New generation about cannon artifact: skout

With the development of social networking, the two words of the cannon are now not the new words that make people blush. And when it comes to "about cannon artifact" four words, emerging in the minds of all of the Nine is a stranger. From "Mike Sui" after the popular, the Mo in was buckle "about cannon artifact" This not good nickname, at the same time, its attention to the heat also in a certain period of time. And what we are going to say today is another skout, called the "International version of The Stranger," but this does not mean that it is the follower of the Mo, on the contrary, it is one of the pioneers of mobile social.

A bad beginning, a return to persistence

In 2007, Skout's founder and CEO, Christian Wikilund, began to devote his energy to developing a location-based mobile social software. Christian that Facebook is a huge force, but the mobile sector is weak, and if you can build a location-based mobile social network, it will be a differentiated entry point.

At first Skout was a similar check-in service to Foursquare, but Christian felt the need to make some changes because it wasn't attractive enough to the user after it was released. At the time, thousands of dating sites caught his eye. After that, Skout became a mobile social software for "making friends and flirting". The Skout in February 2009 was exhibited at IDG's DEMO conference (a Science and technology conference to showcase new products) and won the Demogod award.

But not every company is Facebook and Instagram,skout is still not getting much attention after the transition. At that time, Google Maps launched Google Latitude (Google), the industry believes that "location-based era", but things are not as fast as people want to develop. There are many similar companies that have opted to give up, and the Skout team is also aware that this model does not seem to work, and is inevitably suspicious. Still, they stuck to their confidence in the field in the swing.

"There are a lot of teams who opt out early, but we feel it's time to do something different, but we're not just turning around overnight," he said. ”

This long-term insistence ultimately brings rewards:

A year ago Skout only 3 million messages a month, one months ago, this number has become 425 million; a year ago, Skout only 100,000 registered users a month, and now users are growing at a rate of 40,000 to 50,000 per day.

Play the Jiangshan, keep the land

The rapid increase in the number of users has naturally increased the pressure on the Skout team, which has grown from the initial 3 to 60 now and intends to expand the team by one more times this year. Christian said Skout will not stop the pace of innovation, and continue to advance the premise is to maintain this very hard to gradually grow mobile community.

Although it is an indisputable fact that Skout is regarded by some as a "gun artifact", the team does not intend to let it drift. Each month, an average of 40,000 users are blocked, and every photo released by the user is audited 4 times. According to Christian, "Lunch time should not appear on the streets of San Francisco, nor should it appear on the skout." In addition, Skout also arranged for 24 hours to deal with the user report.

Community management is one of the most important aspects of skout, because Skout is different from Facebook. Facebook's users have a "social spectrum" constraint, and skout is like an unguarded place, and if unchecked, the user's own will destroy the community.

Pace

April 3, Skout successfully financed 22 million dollars. When BusinessInsider asked Christian how he would use the money, he replied:

We have made ends meet in the past four months, but the success of this financing does not mean that Skout is ready to start making a profit. ...... The opportunity is huge, and the next 1 billion people will be using smartphones as a gateway. ...... There are still many people in the world who want to see the new World and meet new friends, which is a huge potential market.

I want it to be the biggest network in the world and we should be everywhere. I want to push fast and expand quickly, as soon as possible.

Although a lot of people are using skout to flirt and peace, Skout don't want to stop here. Christian mentions that in addition to these two goals, some people also use it to meet new friends, or simply to find someone to chat for fun. People are logged in many times a day, just as they are using text messages, but they don't take long. He also mentions an interesting data that 80% of Skout users are single, while the proportion of singles across the country is only 50%. This shows the apparent bias of the Skout user base, Christian revealed this summer will release a big update, pushing Skout to become no longer just "flirting and dating" applications.

But although the current perfect product and expansion of power is the first priority, but Skout is also actively explore their own profit model. Currently it has a free and a fee version in the APP Store, and the billing version removes the ad and asks for 3.99 dollars. However, it is obvious that the price of some hooligans, so that some people bought after the big call "deceived." In addition to the billing version, Skout also sells points in the application, points can buy virtual items and unlock additional functionality. In addition, the application of location-based advertising is also a skout profit point.

Domestic situation

Counter-view domestic, to provide similar services have MO, micro-letter, rice chat and other products.

Mo is a only focus on geographical location dating products, its founder Yantan on April 9 through micro Bo revealed that the user of the MO has exceeded 3 million. And on the profit model, the team said that the current will focus on products, not too much to consider the profit model, after all, all of this should be based on user size.

Compared with the stranger, based on the location of strange friends can only be a micro-letter and rice chat a function, the three are put together in fact some improper. But based on the development of the IM model of micro-letter and rice chat, in terms of user volume is obviously more than a chip, micro-letter has reached 100 million, and rice chat also has 12 million users. If the user reaches this level of application integrated with their own similar functions, this is really impossible to ignore.

At present, Tencent's micro-letter still has incomparable advantages: the integration of QQ and user address Book recommended features to bring it a large user base, and it can be said to be Tencent mobile application leader. And millet in the rice chat was the micro-letter rout, was trying to use "rice bar" to a gorgeous turn (effect to be validated). As for the most immature of the MO, can only say "focus" is a double-edged sword. If the micro-letter and rice Chat (or rice bar) can use the brand influence to attract users, the MO to attract users of the method about only "excellent products" and "hype." In the long run, only the former, supplemented by the latter, if the cart before the horse, it would be tantamount to suicide. (Original link: ifanr.com/88079)