With more short videos, will Xiaohongshu become “TikTok-like”?

Recently, Xiaohongshu has started to improve and optimize its content community, and the "shopping" at the entrance has been replaced by "video". What does this change of Xiaohongshu mean? This article analyzes its changes, let's take a look.

Recently, some users discovered that in the latest version upgrade of Xiaohongshu, the original "Shopping" entrance in the bottom navigation bar was replaced by "Video" and appeared in the second column of the homepage.

Some users think this change is "pretty good", but many users say that the videos on Xiaohongshu are not worth watching.

"It feels even more lagging than TikTok. The more interesting videos I see are all ones I've seen on TikTok, and the videos I haven't seen are not new enough," said user Cheng Yu.

Before this, Xiaohongshu had been exploring the path of e-commerce, attempting to perfect the perfect closed loop of "planting grass + pulling grass".

After 9 years of attempts, from cross-border e-commerce to live streaming e-commerce, Xiaohongshu even banned Taobao's external link function and promoted private e-commerce traffic for its own brands. However, there seems to be a barrier between community + e-commerce, which cannot be broken through. To date, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business has not yet grown in scale.

The fact that Xiaohongshu has now replaced the shopping section with videos actually means, to some extent, that Xiaohongshu has temporarily shelved the creation of a "grass planting + e-commerce" closed loop in an attempt to improve the content community.

1. “Video” replaces “shopping”

Where has Xiaohongshu’s “e-commerce” gone?

Recently, some users found that in the latest version upgrade of Xiaohongshu, the original "Shopping" entrance in the bottom navigation bar was replaced by "Video" and appeared in the second column of the homepage. The original "Shopping" entrance appeared in the second column of the top secondary navigation bar.

The newly launched videos are almost identical to short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, except for the interface layout. Functions such as "repost, comment, like, and favorite" and swiping down to switch videos are now the mainstream forms of short videos.

Bianniu.com found that the video content on Xiaohongshu includes "pets" and "cooking", which are mostly related to their usual browsing habits, and the video length is mostly around 30 seconds.

Some users think this change is "pretty good", after all, short videos are the mainstream nowadays.

However, many users said that there was nothing to watch, "The videos are all very short, and I don't know what I watched after watching them." User Duoduo said: "The content is not rich enough, for example, I didn't see the movie commentary and popular science content that are common on short video platforms."

"I looked through ten posts, and none of them interested me, except the last one, which was about mahjong," said Mumu.

Cheng Yu feels that "it feels even more outdated than TikTok. The more interesting videos I see are all ones I've seen on TikTok, and the ones I haven't seen are not new enough."

For brands, they currently prefer graphic and text content.

Xiao Fei, a designer brand operator, told Bianniu: "At present, we are more inclined to publish graphic notes. Videos have just started, so the effect may not be good."

"If we replace shopping with videos, on the one hand, we have to create both graphic and video content, which is a lot of work; on the other hand, we care more about the direct conversion of Xiaohongshu's 'planting grass + pulling grass', but it seems to be different from Xiaohongshu's current trend." Xiaofei said.

But it seems to be a good thing for content creators, as "there are more channels to display content."

It is reported that video content currently accounts for 45% of the content exposure on Xiaohongshu. After the video stream was launched, Xiaohongshu's advertising tool "Full-site Smart Investment" added video streaming scenarios, which also means that advertisers have more choices.

However, according to media reports, an insider of Xiaohongshu said that at this stage, they would still recommend customers to publish high-quality picture and text notes for grass-roots marketing, and video streaming content may not necessarily be suitable for publication.

In addition, Xiaohongshu has also upgraded the Dandelion brand mark component, upgrading the original "brand cooperation mark" to a "brand mark component", and brands can choose to display or not display it based on marketing demands. In short, if the brand is willing, the blogger's report notes will no longer display the "cooperation mark".

2. Cut off both arms?

As a content community, advertising has always been Xiaohongshu’s core business.

In 2019, Xiaohongshu connected to MCN. In the second half of 2020, Xiaohongshu used the B2K2C model to summarize the brand promotion driven by KOC on the platform.

In fact, at this stage, Xiaohongshu's active commercialization is indeed mainly achieved by the free growth of KOCs and new domestic brands, rather than platform promotion.

In 2021, Xiaohongshu officially launched the Dandelion platform and required all advertisements to be traded through the platform.

On the other hand, Xiaohongshu has been seeking a second growth curve.

As early as 2014, Xiaohongshu entered the cross-border e-commerce field, attempting to complete the closed loop of "planting grass + pulling grass".

In 2016, cross-border e-commerce entered a silent period due to policy influences.

At the end of 2019, Xiaohongshu began to enter the live broadcast track. In August 2021, Xiaohongshu launched the "account and store integration" mechanism, connecting content accounts and store accounts to lower the threshold for bloggers to open stores. From planting grass to encouraging sales. Xiaohongshu has always wanted to achieve a closed business loop by developing e-commerce business.

However, Xiaohongshu's attitude towards e-commerce has always been vague. Qu Fang, the founder of Xiaohongshu, said several times in an interview in 2017: "Xiaohongshu is not an e-commerce platform, but an amusement park."

After 9 years of attempts, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce recognition is not high.

Previously, many Xiaohongshu users told Bianniushi that they only shopped for products (on Xiaohongshu) but did not buy anything. The reason for this was that they did not trust Xiaohongshu e-commerce.

According to a previous report by iMedia Consulting, Xiaohongshu's GMV in 2020 was less than 7 billion yuan, and the overall e-commerce commission rate was between 15% and 20%. Its e-commerce revenue is expected to be between 1 billion yuan and 1.4 billion yuan, and its overall revenue in 2020 will be between 5 billion yuan and 7 billion yuan.

In addition, according to the iMedia Research report, in 2020, Douyin live e-commerce GMV exceeded 500 billion yuan, Taobao exceeded 400 billion yuan, and Kuaishou was 381.2 billion yuan. Obviously, Xiaohongshu's GMV is much lower than the other three platforms.

From cross-border e-commerce to live streaming e-commerce, Xiaohongshu later even banned Taobao's external link function to promote private e-commerce traffic for its own brands. However, there seems to be a barrier between community + e-commerce, which cannot be broken through. To date, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business has not yet reached a scale.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu’s commercialization model has been criticized.

On the one hand, Xiaohongshu’s advertising business has suffered a blow.

At the beginning of 2022, the advertising revenue of many leading Internet companies was sluggish, and Xiaohongshu's advertising revenue was also affected.

According to the data from the Prospective Research Institute, in the first quarter of 2022, Internet advertising only increased slightly by 1.4%. Among them, Tencent's advertising revenue fell by 18% year-on-year, and Baidu fell by 4%. Brands have reduced their marketing budgets and reduced their demand for advertising.

In addition, the advertising business on which Xiaohongshu relies for its survival has also frequently been exposed to problems such as "false recommendations", "private transactions", and "safety risks".

On the other hand, the single commercial monetization capability has been the source of market concerns about Xiaohongshu in recent years.

Public data shows that about 80% of Xiaohongshu's revenue comes from advertising, and after eight years of development, its e-commerce business only accounts for about 20% of its revenue.

According to 36Kr, Xiaohongshu's advertising revenue target for 2022 is 24 billion yuan, which is twice that of 2021. A rough estimate is that the company's revenue in 2022 will be around 30 billion yuan, and the e-commerce revenue is clear at a glance.

At present, Xiaohongshu, which has been focusing on "planting grass", has not been able to break through the bottleneck of commercialization and is still exploring better ways to realize cash. Xiaohongshu's replacement of the shopping column with videos actually means that Xiaohongshu has temporarily put aside the creation of a "planting grass + e-commerce" closed loop and turned back to continue to consolidate its core business of "planting grass" in an attempt to improve the content community.

However, for now, short videos do not seem to have brought growth to Xiaohongshu.

3. Go deep into the hinterland

According to the "Report on the Research on the Power of Product Promotion on the Three Major Platforms" released by iResearch in October 2020, 74% of users have purchased products that have been recommended, and more than 80% of users will complete the purchase within one week after being recommended.

Against this background, whether it is the e-commerce giants Taobao and JD.com, or the video communities Douyin and Kuaishou, they have all tacitly reached a consensus on doing the "grass planting" business.

In 2018, ByteDance launched the content planting app "Xincao"; in July 2022, ByteDance launched the content planting app "Kesong"; Taobao launched the interest community app "Yousha" that can plant grass; Pinduoduo has "Pin Xiaoquan"; JD.com has also begun to build its "Planting Show".

Relying on its strong traffic advantage, Douyin will naturally get a share of the "grass planting" business.

As short video traffic reached its peak, in October 2021, Douyin launched a picture and text planting plan to explore the picture and text field.

At the beginning of 2022, Douyin changed the first-level entrance "Same City" at the top of the homepage to the "Planting Grass" channel, and changed the "Like" button of short videos to the "Planting Grass" button. The first-level page of the Planting Grass section was also changed to the same double waterfall flow as Xiaohongshu, but the performance was average.

According to FeiGua data, the collection rate of Douyin's graphic and text content is 1.47 times that of videos, and the interaction rate is 1.32 times that of videos.

At last year's TikTok Creator Conference, TikTok also stated that pictures and texts will become the platform's key focus in the future.

The importance of short videos on content platforms is a recognized fact. Since 2021, Bilibili has launched Story-Mode vertical videos. In the first quarter of 2022, the proportion of vertical video playback on Bilibili accounted for more than 20% of the total playback volume. WeChat Video Account is also gradually improving its system and becoming a key business of Tencent in the future.

Xiaohongshu also started exploring boundaries early on.

Compared with other platforms, Xiaohongshu, which started out as a graphic note platform, has always been more cautious. Official data shows that from 2019 to 2020, 97% of creators on the Xiaohongshu platform have published video notes, and the number of videos published on the platform has increased fourfold.

It was not until the second half of 2020 that Xiaohongshu finally launched the "Video Account". At that time, Xiaohongshu's founder Qu Fang announced that the company would embark on a "second venture" and move towards "Community 2.0 with more diversified video content expression."

After two years of exploration, Xiaohongshu has been moving faster and faster in videoization. Now, Xiaohongshu is recreating "Tik Tok", which is also a new challenge to existing short video platforms.

When Xiaohongshu launched its welfare club, its founder Qu Fang said, "E-commerce is responsible for making money to support the family, and content is responsible for being beautiful." From the very beginning, Xiaohongshu decided to complete the "planting grass + pulling grass" consumption closed loop through the "community + e-commerce" model.

Xiaohongshu, which has encountered many setbacks in its e-commerce journey, is now putting its focus back on its original content community, believing that "content must also be responsible for making money to support the family."

Author: Qianqian

Source: Bianews (ID: bianews8); accurate, fast and in-depth technology media