Group 4: Liu Xinyi, Tan Xiangling, Zhu Jiaqi, Niu Yunyi, Wang Xin, Shi Congshuang

Douban

Changes:

2005, Douban was founded as an UGC platform about book, movie, and music.

In its first 10 years, Douban gradually developed into an innovative network service for communication systems (crosstown, group, friends, and neighbors). At this stage, Douban added functions including offline activities and group topic discussions, further enriching the interactive experience.

Around 2010, Douban started expanding to mobile platforms, attempting to split its online pages and functions into multiple single apps to better serve the functional needs of different devices. During this stage, Douban launched 13 apps based on the existing web functions, such as Douban FM and Douban Moments. However, Douban’s team wasn’t able to support so many product lines, and the scattered products made it difficult for original web users to transit accurately. It once became a negative example of app fragmentation. In 2014, Douban stopped focusing on developing standalone apps, instead integrated all app functions into one, then officially launched the general Douban App.

Afterwards, Douban began to concentrate on commercial monetization in many aspects, some efforts devoted to the plan are as follows. In 2014, Douban launched the “Golden Fleece Plan,” allowing musicians to earn money based on the number of listens their works received. In 2016, Douban established a film company called “Spaceship Pictures” and came up with the “Young Directors Short Film Project.” In 2017, Douban introduced a paid content product called “Douban Time.” In 2018, Douban Reading was spun off and completed a 60 million RMB Series A financing. 

From 2020 onwards, due to government policy, Douban underwent a series of rectifications under the supervision of the Cyberspace Administration, hence losing large numbers of regular users.

In 2021, Douban was accused of "repeatedly transmitting information prohibited by laws and regulations", and “over-collecting of users' personal information”. In 2022, Douban stopped the private group function, disbanded 15 influential groups, and started real-name registration authenticated with mobile phone numbers from mainland China.

The Business Model:

·Advertising: Mainly use Native ads and banner ads to gain views, clicks and brand recognition

·Cross-platform collaboration: An essential part of the channel promotion for partners by inserting external links

·Business to business:selling the copyright of novels published on Douyue（豆瓣阅读）

·Business to consumer: e-commerce：豆瓣时间（pay-for-konwledge products） 豆小铺（group buying） 豆瓣豆品（self-support brand）

Who are the clients? 

1. People who are mostly over 25 and interested in music, movies, TV series and books. 

2. Advertisers that hold advertising campaigns to promote their products or services to users on Douban.

Key competitors

• Early Douban's main competitors were Sina Weibo, Renren and Kaixin. These social platforms have similarities with Douban in terms of user interaction and content generation. However, Douban's content is relatively more niche and artistic, so it has its own unique market positioning.
  

• Now Douban's competitors include Weibo, bilibili, and Zhihu. These apps all have the same content community, and the tone is similar. The tone refers to the product's current audience type (literary youth, stargazers, delicate boys, etc.), the type of content producer (ugc, not pugc and pgc)), the product's future path.