18 years is a year of short video explosion, and many users will have a feeling that they can’t stop when watching short videos. So how exactly did short videos kill your time?
If 2016 is the outlet of live broadcast and bike-sharing, 2017 is the outbreak period of short video. Time has entered 18 years, and the popularity of short videos has become more and more prosperous.
The familiar short video players: Tik Tok, Watermelon Video, Volcano Video and Aauto Quicker are among the top ten in the industry.
I believe that every user who watches short videos has had this feeling: I just watch two … and then slip away in half an hour. How did the short video, known as the "time killer", kill your time and make it disappear unconsciously?
In this regard, individuals have the following ideas:
Since the outbreak of mobile internet, recommendation system is not a new word. Providing users with his favorite content is what recommendation system is good at! For example, today’s headline machine recommendation information flow, Netease Cloud Music’s magical song list recommendation … It will make you have a dedicated service experience, so that users can’t stop using the APP.
Combined with the psychological flow effect, we can see the magic more clearly.
Flow: In psychology, it is a kind of psychological state when you concentrate on a certain behavior, and entering this state will make people feel happy.
When you are immersed in the glory of the king qualifying, when you are still reluctant to leave the TV screen at one or two in the morning, you are in a flow.
In this state, you don’t want to be disturbed, that is, you resist interruption. It’s like you will keep starting games and watch TV series episode after episode, as if you can’t control yourself. In fact, your brain doesn’t want to control yourself to stop.
Combining the two, the recommendation system pushes your favorite content and updates it constantly. You don’t want to stop sliding your finger when you enter the flow state. In the short video of 15s, you unconsciously brush it until 2 o’clock in the middle of the night …
With the development of technology, information is carried from words to pictures, to videos, and then to live broadcasts. You will find that:The improvement of information carrying mode has a subtle influence on your brain.
Although words, pictures and videos can explain the facts, but:
- The form of words will bring people more imagination space after extension. After words enter the brain, it will take some time to be translated to understand (although it may only take a few seconds).
- Compared with words, pictures are a more intuitive expression method, which objectively shows the facts in a shorter time, but as a static display, there is still some room for imagination;
- Video and live broadcast are one step closer. What you see is what you get. The imagination space is further compressed, the content of objective expression is enriched, and the human brain can directly receive more information, which can be understood without the second translation of the brain.
The live broadcast was a hit in 2016, and I personally understand that this has the same reason. As a recorded video, the live broadcast form gives people a more intuitive feeling of time and space, but the live broadcast also has a short board because of real-time, and users are not free all the time. If you miss the time, it will lose its meaning.
With the increasing fragmentation time of users, short videos have become the best channel for users to enjoy themselves. Short-term entertainment, easy-to-understand content, this experience will make the brain addicted and easier to immerse itself in.
Personally, this situation can be explained by a law in Thinking, Fast and Slow:
Rule of Least Effort: If there are many ways to achieve the same goal, people will often choose the simplest one.
After carefully studying the development, content tendency and product function of Tik Tok, it is found that its popular mode fits well with the addiction model mentioned in the book Addiction:
Tik Tok’s brand promotion, the forwarding and dissemination of wonderful short video content in social software, and the first stage of the addiction model cycle: trigger comes into play.
For whatever reason, when you click on the link to play, you have entered the second step of the addiction model cycle: action. Next, you will see all kinds of dazzling content.
The difference between the addiction model and the common feedback loop lies in that it can directly stimulate people’s strong desire for something, Tik Tok’s precise control in the content direction, and challenging the variability of gameplay, so that every time you slide, you can bring new surprise variables, and the brain excitement will continue to rise because of unexpected rewards, expecting to find more surprises.
In the last stage: input, not only means making users willing to spend money, but also means that users’ behavior can improve the subsequent service quality. Praise, attention, etc. are all the inputs paid by users to improve the product experience.
These inputs will have an impact on the first three stages. Triggers are easier to form, actions are easier to take place, and rewards will be more attractive.
Judging from the current analysis, short video, as a sharp weapon to kill time, seems to have stepped on the breakthrough points of two times: the development of technology and the outbreak of information. At the same time, the psychological nature of human beings since ancient times has been infinitely magnified by various means in this era. Is the outbreak of short videos really just accidental? I do not think this is necessarily the case.
At present, I have only analyzed the environmental and industrial factors, but not the in-depth product experience analysis. I believe that each product has its unique attraction to users, which is also a direction that I will study in depth in the future.
The above are some of my personal superficial ideas, and I hope to communicate with you.
This article was originally published by @DHAllison. Everyone is a product manager. Reprinting is prohibited without permission.
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