“Old Hongshu” is losing blood. Can the content business for the elderly still be successful?

In recent years, in order to compete for the elderly market, major platforms have been working hard. What is the current status and development of the Meipian APP, which was created based on the elderly group? How is its commercial development? This article summarizes the Meipian APP's journey to build an elderly community and its commercial layout. Let's take a look.

How short is the life span of an APP?

Statistics show that 80% of apps survive for only two years. However, Meipian, an app that focuses on serving the elderly, has survived for seven years. Strangely, this content community app called "Meipian" is similar to "Little Red Book" in content, but it is favored by the elderly and has the last laugh among a group of content apps of the same era. What is the reason?

Looking through the media's comments on Meipian, it has always been known as the "old red book". When you open the Meipian APP, the large eye-protection font instantly comes into view, which is extremely in line with the visual needs of the elderly. From a functional point of view, Meipian users can send hundreds of pictures every time they update their status, and they have the opportunity to be selected by the platform after adding text and inserting music. In the field of social interaction, Meipian not only has the Meiyouquan community, but also pen pal letters similar to QQ drift bottles. All operations are simple and convenient, almost perfectly hitting the spiritual needs of the elderly.

One fact that cannot be ignored is that after the advent of the Internet stock era, the elderly user group has gradually become an incremental part of the traffic pool. The "2021 Silver Economy Insight Report" released by QuestMobile shows that as of October 2021, the number of monthly active mobile Internet users aged 50 and above reached 251 million, a year-on-year increase of 19.3%, and the average monthly usage time per person reached 143.9 hours, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%.

In order to compete for the elderly group, major platforms have also made frequent moves. However, as the aging population increases year by year, these apps that meet the needs of the elderly seem to have fallen into an "aging" state. Against this background, what new stories has Meipian, which has been around for seven years, told based on the elderly user group?

1. From Yituwen to Meipian, the elderly community has been successfully built

In 2015, Tang Renren, the father of Tang Qi, the founder of Meipian, became fascinated with photography. However, since WeChat Moments can only post nine-square grid pictures at most, it is difficult to share in batches. In order to satisfy his father's desire to share, Tang Qi developed the Yituwen APP, which is the predecessor of Meipian.

At that time, the main function of Meipian was to share pictures and texts, and it did not target the middle-aged and elderly groups. However, driven by the tap water effect, more and more middle-aged and elderly people registered for Meipian, which in turn helped Meipian to continuously upgrade and explore social functions suitable for the middle-aged and elderly groups. In 2021, Meipian launched the "Forty Years" content community, completely locking the target audience in the middle-aged and elderly groups. According to the "2021 China Middle-aged and Elderly Internet Product Insight Report" released by AgeClub, the number of Meipian users over the age of 45 has reached 107 million.

In order to improve the retention rate of middle-aged and elderly users, Meipian has set up recommendations for excellent works in content creation, and regularly launches activities such as soliciting contributions to special culture, collecting old songs, and national photography exhibitions. These activities have also attracted many high-quality content creators and activated Meipian's early content ecology.

Do you think that the elderly can only gossip with their neighbors all day long? Little did you know that Meipian staged real scenes of masters among the people. From music, chess, calligraphy and painting to poetry and songs, Meipian has always been tightly wrapped in a strong literary atmosphere, and there is a fierce talent competition among Meipian friends. Some love to write poetry, some like photography, and some like writing. The content they publish is either literary and romantic, or warm and peaceful, or imaginative. The diversified creation also provides Meipian with original content accumulation.

In 2017, Meipian launched the "music + pictures and text" H5 New Year's greeting cards, establishing a new form of content creation. With this creativity, Meipian ranked fourth in the APP Store, truly breaking out of the circle.

Since then, the community function of Meipian has been continuously improved. The latest topics can be discussed in real time on the square, and the Meiyou circle brings together different circles of interest enthusiasts. The social attributes of the elderly are becoming more and more perfect. Although Meipian lacks top celebrities, it has accumulated 40 million core creative users, thus ensuring the continuous output of high-quality content. After the rise of short videos, Meipian creators can also publish short videos.

In order to encourage content creation, Meipian has set up incentives such as user rewards, flowers and petals, etc., which provide creators with a sense of ceremony for content recognition. Today, Meipian has more than 200 million registered users, 12 million monthly active users, 180,000 new works every day, 2,094 topics on the community platform, 300 million works, and 6 billion pictures uploaded.

Meipian, which has captured the attention of the elderly with its high-quality content, has also won the favor of capital. Tianyancha data shows that from 2016 to 2018, Meipian has completed six rounds of financing. The highest round of financing was led by Mango Cultural and Creative Fund, with Jingwei Venture Capital and Zhen Fund participating in the investment, with a financing amount of over 100 million yuan. However, in recent years, there has been no news of Meipian's financing. Meipian, which has been in business for seven years, seems to have fallen into the dilemma of "aging". Meipian, which is positioned at an advanced age, seems to be about to become a "discarded child" of capital.

2. The difficulty of commercialization and realization: a game between ideal and reality

Meipian has always been very restrained in its consideration of commercialization. On the one hand, the purchasing power of the elderly is relatively weak, and they are not very enthusiastic about paying for products. On the other hand, the original intention of Meipian was to provide a spiritual home for the elderly, and it is more idealistic.

Regarding the commercialization of Meipian, Meipian co-founder Zhang Quan mentioned in an interview with Hedgehog Commune that the team mainly considers two aspects when conducting commercialization. First, valuable products or services for users, and second, a good user experience. Multiple considerations have caused Meipian's commercialization difficulties and have hindered its ability to make money.

At the beginning of its business, Meipian's business channels were extremely single, with only advertisements and Meipian books. Since Meipian's audience is the elderly group, the advertisements it attracts are limited, and the elderly have a low awareness of prevention. In order to improve the user experience, Meipian has to screen the advertisements layer by layer, and the number of advertisements it receives can be imagined. As for Meipian books, users will organize and typeset the pictures and texts they posted on Meipian, and print them into commemorative albums. The price of a Meipian book is about 50-100 yuan. To catch up with shopping nodes such as Double 11 and Double 12, Meipian will also launch activities such as 40% off for one book, 50% off for two books, and 40 off for purchases over 500. Relevant data show that during the Double 11 and Double 12 periods in 2021, the daily sales of Meipian's printing business exceeded one million.

In 2019, Meipian gradually expanded its commercial monetization channels, launched paid memberships, and increased the reward share from 5% to 30%. However, this move attracted a large number of user complaints and more and more negative reviews in the app store. In order to restore its reputation, Meipian publicly announced in its fourth anniversary letter that it would reduce the reward fee from 30% to 2% and cut commercial advertisements in important positions. This drastic and decisive reform measure will undoubtedly cause losses. In the end, Meipian reported a loss of 30 million in 2019. In order to survive, Meipian had to find new profit points.

In the second half of 2019, Liu Jun, the product manager of Meipian, came up with the idea of ​​virtual flowers as gifts: 10 flowers for 1 yuan, 66 flowers for 6.6 yuan, and 88 flowers for 8.8 yuan. Moreover, flowers can only be used for rewards and cannot be withdrawn. Meipian's move to create a sense of ceremony for creators at a relatively low price was quickly accepted by users. The two businesses of flower rewards and paid membership gradually became the pillars of Meipian's commercial realization, and Meipian also reversed its loss situation.

However, due to the recurrence of the epidemic in recent years, the elderly have fewer and fewer opportunities to travel, which has also led to a decrease in the number of high-quality landscape photos they capture, not to mention printing them into books. Under such circumstances, the revenue of Meipian Books has been hit, and the price of Meipian membership has increased from the initial 19 yuan per month to 29 yuan, and the price is close to the ceiling. Although live streaming has broad prospects for bringing goods, Meipian lacks top celebrities, and the elderly are not used to shopping in live streaming rooms, which has caused limitations for Meipian to expand its business.

In an interview with Daily People, Meipian's operating staff said that Meipian had tried to organize offline theme activities for profit, including book clubs and photography tours, but the elderly were "only willing to pay 300 yuan at most" and the money everyone contributed was just enough to cover the cost of organizing the activities, so the business eventually fell through. Meipian also tried to launch content payment, but the middle-aged and elderly groups clearly lacked the willingness to pay, so the income from content payment was very little and there was no prospect for development.

The failure to explore diversified commercial monetization has led Meipian to gradually fall into a development bottleneck. It is reported that after Meipian laid off employees, only more than 100 people were left. The "old Red Book" that was built for love seems to have lost the "motivation" to move forward.

3. The era of inventory has arrived. Who can seize the elderly user group?

In fact, the elderly group that Meipian focuses on is a rapidly expanding market. According to the seventh census, the population aged 60 and above in my country accounts for 18.7%, reaching 264 million people, and is expected to reach 487 million in 2053. The National Social Science Fund's "Research on Elderly Care Consumption and Elderly Care Industry Development" pointed out that by 2050, the scale of my country's elderly market will reach 48.52 trillion yuan, and the elderly consumer market will reach 60 trillion yuan. It can be seen that the prospects for the silver economy are broad, and major platforms have also begun to enter the track to seek a share of this cake.

For example, in addition to Meipian, middle-aged and elderly people are emerging in young people's gathering places such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, and there are many high-quality celebrities among them. On Xiaohongshu, 53-year-old Angel Z has 839,000 followers on Xiaohongshu. She mainly shares her daily life such as fashion wear and facial care. At 53, she looks like 33. Her age-reducing secrets have also brought her many commercial cooperations, including cooperative brands such as Marumi, Hanshun, and Huaxizi. Bloggers such as Auntie Chengzi and Liu Yidie, who are over 50, have also accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans.

According to Xiaohongshu data, in the past year, the number of bloggers aged 50-59 and over 60 has increased by more than 100% year-on-year. Driven by elderly KOLs, the number of elderly people entering Xiaohongshu has also increased.

There are also celebrities with millions of fans on Douyin, such as I am Grandma Tian and Grandma Wang who only wears high heels. I am Grandma Tian became popular with her funny and down-to-earth short videos, with the highest number of likes for a single video reaching 4.214 million. Grandma Wang who only wears high heels has been showing her fashion shows on Douyin, frequently changing her clothes, and their appearance has also attracted a large number of middle-aged and elderly fans.

In order to accurately tap the commercial potential of the incremental group, the major platforms have tried their best, but the strategies they implemented do not seem to be friendly to the elderly and do not accurately capture the various needs of the elderly. For example, in January this year, Xiaohongshu applied for the Laohongshu trademark, intending to build a community that gathers middle-aged and elderly users. Previously, Xiaohongshu also launched Youyou Video, which provides dressing guides for users aged 40-60. However, due to the small number of downloads, this product has been removed from the shelves, and Xiaohongshu's Laohongshu plan has also been shelved.

Due to age, physical strength and other issues, creators on Douyin such as I am Grandma Tian and Grandma Wang who only wears high heels naturally cannot update at a rate comparable to that of young people. Not updating for a long time will also cause the problem of losing fans. The platform has not figured out a way to deal with this phenomenon, so it is difficult to attract more audiences in the same circle.

In short, due to various factors, although the senior citizens are active in the current major mainstream platforms, they are unable to realize their commercial value due to various obstacles. This is one of the common problems that makes the major platforms feel "embarrassed".

There is a phenomenon that is worth our deep consideration. In 2022, Meipian released a promotional video of "Frontier Waves" with a speech by He Bing. The value conveyed in the video is that middle-aged and elderly people can also try sports such as cosplay and paragliding.

Surprisingly, the degree of complaints about this promotional video online is no less than that of He Bing's speech "The Next Wave" in 2020. The embarrassing thing is that although this video allows the middle-aged and elderly groups to see more possibilities for retirement life, it is not universal, and most elderly people are still separated by the digital divide.

The key for the platform to leverage the silver economy lies in whether it can launch products that meet the needs of the vast majority of elderly people and continuously output hardcore content, thereby filling the spiritual gap of the elderly and increasing their willingness to pay.

Therefore, in the ever-expanding elderly market in China, content products targeting the elderly, such as Meipian, may be able to reap certain "dividends of the times". However, if they do not grasp the essential needs that motivate the "silver-haired group" to be willing to pay, the only fate that awaits "Meipian" is to become the tears of the times.

Author: Rain and Smoke, Editor: Ji Nan

Source: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout), a self-media ecological observation account that combines good-looking and informative content