News reader faces misfortune

Early this morning, I received an email indicating that I had played a news reader Flud is about to stop service. The company went nowhere after 3 years of operation.

Flud, the first to focus on iOS news readers, launched a short-lived Android version 2 years ago, and later launched the WP and Android versions in April 2012. At the time, it was in the crossfire of similar products such as Flipboard, Pulse, and found its own path: building a news reader's internal social network rather than sharing articles with Facebook or Twitter.

Although founder Bobby Gochard confidently said that their users were more willing to share internal social networks, operational facts proved that the behavior was not pleasing to the user. Flud has been said to be Chengxiang to do journalism Instagram, want to do the news version of Spotify, but clearly, want and reality is different.

Flud's closed social networking features have found a way out of the door. In a report this April, TechCrunch said Flud was seeking mutual support yammer the internal social network of the company. Prior to that, Flud's WP version was rated as one of 4 best apps at Microsoft's one-time mobile accelerator conference, and no wonder it continued to be appreciated by Microsoft.

But Flud is still getting tougher, and it was supposed to finance 8 million of billions of dollars, which it announced only 1.1 million dollars in April this year, continuing to burn for 4 months and finally shut down.

Simply put, the reason for Flud's death is that, in addition to its own social networking concept, the product does not have any extraordinary functionality-enough to turn other application users around. And the product does not have the extraordinary place, makes its social network also has no extraordinary place, the nature does not have.

Flud the Chinese version of Waterloo?

News client applications have sprung up in China. We ruled out a version of the disappeared, but also to count the zaker, fresh fruit, no search, today's headlines and so much more.

Among these, I find it most like flud-whether from the nature of the product or the present situation. I am very optimistic that I did not find the original content recommended, because it is becoming a standard, by many independent bloggers, collected so many valuable recommendations, can be used to do a lot of things. It turned out to be a news social network, and it really made me blind to the data.

Now, there is no way to promote its mobile phone reader, and free for some independent blog to create embedded in their social comment module client. Even if the comments can not get through with the original site, there are not many people with no system reviews, most of the comments are crawl Sina Weibo (with "and evil society" client as an example).

The scene is similar to another popular application, "Today's headline." However, it did not plan to build a social network from the start, using microblogging directly, and now can aggregate dozens of or even thousands of comments under each article. Today's headlines are more wild and more dominant in operations than they are without.

Although I have been worried that the number of users mobile internet does not necessarily mean profitability, but for news client products, the most direct news intermediary advertising is enough to support the survival of a small team of people. Therefore, whether flud or not, its effort to build a network of users is difficult to quickly achieve profitability, but also to the tight-strapped investors deterred.

Reader market continues to shrink under multiple attack

For news reader class applications, now is not the time to play the concept. They have to come out of the illusion of Google reader shutdown some time ago and face the brutality of the user.

News reading is an immersive application, a user of all the pieces of time, in a single flow of information will be consumed by all, no time to experience another product. So when the microblogging just came out, the information flow is relatively pure, suddenly become the most important way to see news. Now the portal's news clients are beginning to replace the early microblogging role.

At present, the time of mobile phone users is torn by four main applications: news, social, video and games. First, the news must be in some people's mobile phone to beat the micro-trust circle, Sheng and birds, then, the user first contact with the client can make him a look is two hours.

Traditional media independent news clients, the arrival rate is extremely low, not to mention the new market into the aggregator of the reader. These readers will only be able to talk about other things by seizing new contacts and developing their reading habits in an effort to improve the opening and usage rates of their applications. This basically can only be preloaded by the list of what.

At this point if the company is the main business is a reader, not only to and the Portal news client competition, but also with large companies do play the use of the reading competition, it is difficult to imagine.

The closure of Google reader is a big storm on the web, but this is mainly because many media people use GR as a way to get information. They project their own shadow onto all users, while official figures show that RSS users have not changed in a way that users are shrinking. If the reader is feedly as an example, think a large number of GR refugees escaped, they got a spring, it is in fact not belong to their own spring and excited.

Believe that the closed half a month later, GR old users have found their own home, only a small number of news clients will therefore usher in user growth.

In my opinion, there is no room for news reading application, and new entrepreneur should not take a concept to join the competition in this field. In particular, feel that the existing products in the audio news, video news, personalized recommendations and other aspects of the lack of entrepreneurs, do not mistakenly think that this is your opportunity.

Author Introduction: Li Shuai, freelance writer, has been a portal network. Focus on mobile internet and entrepreneurial investment in the field of dynamic, the development of new media also has a strong interest.