Economics in the mobile age

We are stepping into a "mobile internet" era.

That's a piece of crap. The words that generalize the characteristics of the times often contain opportunities, opportunity means limitation: if 10 years ago, a Chinese entrepreneur said that the future would be "mobile internet age", there might not be any 3G portals today, and if Microsoft had agreed to that, there might not be any Apple business today. And now, when the road Kennedy: operators, risk investors, overseas it giants have determined, for the "mobile internet" industry chain dominance, if you-dream of the common developers, the trend of the times, as usual, "mobile internet" to sum up, basically no you anything.

Therefore, in the context of "mobile Internet", it is necessary to find a more specific and representative of the characteristics of the times, its connotation and extension, on the one hand, with the methodological significance of the category, can guide our entrepreneurial direction; On the other hand, there is no full potential in the industry at the moment. The new vocabulary is "fragmented," and the degree to which it is understood and grasped will determine how much opportunity you will have in this time.

Characteristics of the fragmentation application

Give a typical "fragmentation" scenario. A company white-collar Amin, in the morning to work by subway, because the distance from the company, they read fantasy novels on the phone to kill time. To the company, after tense work, he occasionally surf the internet to relax the nerves. Noon to the restaurant, he routinely use a mobile phone lbs application "check-in" to get the restaurant discount. The discovery of the food is very slow, Amin then played a few with mobile phone "Angry Birds." In the afternoon, Amin to visit customers, according to mobile map, and soon came to the customer company, found that the customer's new product is very characteristic, and then by the way sent a mobile phone Weibo to the industry friend recommended ... The above scenario, I believe most readers will feel familiar. Why do you call this scenario "fragmented application"?

First, the use time of the application is fragmented. It is reflected in: the completion time of each application is very short, generally not more than more than 10, 20 minutes, start each application time, is random.

Secondly, the application of the kind is fragmented, it satisfies the "long Tail theory" of the characteristics of infiltration in our daily life, types can be said to be various.

Such "fragmented applications" in fact abound in life, such as working with a newspaper to go to the bathroom, such as housework, while turning on the TV for Two eyes ... These "fragmented applications" are inherently not of direct value, but with the advent of mobile internet and related technologies, these seemingly isolated behaviors suddenly have a "relevance" that involves brewing huge business opportunities. Take a look at the newspaper in the bathroom, for example, if you look at the paper, it is the most spiritual connection with the world, but if the mobile phone as the medium, you will have a direct push to the world: such as your choice of news, some degree is affecting the flow of related websites, advertising revenue!

In other words, pervasive networks, portability of mobile devices, and increasingly standardized payments and logistics channels are forming an "invisible" huge system that can provide services to the users who access them anytime, anywhere. This allows people in any time, space debris, their interest fragments can be "system" focus, be guided (or the temptation) to generate a corresponding "mobile industry chain" to bring profits of the behavior-this is the mobile era-specific fragmentation of the economy.

The potential of the fragmented economy

What is the commercial potential of fragmentation? At present, China's mobile phone users have about 350 million, according to Eric last year's survey data, China's more than 49% of mobile internet users on average more than 15 hours a week online. From this can be a glimpse of debris time applications that may exist in space. If you look for a specific frame of reference, the most successful fragmented application in the world today is the Angry Birds series.

"Angry Birds" success story, I believe it has been known, its research and development team Rovio, in nearly 10 years, the cumulative development of more than 50 games, all the response is flat. Until Apple's iphone was born and the App Store model was successful, make Rovio team to "success game" produced a new understanding, then give up the past preference of fighting, war games, instead of doing a simple plot, so that people even if only a few minutes time, can also play a few small games. So "Angry Birds" in 2010 should be born, and become the most successful mobile games so far, only more than a year time, harvested about 75 million players, the current global cumulative download breakthrough 200 million times. It's worth noting that the 3-5-minute application scenario results in a total of 200 million minutes per day for global players-equivalent to 16 years. For its success, Rovio Mobile CEO Michael F. Hyde is no doubt due to the potential for "fragmentation", he said: "New touch-and-control portable devices have changed the way people behave." Nowadays people need entertainment anytime, even if only a few minutes of free time. This (angry bird) has many of the 2 billion minutes coming from such a small amount of free time. ”

Design principles for fragmentation applications

Although mobile Internet user demand can be supported by "Long Tail theory", it is not easy for an application to stand out. Because most applications are either not "rigid requirements" or too many of the same products for users who spend their time in fragments, the choice is too wide. This has led users to become more and more "spoiled" and increasingly picky.

There is an objective reason for the user's lack of patience, they are often used for "sneak in", the "busy" has two aspects: the user's geographical location is changing, such as the airport, restaurants, subways and so on, are temporary stay of debris geographical space; The user is doing a continuous, systematic thing at the same time ( such as listening to a conference speech, etc.).

In this way, because the user in a fragmented geographical location, no system, complete time to use a product, this determines that the mobile product must first meet the user's objective elements, in the application of time settings, to match the fragmentation of time requirements. Micro-Cloud operations director Qi to reporters, they assessed the micro-cloud platform of nearly 80 games, generally speaking, entertainment and leisure class, each level is about 3 minutes, and fighting war class are about 10 minutes of clearance time.

Second, and most crucially, you need to attract users in this limited time fragment. This means that you have a more accurate view of the user's psyche than the psychologist, and you have to target the various quirks of the user-it's harder than serving the ancient emperor.

But winners are the kind of people who can tap into the positive in the big trends, such as the fact that users are now demanding the product experience, leading to the rapid rise of a design company called Eicodesign. Within 3 years they developed a team of more than 40 people from 2 founders, and the office area expanded from 75 square meters to now 1200 square meters, and last year's turnover reached more than 10 million. EICo Design founder Xu Shiyan in an interview, said: "Must be in the first 3 minutes of application to attract users!" "We tend to think of users as: he just bought an iphone, commissioned a friend to install some apps, and when he clicked on the app on his desktop, he didn't even know what it was," he said. As a result, we need to find a lot of user groups, test, validate, and observe their behavior, and distill the most important first 3 minutes of design. "This sentence helps us understand why EICo design can be successful quickly because they can achieve the ultimate in a user experience in just 3 minutes of fragmented time."

Service Patterns for fragmentation applications

From the concept of fragmentation application, it is based on the user's time, geography, desire to provide services, but can be divided into two completely opposite direction: the former is familiar, only in the space and time debris within the scope of services provided, such as some mobile entertainment games, geographical services, etc. The latter is a systematic direction: to integrate the behavior of people in different time and geographical fragments, and to accomplish a system of things.

For now, the first direction occupies the bulk of the debris application, but the second direction must not be underestimated, the gap is often hidden opportunities. For example, domestic collaborative management manufacturers Zhiyuan software is based on such a concept, see the Mobile Terminal Business application prospects, launched the synergy and mobile integration of "Zhiyuan M1." Zhiyuan Software Vice President Hu Shouyun said: "According to our investigation, especially managers, the demand for mobile clients is very strong, on the one hand, due to frequent business trips, participation in meetings and other reasons rarely in the office, on the other hand, often need timely approval, official documents and send and receive supervision work, coordination resources. "According to far data, using" Zhiyuan M1 ", users can be completed within 0.5 minutes of rapid approval/processing and scheduling, 1 minutes to complete the document approval, new synergies and processes, processing synergies, editing processes, photo synergy. Voice Synergy takes a little longer and can be completed in 2-5 minutes.

This effort to consolidate user fragmentation time the ideal technical framework is of course the "Cloud + End", with the future of cloud computing technology further mature, the application of the ability to adapt to the terminal to further improve, there is bound to emerge a proliferation of fragmented applications, whether it is to lure users to debris time, or to assist users to systematize the transaction fragmentation, are invaluable business opportunities.

Marketing in the era of fragmentation-fission-type communication

In the era of fragmentation, product marketing also has its own rules, like fragmentation of information.

Remember to interview 3D shootout game "The last line of defense," the author Shillon, he once exclaimed: "I always thought the game out, directly put on the app Store propaganda on the finished, and then with the micro-cloud cooperation to understand the game in the release, the operation has a lot of professional and technical problems." "Shillon Initial understanding of marketing, representing a lot of mobile developers of the inertia of thinking, follow the traditional" content aggregation ", centralized platform for the idea of delivery, and consumers need to learn from the experience, cognitive process, and then decided to buy. But the mobile internet, consumers because of the pervasive information channels, the decision to purchase behavior of the thinking path of important changes, countless information contact points can change his decision.

Therefore, a marketing, if you want to meet two conditions: first, users receive information after the purchase of high probability, and second, the information radiation capacity. What's the best way? The answer is Word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth to promote the potential to buy based on their own life experience can be realized, at the same time with the mobile equipment and SNS mode of prosperity, the link between people more closely, in the Word-of-mouth communication mode of fragmentation of information after the continuous fission, is brewing an astonishing transmission of energy.

Sina CEO Charles Chao recently revealed that according to their existing data, a micro-blog spread through three nodes, the most likely in the entire microblogging user base to achieve 97.3% coverage. It can be a glimpse of the breadth of Word-of-mouth spread, then its depth?

Buzzagent.com founder Barthes had "Pantene Ahena" as a case of Word-of-mouth marketing trial, found a week later, with Google search "Pantene + trial", the result has 160,000 items of information, two weeks to find 290,000 items, one months after the search unexpectedly has 570,000. In the traditional mode of aggregation marketing, one months after the relevant search term basically disappeared.

Word-of-mouth marketing strategy is diverse. "Angry Birds" uses interactive marketing based on the Web2.0 era, allowing gamers to use and talk about the game, such as crafting promotional videos on YouTube, interacting with players via Twitter and email, and even adding fan-designed hurdles to the game. Coincidentally, "Plants vs Zombies" and renowned PopCap game company, its Asia-Pacific President Jamesgwertzman said: "The best marketing is word-of-mouth, we do not in marketing (refers to the traditional marketing model) to spend money, our marketing department will focus on the blog writer's recommendation, The display of social networks, communication with our players and so on. ”

Concluding

In the category of philosophy, "fragmentation" means the division and variation of Things, and the variation means rebirth. When I was a student, I was fed up with the new things at the time--the computer, and felt that it had increased the burden of schoolwork. Until it is astonishing to split the physical world out of a complete digital world, it is gradually understood that new things often contain the power to subvert the old order. Now that programmers are starting their own business is full of the desire to dominate personal destiny, so in this mobile era, let "fragmented application" fission more violent, it contains a godsend.