Editor's note: this article is from the official account "Reading Entertainment" (ID:yiqiduyu) of Wechat, author: Zhi Yue36氪Released by authorization.

The idea of returning to the path of letting a hundred flowers blossom is beautiful, but if LOFTER wants to move towards a multi-interest platform, it is bound to take a more active operational lead over the existing content community and tighten control over peer works with greater regulatory and copyright risks.

End of December 2020NetEaseLOFTER held a brand refurbishment conference to launch a new slogan: "see every interest".

On the face of it, this is just a brand interpretation of LOFTER's attempt to diversify its content. However, combined with the development history of LOFTER, the 227th incident in 2020 and the storm of APP off the shelves, LOFTER is likely to make a big adjustment-to get out of the user impression established in recent years, to re-highlight the image of the multi-interest community in the early stage of the product, and to grasp the tight "selling point" of the "youth community".

The reason for such speculation about its strategy lies in the significant change in the relationship between LOFTER users and the platform. On December 26, 2020, LOFTER's official Weibo released two videos related to the brand refurbishment launch, one of which was "the world goes against the current, we create more than". The style of painting in the comment area is like: "would you rather match" and "We are not only creating against the current of LOF".

Another top video is the brand-new manifesto of "seeing every interest", while the style of painting in the comment area goes like this: "you have to see the creation first, right?" , "Please stop the screen", "Bye-bye".

The main problems pointed to by the criticism are: the examination standard is ambiguous and difficult to pass, the historical content is blocked, the current limit is serious, and most of the users with serious opinions are the content consumers and creators of "works of the same person".

When the 227th incident spread to LOFTER in the first half of the year, the feelings of the same "wives" towards LOFTER were completely opposite, and the voice of support for it was the mainstream. Zhihu question: "Why did lofter go from fighting for injustice to everyone shouting now?" "people shouting and fighting" is a bit of an exaggeration, but this Zhihu problem also reflects the change in the mood of some users.

What is LOFTER going through behind the brand refurbishment? What does NetEase want LOFTER to look like? It starts with the history of LOFTER.

1From off-shelf rectification to brand rejuvenation, the two backgrounds behind the frustrations of LOFTER

NetEaseWhen the light blog product LOFTER was launched in 2011, probably no one could have imagined that the public's impression of it would become a gathering place for "like people" works in the future. At that time, LOFTER followed the light blogging platform Tumblr, which was born in 2007 (Chinese call it "soup not hot"). Tumblr is characterized by its ability to meet both expression and social needs, simple design style and free content types, which quickly attracts a large number of users. 2013YahooBuying Tumblr for as much as $1.1 billion shows how hot it is.

What brings Tumblr to its peak is not the vertical areas of literature and art and interest in the public impression of light blogs, but adult content. With the increasing influence of adult content, Tumblr has gradually been retaliated: blocked by other countries, Apple removed from the shelves, and so on. Then Tumblr chose to "ban adult content", but after the crazy decline in traffic, Tumblr did not usher in the expected rebirth, but all the way to the bottom, by 2019, Tumblr wasVerizonSold for $3 million.

LOFTER has experienced similar problems. Many regular LOFTER users know that in addition to "Old Ford", LOFTER also has a nickname "no", which means "you know" at the time. Before the stricter regulation of the Internet, there were a lot of marginal content in the pictures on LOFTER, and meat articles were also very popular.

Media coverage in 2016

Of course, regulation was not in place at that time, and LOFTER was not the only one with such problems, and that was not the point. The next story is well known-the Internet has become more tightly regulated, and almost all content platforms have been cleaned up.

LOFTER needs to continue to pay attention to content regulation and completely get rid of the "large-scale" label in the early stage of development. This is the first background.

From a genetic point of view, LOFTER was launched as a light blog product focused on vertical areas of interest, and did not design the main content area of community culture. The turning point was in 2014, when the domestic animation IP "full-time master" became popular, triggering the creation trend of fellow authors, while in the same period, the blog FC2, which gathered a large number of peer culture enthusiasts, was blocked. At that time, "36 Courtyard", the largest peer library in China, was also rectified, and for a time, simultaneous users could not find a suitable platform. As a result, LOFTER, which had less restrictions on content at that time, flooded into a large number of fellow creators, and the development of human culture has become the most well-known content tag of LOFTER.

In March 2020, some food circle groups went to war with peer enthusiasts, known as the ao3 incident or the 227th incident. In hindsight, on the one hand, this incident has brought a protracted negative impact on Xiao Zhan, on the other hand, it has pushed the circle of people who have been satisfied with the minority circle's own "producing and eating grain" to the front of the stage for a long time-- which has created a new problem situation. In the works of the same people, there are "clear hydrology" and flesh texts on a larger scale, and which type of audience is more obvious. However, because of the "no expansion" that has always existed in the same circle, that is, the habit of self-sprouting in the enclosure, those in the circle are still in the circle, and there are not many external forces affecting the internal cycle of "producing and eating grain," but the 227 incident permanently changed this state.

In July 2020, LOFTER began to rectify and reform. 'in order to better serve everyone, adjust and improve the content, and ensure the healthy development of the community, we are combing and investigating the historical content, 'the official WeChat wrote when reporting on the progress at that time. The relevant laws and regulations on the basis of this carding and investigation are as follows: the regulations on Ecological Governance of Network Information content issued by the State Internet Information Office, the "vulgar Thirteen articles" determined by the Information Office of the State Council, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the General Administration of Press and publication.

Since then, a large number of works of co-authors on LOFTER have been blocked, new works cannot be approved, and streams are restricted. Only then did we have the comments, criticisms and Zhihu questions at the beginning.

After the removal from the shelves in 2020, LOFTER content as a high-risk content category, the basic disk has been greatly affected, at least for those users who came to LOFTER in 2014, LOFTER is no longer a simple self-reserve. This is the second background.

2Pan-interest, a road that "looks good"

Historically, it is the same user who chose LOFTER, rather than LOFTER, who chose peer culture, which is the evolution of user-led community culture. In the years when light blogs have died out, peer lovers are obviously an important source of users for LOFTER to survive. While bringing precious traffic and active users, the two-dimensional nature of peer culture has also established the scarce label of "young community" for LOFTER.

The author of the online picture can see the signature of the picture.

But at the same time, there is an inherent contradiction between human culture and "development and growth"-one is the contradiction between the content scale and regulation mentioned above; the other is that the work itself often comes from a well-known IP, which hinders the commercial development value of copyright, and there is no logical and considerable business prospect except for the advertising business and surrounding agents brought about by traffic.

Reading Yujun believes that the reason why LOFTER put forward a new brand image at the end of 2020 is to make brand preparations to break through this existing dilemma. The idea of returning to the path of letting a hundred flowers blossom is beautiful, but if LOFTER wants to move towards a multi-interest platform, it is bound to take a more active operational lead over the existing content community and tighten control over peer works with greater regulatory and copyright risks.

The first problem is that it will offend a large number of former core users. The fact that LOFTER has changed from a light blog to a "wife" is the evolution of a user-led community culture, so excessive self-regulation is actually a knife on some of the "core users". To make matters worse, LOFTER does not have a strong audit force to conduct a reasonable audit. Since July 2020, a large number of co-authors have been expressing their dissatisfaction everywhere: "what if the articles on LOFTER that can no longer be clean water are blocked?" , "my drama love Shimizu is locked, brainless driving is still kept", "Jinji Shimizu is on the screen without notice" …... The longer this continues, more and more users who regard LOFTER as "home" will be discouraged.

The second problem is that outside of LOFTER, there is no content area that is really ahead of competitors and has commercial potential. On the audio-visual review of books, there is Douban standing there; first pull up the concentration of young people by the second dimension, and then walk out of the circle? Bilibili has already completely walked the road, LOFTER is not only late, there are a large number of "purity" competitors, such as half-dimensional, A station, etc. It is true that LOFTER used to be a quality photo community, but even the overall market for graphics and text has given way to video. How much room for imagination can this market have? LOFTER also mentioned that next year will focus on the layout of video content, but the video track, LOFTER left about two or three years late, the market from integration to subdivision of the Red Sea, it is difficult to see the possibility of a breakthrough.

When NetEase's Weibo and blog were closed, their users were moved to LOFTER, making the latter the only survivor on NetEase's social content track. In 2019, NetEase cartoons were packaged and sold to bilibili, and the two-dimensional and young attributes of LOFTER are obviously more important to NetEase. But from the beginning to the present, the highlight moment of LOFTER is only popular in the minority circle, and there are internal and external troubles behind the brand renovation. After drifting away from the circle of peers, LOFTER seems to be becoming more "chicken ribs".

The pan-interest layout of "every interest" is indeed quite "universal", but "pan" is often a positive word only when the scale is large enough and the matrix resources are strong enough. For LOFTER, the immediate problem is already very thorny, the voice of the same user, LOFTER is powerless, or do not want to hear it?