How do instant social products solve growth problems?

Since Snapchat's popularity, there have been a number of bright products in the mobile social arena, such as the use of network-free communication tools FireChat, anonymous social whisper, short video instantaneous sharing applications Taptalk, etc. However, with new gameplay to provoke the interest of users and usher in a wave of outbreaks, such products also appear to encounter the same problem-it is difficult to ensure continuous user growth and viscosity.

Such examples in the domestic as many see, like before the face Meng, the recent no secret, whether from the data or the use of friends around the frequency, people can intuitively feel that everyone's freshness has faded, their use frequency is also declining.

For entrepreneurs, in the face of such a situation is very regrettable, after all, to make an instant popular product itself is not easy, after a brief eruption and then look at their products slowly become "pure" This is certainly not a pleasant thing.

Then there is the question of how to keep the new social products of instant popularity alive, to ensure "not to die"?

In my opinion, whether it's Facebook's real-name social networking or the new social mechanisms that burn and anonymously socialize, they are all "replicating" human realities or restoring some underlying psychological needs. In these new products that are instantly popular, they tend to have new features that are simple, easy to pick up and that can provoke the interest of the user. After reading, burning, instant social, anonymous social, these mechanisms in the short term to attract the attention of users is not difficult, but because this kind of scene is not the actual life of the general needs, so after a short chase, nature is easily abandoned by users.

When people replicate a class of Snapchat products, like to say that they are burned after reading, is a social future, but in fact, whether after the burn, instant social or anonymous social, they are only a product function (feature), these functions may become a social product at a certain stage of the trend, However, because of its narrow application, it is easy to get into trouble with its own development.

May wish to take Snapchat this to have the typical product for example, to look at a certain characteristic in the short time quickly leap over the red product is how to maintain the heat through the function iteration, the breakthrough development bottleneck.

If only the success of Snapchat is understood as the mechanism of after-reading, it is not appropriate to think that it is possible to replicate the success of Snapchat by copying this set of mechanisms. Snapchat popular reason indeed and sent after the burning picture has a lot of relationship, but Snapchat can continue to develop on the way is that it does not confine itself to send pictures, read after that burn this single function. Snapchat later not only joined the character chat features, but also introduced a fun story--you can understand it as a burnt "circle of friends." The former makes it a new kind of IM, and the latter lets it continue to have fun and interesting product attributes.

That is, when Snapchat's use of the scene from a narrow read-burn image exchange into a general demand for IM, and to meet the fun of people exploring the unknown world, it also evolved from the function (feature) into a real product. For this kind of instant popular social product, wants to maintain the continuous growth and the viscosity, needs like Snapchat, before being discarded by the user, transforms the small public the novelty function to has the populace general demand the product.

The drifting bottle in the micro-letter is also a success story. Most users will not be bored to play the rafting bottle every day, but when the rafting bottle as a function of the existence of everyone bored occasionally play once feel may be good. If you still remember, Zhangxiaolong once said shake the line soon after 100 million times a day to achieve the number of use, and then became a micro-credit number of the outbreak point, and then, micro-letter timely through voice chat, friends circle and other characteristics quickly turned into a national IM.

The bottle is not a micro-letter "after reading is Burning"? The micro-letter only uses such a function to detonate the user, actually does not confine itself here, it is also the kind has the universal demand, has the tool and the social attribute the IM.

However, when you take the drift bottle this function to make a separate product, and the entire product has been in the "drift bottle" This function of the circle, the outcome will be like the picture drift bottle Rando, the stranger picture Exchange postcards This-few people know these names.

Snapchat and micro-letters are still somewhat different: the path of the micro-letter is to build up a general demand for the product system, and then with a shake, drift bottles such as the function and Tencent's resources to detonate users (do not think that the resources of large companies will be able to detonate users, A good example is the failure of contacts and Facebook's series of subsequent social offerings: Snapchat the ability to detonate a user after a read-burn function, and then perform its own evolution from function to product on this basis. However, the two converge.

For social products that are instantly popular, if the development team also confines the product to a feature that makes you instantly popular, its narrow user-use scenario will only make the product development a bottleneck. As Steve Jobs described Dropbox, this is only a functional feature that cannot be called a product at all. What Dropbox later did was seen in the same way that it applies to these instant-red social products.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)