Viewing the rise and fall history of BBS community from the end of the cat flutter

Finance and economics new knowledge original

Author | Orange Zhi Editor | Jiashan

Following the closure of old BBS community forums such as Netease, Sohu and China.com, and the sale of xici, the old BBS community forums in the portal era were almost wiped out.

On April 15th, Maopu announced that it would officially close the posting function, and once boarded Weibo Hot Search, which was called the last swan song of Internet BBS by netizens.

"The BBS era ended as early as 2012." The former director of the cat flutter recently said on the media platform.

As the most important birthplace of domestic network culture, BBS gave birth to numerous "online celebrity", network events and network buzzwords in the wild era of the early Internet, many of which are still active in today’s Internet.

Like most Internet products, BBS is an "exotic product".

| past lives

BBS(Bullletin Board System), translated as electronic bulletin board in Chinese, was originally designed to publish information about the stock market. At that time, BBS didn’t even have file transfer function. Since then, with the development of WEB technology, forums have been born.

In 1984, the world’s first BBS network, Fidonet, came out, and users were connected by telephone lines to realize point-to-point communication between PCs.

In 1991, with the establishment of the first Fido site "Great Wall Station" in China, Huiduo. com crossed the ocean and entered the mainland. The following year, Beijing Great Wall Station and Shantou Station merged into China Huiduo Network. The earliest BBS exchange system CFdio in China was born.

Before the Internet was popularized, CFdio, as the gathering place of the first batch of netizens in China, was once active among a group of "business crocodiles" who laid the ecology of China’s Internet industry, such as Lei Jun, Ma Huateng and Qiu Bojun.

In its heyday, the number of CFido users exceeded 10,000, with nearly 200 sites nationwide. However, in order to use CFido, users need not only PC, modem and other related equipment, but also "classic software" such as "Ranbo Express" which is only suitable for DOS platform.

The high threshold of use makes CFdio destined to be a niche discussion forum exclusively belonging to technical houses in the pre-Internet era.

In 1994, the first domestic 64K international dedicated line was opened, marking the first official access to the Internet in China. With dial-up Internet access becoming history, Windows replaces DOS system, and BBS of universities such as Tsinghua in Shui Mu, Sayuri in Nanjing and Weiming in Peking University, as early online forums, have mushroomed everywhere. As a "big brother", CFido was gradually abandoned by people because of its complicated operation and high use threshold, and stayed for the last update on October 17, 2001.

In 1997, Maopu was established, which positioned the game community at an early stage and then turned into a comprehensive community. In 1999, Hainan Talent Network was launched, and Tianya Community, which is also called BBS Gemini with Maopu in the future, is one of the plates mainly based on stock market news. The following year, Netease, Tencent, Sohu and Sina were established one after another, and their portal forums were also launched one after another.

Since then, BBS has been combined with the community, and the forum has become an excellent place for the majority of netizens to speak freely.

In the era when there were no platforms such as Weibo, Post Bar and Renren.com, BBS held several posts, and even in the era when the word online celebrity did not appear, it produced countless online celebrity and buzzwords. "Human flesh search", "Sister Furong" and "Don’t be infatuated with elder brother, elder brother is just a legend" have all written an important stroke for China Internet history books. Among them, such as "Xiaoxing Yi the Beast" and "Sister with Milk Tea" are still active on the Internet, writing their own lives.

Perhaps any Internet industry can’t escape the fate of "a generation of new people for old people".

Go to decline

As a vertical community of games, the early Puff did not distinguish layouts like other BBS platforms, but concentrated all posts and posted them on the same interface, which made reading very concentrated, and this unique centralized information flow later became the distinctive feature of Puff’s widely known "Puff hodgepodge".

The vertical community positioning made the number of users of the early Puffs small, but the quality was extremely high. As the "start-up team" of the Puffs’ content, these people contributed the first batch of high-quality game-related content to the Puffs, laying the foundation for the early Puffs.

In 2003, "Popular Software" and "Computer Edition" successively made special reports on the cat flutter, more and more users poured in, and the dimensional wall began to be broken.

In 2004, the Puff was acquired by Thousand Oaks and began to operate as a company. Since then, the Puff start-up team has left one after another, and the Puff administrator began to ignore the post quality under the oppression of KPI, and the content gradually became vulgar, and the Puff existed in name only.

In 2006, due to commercial realization and other reasons, Thousand Oaks Interactive transformed Puff into a portal website, and expanded its content into a portal website integrating news, sports, entertainment and other channels. After the revision, the community attribute weakened, and a large number of users left.

In 2009, Maopu was listed as the "list of the first batch of exposed websites to rectify the vulgarity of the Internet in China" and became the focus of the rectification action. At that time, Maopu had lost its early unique "Maopu" culture and was not dominant in the battle between portals.

Not only the cat flutter, but also the traditional BBS forums have begun to decline.

With the introduction of web2.0 into China, the Internet has changed from a mode in which a few people publish content for many people to a mode in which everyone can publish content for others.

At that time, Sina Blog, Tencent QQ Space and Netease Forum were established or revised one after another, and Renren’s predecessor intranet was also established in the same period. These emerging platforms further lowered the Internet threshold and users of BBS forums began to lose. In addition, with the advent of 3G era, the advantages of PC are gradually declining, and the era of mobile Internet is coming.

At this time, although the traditional BBS is in an embarrassing situation, there is no substitute yet. The activity is still acceptable, even developing well. In 2008, the "Edison Chen" incident brought huge traffic to BBS, and today, entertainment gossip is still one of the most important sections in most forums.

But now, it seems that this is the last time for BBS to shine.

In 2009, CNNIC released data, and the usage rate of BBS/ forum declined for the first time. Sina, which has accumulated a certain popularity in the blog field before, has opened up a new era through a short 140-word Weibo and quickly became popular.

Different from the restrictions such as setting the title and being subject to the administrator’s review, Weibo’s use threshold is further lowered, and many ordinary users who can only be "melon eaters" in the BBS era have the opportunity to express themselves for the first time, which also makes Weibo spread very fast.

In addition, because of its simple interaction, convenient development of KOL mechanism and rich information flow, it has replaced the core functions of traditional BBS forum in many aspects, and Weibo has a great impact on BBS. Since then, various BBS communities have helped themselves, such as Tianya has done Tianya Weibo, but they have achieved little.

Campus BBS, such as Shui Mu and Tsinghua, were also forced to transform the campus communication platform for related policy reasons. Taking Tsinghua University Shuimu Tsinghua BBS as an example, Shui Mu community was finally differentiated, while Shui Mu Tsinghua transformed the campus community, and the traffic was not as good as before.

When external enemies attack, internal chaos is another core reason for the decline of BBS.

As a product of the PC era, BBS is facing the mobile Internet era, and its transformation is very slow.

As a representative of "content-oriented", forum users have high requirements on time whether they are "soaking in forums" or "writing posts". However, in the 3G era, it is difficult for network speed to provide a better user experience for such operations. In addition, unlike PCs, fragmented use of mobile terminals is the norm.

All these make the forum out of touch with the times and become out of place.

In addition to the slow transition, the poor experience of the forum has gradually been criticized by users.

In the PC era, BBS forum was loved by users because of its characteristics of "emphasizing operation and neglecting products". However, as China entered the era of mobile internet, the importance of user experience became more and more prominent, and the forum of heavy operation was out of place in the early era of mobile internet, which emphasized products. The outdated page design, numerous advertisements and anti-human interaction in many forums make the user experience worse and worse, which in turn leads to the loss of users.

However, as the Book of Songs says, "There are exceptions to everything", some vertical forums are developing smoothly in the tide.

Today, platforms such as car home and Hupu are vertical communities, and when the number of users of Maopu has reached 10 million, their respective users are only a few hundred thousand. However, with the development of time, such vertical communities have become rare survivors in the BBS community after the comprehensive BBS community has "collapsed" one after another.

The reason is that although the comprehensive community attracts many users with its huge user volume and extensive content, it is also difficult to attract high-quality users because of too many contents. Minority communities can often gather a group of core users with high quality and high loyalty, thus forming an excellent community atmosphere.

However, minority communities often mean that they lack an effective business realization model, and it is not easy to maintain long-term stable development. Breaking the circle is often the first choice to ensure sustained growth, but its final trend is polarized.

| Who will be the next cat flutter?

In the early years, Kaixin.com, the core of its rise, was to seize the "white-collar crowd" at that time and once became one of the most popular websites in the market. Renren.com was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011, and its market value once reached 5.5 billion US dollars. Eventually, it was gradually forgotten as users left the campus. The two did not choose to break the circle in the later development, and gradually lost the development opportunity in the traffic migration.

In his early years, bilibili became a representative of ACG website with high user quality and good content because of its difficult "full membership test questions". Zhihu, who insisted on the invitation system at the beginning of its establishment, was also labeled as a "senior intellectual" in the early days.

But feelings often can’t be eaten. Whether in bilibili or Zhihu, all enterprises are beginning to break the circle in order to make profits.

Bilibili has gradually reduced the difficulty of answering questions, and Zhihu has already abandoned the invitation system and changed to the open registration system. With the support of capital, the traffic of both enterprises has risen.

At the same time, both users in Zhihu and bilibili are beginning to think about where the atmosphere once went.

Bilibili used to be the exclusive of ACG fans, and all kinds of ACG-related videos, such as animation and house dance, have always been the core of bilibili. However, with the destruction of bilibili in recent years, the ACG positioning has been gradually broken, and various contents that are not closely related to ACG culture, such as movies, popular science and live broadcasts, have poured in one after another, making the ACG culture in bilibili even more declining.

There is no denying that it is understandable for enterprises to choose commercialization, and commercialization will inevitably break the circle. But at the same time, it is necessary to deal with the contradiction between new and old users in the community. The source of community vitality is the keynote of core culture. The core groups among the old users agree with each other, and further recreate the core content of community culture to ensure the competitiveness of the community.

And if it is wanton expansion, it will inevitably become the next cat flutter.

| Write at the end

Whether it is BBS forums such as Cat Pup and Tianya, or platforms such as bilibili and Zhihu today, as representatives of community culture, the importance of users’ value system and unique cultural atmosphere in the platform is self-evident.

Even with the development of the times, the Internet has entered the era of mobile Internet from the PC era, and the form of content dissemination and presentation has undergone earth-shaking changes, but the essence has not changed, and community growth still relies on high-quality content.

Perhaps in the future, with the development of science and technology and the progress of society, a new platform will enter our life, replacing the popular related products and becoming an indispensable part of life.

At that time, we may miss other platforms just as we miss BBS community forums such as cat’s paw now, but in any case, mutual recognition among users will still be the main tone of community culture, and community culture will always have its vitality.