The sorrow of self-media/comparison of experience of respective media platforms

This article is divided into three parts. The first part is about the current situation of self-media (the sorrow of self-media, you can skip it if it is purely a complaint). The second part is a comparison of the actual experience of several major platforms. The third part is about the weird things I encountered when using some self-media platforms.

The tragedy of self-media

I remember that 7 years ago, Weibo was full of rumors about NetEase’s commentators and all kinds of interesting jokesters. At that time, full-screen mobile phones had just begun to become popular, MiLiao was still better than WeChat, and it was also the beginning of the mobile Internet. The NetEase News client left a very good impression on me and I still use it today. But unknowingly, 2016 has arrived. With the rise of live broadcasting, self-media, and content entrepreneurship, especially under the leadership of Toutiao, the media seems to have entered a new era.

Although NetEase has lost its previous commentator, it still has some interesting jokes, and the content of articles has become more and more "weird". Putting aside the political factors of a certain Smiling Bear that has always been at the top, NetEase has introduced a large number of self-media, plus its own recommendation technology (you open an article, he will record your keywords, after opening a few, he will think you are interested in the keywords), when you refresh, what you see is no longer NetEase's own news, all are from self-media, although it makes users feel like it comes from NetEase official, but the quality of the content becomes unbearable. Therefore, users need to constantly open the headlines (thinking it is some major news), and then go back and click x to stop the keywords and the self-media push of the headlines. However, the number of self-media continues to increase, making people lose the fun of watching news.

Weibo, I haven’t used it for more than two years, and I’m back again. Using it to read news is faster and more accurate than the client. I control who I subscribe to, and I no longer have to be bothered by clickbait self-media.

At this point, everyone must be wondering, why are there so many unreliable self-media? I am expressing my personal views and some conjectures, just listen to them:

Of course, there are many self-media that do very well. I will only discuss those plagiarism, blind writing, and headline-making ones (most of them) here.

This question is actually similar to why live broadcasts are so popular recently. First, with so many people getting something for nothing, the social atmosphere has changed to how to make money easily and become famous without cost. Naturally, self-media and live broadcasts are much simpler than other industries. Second, there are more and more idle people. In the past, everyone started entrepreneurship, and cats and dogs were all messing around. After the limelight passed, they found that it was not working, and embarked on the road of "content entrepreneurship". Then, how can self-media be regarded as content entrepreneurship? In my opinion, vertical content can be counted. Another reason for the large number of idle people is that the unemployment rate is high. There are two factors here. One is passive unemployment. If the family has some money, it doesn't hurt to do some self-media. If there is no money, they will probably go out to work everywhere; the other is active unemployment. As we all know, there are more and more children who have a house at home (not a special trait, it only means they have money) but do not work. If they have nothing to do, they can come out and do self-media, become Internet celebrities, or even spend some money. Third, with self-media and live broadcasts, the learning and production costs are so low that college students and even high school students can participate. Fourth, this really brings fun to bored netizens (whether it’s weird or normal)

Since the market threshold is low and the number of participants is large, the natural problem that arises is competition! There are only so many news points, and not everyone can write original stories, so what should we do? The phenomenon occurred before. I dare to copy anything, I dare to write anything, I piece together here and there, and it becomes an article by just thinking about it. It is not a problem to publish dozens or hundreds of articles in a day. for what? As for page views and profit sharing, I won’t talk about that here.

The platform is the source of their breeding, and the platform cannot and cannot regulate so much content. Just imagine the Weibo format. No one will forward your bad writing. Since you have no fans, no one will read the more natural things without fans. Therefore, users are forced to write good things.

Okay, enough talk, let’s get to the point.

Self-media platform experience

Some time ago, on a whim, I researched several current self-media platforms. Firstly, it was to improve traffic and SEO for my blog. Secondly, I wanted to see how the current platforms were doing.

This does not include the WeChat public account. I do not regard it as a self-media platform, but as a technical interface platform. I have several service accounts and have played with some interfaces. Friends who are familiar with me have always known that I use its interface to "mutilate" others while cursing WeChat.

In addition, there are many other unreliable submission methods, such as so-and-so blogs, etc. I also briefly researched these. The conclusion is that it is meaningless (although there are many soft articles on the Internet), and you can just ignore them when you encounter them.

Okay, back to the topic, I registered: Jianshu, Zhihu Column, Toutiao Account, NetEase Account, Phoenix Account, and Sohu Account. Some people say that the first two don’t seem to be self-media, eh! It doesn’t matter if you think it’s not, it’s not. Anyway, my purpose has been mentioned before, the first is traffic and the second is website weight and SEO. Of course, this is just what I found myself. If you have any other recommendations, thank you very much!

First, let me briefly introduce my experience:

• I only post articles written by myself
• All articles are blog attributes (the writing style is casual, even high-quality articles), and they can be copied directly without modification and published directly.
• Don’t make any title changes, don’t deliberately cater to the platform and users
• I have added the original address (my blog address) to the header of all articles.

From May to now for more than two months, there are a total of 8 articles, most of which are summary, introduction, and comparison articles written by myself (see my blog posts from May to July for details). First, I will post the views, comments and other data of each platform:

Let me explain first: N/A means there is no data on the platform (update: Zhihu has subscribers, here is 0)

From this table, you should be able to roughly assess the value of each platform to the public. Of course, everyone has their own opinions, but I will mention my own feelings:

Except for Toutiao's Toutiao account, other platforms basically ignore small users. For very high-quality articles (I have two good reviews), each platform may not have time to review and recommend them. Toutiao account is very good for content review and recommendation. During the experience, I happened to encounter the University of Malaya air incident. I posted an article about our neighborhood to my own account (because it was breaking news). The number of views instantly exceeded 10,000 (because it was a special article, it was not included in this table), and there were hundreds of comments and reposts. However, the article was rejected by NetEase and Sohu. It can be seen from this that Toutiao is very serious about news and takes good care of self-media content.

Everyone is confused, since the number of views is so low, why do you put so much effort into doing this? If you know some SEO students, you should be able to reply immediately: external links! I think so too. Although there won’t be a lot of traffic guidance, the value of external links is still very high. So I made the following comparison:

It can be found from this that Toutiao, Jianshu, and Sohu directly use their own main domain names to post articles, and the external links of the articles are of very high value. Although NetEase uses self-media domain names, the inclusion is normal and has a certain value. On the contrary, Zhihu and Phoenix neither use their own main domain names, nor are their inclusion speeds good. Among the first few, except for the headline number, which cannot send external links, the rest can cover external links, and the value is very high. Of course, given the importance Toutiao attaches to self-media, the lack of external links is still very valuable.

Before summarizing, let’s take a look at the feelings of removing several platforms in fragments (not all):

Phoenix complained:

1. The web platform experience is very poor.
2. The information review is very confusing and I don’t understand it at all.
3. Every time I publish, I am forced to have a picture. When I write an article, I don’t necessarily have to accompany it with a picture.
4. Articles removed without reason
5. Search engines do not include articles

NetEase account’s complaints:

1. Modifying information on the web page is completely confusing
2. Very poor customer service (although nothing else is there)
3. Removed articles for no reason and did not actively recommend articles (probably because there are too many accounts and no one cares about them)

简书：可以投稿到任意栏目（栏目也是用户创建和维护的，可以理解为群），浏览量和栏目息息相关，文章质量好的话，大多数栏目会通过（除了首页）。

知乎专栏：这玩意逻辑一直很奇怪，貌似还在内测中，投稿到其他栏目有问题，并且时常出现奇怪的现象。

Summarize:

虽然这些平台并不能给原文带来太大的流量，但是他有传播和外链的价值，所以对于自己有博客的孩子们还是有很大益处的。当然如果本身博客流量和关注度就很高的话，就没必要这么操作了。（可以联系官方，要求开个关注度高的栏目）

In addition, if you are a friend who makes content (seriously making content, not those eye-catching headline makers), it is recommended to open accounts on various platforms and associate them with core content nodes (your own blog or other websites). This can form a central point and multiple external interfaces, which will be better for future development. After all, no one knows what platform will rise in the future.

Adventures

Phoenix:I have to complain. First of all, the entire page is very inhumane and the user experience is very poor. The second is customer service. The first time I wanted to change my nickname, I found that there was no way. After the change, it showed "Under Review". After a few hours, "Under Review" disappeared and was changed back to the original name. I haven't found any way to contact the authorities. The second time I chose to only change my avatar. I tried twice and received two rejections. The reasons were:

• For the first time, the ID number is not clear. It has obviously passed the ID verification, but I haven’t touched it. Why is it unclear again?
• The second time, the quality of the content was low. All my accounts posted the same content, and all the posts were written by myself. It turned out to be of low quality.

Okay, I gave up completely. Find a reason why it shouldn't be like this

NetEase account:It is also a strange place, and I also want to change the name and avatar. It is worse than Phoenix, because after modification, it will not display "under review", but directly refresh and display the original data. I think it may have been submitted to the background, but I tried several times and waited for several days, but nothing happened. Is the system broken? Fortunately, he has online customer service, but he is often not online, and I know his working hours. I finally contacted him the day before yesterday. Not only was the reply slow and the problem was not solved, the reply he gave was: You changed the classification, so it didn’t pass. The problem is, I haven't even touched the classification. . . Then the other party never replied.

Of course, other customer service is probably not that good either. I happened to have experience with these two companies, so I’ll mention it.