Images generated by AI
Because of the AI model, the value of the graphic and text community in the Chinese Internet community seems to be about to take off.
On March 5, Xiaohongshu announced the launch of the first AI developer competition, positioning itself as an independent developer with individual and lightweight teams. The competition has two tracks: “Treasure APP” and “Best AI Project”, with a maximum prize of 500,000 yuan and traffic support.
Just last week, on March 1, Zhihu announced that DeepSeek has opened an official account on Zhihu and exclusively released the technical article “Overview of DeepSeek-V3/R1 Inference System”.
Today (March 5), Xiaohongshu official also disclosed a set of data. In the past year, a new generation of independent developers are emerging in the Xiaohongshu website. There are nearly 10,000 independent developers actively creating on the site, and more than 7 million discussions on related topics. The release of independent development related content in the past year increased by 124%.
Xiaohongshu believes that these new generations of developers have diverse identities and love to express themselves. From personal stories, product information, to development progress and revision feedback, a “live-minded” UGC community ecosystem has been created.
In addition, Xiaohongshu also announced that the number of published technology-related content on the platform increased by nearly 150% in half a year, and the number of readings on related content increased by more than 200% in half a year.
Before this, Xiaohongshu had a highlight moment in the technology circle. On February 6, after DeepSeek became popular in the circle due to the release of DeepSeekR1, it announced the description of its official information release and service channels.
At that time, DeepSeek said that it currently has only the only official accounts on three platforms, WeChat official account, Xiaohongshu and X (Twitter).
DeepSeek Xiaohongshu account
DeepSeek’s official move caused a lot of discussion at the time. Because in terms of user scale, activity, and a larger range of influence, Xiaohongshu is not as good as Douyin, Kuaishou and Weibo on social platforms, but DeepSeek does not officially choose the latter, which is a relatively important change.
At that time, Titanium Media APP learned from Xiaohongshu that it was largely because DeepSeek valued the community atmosphere and tone on the platform.
On Zhihu, after DeepSeek opened an account, it announced the details of the model inference system optimization for the first time and disclosed key information on cost and profit margins. This article is also the official finale of the highly-watched “DeepSeek Open Source Week”.
Screenshot of DeepSeek Zhihu account
Not only DeepSeek, participants in open source projects such as the Dark Side of the Moon, Microsoft Research Institute, Tsinghua University, and Stepping Stars all share research results and experiences on Zhihu.
Zhihu believes that DeepSeek’s choice of Zhihu as the last stop for open source release further led the release of the most important AI trend on the entire network, and it is also a proof that Zhihu is the “community with the highest density of AI practitioners and entrepreneurs.”
One focuses on “living sense” and the other focuses on technical experts. Xiaohongshu and Zhihu officially began to “capture” a new generation of AI developers. This may also be a rare opportunity after being “hit” by the short video community, and the graphic community proved to the market that it still has a unique competitive advantage.
After all, since 2016, after the rise of short video platforms represented by Douyin and Kuaishou, the graphics and text communities that carry the starting tasks of the Internet community have been regarded as a form of no commercial value and relatively backwardness. Classic remarks are just like in 2017, Sina Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei posted on Weibo to publicly joke that Douban users are one of the two groups of users with the least user value in the Chinese website circle.
When the short video platform further subsided and expanded commercialization, the influence of the mobile Internet reached the level of popularization of the whole people. At the same time, it also subtly changed the consumption structure of netizens’ content, and to a greater extent, it also gradually divided the user community circles.
Of course, among this, Zhihu once ambitiously launched short video-related plans, and so far, short videos and live broadcast content are still important content on the Xiaohongshu platform. However, both Zhihu and Xiaohongshu have not given up on using pictures and texts as one of the important content forms of the platform.
Facts have proved that short video/live broadcast platforms do have more commercial space. After ByteDance owns a huge traffic machine, a huge traffic machine, instantly stood out from the list of small Internet giants at that time and stood out.
Perhaps away from the most intense short video battlefield, the community focusing on graphics and text has left more space.
After the influx of “TikTok refugees”, Xiaohongshu’s latest valuation has surged to $20 billion. Last December, according to Bloomberg, Xiaohongshu is expected to double its profits to more than $1 billion in 2024, and then it may conduct an IPO.
Zhihu’s financial situation has also improved, and the company is still a shortcoming to profit. The latest financial report data shows that in the third quarter of 2024, Zhihu had a net loss of 9 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 96.8%, which is the single-quarter record with the largest loss reduction and the smallest net loss since its listing.
Now, as DeepSeek leads the Chinese AI model to further break the circle, a new generation of AI developers is becoming increasingly famous, and the battle to compete for the exchange venues and frontier positions for practitioners in technology fields such as the Internet, AI and robots and other technology fields will also start again.
This new battle for attention will also be an insurmountable competitive barrier for short video platforms represented by Douyin and Kuaishou.(This article was first published in Titanium Media APP, author | Li Chengcheng)
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