App's Seven Ways to die: jump in and die fast

Source: I black Horse net author: Shi Hai wei (entrepreneur reporter) "I a Dark Horse guide" A will work millions bone withered, this kind of thing in the froth industry will always happen. Mobile internet especially. From "Angry Birds" to "Plants vs Zombies", "Fishing Tatsu people", "Sing", "Mo Mo" ... App apps are "exploding" overnight, creating user and financing myths that have spurred millions of individuals and small teams into app development, and they want to be nouveau riche. The glitz faded, leaving only a pile of app corpses. According to the street network CEO Liu Davei Memories, 2010 and the birth of the same street lbs application close to 20, which makes him very safe, thought he chose the right direction. A year later, these applications are disappearing and the streets are struggling. There are no more than 20 apps disappearing. "Entrepreneur" reporter for several months, inventory of Apple App Store, 91 wireless, Android Market and other application stores, sorting out the list of 100 disappeared apps, and extensive interviews with investors, app entrepreneurs and managers of various application stores to comb out the "death" reasons for these apps. You, dare to step on these app corpses to start a business? "Xiao Bai" rushed into the profession? Die Fast! Li Jiageng's story has a certain representativeness. July 2010, Li Jiageng in Shanghai to participate in the micro-Bo pioneering competition, met a lot of internet people. Persuaded by his friends, he found himself a "product manager" of the characteristics of the desire to start a business. He left Dongguan to Beijing in June 2011 and soon found a technology partner and angel Investment, but he did not understand the product, even the mobile Internet heavy users are not counted. Three months after the product on line, the user experience is very poor, cursing constantly, and one months after the investors to terminate the investment. After two months, the product manager left, the team dissolved, he also said that the balance of 50,000 yuan is the technical partner to roll away. According to "entrepreneur" statistics, 100 of dead apps, social class accounted for 35%, is the highest mortality category. This is no surprise, says one investment manager, because social applications are purely product-driven (rather than technology-driven) and simply entrepreneurial. Everyone has a little imagination about socializing, and having an idea makes it easy to do something. But social products are not actually the threshold of ideas or products, but in the operation, which has a lot of pits, than the entrepreneur to the user's understanding of the resources of the control, as well as with the platform to dance, access to users from the platform, the topic of public relations, financing capacity ( The prerequisite for social change is a large user or a high user retention rate, which requires long-term burning of money. Social applications have not been easy to expand the user volume, business model is still difficult to find (micro Bo are so big, their own model is not really groping out). As a result, the social app sector has entered too many unknown entrepreneurs, with the highest mortality rate. Lack of market research, empty talk mode? Must Hang! Li Tianfang, the planned FM founder, returned from Silicon Valley in 2010 to start a business. When he first arrived in Beijing, he hoped to know some friends through the activity, in the experience of magic time nets and watercress withAfter the city decided to do an application. Planned FM can initiate activities with social functions, and provide users with a variety of activities information, once in the entrepreneurial circle is very famous. Although many of the internet people in the north are aware of the planned FM, Li Tianfang says that in the "real" world, there is no user plan for FM. "I wouldn't do this if I lived in China for a few more years." Because the foreign and domestic understanding of the concept of activity is completely different. "In the memory of Li Tianfang, many of the internet activities in Silicon Valley are very pure, and many of the domestic activities are not of high quality and expensive, and the target customers of the planned FM are losing their appeal." The big reason for planning FM's late transition is also related to this. Li Tianfang's first reaction was to filter activities with a friend's focus on the flow, so the original version of FM was planned. It turns out that this method of using A+b to generate a pattern is not tenable. "The real success of the product is to observe what is already in demand." What value can we really offer our users? Then I felt like we weren't worth living. "Li Tianfang reflection, those who talk about Solomo, O2O and socializing every day are dead, and those who live are not particularly powerful, maybe they're just doing something special." Copy failed to die at home and abroad what are popular products and models, in the domestic copy one, which is the typical "model" of Internet entrepreneurship in China. The mobile internet age is not only not immune, but also intensified, of course, also staged a copy of the failure of the story. 2010, the street and other lbs applications are mostly copied from the United States Foursquare. The question is, are Chinese users happy to share geographic information? What kind of core needs does the check-in meet? If only rely on medals, concessions, and other means, is clearly not the major group buy preferential category network opponents. Take the street as an example, early seed users, a class of people to explore the location for the purpose, a class of people focus on recording life. Street side NET CEO Liu Davei that, user demand is not unified is to hinder the development of the root cause of the street, you find it difficult to judge the service which group of people, out of which function is not appropriate. Liu Davei know, local point or check-in function has become the bottom of all content, simply to do the application can not survive the sharing, he wanted to make the street to a user UGC as the leading share of the community, to cater to those who love to record the life of the small crowd, but also worried about other users. The only way is to develop several apps at the same time, made like watercress FM, watercress reading the same series of products, an app only do one thing. This may be the future direction of the street, but he is not sure now. If the street is just a little confused and sluggish, some gourmet app really "copy" the soul-stirring, and some even quickly "copied to death." May 23, 2012, the food application of "God Shake" by Apple informed the shelves. On the same day, the public comment on the external release of the statement that "God shake" a large number of plagiarism on its website merchant information, pictures and user reviews. Because of the public commentCounterattack, let "God shake" very hurt. According to the Yangtze River business daily, after the incident, an entrepreneur said that he was more than "God Shake" before the shake shake of the food app, but eventually did not go on. Because of the gourmet app, if there is no reliable online merchant data, everything is nonsense, doomed to a short-lived, become a mobile internet accident, not the story. A simulation of the "Flight Butler" Flight application founder also said that because they and investors are lack of aviation industry resources, the project on line only one months, can not get first-hand flight information, the final only to give up. No money to starve. App apps only have two revenue models: User-paid downloads, free downloads, and embedded ads. At home, "online things Are free" concept, want to let users pay, how a difficult word! Most small and medium app developers want to earn their income, either by downloading them from overseas apps or by doing app games that users are most willing to pay for. In the 2009, the two applications of the touch-method and Dolphin browser were based on a download of 10 dollars in the U.S. application market or a 6.99 dollar donation for each user to survive. That's because they do it early, and by the end of 2011 years, as soon as one application pops up, there's a bunch of similar, free, shoved apps coming up. It's hard to collect money. Of course, game app, as long as the product is good, or the most easy to receive money. This explains why gaming applications account for only 1% of the 100 app death lists. Free Download + advertising mode is also extremely difficult for most apps. First of all, no mass download (Bachi) There is no independent advertising value, only through the Anwar, the Alliance and other mobile ad league to get poor advertising revenue. Even so, because most of the apps advertised today are apps, and there are a lot of developers waiting to pay, and few people are willing to spend. The 2012 economic environment is not good, the original willing to "pay the money" to raise small and medium-sized developers mobile advertising platform is also shrinking the winter, it is a little more pathetic. How can this game last? Early on, there are some developers to undertake the way of app outsourcing to maintain their livelihoods, a project can often receive 30,000 ~5 million, but with the letter, Jiang, such as the so-called fool-like app rapid generation platform, so many developers even the survival of the life is gone. Shanzhai ferocious, was copied to death, it is acclimatized, there is no resources and other causes, "was copied to death" is the capital, large companies crushed to death. Similarly is the K song class application, did the earliest and the user experience best not to sing, but sings the Leng to throw the money to launch. "Entrepreneur" magazine has interviewed a number of brush list companies, some people say, there is financing to sing it all over the domestic brush list company (no one brush list companies can bear alone so large volume) large-scale brush list. Of course, this kind of statement was sung by the CEO Chen. Sequoia Capital Partners in an interview with the "entrepreneur", said that some companies to brush the list as a daily main task, the monthly fixed expenditure of dozens ofmillion, long-term locked in the top 100 or the top 50. These companies generally have a round of investors, no investment of individual developers can not afford to play. In fact, the existing investors generally know, open one eye, and some even encourage entrepreneurs to brush or lock list, mainly for the next round of smooth financing. In the crucial period of the financing B round, some app lists are particularly bright. The free social and utility apps that can't be instantly turned out to be "motive" in particular. This may explain to some extent why 100 of apps ' death lists, social classes and tool applications add up to 50%. How can the small and medium-sized developers who are desperately squeezing in the hot fields of giants and "rich people" have a way out? In addition to brush list, advertising (and change), preinstalled is the most important means of app promotion. Wang Jialiang founder of the "entrepreneur" said that large companies copy an app, you can use money to advertise, with existing resources to exchange, and even spend money pre-installed in the mobile phone terminal, which is common developers can bear? It is normal for a giant to stare at apps that die faster than the PC Internet age. Missing financing time and death itself is difficult to have hematopoietic capacity, and want to burn money to make the user large, which requires a lot of investment people to blood transfusion, so the financing ability and timing of the decision of a lot of app life and death. Sometimes it's killing me to miss the financing time. Image Application founder Zhang (a pseudonym) to the "entrepreneurial" reporter said his application in 2011 when preparing for a round of financing, and the domestic two institutions signed a memo, late due diligence, such as VC delayed financing schedule. "Time will change a lot of things. After missing that opportunity, the market's valuation of the product changed. "Zhang has so far felt that the root cause of the project failure is to miss the financing. "VC had intention to us, is to recognize our model and team, but good things to push Ah, later related to product promotion, it needs money to do, and not the angel money can be solved." "The journalist was born in 2011 and returned to the media circle after the project failed," he said. "There is a saying that when a media person comes out to start a business, it proves that the industry's bubble is already very big." He said, slightly self-deprecating. "Japanese-style" app died and died. The smooth downloading mode and SNS network of the App store make the explosion effect of Word-of-mouth marketing appear, and many new applications have emerged. such as the mobile phone can be thrown up to measure height, or can imitate the funny voice of the app. The users of this application are only one or two times fresher, and they are more like a "day-cast" product. In the past business model, no one is willing to do a "Japanese-style" application, but in the existing app download environment, a large number of people doing "day-throwing" software. Even if the user does not survive for a long time, once the outbreak point of Word-of-mouth marketing has been seized, developers can still get some advertising revenue, and even users are willing to pay for the purchase. It is well known that this product will not provide lasting value, but investors, developers are still willing to believe that this is a viable modelType. "Japanese-style" app is a tool to make quick money, dead die, anyway their mission has been completed.