After 5 years of ups and downs, NetEase LOFTER has evolved into the best picture social software in China?

Five years ago, perhaps no one could have foreseen LOFTER’s current status.

Due to the impact of the rise of Weibo 10 years ago, light blogs were also born from blogs, the traditional platform for personal content on the Internet, of which Tumblr in the United States is the most typical. Tumblr has more than 550 million users, 280 million blogs, and 132 billion posts.

But in China, the situation of light blogs is far worse than abroad. The reasons for this are very complicated, and a large part even comes from cultural differences, as Wen Min, director of the Blog Product Department of NetEase Hangzhou Research Institute, shared in the MindTalk online forum:

With the growth of Sina Light Blog last year Closed, LOFTER has become the only "survivor" of domestic light blogging applications. Not only does it have 27 million activated mobile users and 3 million active users, but it has also embarked on its own path of "picture socialization".

This successful transformation was completely completed in daily operations bit by bit. This may be LOFTER's unique operating experience.

In terms of functionality, the PC and mobile versions of LOFTER have "quietly" taken different paths.

The PC side of ?LOFTER still maintains the structure of a light blog. You can publish text, pictures, music, videos and other elements; in contrast, the mobile side has already entered the field of picture social networking. Images can be sent directly by clicking the publish button, while text and videos can only be sent by long-pressing. This is similar to the publishing method of WeChat Moments, which subtly guides users.

Looking back at the early users of LOFTER, a large part of them came from the previous NetEase photography community. Many of them were even employees in charge of operations who joined LOFTER one by one. The quality of the content they could provide was extremely high. high.

First of all, there are the early users. Many of LOFTER’s seed users come from NetEase Photography. Most of the photography users in the cold start stage were even brought in one by one by fellow operations students. The biggest feature of this group of users is their high quality. .

In the photography circle, big Vs in the photography industry have gained a lot of attention through their outstanding works. This group of big Vs with their own celebrity attributes joined LOFTER and became their seed users. As a result, LOFTER became a community that is very attractive to photography enthusiasts. As Wen Min mentioned in his answer in the MindStore community:

After the seed users are attracted, the next step is to use key operational methods to keep them in the community and continue to be active. In addition to creating continuous attraction for users through high-quality content operations, a large part of LOFTER's community operations is converted from seed users. Most of these seed users are photographers, illustrators, novelists and even celebrity webmasters.

Because of these operators who deeply understand users, LOFTER can operate users more carefully. Wen Min said:

In actual operations, LOFTER adopts the method of operators selecting directly from the user group to ensure the quality of refined operations. Take the operation of experts as an example:

Recently, LOFTER has continued to deepen this strategy and plans to incubate a group of LOFTER life aesthetics authors with their own product tonality, and create customized products for them that match their tonality. Incubation plans and programs further expand the scope of the above picture.

After high-quality content is generated, LOFTER will conduct user analysis through complex algorithms, and finally push various high-quality content to users. During this process, LOFTER will also intentionally discover high-quality new users, give them greater exposure, and promote the integration of new and old users.

In sharing the MindTalk line field, Wen Min also particularly emphasized the role of data. LOFTER has been monitoring various key data and looking for and summarizing the optimal patterns to discover new areas suitable for LOFTER to enter.

This is why LOFTER is based on visual aesthetics and then covers the fields of literary photography, lifestyle, fashion entertainment, and two-dimensional. By constantly changing the product form according to user needs, LOFTER has gradually transformed from a photography-oriented light blog into the current photo social platform.

If the type of users and published content have defined LOFTER in the field of picture social networking, then LOFTER ART and the newly launched "Lehu Prints" are targeted applications provided by LOFTER .

The former specializes in serving photographers, encouraging photographers to publish their works on LOFTER, and then package them into artistic photos that can be sold online through LOFTER ART. After the sale, the photographers and users will be given real money. Give back.

The newly launched "Lehu Print" is even simpler. You can directly turn the 24 photos you posted on LOFTER into photos at a price of more than 60 yuan, and become a decoration in real life. Taste. Low-cost and high-quality printing services form a strong guide, prompting users to publish their best and highest-quality photos on LOFTER, thus injecting new picture content into LOFTER.

It has received a large number of user participation within 7 days of its launch. According to official information, nearly 9,000 people chose to print their celebrity idols, and more than 8,000 people chose to print selfies. This also reflects LOFTER’s relatively young user group from one aspect. LOFTER officials also stated:

With its own operational capabilities, LOFTER has opened a new market for photo social networking.

Finally, let me quote a clip shared by LOFTER product manager Shen Bowen in the MindTalk online forum: