middle and tail to get a share, everyone will be happy.

"Fireworks" is the official commercial cooperation platform of Bilibili. The "Fireworks UP Master Preferred List" in March this year measured the average video playback volume, average interaction rate, etc. Whether the number of playback minutes will be the leading factor in the future is still unknown.

At least, it is more difficult to fish in muddy waters with the number of minutes played than with the number of plays.

Story-Mode, the short video service of B Station, had a very low presence last night. B Station's vertical screen short videos are more like following the trend and adding bricks and tiles to commercialization, but it has not yet developed its own characteristics.

However, when it comes to medium and long videos, Bilibili can confidently emphasize its sense of community.

In his anniversary speech, Chen Rui shared three things that B Station has focused on for 14 years:

Good content, dedicated UP hosts, and a community of like-minded people.

He believes that these three things complement each other, and UP hosts are the core of them.

Although Bilibili has become a comprehensive video platform, when it comes to communities and circles, labels such as 2D and ghost animals still follow closely. To some extent, the medium and long videos on Bilibili also represent a niche professionalism.

Among all the video platforms, it is difficult for Bilibili to be the fastest and the one with the most traffic, but because of its deep-rooted community culture and creativity, it is also difficult to be left behind. It is time for it to prove itself.

Author: Zhang Chengchen, public account: ifanr (ID: ifanr)