My reliance on Douban is growing bigger and bigger now. I log in every day and spend 20% of my online time on it. I am not a value contributor to Douban, rarely writing book reviews, movie reviews or music reviews. Occasionally, when I see an interesting comment, I can't help but type a few words. So what do I do on Douban? A few people often write me Doumails, and we communicate through Doumails. I keep track of the activities of my friends on Douban, reading their broadcasts like mini-blogs. I also participate in impromptu discussions in groups. My attention has shifted from things to people, which makes Douban more interesting and useful for me. These are all effects of Douban's social networking service (SNS) transformation. It's worth mentioning that I spend 80% of my time on Douban on "9 Points," a channel similar to Zuantua, which is quite attractive to me.
A product alone contributes 11% of traffic, so I really have to admire Arbei's strategy. Now, 9 Points may not be considered a successful product yet, but in my view, it has made at least three significant contributions to Douban.
Firstly, attracting peripheral users and contributing traffic.
For the product 9 Points, Arbei's original intention was to give deep divers on Douban a place to play besides wandering around aimlessly. I ended up playing it. I estimate that Arbei wanted to attract peripheral users by aggregating information and promote so-called mainstream users through the behavior contributions of peripheral users. Douban has completely transformed into an SNS, where people should return to an important strategic position. 9 Points achieves personalization on the basis of popularization, and Douban then dynamically reflects the personalized behaviors of deep divers in 9 Points to friends as PUBLIC. In the end, it is to promote the development of Douban's SNS. The development of SNS needs the support of traffic, and 9 Points has become a powerful magnet, continuously attracting peripheral users to participate. Arbei just wants to tell everyone that apart from reviews, Douban has other things to play with, so come quickly and it will be fine.
Secondly, aggregating information, improving efficiency, and promoting internal information circulation.
Since the emergence of blogs, information has become fragmented, hence the need for aggregation. Selective aggregation can greatly improve the efficiency of obtaining information, which is why RSS etc. are so popular. 9 Points is also a product similar to RSS. It can help Douban users better obtain information. And Douban users happen to be active readers (including music and movies), with a great thirst for information. In this way, the role of 9 Points becomes very prominent. On one hand, it helps users quickly obtain information, and on the other hand, it promotes the circulation of information within Douban. The advantage of 9 Points lies in the fact that its seemingly unrelated functions to reviews actually have a strong intrinsic connection. It aims to achieve information symmetry, which can be called a two-pronged approach.
Thirdly, paving the way for e-commerce.
This is what I consider to be the most critical point. I boldly guess that the strategic significance of Arbei setting up 9 Points is to pave the way for e-commerce. After all, there are more people who read books than those who write book reviews. E-commerce needs the support of traffic, and the acquisition of traffic will come more from peripheral users. Douban thinks that whether you are a deep diver or an elite, no matter why you come to Douban, as long as you choose Douban and stay to play for a while, it's fine. The effect of this is that Douban will become the first entry point for a large number of users' online shopping. To put it simply, Douban wants to rely on 9 Points to broaden its user base, increase user stickiness, and prepare for the development of e-commerce.
Of course, from the user's perspective, Douban's 9 Points still needs improvement. For example, the classification issue of the nine channels in 9 Points, whether they can really let everyone find a channel that belongs to them. I doubt it. For instance, the recommendation problem on the channel homepage, how to filter out individual non-priority information, these all need improvement. But clearly, the launch of 9 Points has more positive significance. The essence of the Internet is information and people, and Douban is making efforts in both areas. Therefore, I believe that Douban's future moves are worth looking forward to.