Tool products share some common characteristics, such as low technical barriers, NO content inheritance, no social attributes, localized use, and high reproducibility; it also has advantages such as excellent experience, outstanding UI, large user base, and solving actual needs. The input method, weather, notes, and bus query are all classified by the author. To a certain extent, these products have a high user stickiness (Open frequency), which can solve a real pain point in users' life, for example, the previous input method is difficult to use, not intelligent, and has poor experience. sogou's input method can solve these problems in one fell swoop, and the weather application also provides users with more accurate suggestions for travel, even these applications have become indispensable applications in users' lives. However, another fact that cannot be concealed is that these applications address very small demands in users' lives. You may say that any product starts from solving small demands and grows into a large product. This is completely correct. The author cannot define a large and small range of requirements. However, the "small" of these applications is reflected in the aforementioned lack of content inheritance, social attributes, and the inability to address deeper spiritual needs, what is reflected in revenue is that there is no stable profit model, or there is no profit model at all. Previously, the author summarized three stages of tool product development, namely, the first stage, pure tools; the second stage, moving towards the cloud, or generating value from UGC; and the third stage, transition to vertical communities. I am bold enough to make a correction. The three stages of tool products are: the first stage, pure tools; the second stage, going to the cloud or vertical community; the third stage, unknown. Unknown, because everyone is exploring and there are no success stories to learn from. The following are some tool products that are difficult to transform to the platform.
Sogou Input MethodAs mentioned in the previous article by tiger sniffing, tool applications are currently exploring on two roads, one of which is on the cloud, and sogou input method is the earliest explorer on this road. This allows users to synchronize word libraries, enable cloud data for uncommon words, and update popular new words at any time, so that users who have been suffering from hard-to-use input methods for many years are highlighted. These innovations lay a solid foundation for the rapid accumulation of users in the early sogou input method. At present, the number of users has exceeded 0.4 billion, which is the third largest client in China after QQ and 360 security guards. With sogou, which has a massive number of users, it has been commercialized for two years since the input method was launched. The earliest commercial product was a pop-up window. In other forms of marketing, we are constantly innovating, such as skin marketing. sogou has successively opened the skin platform and cooperated with advertisers to customize the skin of product themes, when you enter pinyin for a product, the product website is displayed. These methods have limited revenue for sogou input methods. The number of users is not proportional to the revenue. sogou input methods start to shift from products to services. In September 2012, sogou released the "sogou Input Method intelligent edition". Its recently launched "heart-to-heart" feature is quite eye-catching. This feature enables users to input nine categories of information, including music, TV series, weather, and train tickets, the content is displayed directly at the bottom of the input box, revealing the ambition of sogou's input method to break through the bottleneck and seize the entrance to life service information. Whether the comment can be used to intercept search engines remains to be tested. Although sogou's input method has been trying to find a breakthrough, but from the current situation, it has not jumped out of the shackles of sogou's browser and sogou's search traffic. According to the current public financial report, there is no sogou Input Method for revenue of a single product, but it is clear that the vast majority of sogou's revenue of 2012 billion US dollars in 0.13 billion comes from sogou search and sogou website navigation, because it is unable to create more value-added sogou input methods for users, it is always unable to obtain a large independent revenue. At the end of January this year, sogou announced that its mobile phone input method had more than 0.1 billion million active users each month. The exciting news was behind the efforts to continue seeking for a breakthrough.
EvernoteThis is its localized name, formerly Evernote. It is one of the few Silicon Valley companies that focus on the Chinese market and quickly put it into practice. Note application is a big demand application in the mobile Internet era. It can easily record, save what you want, synchronize it to other devices, or share it with social websites, in a word, it helps you manage your memories. Under the trend of intelligence, it is a very attractive product. Evernote has around 50 million users worldwide, but the number of Evernote users in China is only about 3 million (public data is December 2012 in 2.6 million). For a product that has been launched for nearly one year, this number is not satisfactory. By contrast, the number of users of youdao cloud notes is about 10 million (launched two months earlier than Evernote), and it still shows that Silicon Valley companies often appear ungrounded in China. Evernote's policy was to build a platform from the very beginning, and its Platform path can be summarized into two aspects. First, the Baobao open platform. Currently, the Chinese products that work with Evernote on this platform include UC, fresh fruit, zaker, and bean fruit food. At the same time, Evernote also opens interfaces to common developers. Its main applications are, save the read content with one click. This is a more practical function, but the premise is that you need to have an Evernote account, so it is actually a way to enhance the stickiness of existing users rather than attracting a large number of new users. Second, it covers more daily services. From the beginning, there were only notes, to the subsequent circles, Food records, contacts, ink marks, and self-developed browser plug-ins, Evernote is covering more daily services, to meet the needs of different groups of people. However, I am also certain that,
Whether these behaviors are recorded in the form of notes, whether they are the best mode and whether they can create the best user experience. For example, to record and share food, more people tend to choose food community applications. For example, Wang Zhuang, co-founder of 36kr, once said, "how to change mobile phone photos to record other people's ways, it may not be suitable for Chinese people's social habits." The confidence that the rich-handsome Silicon Valley company is not eager to complicate its products is that it has the support of huge amounts of financing and value-added services. Taking Evernote as an example, if the proportion is calculated as 4% of the Public proportion, since its launch, revenue is about 30 million RMB, which is a considerable number. At present, the impression note team in China is mainly engaged in brand operation and promotion, and is competing with the free and more Chinese characteristics (such as handwriting notes) note-taking applications in China such as taoyun, how to build your own barriers to test the team's innovation. Finally, the author's point is:
1. The ultimate main business of Evernote is certainly not for notes, food, and other applications. These are only for the frontend, and cloud computing is the ultimate main business. 2. Evernote seems to be C, and eventually to B is more reliable.
Moji weatherIn early March, moji.com announced that the number of users had exceeded 0.1 billion. moji.com became the minority mobile app in China, and it was reported that it had received the third round of financing in last August, with investors including innovative workshops. Before last August, it had more than 60 million users. The third financing is the time scene weather function of moji. This feature was originally intended for users to take and upload weather photos in real time to make up for the inaccuracy of weather data. This feature brings social networking and image sharing elements to moji weather, and finds a breakthrough point for it to seek to break through the dilemma of pure tools. The company revealed that the time scene function was launched for two months, converting moji weather into 2 million registered users. Of course, increasing the time scene weather is not just for the previous reason, because of the local nature of the weather, mobile, social networking, and local combination, a complete solomo product is present, the next story will be a lot easier to tell. However, according to my own experience, the Time Scene weather is not significant to local users. If this person is in Guangzhou, he has a need to watch weather forecasts and weather trends, but I have no need to browse the time scene pictures uploaded by Guangzhou netizens. This function is more useful for travel travelers, among them, the social nature is also discounted. In addition, regular weather uses Pinterest-like image walls for display. In fact, Pinterest-like products are not as popular as imagined in China. It is also a major problem how to better attract users. Another risk of tool transformation to vertical social networking is that the profit cycle is infinitely prolonged, and the effective profit model of mobile social networking is still under exploration, A successful transformation of tools is bound to go through the long process of tools> social networking> profit. There is a great deal of uncertainty about whether the transformation is successful or whether the operation can be successful after the transformation. Fortunately, moji.com has no profit pressure for the moment. The existing revenue (display advertisements, brand embedding, and application recommendations) can offset some of the costs. With the support of financing, moji.com has steadily promoted commercialization, it may be able to create a new business model.
Go DesktopThis is a product rarely seen in the media, produced by 3G portal companies. The last time I saw a report, it was the paid 3D mobile desktop next launcher launched by the company, with revenue of over 1 million in 2 weeks. Similarly, little-known is that go desktop has more than 0.2 billion users worldwide, which is an impressive number even globally. Go desktop is an Android mobile phone desktop beautification software that meets users' personalized mobile phone desktop requirements. Go desktop adopts the entry policy. As for the entry point, the mobile browser becomes a very large entry point on the mobile Internet because users need to access the network and use the browser to open webpages. Similarly, the mobile desktop seems to be almost the biggest entry to the mobile Internet, because the user opens the mobile phone every day and is always using the desktop for any operation, however, the biggest difference between it and mobile browsers is that desktop beautification is a local behavior that can be done locally on the mobile phone without the need to open the network, if you do not open the network, you cannot start the portal. However, go desktop is no longer just a local desktop beautification software. Any tool product that wants to transform the service platform will not be willing to simply use local tools. Go desktop enables the mobile phone network to recommend various wall paper, themes, plug-ins, and applications for users. Therefore, go desktop's Open Platform Policy is derived. On the open platform, go desktop and sogou input methods are very similar. One is to build a platform where designers upload their own wall paper and themes for users to download, the paid themes are divided into (most of them are free of charge, and the overseas version is partially charged). Second, open interfaces allow developers to develop go desktop plug-ins on their own. According to previous reports, Facebook has cooperated with Go desktop to develop official plug-ins. However, the open platform is more about user experience and cannot generate revenue. Currently, go desktop is the only channel that can generate large revenues. It is app distribution. The company also has go products and other app distribution products, similar to app stores, which can bring a certain amount of revenue to a large user base. As overseas users account for 70% of total users, at the end of 2012, 3G portals set up offices in the United States to expand overseas markets. According to the company's previous Director, go desktop's overseas cooperation is still dominated by traffic models, with a revenue target of $2 million this year. From the current revenue model, go desktop has not jumped out of the traffic pilot model, but its international route is worth encouraging and may provide a clear path for itself and its domestic counterparts.
Conclusion
Tool products have accumulated users in terms of practicality and good experience. After a certain level of accumulation, more services are extended, and the tool is getting heavier and heavier, and the experience is also deteriorated.. For example, the sogou input method has recently added the "heart-to-heart" function. The larger the input box, the more shortcut keys, and whether the user accepts two more buttons during the Fast typing process, or stop and click a button with the mouse to show the result. It takes time to test. In moji weather, because of the increasing number of functions, the iPhone interface is already a little crowded and may be slightly incorrect, operations are also more complex. While commercialization, avoiding downgrading of user experience is a problem that needs to be considered in the transformation of all tools. The above four products are lucky to have enough users and ample funds for commercialization. There are also many products that are dead or dying because they only use pure tools and have not crossed the first hurdle: User accumulation, such as the closed 8684 bus and subway APP groups. For general developers, survival is the top priority. Without a precedent for a more successful revenue method, traffic was the biggest revenue source for tool products. Tool products lack imagination and become one of the most undesirable products for investors. There may also be exceptions, such as the QR code scanning software, because in the o2o chain, the role of "2" (to) is still very imaginative. Because of the attributes of tools, these products have all chosen to transform to the Life service platform. Each transformation has its own route. Through cloud computing, vertical social networking, and integration of Life service, there are other things that haven't been summarized, and more are waiting for entrepreneurs to explore. Many mobile Internet tools are being used as open platforms, but in China, the cruel fact is that traditional Internet open platforms have not yet been used, after several years of operation, only a few giants are still working hard (Baidu is not listed here). In this case, he talks about porting this edge model to a mobile phone. Listening to his advice: The focus of tool product transformation is never on an open platform.
How to Implement platform-based tool products)
