Recently, the most profound insight I've gained about social interaction is that socializing must occur within a community; the need for social interaction can only be fulfilled within a community.
This may sound like a cliché, but with the development of the internet, many online "social" behaviors have been simplistically reduced to buttons for liking, saving, sharing, commenting, etc. We gradually come to believe that as long as there are these interactive applications, it constitutes social media, as if socializing based on content is a given... However, when we continuously engage in such interactions on a dazzling array of so-called "social media," we often feel a deeper emptiness inside. The underlying reason is that socializing is fundamentally based on community, and the sense of community in many so-called social media is disappearing, making it difficult for our social needs to be truly satisfied.
What is wrong with today's social media? Today's social media lacks community.
Understanding Socializing, Community, and Social Media#
In some contexts, "socializing" may be a relatively broad concept, but the "socializing" I want to discuss today corresponds to the psychological needs of humans: connecting with others.
So what is a community? It is a group of people connected by some kind of relationship. This relationship is very flexible; it may come from the same hometown—when away from home, a hometown association is a natural community; it may be based on shared interests—people who enjoy skiing form a skiing community; or it may be about sharing common ideals—people who love the spirit of open source come together to build an open-source community... In short, it must be based on a relatively specific relationship (relatively speaking, "we are all humans" is a very broad relationship).
The community defined here can be tight-knit or loose, may have a fixed organizational form or may not, but the key point is that there is a "connection."
From the definitions above, it can also be seen that socializing, which satisfies human psychological needs, must be based on community, because the premise of connecting with others is naturally having a relationship that can be connected, and that relationship has already defined the community. Moreover, typically, the tighter the community, the easier it is to satisfy people's social needs.
Social behavior may promote the emergence of communities, and within communities, people's social needs will be further met.
So what is social media? Here I will paste the definition from Wikipedia: Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. Although the forms of social media have become increasingly flexible over the decades of internet evolution, the core of social media is to create and share information.
In the "traditional" sense, content platforms and social platforms may be distinguished, but it is evident that the current trend is "content platforms becoming socialized, social platforms becoming content-oriented." Whether originally a content platform or a social platform, they are now developing towards being "both a social platform and a content platform." Whether driven by the platform or by user behavior, the result is the same, and this is true in both Asia and Europe and America. For example, YouTube, as a typical content platform, has introduced features like the Community Tab and Shorts, which continuously emphasize community/social attributes; NetEase Cloud Music, as a music content platform, has seen frequent spontaneous social interactions in the comment section, and the official reinforcement of the concept of "Cloud Village" to enhance the platform's community aspect, can now also be considered a social platform; even Toutiao, which appears to be a typical content platform, actually serves as a social platform for middle-aged and elderly users; and Twitter, as a typical social platform, has changed its default timeline from Following to For You—shifting towards short content.
These examples illustrate that the scope referred to by social media is actually quite broad. This article does not aim to discuss social media in terms of product forms but rather to discuss social media in a more general sense.
Classification of Social Media#
According to classic internet theory, based on the medium that facilitates social relationships, the two most common forms of socializing are content-based socializing and relationship-based socializing. Content-based socializing establishes connections based on produced content, such as Weibo; relationship-based socializing, as the name suggests, is socializing based on relationships, with Facebook or WeChat (Moments) being examples.
According to the earlier definition of community: "a group of people connected by some kind of relationship," relationship-based socializing is naturally based on community. For instance, in Moments, people share content, and they may already be family/friends/colleagues, forming a familiar community. In relationship-based socializing, because everyone knows each other, or at least has established some kind of relationship through some opportunity, socializing is meaningful.
Content-based socializing, on the other hand, does not have this pre-existing relationship; the only connection might be that I happened to see the content you posted. This is a very loose bond and does not naturally make socializing based on it meaningful. If socializing based on this does seem meaningful, it can only be because the intrinsic connections formed based on content are significant enough, the most common forms being interest communities or knowledge communities formed based on content.
Making relationships formed based on content meaningful enough is a very challenging task, but in the in-depth analysis in the next section, we will realize that platforms that do socializing well are doing this very well, meaning they have successfully built content communities.
Of course, a social media platform cannot be exclusively content-based or relationship-based; both must coexist. For example, even if most of the Moments are "familiar faces," there are still a few people with very weak connections (like a chance encounter with a micro-business). If you find their content interesting and interact with them, it then becomes content-based socializing. Similarly, major content platforms often like to recommend "friends you may know" to you, which is actually aimed at promoting relationship-based socializing. But let us focus on the mainstream usage of the platform, or in Web2 terms, let us focus on the platform's "high frequency."
Content-Based Social Media Must Have "Tone"#
When I say "tone," I am referring to the atmosphere, style, attitude, etc., of the platform or even the community.
We often observe that the stronger the community atmosphere of a platform, the more willing users are to socialize there; this is indeed a reaffirmation of "social needs must be satisfied within a community." Especially for a content-based platform, if it can do socializing well, it must be due to its "tone," which is typically achieved through the uniqueness of the content.
Tone + people indeed have social needs on this platform drives the gears to turn, facilitating the formation of the community, and the unique atmosphere of the formed community is a powerful drug for increasing user stickiness. In this mutually reinforcing gear, functions like posting content, liking, and sharing are merely tools that can only help further form the community under the premise of existing social needs, rather than having these functions alone create social needs or even form a unique community.
For a typical content-based social media, there are usually three forms and levels of community:
- The overall user base of the platform as a community
- A community formed by a group of people (usually an interest community)
- A community formed around a certain KOL
These three are not independent of each other; most of the time, they promote each other. However, initially, for a platform, if at least one of the above three types of communities can emerge, it has the potential to become a social media; otherwise, it can only be a tool or a pure content platform.
Before citing successful examples, let us first look at a failed example: Alipay.
Alipay has made multiple attempts at socialization, but they all seem to have been in vain. Let us understand this issue from the perspective of community.
First, in the mainland market, where relationship-based socializing has been monopolized by Tencent, it is almost impossible for Alipay to establish relationship-based socializing.
Next, let us examine the possibility of content-based socializing. Alipay's positioning from the beginning has been as a payment tool for everyone, so on one hand, users have long perceived it as a tool, which tends to have a neutral style; on the other hand, more importantly, the target audience of such a product is too broad, making it nearly impossible to form any meaningful connections based on the entire user base. The more widespread Alipay's payment function becomes, the more this is the case. How can we feel a sense of community just because we spend money every day? Oh, it’s also possible, after all, the mainland version of Alipay spends RMB, so the community that seems most suitable for the mainland version of Alipay is a patriotic community, with content like "today the US stock market circuit breaker, tomorrow Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, the day after Greece went bankrupt, and finally concluding to long the RMB, payments still rely on Alipay :)" In other words, Alipay does not have an advantage in the first type of community.
As for the second and third types, Alipay's current attempts are to create a community in the financial management section, which is actually a good entry point, aligning with Alipay's own functions, and during times of market volatility, like now, the demand for discussion and exchange will increase (just like trading cryptocurrencies, sometimes forming teams for rights protection, sometimes calling family, sometimes analyzing the Federal Reserve's impact on Bitcoin, sometimes discussing which altcoin to invest in, sometimes teaching you how to read candlestick charts, sometimes explaining how to analyze the market, it gets lively), and based on my observations, Alipay's financial management community (or called Ant Financial Management Community? See the image below. I am not a professional product researcher and haven't fully understood the past and present of the Ant Financial Management Community; it seems to have been a fund comment section before?) is actually doing quite well, as many netizens share their real trading operations, and even last year during the Spring Festival, netizens spontaneously formed a "blind date corner," although such events may only be fleeting, they are indeed real social interactions. However, so far, the entire community has not formed a clear "tone," whether for the community as a whole or the small circles led by KOLs, there is no prominent style, and the sense of connection within the community is still relatively weak; rather than being a community, it feels more like a plaza.
Another relatively successful "social" case for Alipay is Ant Forest, but Ant Forest is a rather special example. It does not belong to content-based socializing but is more like SocialFi, which I will analyze separately when I have the opportunity.
Now, looking back at some "successful" social media examples. Taking Bilibili and Xiaohongshu as examples, both have their own characteristics, but undoubtedly they can both be called content platforms and social platforms, meaning they are social platforms that can truly meet people's social needs. Correspondingly, both of these apps have a very strong tone, especially in the early days, with a very strong sense of community. Although this may not be the case now, we will analyze this in the next section.
For instance, Bilibili has almost reached the point where any fan of ACGN in the Chinese-speaking world cannot be a Bilibili user; the overall cultural atmosphere is very prominent, and the sense of community is strong. Moreover, ACGN can naturally form communities based on different "IPs," and the sentiment of "as long as you like xxx, we are good friends" is surely familiar to everyone.
As for Xiaohongshu's atmosphere, it is also a breath of fresh air on the internet. Without discussing the merits or flaws of Xiaohongshu's unique text formatting style, it must be acknowledged that this is also a testament to its community atmosphere. On the other hand, Xiaohongshu, starting from life experiences and primarily targeting female users, has truly created an atmosphere of "sincere sharing, friendly interaction," as stated in its community guidelines.
Of course, the formation of this "tone" is not only due to user spontaneity; the guidance of operations is also very important. But in any case, we can see that if a content-based social media can truly make users happy, it undoubtedly has a strong "tone."
Content-Based Platforms Becoming Content Discovery Platforms#
Finally, we come to today's social media.
Earlier, I mentioned that content-based social media must have "tone," but this statement is not entirely accurate. A more accurate statement would be that early content-based social media must have tone. Some may say that the so-called community atmosphere is merely a manifestation of niche appeal, and as user numbers grow, it will inevitably be "diluted." However, this is not necessarily a failure or an irreconcilable contradiction; if a social media platform's content is rich enough, it can also form a sufficiently complex community ecology, allowing for many kinds of "tones," or even a "non-tone," achieving a "large and beautiful" outcome.
The most common approach to achieving this is algorithmic recommendation. This is also the easiest way for platforms to break out of their circles; for example, Bilibili's homepage redesign six years ago was an attempt in this direction.
However, perhaps this method is too clever, or perhaps as the platform expands, the pressure for commercial monetization increases, or there are more complex issues behind it, but in any case, the current situation is that content platforms are increasingly resembling social platforms, while more and more are becoming content discovery platforms.
Do current platforms still have "tone"? The content of the platform itself may still have it, but if we are talking about community atmosphere, unfortunately, it is disappearing, because communities are disappearing. Let me repeat: the growth of users does not necessarily lead to the disappearance of communities; the direct reason for the disappearance of communities is that content platforms are becoming more like content discovery platforms and have not provided a way for people who enjoy similar content to connect well. The ultimate form of a content discovery platform is like Google Search, which can at most be a very broad community, right?
When a platform is left with only content, there is no community. People will still like, comment, and interact, but what remains are mere symbols; comments are just people talking past each other, most of the time merely an abstract cultural lonely carnival. The meaning of socializing is being dissolved. I believe algorithms can evolve to be "smarter" and "understand" better what we like to watch, but these cannot provide us with more satisfaction. Do we need so much information? Of course not. What we need is to connect with others. Moreover, if it is truly about acquiring information, we should not be getting it from a vast amount of fragmented information. But that doesn't matter; there's no need to demand efficiency in everything, and indeed, this fragmented information can to some extent broaden our horizons and enrich our experiences; the key issue remains that our social needs are not being met.
When I surf various social media, I often come across lifestyle or sports tips that I might be interested in, or some principles and knowledge that I might also find somewhat interesting... but I always find myself wondering, why do I need to see these? These contents are quite fascinating and captivating, but what do they have to do with me? From this perspective, I actually have no interest at all. My friends' lives may not be that "exciting," but I would rather open Telegram and chat with them, listening to what has happened recently.
I do not want to conclude that using these social media and chatting with friends are two opposing things. They could originally be one thing; why can't we socialize while browsing information in a community? (As I write this, I suddenly realize that the social media closest to this form is Mastodon, where each server is an independent community, each with its own atmosphere and style, but everyone in the community feels seen.) Unfortunately, the problem is that most content-based social media only focus on content recommendations, neglecting people's connections. The issues exposed by this product form are actually that the platform's commercial monetization pressure is inconsistent with meeting people's social needs.
After repeated verification, it seems that the form of content discovery platforms is the easiest way to increase traffic and the easiest to monetize, so major social media platforms have chosen this approach. However, the consequence of this is that the content people receive is too fragmented, and content recommendations that specifically target human weaknesses prevent people from focusing, resulting in an inability to establish more effective connections. On the other hand, as platforms strive to hit human weaknesses more precisely, the increasingly "vertical" and robotic nature of content creators trained by the platform's algorithms also emerges. These may be "high-quality" content, and they may successfully drive sales, but these "influencers" are not the people that everyone wants to be friends with. People's social interactions become cheap, distorted, and meaningless...
Unfortunately, this is today's social media. I cannot draw any conclusions or point out any solutions; I can only say that the only hope I see at present is to redefine ownership and value distribution through Web3, although this is also a vague and uncertain hope.
Conclusion#
The inability of today's social media to meet people's social needs is a result, and there are many underlying reasons. "No community" will not be the only problem, nor does it even count as a more fundamental reason; issues such as the much-criticized attention economy, algorithm manipulation, and the exploitation of creators' value are all problems of today's social media. However, this article chooses to approach from the perspective of community in hopes of understanding social media from the essence of socializing, to understand what is happening in today's social media.
What is wrong with today's social media? Let me quote nankeyike's comic as a conclusion:
"It feels like you have opened a window and seen an incredibly prosperous city outside. But that is a city where you do not exist. All the information seems to be just drops of water splashing from the back of your hand, providing at most a fleeting stimulation and the temporary coolness that comes with it."