Facebook Home is one of the big four portals to the mobile internet

Not so long ago, I just wrote, "The First World War on mobile internet is coming to an end, are you still alive?" 》。 In the mobile internet, the Americans are sitting on the operating system, the Korean people are in the hardware market, with the first phase of the overall situation, the next war will spread to the application and network areas. Sure enough, Facebook suddenly unveiled a new generation of Android apps "Facebookhome". The legendary Facebook phone is not a mobile phone, but a "lock-screen + desktop" between the operating system and applications. Facebook is coming, and it's also a third-party desktop field that we've been fighting for two years golauncher.

As early as in the distant internet age, there is a word, access to the world.

The entrance refers to the way in which users look for information and solve problems, which means they get a huge amount of users. Although the mastery of users is not directly equivalent to the business of cash, but if the loss of this position, but also lost the opportunity to become the industry giants. Internet pioneers who make browsers, do information portals, do search and socialize, hide behind the infighting over user access.

The same is true of mobile Internet. All ambitious companies, moving into the mobile Internet, are not running products with simple services, both hardware and software, as the "aspirant" tools to complete the mobile Internet layout. The fundamental goal is to aggregate users onto their platforms and gain a higher range of benefits through subsequent applications and traffic.

Mobile Internet today, has formed four main portals: Application market, browser, super app and mobile desktop.

The big picture has been decided by the App Store

In the early days of mobile internet, browsers became the user's behavioral habit of continuing the internet on the phone. As the iphone turned out, Apple redefined the underlying structure through Ios+appstore, and mobile users began learning to use local apps to connect to rich Web services. With the follow-up of Android-googleplay, double-hung, together with the establishment of the operating system to set up a platform for the application of "I" to distribute the rules of the game. The App store becomes the first level of access to the mobile Internet for users.

The application store entrance has been decided because the App Store has a close connection with the operating system behind it. For the current global mobile internet market, the power of the operating system level has been basically established. Google's Android and Apple's iOS will dominate the underlying ecology of the mobile internet for a long time, with both sides becoming more secure and their ecosystems becoming more complete. In this dimension, the opportunity to bequeath to the sender cannot be said no, but has been negligible.

On top of that, the App Store and the GooglePlay will sit on the same footing as the operating system.

In addition, Apple's usual style, App store software consumption and itunes audio and video consumption are merging with each other; Google renamed Androidmarket last March as GooglePlay, also to put the software market and the previous Google Play operating the audio and video , the publishing market is in one place, allowing users to complete more mobile internet consumption in one interface.

Of course, in a handful of countries, such as China, with policy and legal barriers, there is still a relatively independent market, and under the aegis of Android, it gives the third party Android app market an opportunity. Pianan a corner, can also occupy a lot of shares, but it is difficult to achieve greater victory.

The long journey of the browser

On the Internet, browsers have always been the most fiercely contested entry point, from Netscape to IE, Safari, Firefox and Chrome, all wanting to be king.

After apps are designed to be used by users in the mainstream of mobile internet services, the new entrants certainly do not want to be ruled by the App Store and GooglePlay. So the voice of the browser resurgence began to rise, its existence is based on the Internet users on the table to cultivate many years of browser access habits.

Especially with the rapid development of HTML5, many good experiences that can only be obtained in app can be implemented on the web side. Developers who are unwilling to be limited to app stores agree that browsers are the most capable portals to subvert the app model. Even Google and Apple, the mobile internet leaders, are neatly standing in the H5 camp and are more determined by developers ' expectations of browsers.

However, in fact, insiders know that reality is much paler than ideal. In H5 's game, almost all players have a mentality: both the hope that this efficient carrier can be standardized as soon as possible, but also to ensure that their vested interests can not because of the rapid spread of H5 by the vicious impact.

The official announcement of the HTML5 standardization was completed in 2014 years. But the symbolic significance of this official time is far greater than the practical meaning. In the foreseeable future, the game and checks and balances of HTML5 between large companies will directly affect the performance of browsers and Web applications on mobile devices, whether the richness of the function or the efficiency of the operation, there will be a significant gap with the local app. The user experience can also become worse.

The data also illustrate the problem, and once-bullish browsers and HTML5 have not defeated app as the primary mobile internet access, as expected. Flurryanalytics data shows that 80% of the time a smartphone and tablet user uses the device is on the application and only 20% for browsers. From the flow point of view, the browser generated traffic is also far below the total volume of the app, and the use of time and flow ratio are showing a downward trend.

In addition to the experience that the local app wants to go far, the deeper reason why browsers cannot move more territory in the war on Internet access is that the mobile Internet and the desktop Internet are fundamentally different in how information is organized. The internet has established its information organization way with the Web station as the core, the interaction between people and the site is the most frequent information flow on the table, so the browser becomes the main network entrance.

But at the moving end, app becomes the most important information organization way of mobile Internet, the interaction between user and application provider is done through individual application, and the mobile browser's behavior also comes from the user's inheritance to the Internet access, but the main information flow is no longer spread around the Web site. Browser marginalization is also inevitable.

The burgeoning Super app

Why can app stores and browsers become mobile Internet portals? Because they both attract both ends of the portal, one end is the service and application provided by the developer, one end is the huge share of the user's operating system brings the user, the store's distribution channel and the payment partition attracts the developer, the HTML5 's powerful function and good vision attract the developer.

Is app really a mobile internet portal? This is a very strange question. Like on the table on the Internet ask: The website is not an Internet portal. Navigation sites, portals, search engines, social networks are all portals of the internet, but my personal blog is obviously not.

It's easy to be an app, but it doesn't guarantee that your app will have millions of stable users. The report shows that no more than 15 apps are used by users on their handsets. Only a few of these apps, on the basis of the millions of stable users, with a strong capital and resource advantages, the platform to become a super app. For example, instant messaging and social access to the micro-letter may be in the mobile internet to rebuild QQ on the PC side of the brilliant, as a super app identity as a portal.

What the micro-credit public platform is doing is like what Facebook did on the Internet on the table. Facebook, which has 132 million active users in 2007, has announced that Facebook's social user relationship data and user profiles are open to third-party developers through a KPI interface. On an open framework, third party developers can develop applications that integrate with the core features of Facebook. The platform not only quickly made Facebook a complete ecosystem, it even made Zynga, a social gaming company rooted in a web platform. Its success has also attracted the domestic social network operators to emulate.

But the sheer amount of money, resources and market share needed by the Super app is a decision that no one else wants to do other than the original desktop, where the Internet has a huge resource advantage (in China, Tencent-Weibo and Sina-Weibo).

The most recent so the most potential mobile desktop

Facebookhome released, the media uproar, that Facebook to do mobile phones, the result of a customized "lock screen + desktop." But for me, Facebookhome's release was a sign of confirmation. We have been developing golauncher painstaking for more than two years, more than micro-letter, UC has a large number of international users earlier, Facebook home into the bureau, and we are optimistic about the third party desktop in the market, and another giant Facebook.

It is clear from the Facebookhome's function that it is a mobile desktop tailored for Facebook's heavily customizable users, by controlling the user's lock screen and first screen, and making Facebook and social networking The center of the user's mobile phone, all around the user's social network, Other behaviors are socially dependent.

App Store, browser, super app and mobile desktop The four portals of the mobile internet are exclusive. For most users, the type of service required is limited, tools, video, gaming, socializing, shopping ... Each portal attempts to provide users with a one-stop mobile internet service that does not pass through other portals when the user connects to the network through one of the portals.

For users, the expectation is a more "shallow" entrance. In the PC network, the search engine can become the main Internet access, because it is the fastest way for users to reach their destinations. The reason why the navigation station can be set up is precisely that it provides the most "shallow" entrance for Internet novice users.

Mobile Internet is the same, the battle of the entrance, the depth of the fight. Who is closest to the user, who is most hopeful. In the four major entrances, the Super app is the deepest and the path to the service is the most complex. Application market second, but its main function is to distribute app. Browsers are similar to apps, or just a special app.

Borrow Asymco founder Horacedediu's wonderful metaphor: Android is a big river, Google is figuring out how to fish, facebookhome but a step up the upstream.

Mobile Desktop in the "Application market, browser, super app and desktop" this mobile internet four major portals is the most shallow, but also the development potential and the largest market prospects. There are many things you can do when the desktop is wrapped around the Android native system at the bottom with a good user experience and custom service. So there will be a lot of third-party desktop birth, such as vertical class Kindle. This time the facebookhome went further, but in essence it was still the vertical class table that highlighted specific features (social or electrical) that weakened other applications to subordinate positions.

Our hands of the golauncher, to enhance efficiency and personalized function, in the third party Android desktop market immersed in two years, today has achieved googleplay total download ranking ranked fifth, personalized products ranked first in the results. Can imagine, with Facebookhome into the Bureau, mobile desktop status is confirmed, will attract more service providers in different ways to enter the Third-party desktop market.

History is also really interesting. Google in the desktop internet age does not have an operating system, but its search engine is the Internet's first portal, but also through the powerful cloud services, the Microsoft Press behind the scenes. Mobile internet age, Google became the operating system builders, Golauncher and facebookhome These mobile desktop are borrowing it.

It made me a little excited and a little nervous. It's exciting to be able to fight alongside the world's Giants in this field, to grab a wider range of mobile desktop in the four major mobile internet portals, and the tension is that our opponents are being killed from different corners, and the challenge is much greater.

But the internet is such an industry, constantly leather their own lives, can stand firm, otherwise, waiting for others to leather our lives.