How to avoid becoming a phenomenon-level application

Wen/NetEase technology Fu Hao Map/netease technology Zhang Zuxian

A blockbuster, "Smoke to the end".

The best part of the movie is, "When I can't do anything, forget everything and let it go." /go for it! " This stills.

However, this is also ... The only frame ...

In fact, this is not a real stills. This "stills" comes from a photo-application called "the Foot." Users can easily create such a "blockbuster" simply by taking pictures in the application or choosing a picture on their phone.

In the last week, the number of users has exploded in the red circle of friends. March 13, the total number of applications for the full download reached 180,000 times, March 15 afternoon, total users exceeded million, as of March 15 9 o'clock in the evening, the total number of users reached 1.62 million, as of March 16 10 o'clock in the evening, the total number of users reached 2.83 million. On the morning of March 17, "Foot Kee" is still the App store list for free first. Starting March 14, the server crashed several times due to insufficient preparation.

is "foot" like the previous demon diffuse camera, face Meng like the rapid rise of the rapid fall of the "phenomenon class products"? Why does it pop? NetEase Technology reporter in-depth experience of the foot, and the foot of the CEO Willow in-depth interview, from the full memory of the team situation, financing, operational data, product strategy, as well as the full memory of the problems to be faced and resolved, and detailed analysis of this sudden red products, and put forward our discussion: This sudden burst of red products, How to seize perhaps the only big development opportunity to avoid a short-lived fate? This article will be described and discussed in detail.

This article is also NetEase science and technology "vertical Social Entrepreneurship Report" seventh, will be published in NetEase, "Social magnetic field," a book embodied. (Please click on "Public social magnetic field")

The basic starting point of this paper is not the analysis of the phenomenon of the so-called "phenomenon-class application", but the discussion of the problems and corresponding coping methods which should be realized in the position of the entrepreneurial team.

First, the basic situation of the full note:

Foot is the internet company Shanghai, such as the Book Culture Communication Co., Ltd. Mobile end of the application, on December 3, 2014 officially online.

Founder and Team

The foot of the CEO Willow graduated from Shanghai Normal University film and television drama literature major; After graduation engaged in mobile operators WAP products and short MMS product development and operation, once in Guangdong Mobile responsible for a TENS user volume mobile product development. Willow resigned at the end of 2013 to start the mobile end of the application products business. As CEO, Willow is mainly responsible for grasping the product direction of the full memory.

In addition to Willow, the full team also has two co-founder. Chen, founder of Technology, Alcatel-Lucent, who was in charge of the base station development business, was "the first 4G telephone in China"; Yu, founder of product operations, has project management, marketing experience, and she has published a "brother" Leslie Cheung biography "so near so far."

Now we have a total of 8 teams and are expected to expand the team to at least 12 people in the future.

Financing

Full of angels round the completion of the financing to benefit from the willow at the right time encountered two "bole-type" investors.

June 2014, the speed of light An Zhen partner Hanyan in contact with the Willow after the beginner of the product, the next morning to finalize the Angel round investment intention and soon signed the terms of investment;

Zhenggang Partners in the month of 36 Krypton Open Day activities in the understanding of willow, think that the film in the direction of the adjustment and their investment in the field is very fit, so also actively involved in the light An Zhen led by the Angel round investment.

July 2014, the full note in the case of only demo is completed by the speed of light An Zhen, Purple-FAI venture to invest with the angel round financing.

At present, the full note has officially entered a round of financing phase.

Partial operational data

Since the official line is only more than a few days, so at this stage to talk about Dau and other data does not make sense. We can look at the growth of registered users from the online to the evening of March 16.

Foot on the line on December 3, 2014, the team has never been active in the promotion of products, so the number of registered users always in a relatively small scale (tens of thousands of people).

February 7, the full line "large mode" (or "widescreen mode"), the day the number of new users more than 200 people;

Thousands of people were added the following day;

March 13, the total number of applications to the full volume of downloads reached 180,000 times;

As at 3 o'clock in the afternoon March 14, the total number of users reached 700,000;

On the afternoon of March 15, the total number of users exceeded million;

As at 9 o'clock in the evening March 15, the total number of users reached 1.62 million;

As of March 16 10 o'clock in the evening, the total number of users reached 2.83 million.

Clearly, the current user growth posture shows the potential for exponential growth.

Second, the current product shape Description:

The full form of the product (Android V2.1.4.1) is described as follows:

The first screen is the "footprint" block, and the top-left corner of the navigation bar is "message/system notification."

The top half of the "popular" button in the "footprint" block is the "full" micro-letter public number article (all related to the film's location). For example, "Bird Man" and the theme of the scene, the user can participate in the subject (such as "I am reading the paper book, those years we stepped on the manhole cover" ) to produce UGC pictures;

The lower side of the topic is the push to the "person who may be interested";

The following main screen section is a quality UGC feed stream.

The "Attention" section of the "UGC" block provides a feed stream of content to individual users and other users of interest.

The second screen is "discovery" block, the top navigation bar in the upper left corner of "search", users can search countries, cities, movies, people.

The top right corner of the navigation bar is "map", the user will be able to see the location of the film from their nearest to the map, in addition, the team also provides the role of the play screen.

The main screen part of the discovery block is the feed stream that is differentiated by the movie. After clicking into a specific movie, the feed stream is differentiated according to the lens in the movie.

After clicking into a specific lens, the picture part is still, the text description part is the lens specific location, the navigation (needs to click to open) and to the film and the shooting place text introduction.

Users can collect or click "Go to" this place.

At the bottom of the "discovery" block, the user can click on the photo to combine the camera image with the photo. This should be the original source of inspiration for the full product.

The third screen for the UGC function button, the current user can produce UGC type has "text", "Picture" and "explosive material" three categories.

Among them, the text and the material two UGC function will soon be off-line.

The picture feature currently offers 4 kinds of picture-making modes:

Normal mode, painting pattern, contrast mode and large mode.

Normal mode, the user can add "imprint" (that is, a lot of pictures in the application of the stickers function/tag), can be added filters, adjust contrast.

In the painting mode, users can select foreground and background images, and it is worth mentioning that the background image is blurred by default, and the user clicks the background image to become clear; the user can also adjust the transparency of the foreground chart, and the user can also choose whether the foreground chart has the effect of holding the picture.

In contrast mode, users can combine two pictures and edit them separately.

The best thing to say is to get a big chunk of the attention of the mind.

In a large mode, users can use a mobile phone horizontal screen after cutting out an area for the area to add Chinese and English subtitles (users can choose the system will be the input of their subtitles automatically translated into English or in the English part to write their own content) and film screen masking; you can then add filters and adjust the contrast for blockbuster.

If you see a "blockbuster" from your memory in your circle of friends, these images are created like this.

The four screen for "Fly Ah", was originally used to randomly look for distribution throughout the world in the film Scene function. The block will soon be adjusted offline.

The screen is "personal" and is used to manage personal accounts and applications.

Products Link: http://fotoplace.cc/

What needs to be explained is that the full memory of the product shape in the future will be a significant change, here is only to remember the current product form static display.

Current product positioning and satisfying user needs: a social product with storytelling and relevance

The target user base is not only limited to the literary and artistic minority users, but also includes the popular users with literary mentality. In contrast, the full memory of the target user's aesthetic requirements will be relatively high.

The product of the full memory provides a way of recording life.

This is a way for users to live as a dramatic, storytelling fragment that can form a relationship between scenes and memories.

Yang said in an interview, "Photo is to record, record is to recall." In essence, the goal of taking pictures is to fully present the scene of the picture at the time of your recollection. Adding a story to the picture and the human brain's own memory model is very similar to the so-called "past things like a movie."

Therefore, the full memory of the user needs to meet is: on the phone to maximize the satisfaction of users to recall this matter of demand.

In the current product form, to meet the needs of users more specific statement is: so that all users can be very low-cost way to produce a sense of the picture content.

Third, product development strategy: From the love of the slow groping

The initial positioning of the product is to do the "recommended movie location" mobile end picture application.

The team's initial inspiration came from a Canadian photographer, Christophermoloney, who filmed a picture of a cross-style film in a different movie. Moloney the movie's Black-and-White stills "embed" the scene, restores the classic movie scene. This play also has a very literary name "electric" shadow/filmography.

Similar paintings are painted with artwork and a series of works by South Korean artist Sungseok Ahn named "Historical Reality (historic a)". Interested readers can search by themselves.

Christophermoloney photo, "The Queen wearing Prada" framing

Remember that the founding team of the film's framing, film storytelling has a more profound understanding and love, so decided to try this as a starting point to do a mobile end application.

With the development of the product in-depth, the team is also the product direction and positioning of the continuous adjustment.

The first negative direction is to do the tourism class O2O application, because it means a large offline promotion and marketing team.

After excluding the heavier business model, the full memory of their product positioning as mobile end of the application.

The product team's basic knowledge of social products includes:

The user behavior must satisfy the high frequency, the high frequency means needs to reduce the UGC threshold;

At the same time, the basic literary and artistic adjustment of products can not be violated.

The foot of the team is the rhythm of the product in the process of grinding and trial and error to find the early core users, which is why the overall layout of the full product is still relatively chaotic reasons.

In fact, the production of large format is only the Fomalhaut of the team in the network name of the editorial colleagues in the play products when the occasional work out.

This one:

Iv. user management and key user experiences:

Cold start stage and user access: an unguarded sudden increase

Frankly speaking, the team is not ready to go into the big cold start step. The emergence of large tracts of the user growth rate is far beyond the original team planning of the pace of development.

Some analysts said that the reason for the growth of the virus is because the foot of the team in the question and answer platform of the corresponding promotion operations.

But in fact this kind of analysis is not able to scrutinize, if an application company ready to promote, its server can not be in the number of users just up to millions when the case of multiple crashes.

March 16 Night around 10 o'clock, Willow also in the circle of friends issued to the cloud server supplier bidding requirements: "To provide full admission service architecture development."

NetEase Science and technology learned that 8 members of the team have been in the past few days in the 24-hour clock upgrade, maintenance server and answer the user's background inquiries, not too late to deal with product bugs and other related issues. In the words of willow, we are now full customer service.

For the rapid growth of unintentional users, we don't know exactly why.

We find it difficult to give a logical and correct analysis, so we are not prepared to make a hypothetical analysis here.

The predisposing factor of this phenomenon may be multidimensional, which is more like a problem in the field of probability statistics.

The construction of user's social relationship: The social network of users and the community of high quality UGC account formation

At present, there are several ways to register, including using mobile phone, mailbox registration or with the user's own other account binding registration. Users can complete the registration by binding their own micro-letters, QQ, Weibo or watercress account.

This part of the registration method (such as mobile phone registration, micro-credit/qq/micro-blog account binding) to some extent to the full memory of the user has a social network part of the relationship.

In addition, the current platform has been settled on a number of high-quality UGC users, some users have been a certain amount of fan clustering patterns.

The point to be raised is that a large account may cause damage to the social properties of the platform and lead the platform to the direction of social media. Therefore, it may be more reasonable to cover the size of a display in a hierarchical manner.

Key user experience: Make the record of the film the way to the extreme

We do not do this at the detail level of user experience examples, only from a relatively macro, abstract point of view of the pursuit of good quality user experience form.

As we mentioned above, what the full memory provides is the way to record the narrative of life.

This means that the full memory needs to be the film, the story of the image record way to the extreme.

We believe that the best way to do this is to meet at least the following two points:

A the user's content production time cost and skill requirements should be low enough;

b The adjustment of the product should be consistent with the recording way of the story;

V. Competition situation: Other products follow up quickly; Is it not easy to imitate?

From the functional point of view, large-mode technology implementation is not very difficult. Beauty, Camara360 and other image processing tools used to see the big enough to play after the game is quickly online similar functional modules. Among them, Camara360 even allows users to create "blockbuster" directly by embedding H5 modules in the micro-mail without downloading applications.

This reality means that the large mode function itself is not a unique competitive advantage.

If you remember that the future can be a long-term success, this may be from the user to the platform to adjust the recognition of the start.

In addition to the architecture of the product itself, which targets storytelling and social relationships, the full team may need to consider how to build a mental model of "storytelling and social" in the minds of the target audience.

To be comprehensive, the full memory needs to be taken may be a product + brand two-legged integrated approach to walking.

To give an example of a specific point, in the current camera mode, the normal mode of the photos taken out of the traditional box-shaped picture. This form of image is the vast majority of the market in the image of the application from the Instagram to inherit, and this form of composition is traditionally a fragmented record.

It is very similar to the rectangular composition of the big picture pattern and the movie picture, this kind of product form has formed the hint of the image narration behavior to the user on the subconscious psychology level. The extent of the fragmentation of the narrative nature of the picture is much lower than that of the random picture, in other words, the narrative image is geared toward the convenience of the user and the relevance of the narrative scene.

Therefore, if the full memory can grasp this opportunity, quickly the narrative of the picture as a planning line on the platform to build up, this may be the establishment of their own brand moat.

Writing here, we look back at the picture-processing applications mentioned above, and their genes are still instrumental in nature. Simple functional reference may not be a natural blow to the memory, but it also needs to be observed in the dynamic response of all parties, including the full memory.

Vi. target market and later development form: discussion is still early

Because it is still in the very early stages of development, it can only be seen in some vague directions.

At present, there are many film producers, online video site of the self-made troupe team requirements and the full record to establish a cooperative relationship.

In addition, the full memory of the existing location found in the product, latitude and longitude positioning and other geographical functions may be a commercial development space.

There are other directions that are inconvenient for public discussion, so please let your readers analyze them according to their own understanding.

Vii. some of our discussions and suggestions: How to avoid a flash in the pan?

I believe many readers will see a problem here: how to avoid becoming a "phenomenon class" product?

Let's start with a brief discussion of some of the product details currently in the blockbuster model, and then discuss it from two levels of short-term response and long-term planning.

Discussion 1. Some of the details of the large footprint pattern:

Due to the memory of the future will be a large-scale adjustment of products, we are only in the current large model of the existence of a number of product issues to do a simple discussion.

In large mode, users should be allowed to include all photos in their composition when adjusting the display area of the picture.

Some of the problems that currently exist are as follows:

When adding a masking, it may cover some of the original content that the user originally wanted to display;

Mobile phone screen screenshot can only be included in the total figure 1/3 less than the area;

These may make the composition that the user originally hoped to achieve cannot achieve.

In addition, to the picture publishing steps, if you find no text added or want to make changes, users can not return to modify, add, only choose to publish or give up. This may be part of the product that is not yet complete.

All of these situations may significantly increase the user's authoring costs. Obviously, this is not consistent with the positioning of the product record in the way that you want to provide the ultimate narrative picture.

In the user experience optimization, can also be in the subtitles to provide more processing options, such as multilingual, simple traditional conversion and so on.

The above is a brief discussion of the details of the large footprint pattern. Let's do an analysis of the two dimensions of the short and long term issues that need to be addressed.

Discussion 2. The pressing problem of the full memory: Change of product shape quickly; try to improve the retention rate of users

Due to the large number of users in the short term is enough to remember the team plan outside the situation, so the full memory must deal with this rare opportunity.

Entrepreneurship does need its own rhythm and tone, but in this fast-paced, fast-discarded node must implement rapid decision-making and effective implementation. Entrepreneurial team and investors need to have the courage to all-in and no longer hesitate to dare to abandon. At this point, your competitor is yourself.

The questions the team may need to resolve as soon as possible:

A what everyone can see is that the server crash problem must be resolved as quickly as possible when users flood in. Full memory of the need to quickly complete the upgrade of the server and to complete the hosting of future tens and even a large number of users of the underlying technology architecture solution.

b There may be a large influx of new users in the future, and the team may need to discuss with the investors the planning changes to quickly determine the strategic direction and take this as the basis for the product function and form of trade-offs and adjustments.

This may be crucial to the memory, as it is related to the formation of a full platform and mental model in the minds of new users.

If the new user came in and found that the product shape was not able to catch him in a flash, the likelihood that he would return for the second time was very small.

Therefore, we recommend that the team quickly complete the product features and structure of the explicit adjustment.

The function should be removed immediately cut off (we see that the foot team has been determined to do this work, such as, remove the "fly" block);

The future of the product to build an ambiguous module also cut off immediately (such as, you can consider to remove the camera mode in the normal mode, remove picture stickers).

From the product level, it is necessary to refer to the creation of narrative and social relationships to the top of the entire product. Users should be able to know exactly what they want to do and what they can achieve when they come in.

God gave you a chance to fight your life and try to catch it.

This could be the only big development opportunity in a product's life.

C. It may be a good way to improve the retention rate of a user by directing the user to a deeper involvement in the product's revision and refinement process.

We do not have to admit that the team can really consider imitating millet in the early days of entrepreneurship, fast on the PC side, micro-client, mobile end to build entrepreneurial team and users, between users and users for the memory of the product itself interactive community.

Let users make the notes as their own products and entrepreneurial team to do. For the lack of products, the team is not to apologize to users, but to allow users to make comments, let them help achieve product improvement.

The community as a product of its own components to operate, and users do continuous communication, so that the core users will not go.

Now, such a window period is being opened to the full memory team, the ability to generate effective user management policies (such as telling the user what's really going on, and guiding them to see the growth of the product in a host mindset) and putting it into practice depends on the views and executive power of the core team and investors.

We understand that the current team is short of staff, energy is limited, but this sentence, now may be the entrepreneurial process should be the most desperate time. Therefore, it is now possible that the speed of light and violet two investment institutions should be the most to roll up the sleeves of the point of strength.

These actions may be required in the short term (half a month?). One month? ) as soon as possible. In the unknown, the entrepreneurial team needs to stay calm, and then try to seize the rare development opportunities.

We have put forward a short term problem that the team should solve as soon as possible, however, all these are premised on the clarity of their strategic direction as soon as possible.

Discussion on 3. The problem of strategic planning needs to be addressed in full memory: The following steps should be developed in general; small and Beautiful is not beautiful

The earliest position is to do the mobile-end picture application of "recommended movie framing".

The current strategic positioning is to do the "life as a story picture record" mobile end of the application.

Frankly speaking, we do not know whether the current positioning represents the true trend of the future of the product. Perhaps, the full memory can develop a more expanded development plan.

For long-term ideas and development planning, we propose three:

A We understand the film and the literary genes, so the product is also appreciated. But one of the facts that may need to be made clear here is that the spread of this product is completely irrelevant to the idea that the team originally wanted to make a film shoot.

(b) The key steps that the team must consider are the future development direction and the matching product structure upgrades, product configuration evolution, and community operation plan. If necessary, the partial renunciation of a particular tone is not unacceptable.

The large format itself may not be sustainable enough, and the required dimensions may be too thin and the long-term reuse rate may be limited.

How to quickly follow up a more scalable and reusable product form on the basis of large mode is the key to the long-term development of the future.

Although the team itself is a very film-like team, but we feel that they are in a timely manner and discard the original part of the product form is more fully understood. This will take the initiative from recommending movie scenes (low frequency, high cost) to storytelling picture making and social orientation (low cost, high frequency?). ) can be sensed.

Overall, the full memory of the future of product planning may need to have steps to achieve high-frequency demand and low frequency requirements of the combination of products to form a three-dimensional form of demand combination.

c If you want to be a successful start-up, keep a small and beautiful mentality is no good. We feel that a feeling is a very valuable spirit, but simply have feelings for entrepreneurship is still far from enough. Feelings + the strategic vision of landing is the preferred way in the long run.

It is hoped that the above discussion will bring some reference value to the key node of the development of the team.

Conclusion: May the Force is with you!

We did not discuss the cause of the phenomenon-level product in the same way as anyone else, because we don't know what the reason is.

We do not know whether or not to repeat some of the past phenomenon-grade products suddenly and out of the old road.

We can only stand at this critical point of time with the entrepreneurial team, and they discuss the existing problems and give them practical advice.

Regardless of where the final situation will go, we hope that the team will be able to hold on to their destiny "like a Jedi using the force and holding on to the glowing dream waving".