豆瓣 (Douban)
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
豆瓣 (Douban) is a Chinese site built around books, cinema and music. Its foundation is entries for works, with ratings and reviews, on top of which sit themed groups, personal diaries and lists. The platform describes itself in a single line in the markup of its home page: "recommendations, reviews and price comparisons for books, films and music recordings, as well as the distinctive cultural life of the city".
How the service works is explained on its about page: the idea is to find, among a great many users, people with similar tastes and to get recommendations through their preferences rather than through editorial selection. The same page says that all the content, the categories and the filters are created by the members themselves, and that helpful marks on reviews push them higher. The copyright line on the page reads 2005–2026.
For an outside communications specialist this is not "the Chinese Facebook" but a reference work with a community attached: the audience comes for an assessment of a film or a book, not for a brand. The operator is 北京豆网科技有限公司 (Beijing Douban Technology, "Beijing Douwang Keji"), as stated in the legal section.
Who's here
Douban does not disclose its audience figures publicly. On the pages we opened — about, the help centre and the legal section — there is no registered-user count, no monthly activity and no country breakdown. The company has no investor section: it is not publicly listed.
The interface language is not stated in the home page markup attributes, and there are no hreflang versions. In practice the whole service is Chinese.
Something else matters more for planning — the entry barrier. The privacy policy requires confirmation by a mainland Chinese mobile phone number and, for certain features, photographs of both sides of an identity document. That cuts off some foreign participants at the registration stage.
Getting started
An account is created with a phone number or an email address, subject to the caveat about a Chinese number above. It is separately stipulated that users under 18 must work in "minor mode" with the consent of a legal guardian.
There is no separate "business account" with document verification on the public pages. Business interaction is built around email: the contacts page names the areas of "brand advertising", programmatic cooperation and partnership on merchandise projects, with the addresses posted as images. The same page gives the hotline number 4008353331.
The working unit for a community is the group (小组, xiǎozǔ). The help pages describe the limits outright: one person may join no more than 500 groups and create no more than 15; the request is made through a form on the group creation page. Open groups are visible in the general directory.
What you can publish
The help centre lists the formats available to a member: a profile and a "board", broadcasts, diaries, albums, participation in groups and mini-sites, as well as reviews in the film, book and music sections — all of it is covered in separate help sections. Inside a group there are ceilings of its own: up to 10 pinned topics and up to 4 "friendly" groups.
The prohibitions are gathered in the community principles. You may not post discrimination and incitement to hatred on the grounds of race, nationality, religion, sex, age, origin, orientation and physical characteristics; insults, defamation and false information; threats; material that infringes copyright. A separate clause forbids spreading advertising and spam and publishing material with a marketing purpose that spoils the user experience, as well as disclosing other people's personal data.
How to grow
Douban has no public description of its feed algorithm. The about page says only that the algorithms are "continuously refined in the background" and that a "helpful" mark pushes a review up. The platform names no weights and no thresholds — there is nothing to base a reach forecast on.
There is no advertising dashboard with rates on the public pages: everything comes down to correspondence with the addresses on the contacts page. The platform publishes no prices.
The ban on artificial growth deserves separate mention. The community principles explicitly name as violations rating a single film from several accounts, machine imitation of a human in ratings and voting, calls to inflate a rating and the hiring of "web armies" (水军, shuǐjūn). This is not a formality: a film's rating is the platform's main product, and it protects that more fiercely than anything else.
Path to monetization
Douban's public pages carry no creator payout programme: no share of ad revenue, no subscription to an author, no fund.
There is, however, a direct ban on earning from a community. The group management rules require organizers not to charge for running a group or for membership in it, and not to sell or rent out a group. That is, the familiar model of "grow a community, then sell access" is a violation here, with a risk of the organizer being replaced or the account blocked.
Tools and automation
The domain developers.douban.com did not respond at all when checked, and a call to api.douban.com/v2 returned code 403. That alone is not proof that the API is "closed for good".
The legal section, however, leaves no ambiguity in the other direction: commercial use of Douban's data, automated collection and web scraping are forbidden, as is the use of the data in artificial intelligence models and algorithms. Any scheduling or scraping service that works with the platform does so against its rules.
Limits and rules
- Age. Under 18 — only "minor mode" with the consent of a legal guardian.
- Groups. No more than 500 joins and 15 created groups per person, 10 pinned topics, 4 friendly groups.
- Sanctions. Content removal, a temporary restriction of 1, 7, 15 days or longer, permanent blocking; data can be recovered within 180 days of a block through the web version.
- Offending groups. A group whose subject conflicts with the platform's principles is dissolved; the organizer may be replaced and the account blocked.
- Data. The policy refers to the requirements of the PRC cybersecurity law and describes the collection of network, device, behavioural and payment data.
- Automation. Scraping, commercial use of the data and training models on it are forbidden.
Who it's for
It suits publishers, film distributors, music labels and authors whose audience is Chinese readers and viewers: an entry for a work on Douban lives for years and functions as a reference record. It suits researchers of taste: ratings and reviews are the product here.
It does not suit a fast advertising campaign: there is no self-service, no prices, everything goes through correspondence. It does not suit teams without a Chinese phone number and the Chinese language — registration and moderation are built on them. And it is entirely unsuitable for anyone planning automated data collection or community monetization: the platform forbids both in plain words.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself like this: «提供图书、电影、音乐唱片的推荐、评论和价格比较，以及城市独特的文化生活。»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: China · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions