Short Video lack high-quality content, insufficient profit, and weak supervision are popular but not popular

To seek long-term development, Short Video platforms must kick away the three major stumbling blocks: lack of high-quality content, insufficient profitability, and weak regulatory links.

Original title: Lack of high-quality content, poor profit model, and lack of regulatory mechanism Why Short Video are popular but not popular

? A few days ago, Alibaba Culture and Entertainment Group held a Short Video strategy conference. Announced the comprehensive transformation of Tudou into a Short Video platform, and will also invest 2 billion yuan to encourage and support content creation; In March, the Short Video platform Kuaishou announced that it had received a US$350 million investment led by Tencent; At almost the same time, in the updated version launched by Netease Cloud Music, the Short Video function became a highlight... On the trend of Short Video, competition is getting fiercer.

According to a report from Internet consulting firm Aurora Big Data, as of the end of January this year, the penetration rate of vertical Short Video APP reached 19.3%, and the number of users exceeded 130 million.

Behind the huge investment enthusiasm and market demand, the development shortcomings of Short Video are worrying. Content creation is seriously homogeneous, and the old tricks of imitation, showing cute pets, and playing funny are lacking in new ideas; the platform only cares about short-term profits and lacks long-term planning; supervision is weak, copyright protection is absent, and vulgar content and creative plagiarism are popular. To seek long-term development, Short Video platforms must kick away the three major stumbling blocks: lack of high-quality content, insufficient profitability, and weak regulatory links.

Playing imitation, showing off cute pets, and playing funny and eye-catching tricks,"Three Axes"

,"Big Eating King Mizijun","Big Eating King Zhen Neng Eat","Big Eating King Alun"... Those with these similar user names are active in The anchor on the Second Photo platform. The content released mainly focuses on eating different portions of food than ordinary people at one time, and even the types of food are quite similar, mostly hot pot, barbecue, Western food, etc.

According to incomplete statistics, the Short Video platform "Second-Shot" uploads more than 1.5 million daily videos. The reporter browsed and found that although the number is huge, the phenomenon of content homogenization is very serious. Playing imitation, showing cute pets, and playing funny have become "common tricks" to attract users 'attention, resulting in low user stickiness.

"When a phenomenal Short Video appear, the number of products of the same type will surge for a period of time for the purpose of attracting traffic. After the market is saturated, the competition mechanism will be restarted. Short Video with high-quality content will remain, while inferior Short Video that are simply imitated will be eliminated." Fu Xiaoguang, associate professor at the School of Television, Communication University of China, analyzed.

Under the temptation of huge traffic, some Short Video authors use low-level tastes as gimmicks in order to capture people's attention to cater to the audience's curiosity. According to reports, a female Internet anchor uploaded a large number of "exotic food" Short Video through a certain software, such as swallowing live goldfish, light bulbs, eating meadworms, cactus, etc. In addition, strange behaviors such as overeating and self-injury have once been the source of vulgar content in Short Video. In order to attract users, some Short Video platforms lack necessary interference in this regard, and some even adopt a tacit and indulgent attitude towards vulgar content through key push, top-top display, etc.

"Short Video are rampant. In the final analysis, the platform does everything it can to make quick profits in the short term." Kuang Wenbo, a professor at the School of Journalism at Renmin University of China, believes.

Today, when channel acquisition is no longer a problem, the principle of "content is king" has once again been regarded as the norm. Short Video platforms are in urgent need of high-quality original products. "There are wonderful ways to prevent motion sickness. I have been using this method for more than 20 years.""There are so many functions of wind oil, but you can't use them." Short Video that publish life tips quickly attracted a large number of fans.

"In the future, Short Video platforms that rely solely on entertainment to attract users will be in trouble, while high-quality Short Video platforms that are committed to publishing useful information, providing specialized knowledge, helping solve problems, and ultimately saving users time will emerge." said Ma Changbo, founder and CEO of Visual Media, a production company for Short Video.

It is difficult to form a profit model for hype, popularity, and traffic

. According to the "2016 Short Video Industry Development Research Report" released by iResearch, as of July 1, 2016, the Short Video industry has received a total of 43 investments, of which tens of millions of investments are mainly concentrated in 2015 and 2016.

"Short Video platforms are of great value. They are a wave of the Internet. They are like turning carriages into cars. They are an upgrade of the entire industry." Ma Changbo said that most of the explosion of headlines and Weibo traffic last year also relied on Short Video. At present, various Internet giants are "racing around the land" and competing for the territory of Short Video.

Some Short Video platforms have attracted a large number of users 'attention in a short period of time through hype marketing by public figures with topical and attention. However, due to the lack of long-term development plans, they cannot turn popularity into a "selling point" for sustained profits, and "good news but not good news."

Take Weibo, which has just been announced to be closed by Tencent, as an example. During the Spring Festival of 2014, Weishi app invited a large number of stars to record New Year videos, and downloads quickly rose to the top five on the free list of Apple APP stores. According to statistics, on New Year's Eve and the first day of the New Year's Eve alone, millions of people posted or watched these New Year greetings videos through the platform, with a total of hundreds of millions of videos viewed. However, the star effect is fleeting. The number of users on platforms such as Nishipai and Quick Hand has exceeded 100 million, but the number of users on Weishi app has stagnated below 50 million. "The fundamental reason why Weishi app was strategically abandoned by Tencent was its long-term loss. The 'magic weapon' for the survival and development of Short Video platforms is to find a suitable way to make money,"Kuang Wenbo said.

With the gradual rise of knowledge payment and the development of users 'consumption habits of Short Video on mobile phones, people are beginning to be willing to "pay" for high-quality content. This has brought development opportunities to content entrepreneurs and stimulated professional media organizations with strong Short Video content creation capabilities.

In January this year, the Short Video APP "Kanjian", which mainly introduces humanities and history, launched a paid membership service and carefully created paid video albums. In just one month, the platform has accumulated nearly 10,000 users, including many loyal users who have purchased annual membership.

Huang He, an associate professor at the School of Journalism at Renmin University of China, believes that to establish a suitable profit model, the key is to change the profit idea from pursuing "traffic monetization" to "content monetization" and use the value of platform content to improve long-term profitability.

The weak supervision of smearing corners, covering up sources, and adding falsification has turned weak.

In February this year, the Short Video platform "Pear Video" opened original columns, compiled videos by itself, and collected content uploaded by users. It released a large number of so-called "exclusive" current political audio-visual news information without obtaining Internet news information service qualifications and Internet audio-visual program service qualifications, and was ordered to make comprehensive rectification.

In addition, some Short Video platforms take advantage of the audience's curiosity and prying mentality, use secretly filming and other methods to use other people's privacy as a selling point, and use pornographic, obscene, violent and other content to "edge the ball." The existence and growth of these phenomena have squeezed the living space of high-quality Short Video and affected the healthy development of the entire industry.

Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that Short Video platforms should not become a "safe haven" for illegal and illegal content. It is necessary to increase control and governance through necessary content review mechanisms. It is also necessary to implement a real-name registration system for video authors and improve the user complaint mechanism to ensure that illegal and illegal content can be self-examined, traceable, and feedbacks, reflecting and ensuring the self-purification capabilities that the platform should have.

Today's Short Video have also become the hardest hit area of plagiarism. Whether it is Short Video platforms or social platforms, marketing accounts that copy and intercept other people's original videos are popular. Some high-quality Short Video are slightly processed by "porters" and "scissors" without permission, becoming tools to attract traffic. Even if the author indicates the source in the video, it is often blurred layer by layer. Short Video that were exclusively launched have their corners removed and their origin covered.

Short Video with the same content are "pinched" and appear repeatedly on different platforms, which not only makes viewers puzzled, but also annoys the original creators of the videos, greatly restricting the creative environment of the Short Video industry.

On February 28, China Copyright Protection Center announced the opening of online copyright registration for self-media audio and video. Previously, the first national copyright registration certificate for Short Video based on the Digital Rights Unique Identifier (DCI) system in China was also released to the public.

Zhu Wei suggested that we should comply with the digital characteristics of the Internet era, innovate and optimize technical means, and track the entire process of production and dissemination of video content. Let the behavior of random screenshots, cutting, downloading and spreading privately have traces and responsibilities to follow, and effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of the original author.

Editor: Nancy