The feminine smell of mobile internet

Facebook is too feminine, at least in the view of the social networking Applified co-founder Fille Mark, "The social network is based on the act of sharing, which is clearly a feminist mindset." "Phil's applified sacrificed a" non-male, not in "banner, and the purely social networking site decided to ignore female users altogether. Earlier, Phil's first attempt was a male mobile social application called Jaxx, where male users were able to maintain friendships through offline activities rather than sharing feelings.

Phil's approach may make you wonder, is Facebook really "too woman"? Facebook still has 8.5 million male users enjoying the "like" button and the fun of finding friends, but women are becoming the majority: 58% of Facebook's users are women, who contribute 62% of data streams, such as updates, reviews, and, on average, 8% more friends than men. Women spend more than 30% per month on social networks, according to Nielsen's survey of 55% of all mobile social users, according to a study published by the market research firm comscore, entitled Women in the Internet: How women affect the Internet. In China, according to Renren, published data show that, although male users than female users 10% more, in the number of dominant, but women's activity and content contribution is still higher than male users.

As Facebook continues to leap Red, the role of female users in social networking is gaining weight. Hu Meng, the product manager of Renren Mobile social products, said in an interview that the outbreak of mobile internet in 2010, especially the outbreak of mobile social products, made the feminine characteristic more obvious, and the micro-letter and the MO-mo are the typical cases and beneficiaries of this characteristic. Micro-letter product manager, Tencent vice president Zhangxiaolong said half of the micro-letter users are women. "The core user groups for social products are young female users, this group embodies a great passion for communication, relationship, emotion and aesthetics, and it is more intuitive that the female user groups have more recognition of product affective design (including expression, copy, interface, etc.) than product function, Hu Meng analysis.

The women who love to go shopping more and more, will be filled with blood dedicated to the E-commerce U.S. shopping website Gilt groupe data, women accounted for the 70% of its customer base, contributed 74% of the revenue, the originator of Groupon has 77% of the user for women. In China, although the traditional Taobao buyers, the proportion of men is slightly higher than women, but the proportion of Taobao shopping through the mobile Internet is very different, a year, wireless Taobao members of the contrast between men and women has been reversed, the female consumer power quietly rising, Become a mobile phone Taobao main force: Wireless Taobao released 2012 years of Q2 E-commerce Data report pointed out that in the physical category of transactions accounted for, women directly related to the category of transactions accounted for more than 40%, wireless female members accounted for up to 54%, the year-on-year growth of 10%. Even the male-keen 3C product started in Jingdong Mall, the proportion of female registered users has slightly exceeded the male.

But more radical changes are taking place in areas related to pictures. On the one hand, the "illustrated" form of interpretation of data is unprecedented, consulting companies and the media have been full of Arabic numerals report, the boring chart into a vivid picture. On the other hand, Pinterest, Instagram, Fancy, Path, beauty, Mushroom Street and other pictures of social networking, shopping sites springing up, and achieved great success. For example, Mushroom Street, the company set up less than two years each day to bring Taobao 800,000-900,000 of traffic, 5 million turnover, from Taobao open platform to obtain 10 tens of thousands of commission. If you are a male, want to register beautiful say or Mushroom street, then you have to be prepared: or you will be rejected in addition to the registration is also cheated on their own in the beauty of the registration of the micro-blog, or you will be the head of the "mushroom cool" and the pink Girl Avatar made in distress. When male users are somehow labeled with the opposite sex, do they think: when does the default sex become "female"?

You might think that these are the sites that are set up for women's good, and of course women will be more, of course, more feminine. So, what about the game field? In recent years, the big hot mobile game is the best example: 60% of the users of Zynga, a mobile gaming company, are women; Women have become major players in social and recreational games, according to PopCap's data. You know, women are valuable resources for many companies, and 51.com even has data that confirms that a woman is worth 10 boys. Palm Technology COO, the original Tencent social network business Group senior operations Manager Liu Nan Mountain More Call "women, get the World", the life of the application of Balsam pear coupons users of 60% of the women.

However, it is somewhat biased and superficial to classify these phenomena as "feminism of the Internet" or "feminine trend". Once upon a time, people had hardly ever wondered whether the Internet had sex, and if so, it was the world of engineering men. But overnight, female users have subverted the formerly male-dominated internet world, and they have become so important that they have even become the main target group for a new round of internet start-ups.

Therefore, the study of female users of the psychological and needs, has become a compulsory internet business. As Tencent Cloud platform director Fu Zhihua said, and women's characteristics, preferences, or designed for women's web site, application of the rise, that women are driving the Internet business model changes, driving the internet from "rational, functional" into "perceptual, strong experience."

Rationality, function, this is the male good at the left brain mode of thinking, and perceptual, experience, is what women are good at the right brain thinking mode. "The essence of femininity is right brain, perceptual thinking beyond rational thinking, Hu Meng to understand this trend of femininity," throughout the last 20 years of the history of the Internet in China, you can see that the role of the Internet in people's lives has such a development thread: tools, information, social, entertainment, life. " The above development trajectory is closely related to the change of the user group, with social as the watershed, entertainment and life becoming more and more feminine. ”

This increasingly obvious feature of femininity is not man-made or deliberate, but a result of profound changes in the composition of the Internet user community. In the early days of internet development, the male and geek-led Internet user groups were gradually diluted by the general public, and the internet spread to the masses and women. "After the percentage of female users reached a critical value, the interesting chemical reaction began with the need for female users to produce products that meet the needs of female users," Hu Meng said. The user's demand drives the corresponding product development, but wants these "the perceptual, the strong experience" the product delivers to the user's hand, then needs a platform as the carrier, this platform is the new generation smartphone. Simple design, pleasing interface, comfortable experience, also is the iphone as the representative of the above characteristics of smartphones, so that female users can be earlier, easier and more natural integration of the mobile Internet tide. According to Beautiful said CEO Xu Yijong said, May every day about more than 700,000 of the equipment in the visit beautiful said app, roughly 80% of the equipment is iOS equipment, estimated by the end of this year, the beautiful said mobile phone traffic will exceed the PC end.

This feminization of the trend, opened the internet's right brain mode of thinking, for once stressed the function, technology and other rational elements of product developers, product managers, is undoubtedly a huge impact, or even revolutionary. The people who first realized the trend have proved their correctness.

"If you don't have a thorough psychological study of women, you lose half your users, so our product managers are now looking at a book called The Origin of women," Zhangxiaolong, a micro-credit product manager, once said. "Zhangxiaolong led the micro-letter product team in the product design process to pay attention to the female psychological impact on the product, and to verify and thus benefit." A lot of people will be Zhang described as "literary young men, like tourism, photography," he has said: "Product manager must be a literary youth." ”

In Hu Meng's view, Zhang's words is definitely the experience, "in order to meet and adapt to the characteristics of the user community, product managers also have to match some of the characteristics of the user community." Literature and art fan should emphasize a prerequisite, that is, social products, the tool of the product does not apply. Unfortunately, as a result of genetics, the product manager of the non-right brain thinking, even if they recognize (may not recognize, or even do not want to admit) the right brain thinking and the importance of femininity, it is inevitable nowhere. "And the palm of the science and Technology COO Liu Nanshan to this understanding is:" Product managers do not necessarily have the literature and art, perceptual characteristics, but must understand the target users of products, a deep understanding of the needs of different users, this is the key to product success. ”