I am Meng Xiaobai, an education reporter from 36氪. My daily job is to watch education at the forefront of the times. I myself have bought audio products that pay for knowledge, but I didn’t insist on listening. Later, I found that there were more and more friends like this around me, and I always wanted to explore what the payment for knowledge brought us. But it's like being in Lushan, where it's hard to tell the true face, and in the tuyere of knowledge payment, it has always been difficult for me to tell what role it plays in this era. However, recently, I did find some clues about entering the "post-knowledge payment era", as well as the new business opportunities and new forms of user relationships that it may bring, so I wrote it down and shared it with you.
The chapters of this article are as follows:
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The decline of paying for knowledge: consumers are no longer satisfied with what they "get"
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Content + service-oriented products: achieving a better life in "doing it"
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A New User Relationship: In the Age of Content + Services, Users Will Understand How You Produce and Deliver Value
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The future that has not yet come: if you see it, it is not far away
text:
The decline of paying for knowledge: consumers are no longer satisfied with what they "get"
Paying for knowledge is valuable.
The speed of social change is accelerating, and paying for knowledge allows us to keep up with the speed of the times.
We want to know some things, some knowledge, some principles, "Right now!" It just can't stand a bunch of copywriters spending months or even a year writing, proofreading, and publishing what I want to know right now. Therefore, knowledge payment is actually a publisher that hits the pain point of this era. The new lifestyle demands that publications be delivered to users in a more timely, convenient and user-friendly manner.
In addition to the carrier form, knowledge payment is also more in line with the requirements of the times in terms of content.
The Internet has largely put an end to what most people see as “information scarcity.” People are no longer as fanatical about words in newspapers as they were in 18th-century Europe. The information surplus itself makes most information worthless. After paying for knowledge, after finding information overload, what is "valuable because of scarcity" for most people - cognitive upgrade.
That is to say, having more knowledge than others is no longer the main way to remain competitive. Having more cutting-edge and deeper knowledge than others can make us more likely to succeed than our peers. Payment for knowledge provides us with these scarce things by transforming the experience and opinions of the best talents in all walks of life into user-friendly language and product form; the most cutting-edge ideas and cognition of our times and the times are also before knowledge payment. Never been so close.
But, and importantly, pay for knowledge takes the internet-scale way to do it. But this is where the irony of the relationship between paid-for knowledge and scarcity comes into play; its scarcity instantly collapses when a certain knowledge is delivered to tens of millions of people online.
Without scarcity, there is no value, no meaning, and easy anxiety. On the way to solve people's anxiety in the Internet age, knowledge payment will be overwhelmed by the anxiety triggered by its own products. Therefore, from information scarcity to information surplus, and then from cognitive scarcity to cognitive flooding, users will gradually find that they can no longer buy things that are valuable because of scarcity.
Other critics will say that the cognitive upgrades that come with paying for knowledge are themselves a scam. In essence, heuristic audio sharing is just a way to stimulate new cognition, which is only effective for some people in certain scenarios; for most people, cognitive upgrading comes from their own practice and generalization of practice. Fragmented content with no mature system not only gives users a false expectation, but also makes them fall into "What stage am I now?" "What will I become after this course?" "New What can the acquired knowledge enable me to do?" In such self-reinforcing confusion.
So, it doesn't matter whether the knowledge payment model itself collapses or is a cognitive scam at all. What matters is, where is the really scarce, so valuable thing now?
Content + service-oriented products: achieving a better life in "doing it"
Drawing a parabola to the future along the path of the birth of knowledge payment, what can we see?
When there is no information, we crave information. When we don't have knowledge, we crave knowledge. Now that information knowledge is enough, what else is there that we don't have?
I don't know which forum a wise man said: I know so many truths, but I still have a bad life.
If paying for knowledge tells us enough "truths", then what we lack and need next should be "to live a good life".
In the past month, a number of primary market financing events seem to indicate that this direction is looming, including the new vocational education company "Three Lessons" which received tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing , and the home early education platform "Xiaobu Parent-Child". Multi-million dollar Pre-Series A financing .
From what I've seen, these two companies aren't just delivering a specific content product to the user, they're helping him gain the ability to live a good life, providing adequately supportive services for the life they want to have.
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Three Courses is a vocational education company, but it is different from traditional vocational training institutions in that its teaching purpose is not to allow users to pass a certain exam, obtain a certain certificate, and rely on these credentials in exchange for interview opportunities. The purpose of these research-based job search orientations may have been a prerequisite for users to get a good job in the past, but the changing times have led to a weaker and weaker relationship between them and a better life.
No traditional exam can assure a business that a user with a high score will become a great product manager, internet operations or new media director. Earning any certification no longer guarantees users success, rewards, and applause in these job scenarios. If users want to have a good life in these positions, they must be able to do what these emerging positions require them to do. Only when you do it will you have confidence; the more you know and the less you can do, the easier it is to get anxious.
Therefore, enabling users to have the ability to achieve a better life is the meaning of the three lessons that best meet the needs of the times in the context of "new vocational education". Then, in order to develop capabilities, not just impart knowledge, the three-course educational service is very heavy compared to traditional training institutions. They emphasize the completion rate of homework, value the output of the portfolio, require users to rely on output to drive input, and rely on the in-depth investment of teaching assistants to ensure that users can exercise new abilities.
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Xiaobu Parent-Child's approach in the field of early childhood education is to provide guidance, community, Q&A, early education materials and other support for parents in the scene of early childhood education at home.
Different from self-media dissemination of early education knowledge, understanding early education knowledge is only a part of obtaining a wonderful experience of parent-child interaction, and what parents want more is that they can directly start playing with their children, and have real-time guidance from early education experts when encountering problems. Sharing and encouragement from parents. Parents want family happiness, knowing how to get family happiness is not enough, giving them adequate support until they get family happiness is the goal.
For early education games that are not clearly expressed in graphics and text, they provide video guides; some videos are not easy to express, they can make decomposition animations; some interactions require specific music, which is provided directly in the app product; some babies will make There are no special reactions foreseen in the guide, and users can immediately ask an expert for help. In this scenario, what Xiaobu wants to do is to provide parents with a high-quality companion experience, and help users create experiences that they could not have achieved by simply knowing early education knowledge.
Looking at the leopard in the tube, the clues I have seen in the post-paid knowledge era are:
Users are increasingly dissatisfied with "getting", they need to get what they need from "doing".
More and more users in different scenarios are no longer satisfied with "what do you give me", but more need "you are by my side", giving me ability and strength.
In the past, users could not do what they wanted to do when they only provided content. Enterprises have to rely on services to enable them to do it.
Then, for startups, the meaning of delivering content itself is becoming less and less, and content + service is the future direction.
A New User Relationship: In the Age of Content + Services, Users Will Understand How You Produce and Deliver Value
(one)
Recently, many people in the entrepreneurial circle have begun to use the word "black box", which has become popular in the field of artificial intelligence, to describe the process of delivering products to users; any product-related information that consumers cannot understand or know, many people refer to them as Affluently known as the black box.
However, this is indeed a convenient expression, because it corresponds to the white box that more and more consumers need. In the field of consumption, users begin to pay more attention to the origin of a product, the method of transportation, the production process of raw materials, and so on. Not that everyone is doing it, but making product information more transparent to consumers is a trend that can be felt.
So for content or service products, will more and more users begin to review and evaluate their production and delivery process?
I think "content + service" type products will draw attention and demand from users to the value production and delivery process. If I simply buy a product that pays for knowledge, then after I buy it, it belongs to me, I can listen to it or not, in short, it is always in the phone, and it stays there statically; even if the product is disappointing, I at most It's just to complain, no need.
However, for products that provide content service support for a better life, it always maintains a relationship with users. Some services are always on call, and some will grow into the user's ability portfolio and become part of the user. To exaggerate, these continuous support services are like air and water in the corresponding scene, and users will of course care more about its quality than consuming disposable products.
Users need to know what exactly is the business doing in the process of creating this service? Do they spend most of their time creating information gaps to collect IQ taxes, or to ensure the output of content services? What is the starting point and focus of "content + service" product design? What is their relationship to users?
(two)
Let's take the content production of three lessons as an example:
First, the new vocational education company locks in the scenarios where users want to display their talents—the jobs they want to get.
Then, the three classes and the first-line Internet companies jointly studied what the capabilities required for these specific positions were, and established a capability model.
After that, the teaching and research team will derive the knowledge map needed to exercise these abilities based on the ability model.
Finally, the curriculum structure is designed according to the knowledge map.
"Content + service" companies should clarify the scenarios and goals with users from the very beginning. Only when companies and users reach a consensus on these two points, content and services can be accurate and highly contextualized. Without the content of the scene and purpose, it returns to the category of knowledge payment.
If the user does not have a clear scenario or set purpose, then the user is not suitable for this product. Of course, there are various ways in which businesses can inspire their desire for a specific purpose in a specific scenario. Also, as we said in Chapter 1, when information and cognition are overloaded, more and more people will want to live a good life; a good life is a broad and vague concept, but it is very important to users. To say, it means a certain scene and purpose.
After reaching a consensus, the output of the content will follow the above process. Because the ability to achieve a better life cannot be taught directly, users also need information that can be easily absorbed directly. Information can be structured into knowledge, and knowledge can be exercised through deliberate training in specific scenarios.
(three)
In addition to the "content" part of the previous section, in order to fully support user acquisition capabilities, the three courses need to provide services that are much heavier than knowledge payment. Of course, this kind of service does not refer to what is delivered to the customer's mouth, but to the "high involvement" of the user - a deep investment in time and energy.
Typically, users need to watch about 2 hours of lessons and complete at least 6 to 8 hours of homework per week for two consecutive months. Three classes place a strong emphasis on homework completion rates. After the teaching assistant grades the user's homework, the user can modify it and submit it, and then the teaching assistant grades it again, and the cycle goes on and on. So many users spend more than 10 hours a week in three classes in order to make their assignments higher quality.
High-involvement services are often operated in conjunction with the community. It is a very difficult process for a person to close himself up to acquire new abilities. In the three-course system, users have accumulated hundreds of thousands of works. They encourage the sharing of cases among users. creativity. Therefore, for products aiming at improving capabilities, community operation is not for operation, but itself is a necessary element of "content + service" products.
In order to make the process of capability acquisition as efficient as possible, users must be “highly involved”, output, shared, and deliberately trained. Therefore, the company can only focus on service.
(Four)
To sum up the above, "content + service" products need to reach a consensus with users at the content level and be highly involved at the service level. Therefore, if the user is really willing to cooperate in doing so, then he will very much need this product to be a white box.
The future that has not yet come: if you see it, it is not far away
The core point of the previous chapter was that the new user relationships resulting from "content + service" products will force companies to put the entire process of value production and delivery into a white box. - The only problem is that none of this has happened yet on a large scale.
The users who pay for knowledge are still far more than the users of the so-called "content + service" products, and I take back what I said in the question, in the next long period of time, the payment for knowledge will not disappear, nor will it die. Just as paper publications have not been eliminated in the mobile Internet era, each publication has its own functions and features in specific scenarios; especially the knowledge-based payment platform with high-quality IP operation capabilities will continue to be loved by some users.
However, I only saw on the one hand that behind the knowledge "MLM" incident, more and more knowledge-paying companies are anxious about revenue and user growth; obviously, they have hit some kind of ceiling.
On the other hand, although the "content + service" products I described in this article are still in a relatively early stage, isn't 36Kr just to let some people see the future first?
In the future, since we have seen this kind of thing, it is not too far away.
postscript
*I don't actually think "content + services" is an accurate word to describe this type of product. It's just that compared to paying for knowledge, I want to highlight the service-heavy characteristics of this type of product. I hope that I will come into contact with more products of this type in the future, and think of a more accurate description. You are also welcome to communicate with each other.
*In the interview, I found a lot of experience in the curriculum and operation of the three courses is worth sharing, so I hope to have a chat with the person in charge of Udacity China next month, and write in "How to make adults like it" Educational Products" topic. Interested readers are also welcome to communicate.
*36Kr does not endorse or advertise any company mentioned in this article. I've just selected products that represent my point of view as examples from projects I've been working with recently. These projects have all received financing in the last week, which to a certain extent represents the favor of capital.