Dear friends, Happy New Year! I wish you all good health, a happy family, lots of money, and great success!

Binance has recently put a lot of effort into developing a new product: Feed. In order to promote this business, not only has a first-level entrance been added to the official website, but the app page layout has also been specially revised. At first, I thought it was just a move to increase user stickiness, providing users with a one-stop trading service through built-in information to reduce the risk of traffic loss.

In the past few days, I have found that Binance’s ambition is not just this, but may have deeper demands. I have some free time today, so let’s chat for a while.

 

1. The dilemma of cryptocurrency social networking

Undoubtedly, China is now leading the development of the Internet, and there have been a large number of successful cases of dimensionality reduction attacks from domestic exports. The development and maturity of Internet technology has greatly changed the form of human society and continues to change our social methods. From the initial forums and blogs, to instant messaging, Weibo, long videos, and now to the short videos that are dominating the world, social software has become a necessity in our daily lives. It is no exaggeration to say that we can go a day without eating, but we cannot let go of our phones for a moment.

Socializing in the cryptocurrency circle is a bit awkward, especially in the Chinese circle. In the overall tight environment, whether it is WeChat, Weibo or QQ, most of us should have experienced the dilemma of disappearing in the chat group or even disappearing in the chat account. Not only ordinary cryptocurrency users, but also those successful people in the circle at the center of the stage have enjoyed the account suspension package many times and have been promoted to the account suspension Douge. In the end, many people had no choice but to leave and walked into the arms of telegram, discord and Twitter.

People in the circle have also tried hard. Status, which raised $64 million in 2017, was highly anticipated. Many CEX chat rooms were also bustling, but none of them have been able to iterate into a native social platform for the cryptocurrency circle. It may be that the user scale of the cryptocurrency circle was still relatively small and widely distributed, lacking a common cultural foundation for deep interaction; it may also be that the cryptocurrency circle is in a very early stage and many tracks are in the blue ocean. Startup teams are more willing to try categories with lower landing difficulty and low promotion cost.

2. Advantages of Binance Square

Binance Square is backed by Binance, the No. 1 traffic in the cryptocurrency circle, and has a huge potential user base. It has a growth foundation that is difficult for new social platforms to achieve, which is the most enviable advantage of Binance Square. With this advantage, even if the final product strength of Binance Square is average or even outdated, it can still capture a large number of users and form a certain influence.

Before Binance Square was launched, Binance had tried forums, chat rooms, and live broadcasts, but none of them achieved a major breakthrough and the overall impact was average. In the Internet world, the positioning of forums is somewhat similar to that of radio stations, which have great advantages in specific social scenarios. Chat rooms are an extension of natural conversations in the online world. Due to the fast information refresh, the completely open conversation experience is not good, and it is suitable for scenarios where there is a host to maintain the focus of the conversation. Live broadcasts are very dependent on the ability of the anchor. Excellent anchors can bring huge traffic, but talents are rare, and there are no well-known anchors in the currency circle. For these reasons, these forms are difficult to grow into the top social platforms in the currency circle.

Binance Square has hope. Whether it adopts the square-style interaction method of Twitter and Weibo; or further adds instant messaging functions and takes the scaled-down version of wx and QQ route; or moves towards short video methods and imitates Tik Tok and Kuaishou, it has the possibility of becoming a native social platform in the cryptocurrency circle.

 

3. Some thoughts

After users are deeply linked, a huge network effect will be generated, which will not only bring huge commercial value, but also build a deep and wide moat. This is a cake that is enough to make everyone jealous. Of course, we also need to know that where there are opportunities, there must be challenges. A road that no one has walked on may be because no one has walked on it, or it may be because no one can walk it through.

From the perspective of content alone, Binance Square still seems quite thin. Although Binance employees have made great efforts to introduce various contents since its launch, it is still far from enough. We live in an era of information explosion and have become accustomed to all kinds of information flooding around us and enjoying all kinds of feeding. The Chinese content in the cryptocurrency circle itself is not rich enough, especially high-quality original content, which is very scarce. In addition to being restricted by the strict management environment, this phenomenon is also due to the lack of positive incentive channels for creators.

From the perspective of the development stage of social networking, the square-style social method has long been proven to be inferior to instant messaging. At present, short videos have a tendency to dominate the martial arts world. They are no longer just an entertainment tool to kill time. They are beginning to conquer multiple directions such as entertainment, social networking, sales, and culture. Even Tencent, the instant messaging overlord, is anxious and actively promotes the short video business. Short videos are swallowing up the world. They are no longer just eye-catching headlines. At this time, if we still push square-style social products that have been defeated by instant messaging, will it be a bit outdated?

From the execution level, there are also many contradictions. The first is the contradiction between the rights and responsibilities of information. Unlike public social platforms, Binance Square naturally carries the label of Binance. Any information in it may be misunderstood as endorsed by Binance, which will obviously become a hidden danger. The second is the problem of information release review. If the review is too strict, in addition to huge manpower expenditures, various highly centralized products will appear, and we all know all kinds of 404; if it is too lenient, there will be regulatory risks. The third is the problem of initial incentives for creators. If the product is formed, it will naturally copy the existing business model to realize it, and the creators will definitely be full of various bonuses. But it won’t work in the early stage. Purely generating electricity with love cannot meet a market with huge traffic. This reminds me of an old saying that the biggest contradiction in the primary stage is that backward productivity cannot meet the people’s growing material and cultural needs:)

Finally, let me say what Binance wants to hear: Dear creators who want to attract traffic, hurry up and grab a spot, what if Binance Square is successful?

PS: The above is just for my own entertainment and is not intended as any investment advice! The key is that I did not confiscate a penny from Binance!!!

 

Thanks for reading, and give it a thumbs up!