Industry dilemma: Mobile phone speed slow users lack of driving force

Absrtact: Four young people quit their steady job and set up a start-up team to launch a free photography app (a third-party app for smartphones). Does that sound weird? In recent years, with the popularity of smartphones, the app has become a lot of creative

Four young men have resigned from their steady work to form a start-up team to launch a free photography app (a third-party app for smartphones). Does that sound weird?

In recent years, with the popularity of smartphones, apps have become a fashionable choice for many entrepreneurs. Although such entrepreneurial projects are fresh and eye-catching and seem promising, entrepreneurs still have to face the most practical question: can free apps make a lot of sense?

Recently, the information Times reporter interviewed the members of the entrepreneurial team wind, let us approach their entrepreneurial experience, together to explore the free app of the way to make a living.

Launched a year with tens of thousands of users

The wind son told reporters that he and 3 Partners resigned together, registered a company. 4 members of the team, one member as the product manager, a member of the designer, a member of the technical development, the wind is mainly responsible for the operation and promotion of products. After a period of research and exploration, they will be the direction of development in mobile phone photography. At that time, there have been some photographic apps on the domestic market, but the wind has found that they are mainly dedicated to providing landscaping features such as skin images, and the expectations of the wind and partners are to create a high-quality photographic sharing community. They are delighted to find that such products are not available on the market. So, the next step forward. First spent half a year or so to develop the program, then, at the beginning of last year, they officially launched the "Flash Shadow" APP. Currently, this free app already has tens of thousands of users. Reporter Login "flash shadow" app experience found that users use the software, is generally a snapshot of the immediate life scene, or the mobile phone has taken photos, and then use the filter to provide the software processing, and then click to Publish to the flash-shadow community, microblogging and other platforms to share.

Want to build a platform for instant sharing

In foreign countries, mobile phone photography has been mainstreamed. Wind son told reporters, mobile phone photography of the domestic market just started, but can be foreseen, it is gradually becoming a major trend, there will be more and more users to enter. It's also a big trend to take photos with mobile phones and share them instantly. For example, the famous American Newsweek "Time" last year featured photographs taken by professional photographers using the iphone, which were captured in the first time by a hurricane, instantly uploaded to Instagram (a well-known American app), causing widespread concern. The wind and the partners want to create a domestic instant sharing platform, attract more users to enter, but also to take photos and photography gap is getting smaller.

Poetic filter name taken from the movie

"Art Fan" is the location of the "Flash Shadow" app. Wind son told the reporter, "Flash shadow" the name of the English name is shining, in fact it is the name of a film, the Chinese translation is "the Spirit", but considering that "the Spirit" is a horror film, they weigh the app's Chinese name as the appropriate and good "flash shadow", their team also in the name of "Flash shadow." Interestingly, the "Flash Shadow" app currently provides 10 balance filter (after taking pictures, to add a variety of special effects), its name also comes from the film, such as Midnight, Annie, Perfume, Bridges, twilight, punk and so on. These fresh, poetic names, not only fit the location of the app, but also let the user in front of a bright. In addition, under the guidance of the developer, users have also tried to publish their own pictures posted on a variety of fun labels, such as lovers of each other to take photos, like to paste the "Good Lover" label, shooting Cheng photos, or lovers of photos, the user labeled "because of love."

Offline activities to attract target users

Feng said that at present he wants to attract creative force, the photos have certain requirements of users, rather than just the pursuit of cosmetic effects. The reporter learned that since the advent of products, in addition to continuous improvement in the user experience, the team also held a number of offline activities, successfully attracted more and more target users. Last August, for example, they held the first large-scale iphone photography exhibition in Guangzhou with the theme "City Flash", using the curatorial and production methods of a professional photography exhibition. The wind son told the reporter, held this photographic exhibition reason, is found that a user with their "Midnight" filter to make a very tasty Guangzhou scenery, so they use this as the first, launched a "midnight line" of small activities, the collection of many users photographed Black-and-white City photos. Later, the further extension of the plan, held a larger concept of the city photographic exhibition, from the user published to the community of the work of the preferred display. Subsequently, they held a number of iphone photo sharing, invited more than "master level" users to share the experience, teaching mobile phone shooting skills. In addition, last September, the team selected a part of the user's published work in the community and produced a 8-minute short film "Photographer", recently shortlisted for the Chinese short Film Media Awards. The wind son also shares the Tao, participates in the concert, the creative marketplace and so on the creative cultural activity, is also promotes one of effective ways.

Industry dilemma: Mobile phone speed slow users lack of driving force

Open the Smartphone app Mall can find that photography software is one of the highest downloads of the category, the number of photographic software is more amazing. In many of the same software, the wind and partners will focus on most of the same software does not pay attention to the "sharing", coupled with the art of the filter name, rich offline activities to stand out. Still, they face the common development challenges of photo apps. Wind has summed up, the first is limited to the "broadband era" has not really entered the domestic network speed, mobile internet speed is more "turtle speed", so many mobile phone users, although the habit of capturing life in a timely manner, but can not do "instant sharing", often to get to a place with WiFi, Focus on sending pictures to the sharing platform, which makes the "instant sharing" recommended by the app not implemented.

Second, the use of mobile phone photography has certain limitations, such as shooting less than the place. In addition, the wind son believes that the current use of smart phones is not high enough, and because of cultural atmosphere, living habits and other factors, the current domestic users to use mobile phone to take photos and share the driving force is not enough. Therefore, the use of mobile phone photography has not been mainstream. However, the wind adds that mainstreaming is a matter of sooner or later.

Discussion: How to make a free app?

Wind son told the reporter, he began to do since 1998 website, belong to the Internet industry earlier netizens. He pointed out that after the introduction of the Internet, in a very long period of time did not make money, to support its survival mainly by charging games to make money on the web and the electricity business, and now the mobile Internet, as before the Internet, like the initial stage, it is difficult to make money. The difference is that the mobile Internet is closely related to the real business environment, wind son found, now everyone is "home on the Road", friends met also play mobile phones, many businesses and entrepreneurs are studying O2O mode (ie online to Offline, will be offline business opportunities and the Internet together, Let the Internet become the front desk for offline trading, so he believes that mobile internet will certainly profoundly change people's lifestyles.

The wind son admits, "The Flash Shadow" has not realized the profit temporarily. When the team was founded, 4 members of the Fund to raise money for the cost of entrepreneurship, development so far the main expenditure is the labor costs, that is, pay their own wages. So how do you get a lot of free apps, like the flash-forwards, that rely on mobile internet? Perhaps we can find inspiration in the way many successful game software use.

Mode 1: Free and paid editions available

Many games, users can start playing for free, but, want to play well, want to upgrade, you have to pay for props. This is the success of many gaming software. For app developers, if you start out with fee-based software, you're probably not getting paid for it. So, if you imitate the way games are being exploited, provide free and paid version, in the free version of only a part of the function, can first attract to the price-sensitive, unwilling to pay the vast number of users to come to try, "hook" the user, some will pursue more and better experience, will choose to provide a full function of the paid version.

Mode 2: Cleverly implanted ads

Advertisers may be more willing to "pay" than consumers who don't like paying. Research has pointed out that advertising in various forms on the desktop and mobile app is growing. If you're inserting ads into apps, you should consider ways to keep the user from being as objectionable as possible, such as simply setting a narrow banner (banner AD) at the bottom of the interface. A study by a foreign agency found that 83% of users like to see ads showing up in the game or apps, rather than app-built purchases.

Mode 3: Attracting venture capital

Attracting investment money is also a way for app developers to consider. For app developers, how to attract venture capitalists is a question worth pondering. Refer to many entrepreneurial projects that have been successful in obtaining wind investment gold, we can draw up a few important points to consider: to make a precise positioning of the product, showing the great development space for the future; The entrepreneurial team should have unique skills, preferably protected through intellectual property systems; team members have the best complementary skills, In addition to possessing ideas and patents, you should also have the skills of financial management, technology development, design production and product marketing.

noun explanation

APP

App is the abbreviation of English creator (meaning application, use), because of the popularity of smartphone, now app refers to the third party application of smartphone. Apple mobile app, for example, can be roughly divided into game classes, books, tools (such as mobile internet browser, English-Chinese dictionary), social classes (such as QQ, Weibo), life (such as electronic recipes, weather software).

The more famous App Store is the Google Play Store of app Store,android in Apple's itunes store, Nokia's Ovi Store, and BlackBerry App World, and Microsoft's App Mall.