The little red book, which claims to have 250 million users, is "yellow"
The app that has made billions of dollars in 6 years was removed from the Android app store yesterday. Xiaohongshu said that he is communicating with relevant departments.
There are frequent problems such as writing in grass, product fraud, etc. Some bloggers say that they have received money from merchants and wrote according to their requirements.
On the evening of July 29, Xiaohongshu app was removed from several Android app stores, which triggered speculation.
As a "lifestyle platform for young people and the entrance of consumption decision-making", in the past two years, negative news such as writing in grass, data fraud and e-commerce fakes have become common occurrences.
Since May this year, in the face of controversy, Xiaohongshu has carried out self-rectification. It is not yet known whether this removal will help Xiaohongshu continue to scrape bones and cure poison, or become a straw to crush Xiaohongshu.
6-year valuation exceeds billions of dollars
Xiaohongshu was founded in 2013. Originally, it was a Haitao cosmetics platform with the nature of shopping strategy. As the e-commerce dividend period passed, Xiaohongshu turned into a young content sharing community.
In 2014, Jie Lin began to contact Xiaohongshu. At that time, she felt that Xiaohongshu was "very tonal". "Everyone will publish high-quality pictures, share good things and makeup tutorials, as well as some food, travel and other content. Every time I brush it, I feel very ‘ Planting grass ’ 。”
"Planting grass", in a group of young girls like Jielin who like to buy in buy buy, means that they are interested in new products. The e-commerce products in Xiaohongshu are also quite distinctive. "The title is often very interesting, which can highlight the selling points of the products, such as a Korean bird’s nest mask that was very popular at that time. The promotion language is ‘ Bird’s nest paste face slippery ’ Plus the price is reasonable, girls are easily tempted. " Jie Lin said.
At that time, the little red book also had a function, which was "home page selection". Once, Jielin bought a big-name necklace. She took pictures and retouched pictures carefully. This beautiful "notes on planting grass" was really pushed to the home page and received more than 800 praises. Jielin was extremely happy. Since then, Jielin has released a lot of highly praised notes, and has also been to restaurants and hotels in online celebrity recommended by Xiaohongshu, becoming a loyal "sweet potato".
At the beginning of 2018, after a wave of stars such as Jelly Lin, Stephy and Jiang Shuying settled in, Xiaohongshu developed rapidly, gradually moving from a small community to a public view, and some stars earned a lot of money by "bringing goods".
By June of this year, founders Qu Fang and Mao Wenchao said in their internal letters that the monthly active users of Xiaohongshu had exceeded 85 million, with a total of 250 million users. In the Internet age, huge traffic is quickly transformed into benefits.
Last year, Ali invested more than $300 million in financing to Xiaohongshu, when its valuation exceeded $3 billion. Not long ago, it was revealed that Xiaohongshu is negotiating the next round of financing of 500 million US dollars, when the company’s valuation may be higher.
"No experience, all advertising"
And gradually, Jielin began to abandon the little red book. First, a friend of hers said that buying a Japanese brand of cotton pad on Little Red Book was "a little yellow and softer" than bringing it back from Japan. Jielin found that there were many posts on the Internet that questioned the authenticity of the goods in Little Red Book, and she couldn’t help but put a question mark in her heart. In addition, the content of the homepage is becoming more and more "messy". The original friendly and sincere community atmosphere of "planting grass" has changed, and there is more noise: some users tirelessly publish pseudoscience or health rumors such as "growing 5 cm a month"; Others package themselves as winners in life. Jie Lin said: "You can often see headlines in Little Red Books, saying that in your twenties, you struggled to mention Porsche. When you click on it, it turns out that Wechat business wants to go offline."
Chen Hao is also a loyal user of Xiaohongshu. "It was originally purely to buy some men’s skin care products and the like." Later, Chen Hao often posted selfies in Little Red Book. He was white, tall and handsome, and with long-term fitness, he had admired abdominal muscles. After a long time, more and more people paid attention to Chen Hao. Soon, some merchants found Chen Hao and hoped that he would try out and promote the products.
"At that time, I felt that it was nothing more than writing a comment truthfully after the trial." But in fact, these evaluations are not completely truthful. Merchants will put forward some specific requirements and say that they can pay a certain amount of remuneration. "To put it bluntly, I still hope to just say that the products are good, so that others can ‘ Planting grass ’ 。”
Chen Hao refused at first, but later found that the tone of many grass scripts was almost the same as what the merchants had previously proposed to him. Since many people have done this, Chen Hao has also begun to take orders. "Even if some samples don’t make me feel good, they will still be written and revised according to the content requirements and review of the merchants. As long as they pass, the fees will be obtained."
Liu Dora is also an amateur beauty blogger of Xiaohongshu. Previously, some of her notes on grass planting were highly praised and popular, so they were quickly promoted. "Generally speaking, the more fans there are, the higher the income. For those who have only a few thousand fans like me, every time I write grass planting, the average income is one or two thousand, plus a set of trial products."
Many users began to vomit, and the little red book "has no experience, all advertisements". Previous surveys have found that fake "notes on planting grass" have formed a complete industrial chain, and products can be published in the form of experience notes as long as they are sent by people. According to the number of fans who publish accounts, notes on planting grass are divided into master notes and amateur notes. The price of amateur notes is about tens of yuan, while the price of master notes with more than 10,000 fans fluctuates greatly, ranging from thousands to more than 10,000 yuan.
Xiaohongshu said that he is communicating with the competent authorities.
In addition to fraud, Xiaohongshu also caused controversy due to illegal content. At the beginning of this year, Xiaohongshu caused controversy over tobacco marketing for women. On July 29th, Southern Metropolis Daily reported that a large number of national illegal drugs, such as placenta, hyaluronic acid and whitening needle, flowed to offline unqualified medical institutions and visiting doctors through Xiaohongshu.
According to Tianyancha data, the main operator of Xiaohongshu, Hangyin Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., has nearly 20 administrative punishment records since 2016, most of which involve publishing false advertisements, deceiving and misleading consumers, and confusing the nature of goods.
In order to standardize the operation of the platform and ensure the quality of content, Xiaohongshu has also made efforts. In May of this year, Xiaohongshu launched a rectification plan, which set entry standards for KOL (online celebrity blogger) on the platform. KOL who failed to meet the standards will not be allowed to receive advertisements privately.
Lin Yun works in a skincare company in Guangzhou, and the company often needs to connect with MCN institutions and find a small red book talent to promote it. She obviously feels that since the beginning of this year, "the rules have changed, and all the advertising notes received by talents must be reported and restricted. Therefore, many talents are full of promotion at the beginning of the month, and everyone is grabbing good resources, which will definitely have an impact on us."
The official did not give specific reasons for the removal of Xiaohongshu this time, but only said that it was communicating with relevant departments. Speculation is more direct — — False advertisements, vulgar content, and collection of user information … … These are the "crimes and punishments" of Little Red Book. There are even self-media reports that Xiaohongshu is involved in pornography. It is reported that in the near future, the Apple App Store may also deal with Xiaohongshu.
Xiaohongshu said that since September 2018, content governance measures have been introduced from various levels such as platform rules, brand cooperation rules and user supervision. Including a comprehensive inventory of the content descriptions of cosmetics, health care products and food commodities according to the restrictions of advertising illegal words; Upgrade technical means and severely punish data fraud and false notes. Recently, the platform also launched the reporting and feedback mechanism of "Little Red Book Ecological Officer", which affects the display results of related notes by users voting on notes that cannot be clearly determined.
Yesterday, Jielin opened a little red book that had been useless for a long time, and a "slimming note" popped up on the front page, "Slimming from 65 kg to 48 kg in 3 months? You see, these two contrast pictures of weighing scale, the blogger hasn’t even changed the shape of toenails and the color of nail polish, which is too insulting to IQ, "said Jielin, pointing out another stovepipe experience of actually promoting the" slimming bag "— — The blogger crooked the floor behind him. (The characters in the text are all pseudonyms) (Reporter Ryker Chan, Huang Xiaoxing, Yu Renfei)
