The secret behind the Internet economy

The author of this article explains the secret of making Internet products with four stories of internet innovation: think more about how to make products interesting. The following four little stories should help you to glimpse the secrets of Internet survival.

Perhaps you are now trying to think of the online features that will attract users.

Perhaps you are now working on competitive products and are summing up your opponents ' success stories.

Perhaps you are now passionate and intent on creating your own business.

Story One: Early matchmaker

One of my friends, in 2000, began to be ready to join the Internet business. And one day, he found that in every city there is often a number of matchmaking agencies, they are through the collection of membership fees to profit, life is very moist, and each boss only trouble is to cover a limited area nearby. This shows that people do have the need for matchmaking, but subject to a greater geographical limitations. If you move this business online, you can use the Internet to break the geographical restrictions, and the collection of membership fees is also a more mature business model, so even if only a very low membership fee, you can get a large number of users to achieve profitability. In addition, there is a very good, there are few sites of the same type, so can be without competition, easily set up the site visibility, and then the overall listing in the future. What a perfect business plan it is!

The site quickly online, a large number of "beauty" and "Boss" of high-quality users were created, advertising water non-stop increase, in addition to the acquisition of several real-life matchmaking agencies, into the Community's first batch of real users. The popularity of the network also slowly accumulated, can naturally increase the membership of almost No. After several years of hard struggle, the friend had to give up. But whenever he saw the now booming matchmaking site, always think impassability, why he did almost exactly the same, but he became a former wave, was filmed dead on the beach?

Because the timing is not right. 2000, many people do not have their own computers but in the Internet Café experience the internet world, so the first group of netizens mostly by students or young people constitute. If the need for entertainment and dating is still strong, the marriage estimate is not considered. And in 2010 years, when those netizens have matured, began to consider the marriage, computer also entered the tens of millions of people, the scale of the Internet, covering all ages, plus the television media, all the time.

It's too early to start, and it's probably not until dawn. And it started too late, and the competition was too fierce. People often say that success, luck is very important, this luck is the trend. What is the trend of the Internet, you can see the Wu of the tide.

So, on the internet, birds that don't always get up early have food to eat.

Story two: The Assassin's business

September 2006, the London newspaper, like red Maple leaf dyed the night sky in London, September 2009, the newspaper as a meteor in London's night sky disappeared. On the September 18, when you clicked on the newspaper website again, the line on the right side of the page was dazzling: This website is no longer updated. Like other free newspapers, the London newspaper relies solely on advertising, which is directly constrained by the economic situation. After more than three years of history, the London newspaper was eventually forced to close for economic reasons. Among them, both the internal cause of their own mismanagement and the external cause of the global financial crisis. Since the financial crisis intensified in the autumn of 2008, the circulation of free newspapers in Europe has fallen by more than 10% per cent, advertising revenues for free newspapers in other regions have fallen by more than 30% per cent, and many free newspapers have had to cut costs, seek mergers or shut down.

Free business models are the most common in the Internet, because free is always more attractive. Since 2000, with the advent of the Internet, the number of subscriptions to newspapers has been increasing. To this end, newspapers want to use the Internet business model, the issue of free newspapers, through "free" to attract readers, increase sales, and then proceeds from advertising. At first, newspapers launched free newspapers to resist danger, and then free newspapers became a means of profit, and competition among free newspapers grew hotter. Everything was fine until the 2008 financial crisis came, and the newspapers were wary that the free business model was actually very fragile. Netizens have become accustomed to not paying for the internet, and there is no turning back from pirated software to the free internet age.

Free Internet has hit many industries, such as music, film and publishing. Others can't earn money, but we can't make any money. I've never heard of a music or movie site that's been very nourishing, and I don't have to think about the profit model. So some technology innovation, such as Peer-to-peer, is good for the public, but the traditional business model is a nuclear attack, once released, the end can only get scorched earth. Of course you can say this will benefit the Internet, but this free innovation is more like the golden Goose. Imagine that one day musicians, artists, and filmmakers would have no income to feed themselves, and they would have to change careers for a living. Or, dear programmers, there is no income, so the public can only entertain themselves on the Internet. So it should be like Apple, everyone has money to earn is really good, this is the business.

Thus, in the Internet, assassin-style technological innovation can destroy others, but it cannot become a business.

Story three: the same root and different life

About 2-3 years ago, on the other side of the ocean, the United States was born two brothers, one called "Sign in", the other is called "group purchase." They were born in the local as a treasure, we have to praise, grow up must become a star, in short, a bullish. Domestic compatriots have always been close to the United States, where the birth of two stars, must follow the popular. For a time, the streets are full of "check-in" and "buy". At the beginning, the two brothers also not negative Chongwang, to be popular some gas, to wealth have wealth.

Although the starting line of the two brothers are similar, but the follow-up development is gradually far away, with their own troubles. The theme of "check-in" fans is often: what can be done to change the status quo? Not long after, people on the "check-in" of the freshness gradually disappeared, users also use their own feet to vote. "Check-in" Tomorrow do not know where.

And the same root brothers "group purchase" because of a simple and clear business model: for local merchants to promote attract consumers, to bring inexpensive services to users, but itself through the prepaid way to obtain intermediate profits. Although this low threshold business model has brought a large number of imitators, but through a period of fierce competition in the jungle, the ultimate guide to local Merchants Network service model to standardize.

Therefore, in the Internet, the more simple the rules of building a business world, the more powerful follow-up development.

Story four: The Girl's mind

A party, the basic is not it circle friends, many girls at the party are using the iphone, we will talk about what fun applications. I recommend micro-letters to these girls, and they ask me what does micro-mail do? I said that the micro-letter can be free to send text messages through WiFi, send pictures, voice conversations. These girls are not interested in a person, but also very strange to ask me, that is not SMS, MMS and FaceTime, why do I have to install another thing?

Then I took out my mobile phone to simply demonstrate: "I shake a shake, you can see the beautiful handsome men nearby, but also directly send a message to greet them." "The girls suddenly became very interested and took out their phones and asked me to install them." No iphone also kept asking other mobile phones can also be installed, the results of the scene half girls are beginning to use micro-letter.

We all know that micro-letter shake can find friends, originally I worry that girls will feel often harassed. However, these girls seem to enjoy this feeling, we also live on the popularity, who was first shaken, who is more popular and so on. Perhaps, after the party ended, because shy did not exchange mobile phone number, now by shaking a shake can continue to contact.

We also know that the micro-letter of similar products have a state function, such as sent, read and so on. On the internet to see someone do the auction analysis, mentioned this is the lack of micro-letter. Perhaps many of you also feel that this function is important. Everyone knows that the mailbox has a read receipt function, simply that you read the mail, the sender will know. This is the same as the micro-letter state function. Although the mailbox has developed this function for so many years, but my friends around me seldom use this function.

If you've been working for a while, you'll have a lot of work emails to deal with, something that's not important to you, but not processed in time. If you explain to others, there is no time or forget, it seems that you do not value each other. Now everyone will say that the mail too much, not see, this excuse everyone can accept. So everyone understands that I am against the need for the micro-letter status hint function, I think it is a very long tail of demand, because an unusual function and harm the public is very unwise. People actually have the need to lie, foreign people have done research, adults 10 minutes of dialogue at least 3 times to lie. Here to explain is that people do not feel that lying is not good, it is the lubricant of interpersonal relationships, and it exists there, we should face its existence.

Every day we study the competition product this function, that function, think this can have, that also can have. Your horizons are open enough, but the more you choose, the less likely you are to make the right choices. How to reduce the cost of trial and error, I think we can learn the religious understanding of human nature: lust-chastity, gluttony-temperance, greed-generosity, laziness-diligence, anger-patience, jealousy-tolerance, arrogance-humility, which is seven sins and seven virtues. I heard that the old beauty has tradition investment only seven cases of crime-oriented start-up companies, but I believe that human nature is a chaotic, not black and white state, moral noble people may make mistakes. So in the deep understanding of human nature, we can in this era of technological innovation, to seize the constant needs of people.

Therefore, in the Internet, function will always lose vitality, and people's needs will last forever.

How to be interesting when making Internet products

Now everyone is talking about the product experience, such as useful, easy to use, and so on, but I think we confuse the commodity economy and product economics, or in the commodity economy thinking way to do products. The product economy is not the noun that now appears, Marx very early has made the distinction between the commodity economy and the product economics. In the course of the development of human society, there are roughly three kinds of basic forms of social economic operation:

(1) Oneself produce oneself need of thing, self-sufficient, this kind of economic operation form is called natural economy;

(2) The production of their own labor products with others produced, different labor products exchange, so as to obtain their own needs, the economic operation of the form called commodity economy;

(3) Although not self-sufficient, but get what they need is not through the exchange, but through the social center of the centralized, unified distribution to obtain, this economic operation is called product economy.

The core of commodity economy is equivalent exchange, there are two important prerequisites: value and scarcity. We often say that the function and user problems are mostly related to product value, the latter is also very important, refers to other people's access to the restrictions, so there is the basis for exchange, the product will be able to obtain bargaining power. For example, oxygen is very important, is our survival basis, you say it is not big, but you usually pay for it? Certainly not, because it is everywhere, so only in rare conditions, such as diving, can do the oxygen business. Now everyone understands the value of limited edition.

Here to emphasize that this article has been in the context of the Internet industry to discuss issues. Why I said that the Internet is not a commodity economy, because its replication costs tend to zero, so in terms of the number of it almost unlimited, has entered the product economy phase. The product economy is Marx's deduction to the future social form, based on the highly developed productivity, the core is to obtain according to People's needs.

To QQ For example, if you ask why users like to use QQ? Very few people would answer directly that it would save me money or send me a message. You can find some friends around you to try, they will tell you because this thing is fun, you can contact friends. Maybe you think you do a product is the development of a new tool, new features, but users never see this, users will say that I never care about tools, I only care about their own not happy, there is no fun.

Therefore, the Internet, especially virtual products, should conform to the economic laws of products, the core is the human needs. Personal advice You can consider more fun, the virtual economy should not like the physical products as the emphasis on practical and problem-solving capabilities. For example, the elderly video, people will think health care for old age is very practical, but the elderly actually prefer to watch soap operas; everyone agrees that learning English is very useful, but how many people stick to it because it's not fun. Therefore, Internet products should think more about how to be interesting.

Finally, we refer to the IDEO model to summarize this article. In short, innovation should be based on human needs, while taking into account the technical and commercial viability.

Author Shenyong, director of user research, Tencent Beijing Design Center, has a PhD in psychology.