The use of entrepreneurial companies disorderly elephant clusters: virtual Increase in flow

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The use of entrepreneurial companies disorderly elephant clusters: virtual Increase in flow

Lead: In Friday, the online edition of the US Wired magazine wrote that the development of mobile applications attracted a lot of money. In order to achieve substantial economic returns, many of the lack of foresight of application developers at the use of dirty means to increase traffic, causing this burgeoning market chaos.

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Platform closure

As money flows into the application industry, the stakes are bigger and the developers are hold, starting to play a crooked line: buying traffic, fighting pornography, cheating, and doing anything to raise the rankings. For the sake of competition, these app developers are willing to use up all the dirty tricks-not only deceiving the user's time, but also deceiving investors ' money.

"I do believe someone will manipulate the data for financing," he said. "All financing companies seem to have made a breakthrough in data, some can reflect reality, and others are Kleiner," said Matt Murphy, partner Murphy, a venture capital firm. ”

If the "web is Dead" argument is established, the open ecosystem that relies on browsers will be replaced by closed applications, then it is not just venture capitalists and software developers who should pay attention to this improper behavior. In the ever-changing application industry, more and more enterprises began to abuse users ' privacy, waste user time, and even destroy the reputation of users. If the trend towards capital and user flows continues, the situation will only get worse.

This is exacerbated by the inherent lack of transparency in applications. In the web, advertising, kickbacks, and suspicious content are most often at a glance. In the application, the user's behavior is locked in proprietary software, trading through itunes and Google Play and other private platform, even advertising can only through the Tapjoy and flurry and other closed platforms. This creates an ideal environment for all sorts of vices.

Many vices

There are a lot of vices in today's applications, and while the flow of this approach is difficult to sustain, it can still be short-lived. There are several main:

1, the purchase of users

For example, when you play Android, you need to use a virtual currency to buy a new prop, but you don't want to use a credit card. No relationship, the application of built-in ads can remind you, as long as the installation of another application can get some gold coins.

This approach is called "Pay by Installation". Tapjoy could earn 100 million dollars a year before Apple blocked the model last year. Today, this pattern is mainly prevalent in Android systems.

2, advertising

The most typical example is the use of Facebook and Google (microblogging) AdWords platform to promote the application. But with the development of precision advertising technology, the application of built-in advertising is booming. The size of the market is expected to reach $3 billion trillion, beyond mobile web advertising.

3, recommended

Tapjoy and Flurry's appcircle network can help paid application publishers improve traffic, registration, and even installation. The business is going by leaps and bounds. Peter Farago, vice president of Flurry, said that since the introduction of Appcircle 1.5 ago, the company's recommendation business has grown rapidly, and its current annual income has reached $ thousands of trillion Peter Faragu.

4, spread the rubbish information

Application developers who have partnerships with social networks can turn on the sharing function by default, turning into a short-term spam disseminator. This pattern sends more information, has more coverage, and requires fewer licenses than the conventional approach. The biggest advantage is that this is a completely free way to promote.

5. Improper content

Application developers have some room to play when dealing with pirated and pornographic content provided by users. In general, they will withdraw the improper content as quickly as possible-few application developers are willing to associate with such content. But if the flow is too hungry, it is possible to take this thirst way-and so on upload the content two weeks after the deletion,

With so many means, the temptation to flow is becoming stronger.

"It's certainly going to happen again, mostly for survival." Flurry Vice President Faragu said, "It's like taking part in a very important dance, and if you want to raise money, you want to look perfect." This is similar to the situation in which listed companies issue quarterly reports every three months. ”

Three major cases

But since vices have spread, it is not easy to distinguish between good and bad.

Take the social video sharing platform Viddy as an example. In April this year, the service reached a record high, at almost the same time, the company completed a total of 30 million U.S. dollars in the B-round venture capital, valued at about 350 million U.S. dollars. But Google's flow database for advertisers showed that when the financing was announced in May, Viddy's daily independent user visits fell from more than 2 million to less than 1 million. Viddy's surge in financing was also reflected in Google Trends and Alexa's traffic statistics. At the same time, the daily active users of Viddy also reduced from 5 million in April to 1 million in May, according to AppData, an application analysis site.

"Viddy did it-their highest flow occurred during the massive financing period and then slipped." Michael Saibert Michael Seibel said he was the CEO of Viddy rival Socialcam.

But Viddy said the round of financing was completely aboveboard. A spokesman for the company said that Viddy did not invest in any marketing or advertising funds, only because of the integration with Facebook in early March, and was dubbed "the next Instagram" by the media, which led to a significant increase in traffic. "All growth is 100% compliance. "the spokesman said.

Even if Viddy does not buy the flow, the company has also been controversial in the past because of the slow pace of removal of pornographic content in February this year, when Viddy apps were briefly off the shelves in Apple's App store.

In fact, Socialcam himself was not able to escape the charges of inflated traffic. April 30 reported that the company from more than 30 top angel investors to obtain funding. May 2, Science and technology blog The Next Web-authored article reveals how Socialcam gets traffic through a marketing service company called Free App A, and consolidates YouTube video content, rather than relying entirely on user-uploaded content. When a user encounters a YouTube video provided by Socialcam on Facebook, it is a tricky trick to register the app before clicking it.

Socialcam completed the financing at the end of April. According to Google and Alexa data, after this, the company's traffic also fell sharply in May. But then rebounded.

Seibel said the surge in traffic was not helping finance. "All of our angel investors were in the stock before the surge in traffic," he said. "he said. But even so, Socialcam has attracted the attention of venture capitalists.

Murphy believes that both Viddy and Socialcam have wisely established links with Facebook, taking advantage of the latter's social map. In other words, they have dramatically increased traffic without spending a penny. "The flow of Viddy has risen for a week, Socialcam is doing well and the flow has only started to fall after two weeks of financing," he said. ”

Kleiner's venture capitalists have a way of finding problems in due diligence, Murphy said. "We value the daily active user, the number of visits and the duration of each visit in order to better understand the status quo." "he said.

The recent surge in the branchout of professional social networks has also aroused widespread concern. The service is similar to LinkedIn, but does not launch an independent website, but rather builds services based on Facebook. Google's data show that in April this year, BranchOut's independent user traffic soared to nearly 300,000 a day. According to AppData data, the service's monthly active users even more than 8 million. April 19, BranchOut announced the completion of 25 million U.S. dollars in financing. Before the end of the month, BranchOut's traffic dropped to One-third, and the monthly active user dropped to 2.5 million.

"BranchOut is a Ponzi scheme," Mark Drey, a recruitment consultant, wrote in a blog post in early June this year after BranchOut's traffic plunged. Business Insider, the tech blogger, then began to pay attention to the company and questioned whether its interest in attracting traffic was aimed at attracting financing. BranchOut the CEO denied it and said the company no longer needed more money.

The company spokesman also told Wired magazine: "BranchOut did not complete the C-round adjustment of growth strategy this spring." Monthly user and registered user growth, which began last year, is only a by-product of organic growth. ”

But BranchOut did not deny that, after the completion of the financing, the company did reduce the way junk information is promoted. BranchOut often uses a buddy relationship to publish information without user authorization. "Collecting friends ' data without the permission of a user friend seems to have become the most annoying place for BranchOut," one blogger said in April this year. ”

After completing the most recent round of large-scale funding, BranchOut CEO Rick Marigny Business Insider said the company was changing its promotional strategy because of the loss of users. "We canceled this type of user access. "We now need to evolve to the next stage, which is to retain existing users." "The company added in an official statement:" We will weaken the user acquisition strategy in the next few months, and instead focus on improving the branchout user experience. ”

Capital inflows

The influx of funds to the field of application has driven a spate of frauds such as BranchOut.

In February this year, Apple bought a 50 million-dollar application-mining tool called Chomp. In the second month, Zynga, a social gaming company, spent 180 million of dollars acquiring Omgpop, the developer of Draw something. In April, Facebook increased its bets and spent 1 billion of dollars on the acquisition of photo-sharing apps Instagram. In June, Google also joined the melee, acquired the office of application developers Quickoffice, but did not disclose the specific amount.

Faragu says all companies want to be the next to be acquired. Because of the great rewards, the trick of inflated traffic is even more tempting. "In the long run, the long-term vision is the way to sustainable development." "But for some people, if they can make it to the company, it's done." (Ding Macro)