Yesterday, Station B decided to cancel the display of playback volume

Some time ago, the news that B station cancelled the playback volume was widely circulated. In the live broadcast of B station's 14th anniversary last night, B station's CEO announced several things, the most eye-catching of which was that the playback volume data displayed on the front desk of B station's videos would be changed from the number of times to the number of minutes. What do you think of this wave of attempts and changes by B station?

I wonder if you guys paid attention to the live broadcast of Bilibili’s 14th anniversary celebration last night.

The song "Anohana" by Zhou Shen and Miyiri Ya brought me back to the time when I first joined Bilibili.

I can only say that this live broadcast was worth it for everyone.

However, although the performance was perfect enough, I feel that the real protagonist of the night is still a hot man.

He is Chen Rui, the chairman and CEO of Bilibili, who is called uncle by everyone.

Let’s put it this way, in a speech that had everyone’s eyes on him, he announced a lot of things that would change Bilibili.

The most anticipated of these is the playback data displayed on the front page of Bilibili’s videos, which will be changed from the number of times to the number of minutes.

In fact, more than three months ago, our Zhiwei editorial department had already exclusively reported this news.

The news we heard at the time was: It was rumored that the front-end and back-end of the relevant changes had been developed, the nuclear bomb was ready, and all that was left was to press the final button.

This time, the uncle no longer played tricks and gave a definite number. According to the official news from Bilibili, the product update will be completed on July 5.

You have to know that in the past, although there were barrages and "three-link" data to measure the quality of manuscripts, the number of plays was still a very important element.

In other words, for most video platforms, the number of plays is one of the most intuitive data.

So this time, Bilibili’s move is a very bold change and attempt.

Anyway, for creators of medium and long videos, it is like the sound of gongs, drums and firecrackers.

For a while, many UP hosts in the circle of friends opened champagne and exclaimed, "I have finally waited for this day."

What's even funnier is that this morning there was a UP who was worried about traffic and was asking around about how to increase the playback data for his videos. But as soon as the uncle finished his speech tonight, he suddenly realized that he didn't need it anymore.

My uncle's logic was also very clear. In his speech, he said that although there is no difference between the content form, it is a bit unfair to the producer of the long video if a short video that took a few minutes to shoot and a high-quality long video that took half a month to produce have the same number of views.

There are also some hardcore high-quality contents, which, although relatively niche, have always had a steady stream of viewers. If only the number of views is displayed, they will likely be drowned in the ocean of various videos.

Not to mention those clickbait videos, users often exit after just a few seconds of clicking on them, but they are able to trick people into watching them because of their extremely high number of views.

So according to my uncle, in order to make those higher-quality medium-length videos stand out, the playback time is a fairer criterion than the number of playback times.

On the other hand, Chapingjun also interviewed DD (pseudonym), a top knowledge zone host with more than two million followers. He also shared his views on the uncle's speech and the changes made to Bilibili.

"This is a huge thing for the creators of medium and long videos on Bilibili," DD told the reviewer.

B station PC web page homepage:

"Because Bilibili is still alive, it means that it is irreplaceable in the field of medium and long video platforms in China, and the content field has always been Bilibili's strength. It is difficult to find a medium and long video platform in China that is more popular than Bilibili."

Therefore, DD feels that this change is a way for B Station to play to its strengths and avoid its weaknesses, and it is actually the most stable adventure.

Of course, not all UP hosts are paying close attention to the changes on Bilibili.

For example, Junru, a well-known UP host in the B station's slacking off area, who calls herself "Can I go to your house?", only found out about this after Chapingjun had a private chat with her.

She even read the question wrong at the beginning, thinking that the video length would be 10 minutes or 5 minutes... so she started complaining.

After understanding what happened, I think Junru's answer is quite profound.

She did not simply open champagne to celebrate, but thought: if the viewing time was displayed, the requirements for creators would actually be higher. The "high" here means that more and better suspense, reversals and ups and downs need to be set up in order to attract and retain as many viewers as possible. This is obviously done better by short video creators, so she does not think that displaying "viewing time" is only beneficial to long video creators, but it is also a test.

In addition, according to M (pseudonym), the person in charge of a leading MCN who often deals with clients, many clients have been exploring advertising models that change the number of playbacks to playback duration.

It is also said that Qifei (Bilibili’s official streaming product) has also made some moves. Although it is still priced according to the number of plays in the early stage, it will be changed to the playback time later. And because the playback time data is difficult to brush, it will be very unfriendly to those accounts that often brush data, and the data of Bilibili will be more real.

After all, this is a brand new thing, which is very different from the market-recognized view that playback volume is king. It requires UP hosts to adapt and receive market education.

In addition, after watching the uncle's speech, I learned a little piece of knowledge: it turns out that it is not technically easy to display the video length in the foreground of the video.

Watching the same video on different devices, turning off the screen on a mobile phone halfway through watching the video, the progress bar constantly switching between different devices during playback, all these situations need to be taken into consideration one by one.

According to my uncle, displaying the playback time is more important than displaying the number of playbacks, both in terms of technical difficulty and cost.

I can only say that my uncle was willing to try this and he spent a lot of money on it.

In addition to the changes in the display of playback volume, I think that Bilibili’s attempts at creative incentive programs and UP host commercialization are also worth talking about.

First of all, in terms of creative incentives, the uncle compared the creative incentive fund to a scholarship, which roughly means that UP hosts with more than 100,000, 200,000, or 300,000 fans are actually capable of commercialization through live broadcasts or business orders.

But for those UPs who have only a few hundred or a few thousand fans, the incentive money can be said to be their only income from making videos.

Although the uncle did not give a clear standard for the new incentive money, I can hear the meaning, that is, the incentive money will mostly be tilted towards small and medium-sized UPs.

In terms of the commercialization of UP masters, Uncle first showed off a wave of live broadcast data and the performance of the UP master business cooperation platform Fireworks, and then suddenly switched to a monthly charging plan similar to a subscription system. . .

I can only say that this turn was a bit unexpected.

So in terms of commercialization, DD, a UP master with millions of fans in the knowledge zone, still made a few complaints, because in terms of commercialization, he thought that his uncle did not provide any new solutions, and still believed that the business order here was the best solution.

Moreover, from the perspective of DD Knowledge Zone UP, he found that Bilibili is more suitable for brand advertising, which requires a lot of preparation to allow users to form brand awareness, so there is often no direct commercial conversion.

For those clients who simply pursue ROI, the advantages of Weibo, Douyin, or Xiaohongshu and other platforms in this regard are greater than those of Bilibili.

Of course, there are some different opinions.

M, the person in charge of a leading MCN, told Chapingjun that the conversion rates of different sections and products on Bilibili are very different. For example, in the knowledge area, the client will pay more attention to brand awareness, but this may not be the case in the life area.

Likewise, different commodities cannot be generalized.

He also believes that the overall ROI of Bilibili is not as good as that of Douyin and Xiaohongshu, probably because Douyin has a large number of users and Xiaohongshu is cheap.

It can be seen from this change that Bilibili still has a lot of room for growth and is continuing to explore and change.

Finally, in general, I think this wave of attempts by Bilibili, especially the changes in the number of views, will definitely bring out Bilibili's advantages in medium and long-length high-quality videos.

But this is just the beginning for whether B Station can turn things around commercially in the future. Efforts and considerations in many aspects such as the future community environment, B Station's organizational goals, and content ecology are also very important.

At least for now, Bilibili, which is 14 years old this year, is still on the road.

Image and information sources :

• Station B, Station B 14th Anniversary Live Broadcast
• Zhiwei, Exclusive | Station B is considering completely canceling the display of playback data

Author: Jiang Jiang; Editor: Mianxian

Original title: Today, Station B decided to cancel the display of playback volume

Source public account: Chaping (ID: chaping321), Debug the World.