The Red is a platform that allows consumers to showcase their lifestyles, and users record the positivity and their daily lives by sharing text, photos, and short videos. Apart from beauty, personal care, diet recipe, fitness and other topics that most females care about, Red also has information about travel, home, hotels, restaurants, entertainment and more, touching on all aspects of consumer experience and life. In this case, Red is one of my most used social media recently. But rather than sharing my own life, I tend to like and forward the posts I am interested in and follow bloggers who have similar lifestyles and interests with me.
I am not a big fan of uploading photos and sharing my life on Red, but I am willing to update my Red account after playing the new Larp game that I found interesting. The review posts are used to have my experiences, personal feelings, pros and cons, recommend or not and some photos. Many Larp game players search for reviews and evaluations before deciding which Larp game they would play, so my posts sometimes receive a few likes and comments. Still, mostly I recorded my life through these posts instead of attracting likes and followers.
Whether I was on the Red or uploaded new posts, the performance of my everyday social media usage on the Red helped the platform increase clicks and traffic. Every action on the Red, whether clicking, swiping up and down, flicking left and right or even gawking, the data collection model quantifies each of these actions into a data record and produces a consumer portrait for me. In this case, the platform could not only suggest content or products they think I might be interested in based on my user profile or sell me to advertisers or manufacturers as part of a “target group” and receive profits.
Before purchasing products, users of Red will usually browse the reviews of other consumers, which is undoubtedly a practical reference for consumers who lack purchasing experience. The number of clicks determines the trending and rank of consumer reviews. My unconscious actions of clicking and following are building traffic and awareness for the Red influencers and increasing the Red’s total clicks and hotness. On the Red, the number of followers and clicks are directly linked to trust, so many advertisers will choose popular influencers to publish recommended posts and buy recommended spots to attract more users to click on their ads. When the influencers’ popularity and traffic increase, trust and reputation are also built with the users to generate revenue. Therefore, some ordinary users are willing to create authentic and close to their lives, making connections with other users and increasing the attraction.
The operation model of Red directly links users’ daily behaviours with the traffic and the trust. This model enables advertisers to identify the target audience of their products more accurately, sell their products through users’ trust in influencers, and meet consumers’ needs for purchasing information and services simultaneously. This model makes every user is a potential KOL and encourage every user to post, which is also helpful to maintain the total user activity of the Red.
I “worked” so hard for the Red, but I have never received any actual pay, including discount, voucher or wages. Red is free to use and contains various information, which is my biggest reward. I did not spend plenty of time on it and post my review regularly; using the Red for me is leisure instead of working. In other words, I use the Red and provide my clicks to increase the reputation of influencers and help the Red maintain the user activity; the Red reward me with the free content and information, which is a perfect beneficial relationship.
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