When Li Ziqi halted updates in 2021, short videos were at their peak, driving the sales growth rate of live streaming e-commerce to soar, sparking discussions on the "renewal" of internet content platforms. Three years later, on November 12, Li Ziqi returned to the internet with new content.

As a phenomenal online celebrity with cross-cultural influence, Li Ziqi naturally chose to update her comeback video across all platforms, attracting widespread attention. Her followers on Douyin alone surged by over 7 million. However, within 24 hours, her three videos garnered 180 million views on Weibo, with related topics receiving 1.45 billion reads and 55 trending topics on Weibo, reminding us of something unchanging: the internet still needs an open, information aggregation platform.

On November 19, Weibo released its third-quarter 2024 financial report. For the quarter, Weibo's total revenue was $464.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 5%. Among this, advertising revenue reached $398.6 million, up 2% year-on-year, and value-added service revenue was $65.9 million, up 25% year-on-year. Adjusted operating profit for the third quarter reached $164.5 million, and adjusted net profit was $139.2 million.

In terms of users, Weibo had 587 million monthly active users (MAU) and 257 million daily active users (DAU) in September.

Weibo's performance keywords for the past few quarters have been stability and focus. Judging from user data, Weibo's MAU has been stable at around 580 million, with little fluctuation from quarter to quarter. From Q4 2023 to Q2 2024, Weibo's MAU was 598 million, 588 million, and 583 million, respectively. Its user positioning and usage scenarios are clear, so its user base remains relatively stable amidst intense attention competition.

Building on this foundation, the "vertical sectors" that Weibo has emphasized since 2023 are a typical example of business focus, aiming to enhance monetization efficiency by fully tapping into the value of core users. In the same year, Weibo began transforming its key product for distributing public information, "Trending Topics," by combining global and personalized hotspots. For several key vertical sectors, Weibo also released corresponding creator subsidy policies.

To describe what Weibo is doing now using a term particularly active on Weibo, popular among fans, Weibo is "purifying" the platform's deep users, allowing their value to "crystallize."

01. "Public Domain" as the Ace in the Hole

As internet trends come and go, Weibo, a product of the Web 2.0 era, shares the same original intention as Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0, placing emphasis on user interactivity and participation. Therefore, entering a new era, Weibo still holds the differentiating ace of the "public domain."

Specifically, as an open platform focused on information dissemination, its usage scenarios differ from short video platforms that prioritize entertainment, such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and platforms that emphasize lifestyle sharing and community interaction, like Xiaohongshu. Competing with these "new aristocrats" of traffic in terms of user scale is unrealistic, but there is still room to tap into the group of retained users who recognize the value of Weibo's information.

Any open platform has a public information field, but their information organization methods and interaction mechanisms differ. What sets Weibo apart is its ability to aggregate topics from various fields onto a "public screen" and maintain topic fluidity and high discussion levels, which is the essence of its public domain.

According to WeiboData statistics, in the first half of 2024, Weibo generated a cumulative total of 73,000 trending topics and 142 trending explosion words, averaging 12,000 trending topics per month. Among these, social hotspots accounted for the highest proportion at 26.3%, followed by celebrities, humor, and TV dramas. The average duration of trending topics on the list was 2.8 hours, with 35% of trending topics lasting less than one hour.

Weibo's trending topics, with their high update frequency and short duration, enable it to quickly capture current hotspots and reflect social sentiment in real-time. This high-frequency rotating information mechanism is a prerequisite for attracting users to "brush Weibo." In terms of content coverage, Weibo is a rare platform that juxtaposes serious topics and entertainment content, allowing it to maintain a public perspective while avoiding polarized viewpoints/positions, embodying both public space and entertainment platform attributes, thereby achieving cross-domain information aggregation.

Therefore, when discussing Weibo's vertical product promotion value, we cannot overlook only the niche audiences targeted by vertical sectors. We believe that Weibo, as a public domain providing wide coverage and high fluidity in the dynamic public opinion field, lays the foundation for brand communication and public opinion monitoring.

According to WeiboData statistics, there were over 5,000 corporate trending topics in the first half of 2024. Influenced by significant events such as the 315 Evening Gala and the launch of Xiaomi's electric vehicle, March saw a notable increase in trending topics, totaling 1,114, with a cumulative duration of 3,321 hours. Judging from the tone of corporate trending topics in the first half of the year, neutral trending topics accounted for the highest proportion, while negative ones accounted for nearly 30%.

Taking the automotive and 3C digital sectors, which Weibo currently prioritizes, as examples, these are products with long decision-making cycles and high per-transaction spending. Consumers need to gather extensive information and user reviews before purchasing. At this point, the advantage of an internet public domain with broad information coverage is evident, as it can present authentic consumer usage experiences and provide professional reviews and purchase advice through influential figures. For promotional planning that requires extensive "momentum building" and rapid dissemination, such as new product launches and celebrity endorsements, Weibo is often the higher-priority choice.

In addition, the value of Weibo's public opinion complexity is often overlooked.

From a communication perspective, the environment of open discussion and the coexistence of multiple stances enhance the platform's objectivity to a certain extent. The highly exposed public opinion field also facilitates timely corporate responses to crisis public relations events, maintaining and shaping brand images. Furthermore, the neutral and negative feedback contained in Weibo represents high-value user insights. Borrowing from the concept of cybernetics, negative feedback is more conducive to system stability, enabling the system to self-regulate and automatically adjust when deviations occur, allowing enterprises to collect information more efficiently.

With the platform's tone remaining stable, there is more room for operational topics to be implemented.

02. Future Potential Lies in Advertising Premium Capacity

Advertising is Weibo's core business. Since existing advertising cooperation primarily focuses on information streams, trending topics, and KOL collaborations, coupled with the public domain nature mentioned earlier, Weibo advertisements are mostly brand advertisements aimed at achieving widespread exposure, igniting topics, and shaping long-term brand perceptions.

Performance advertising aims to directly promote conversions and complete sales, with an extremely short user behavior chain that heavily relies on platform traffic scale, considering hard indicators such as conversion rates and transaction volumes. As mentioned earlier, traffic scale is not within Weibo's strength. Although brand advertising also requires exposure, it more stringently tests the added value of advertising to brand influence and user perception. Therefore, we believe that the upper limit of Weibo advertising lies in how much premium it can achieve.

Combining Weibo's platform positioning, the most direct method is to amplify the driving effect of hotspots.

The third-quarter report mentioned that due to the coverage of the Paris Olympics during the quarter, coupled with the active summer vacation period when dramas and variety shows were concentrated, Weibo focused on integrating platform hotspot resources, combining platform and client hotspots to maximize the attraction and accommodation of industry clients' budgets.

This year, advertising revenue from the Paris Olympics achieved Weibo's highest record for event sales, marking a significant increase compared to the Tokyo Olympics. Weibo's food and beverage industry also saw outstanding year-on-year growth in third-quarter revenue due to contributions from the Olympic Games, becoming one of the main drivers of third-quarter advertising revenue growth.

"Acting according to the times" requires no cause and effect; it is inherently a platform known for trending topics. Leveraging the traffic agglomeration effect of hot events to create efficient interaction and communication scenarios for brands falls within Weibo's comfort zone.

At a deeper level, releasing the platform's communication value by encouraging user interaction and participation can refer to a case that is not often mentioned—Weibo's experimentation with AI agents.

"Comment Robert" and various derivative Weibo AI accounts represent the platform's response to the AIGC wave, initially launched in July 2023. Compared to heavily invested, multifunctional projects like Douyin's Doubao and Kuaishou's Keling, which have formed independent apps, Weibo's comment bot appears to be a minor attempt. However, Comment Robert and its derivative accounts have sparked numerous positive discussions among Weibo users, even forming an internet meme.

Fundamentally, the Weibo bot was fed massive amounts of data from the platform, consuming Weibo's "native" corpus. From initially inarticulate responses to later more human-like evaluations, meme-savvy remarks, and occasional flashes of brilliance, this continually growing small AI entity showcases Weibo's content ecosystem well. Users expect to find platforms on the internet that allow for authentic voices and embrace individual differences.

When launching Comment Robert, Weibo mentioned its initial intention of leveraging the latest generative AI technology to optimize ordinary users' tweeting experience and enhance their activity in platform content production. Therefore, Robert will not interact with bloggers with over a million followers for the time being, and more interactive functions and robots with different role orientations will be launched in the future.

We have emphasized throughout that interaction and participation are the underlying logic of Weibo. Weibo advertisements' influence, credibility, and appeal all require more active user dissemination. Users are currently Weibo's most important asset, and all efforts to enhance monetization efficiency will ultimately be linked to improving user initiative.

03. Final Thoughts

In recent years, Weibo seems to have stopped obsessing over finding "future imagination" from traffic trends and instead focused on doing more suitable things. Buzzwords like live streaming, e-commerce, and finance appear less frequently in Weibo's promotional messaging, with more emphasis on progress made in specific vertical sectors.

At the same time, Weibo is also attempting to leverage its influence to strengthen the value of the platform's promotional front. For instance, Li Ziqi's first public event after her comeback was "2024 Weibo Renewal Intangible Cultural Heritage·Tianfu Night," co-hosted by Weibo and the local government, aimed at promoting local intangible cultural heritage and related conservation efforts.

A common internet argument is that new content forms will quickly replace old forces. However, as long as the need for in-depth exchanges and information exchange persists, short videos will not indefinitely encroach on the living space belonging to graphic and textual information. A decentralized public opinion field will always have a group of deep users who share its values.

However, the current Weibo needs to adapt to its new identity, making more "small but beautiful" commercial efforts under the "large and comprehensive" public domain positioning.

*The lead image and images in the text are sourced from the internet.