Tools Small products you have the dilemma of platform

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Note: This article refers to the small products, mainly for tool products. As for tools, Kleiner Zhou Wei has called it "gnome project," meaning low user loyalty and difficult to grow. Although too ruthless, there is some truth.

Tool products have some common characteristics, such as low technology threshold, no content inheritance, no social attributes, localized use, there are high degree of replication and other shortcomings, but also experience excellent, UI outstanding, user base is large, to solve the actual needs and other advantages. Input method, weather, notes, public transport inquiries are the author to the ranks of such products.

To a certain extent, this kind of product user stickiness (open frequency) is higher, can solve the user's life encountered a real pain point, such as the previous input method is difficult to use, not intelligent, experience poor, Sogou input method to solve these problems, and weather applications also give users travel to provide more accurate advice, Even these applications have become an indispensable application in user's life.

However, another fact that cannot be concealed is that these applications address a very small demand in the user's life. Perhaps you would say that any product is from the solution of small demand to start, grow into a large product. That's exactly right. I can not define the needs of large, small scope, but these applications of "small", embodied in the previous article said no content inheritance, no social attributes, can not solve the deeper spiritual needs, reflected in the revenue is, there is no stable profit model, or there is no profit model.

There was a tiger-sniffing net. The author summarizes the three stages of the development of tool products, the first stage, the pure tools; the second stage, toward the cloud, or UGC to produce value, and the third stage, transition to the vertical community. The author bold to make a correction, the tool class product real three stages is, the first stage, the pure tool; the second stage, toward the cloud or the vertical community; Stage three, unknown.

Unknown, because we are all in the exploration, and there is no successful case for reference, the following selected is a number of difficult to transition to the platform of tools products.

Sogou Input Method

Before the tiger sniff of the article mentioned, tool class application is currently in two ways to explore, one of them is on the cloud, Sogou input method can be said to be the first explorer on this road. For the user synchronization thesaurus, rare words to enable cloud data, hot new words at any time to update, so many years endure difficult to use the input method of the user before the light. These innovations for the early Sogou input method quickly accumulate users to lay a solid foundation. At present, the number of users has exceeded 400 million, is the QQ, 360 security guards after the domestic third largest client.

Hand in hand a large amount of users of the Sogou, early in the input method launched 2 years has begun commercial exploration, the first commercial products are window. In other forms of marketing is also in constant innovation, such as skin marketing, Sogou has opened the skin platform, and and advertisers to cooperate to customize the product theme of the skin; web site recommendation, in the user input related products Pinyin, directly for users to display the product site.

These for Sogou input method to bring the revenue is limited, the number of users and revenue is disproportionately disproportionate, sogou input method began to turn from the product to service. September 2012, Sogou released the "Sogou Input Wisdom Version", its recent online "heart" function quite noticeable, the function of the input music, film and television dramas, weather, train tickets, such as nine categories of information, directly below the input box to display relevant content, the move revealed the search dog in a hurry to break through the bottleneck, Ambition to seize the portal of Life service information. It remains to be seen whether the interception search engine can be commented on.

Sogou Input Method Although has been trying to find a breakthrough, but from the current situation, it did not jump out of the dog for Sogou browser, Sogou search transportation flow shackles.

From the current public earnings look, no sogou input method of individual product revenue, but it is clear that Sogou 2012 130 million U.S. dollars of revenue from Sogou search and Sogou site navigation, because the user can not create additional value of the Sogou input method, always can not get the larger battalion collection.

At the end of January this year, Sogou announced its mobile input method monthly active user breakthrough 100 million, encouraging news behind, is to continue to seek breakthroughs.

Impression notes

This is its localized name, formerly known as Evernote, is a handful of Silicon Valley companies that value the Chinese market and quickly put it into practice.

Note application is a big demand application in mobile internet age, conveniently record, save what you think, sync to other devices, or share to social networking sites, most importantly, can be very convenient to query, a word, to help you manage memory, in the trend of intelligence, is a very attractive product.

Evernote has around 50 million users worldwide, but the impression notes are only about 3 million in China, (the public data for December 2012 is 2.6 million), which is a poor figure for a product that has been launched for nearly 1 years. By contrast, the number of cloud note users is about 10 million (earlier than the 2-month impression note), still shows the Silicon Valley companies in China often appear ungrounded gas.

Evernote from the beginning of the strategy is to do the platform, its platform can be summed up in two aspects of the road.

One is treasure open platform. Current and impression notes on the platform of the cooperation of domestic products including UC, fresh fruit, zaker, beans and fruit food applications, impression notes also to the General developer Open Interface, mainly used as a key to save reading content. This is a more practical feature, but only if you need an impression note account, so this is actually a way to enhance the stickiness of existing users rather than attracting new users in large numbers.

The second is to cover more daily life services. From the very beginning only notes, to later punctuate, food, contacts, ink, and Self-developed browser plug-ins, impression notes are covering more daily life services to meet the needs of different groups of people.

But the author also questioned whether it was the best mode to record these actions in the form of notes, and whether the best user experience could be created. For example, the record sharing of food, more people tend to choose gourmet Community applications, and then, like Network Records, 36 Krypton co-founder Wang has said, "The exchange of mobile phone photo recording other people's way, may not be suitable for Chinese social habits." ”

To make the high handsome Silicon Valley company not in a hurry to complicate the product is the support of huge financing and value-added services, taking impression notes as an example, if the public ratio of 4% calculated, the introduction of the current revenue of about 30 million yuan, is a considerable number.

At present, the domestic impression of the team to do more brand operation and promotion, in and Youdao cloud notes and other domestic free, more Chinese characteristics (such as handwriting) Note the application of the competition, how to establish their own barriers to test the team's innovation.

Finally, the author's point of view is: 1,evernote final main business, certainly will not be notes, food and other applications, these are only outposts, cloud computing is the ultimate main business; 2,evernote looks to C and eventually to B more reliable.

Ink Weather

In early March, ink weather announced that the number of users to break through 100 million, became a few of the domestic mobile applications, but also last August was a third round of financing, investors including innovation workshops. Before August last year, it had more than 60 million users.

The third financing is the ink weather feature. The original purpose of this function is to take weather photos and upload them in real time to make up for the inaccurate weather data. This feature brings social, picture-sharing elements to ink weather, and finds breakthroughs in its quest to break through pure tools. The company revealed that the time-view feature was online 2 months for the ink weather transformed into 2 million registered users. Of course, the increase in the weather is not only one of the reasons, because of the local nature of the weather, will be mobile, social, local integration, a complete Solomo products present, the next story is much better.

However, according to the author's own experience, the weather on the local users is not very meaningful. If I am in Guangzhou, there is the need to see weather forecasts, weather trends, but I did not browse Guangzhou users upload the scene picture of the demand, the function of travel tourism users, more reference role, including social also played a discount.

In addition, the scene of the weather using a class Pinterest picture wall display. In fact, Pinterest products are not as popular in China as they might think, and the ability to attract users is a big problem.

Tool to transform the other risk of vertical socializing, is the profit cycle is infinitely long, the whole mobile social effective profit model is still in exploration, tools to successfully transition will have to go through the tool--> social--> profitability of the long process, whether the transformation of success, the transformation of the success of the operation, there are very large uncertainties.

Fortunately, the ink weather temporarily no profit pressure, the existing revenue (display ads, brand implantation, application recommendations) can offset a part of the cost, with financing support, and steadily promote commercialization, perhaps to create a new business model.

Go desktop

This is a rare media product, produced by 3G Portal, the latest reported, is the company launched a pay 3D mobile phone desktop next Launcher, online 2 weeks of revenue million. It is also little known that the number of users on the Go desktop is more than 200 million worldwide, which is an impressive number even in the global view.

The Go Desktop is an Android mobile desktop landscaping software that satisfies the needs of the user's personalized mobile desktop. Go desktop exit strategy.

On the portal, mobile browsers become a very large mobile Internet portal, because users want to open the Web page, need to access the network, and use the browser.

Similar, mobile desktop, looks almost the biggest mobile internet portal, because the user opens the handset every day, carries on any operation all the time uses the desktop, but it and the handset browser biggest difference is, from the user most basic demand, the desktop beautification is a local behavior, namely in the handset local can complete behavior, Without opening the network without opening the network, the portal is not open.

Of course, the Go desktop is not only a local desktop landscaping software, any one want to transform the service platform of the tool class products, will not be reconciled to only local tools. Go desktop will enable the mobile phone network, for users to recommend various types of wallpaper, themes, plug-ins, applications, and then derived the Go desktop open platform strategy. On the open platform, go desktop and Sogou Input method has very similar initiatives, one is to build a platform, the designers upload their own wallpaper, theme for users to download, charge the subject and the designer divided (most free, the sea version of the partial charges); The second is open interface, developers can develop their own go desktop plug-ins on the interface. According to previous reports, Facebook has been working with the Go desktop to develop official plug-ins.

But the open platform brings more user experience and does not create revenue. The only channel where the go desktop can generate a larger revenue is the app distribution. The company also has app distribution products such as Go Boutique, a similar app store that can generate a certain amount of revenue on a large user base.

Because overseas users account for 70%, at the end of 2012, 3G portals set up offices in the United States to expand overseas markets. According to the previous company owner described, go desktop overseas cooperation is still the main flow pattern, this year's revenue target of 2 million U.S. dollars.

From the current revenue model, go desktop also does not jump out of the mode of diversion, but its internationalization of the route is worthy of encouragement, perhaps for their own and domestic counterparts to come out a bright road.

Conclusion

Tool products start with practical and experience good accumulation of users, accumulated to a certain level, expand more services, tools more and more heavy, the experience also from the bad. such as Sogou input method recently added "Heart" function, the larger the input box, the more shortcuts, whether the user accept in the process of rapid typing, more than 2 buttons, or stop to use the mouse Point a button to expand the results, need to wait time to test; again, as the ink weather, because of more and more functions, iphone version of the interface has been slightly congested, a little careless may be wrong, the operation is more complex. The commercialization of the same time, to avoid the user experience decline, is all tool transformation needs to think about the problem.

The above 4 products are fortunate enough to have a large user size, with ample money for commercialization. In addition, there are many because only do pure tools, has not crossed the first hurdle: User accumulation, dead or dying products, such as the rumor has been closed 8684 bus, Subway and other app group. For ordinary developers, living is the first priority.

In the absence of a more successful revenue method precedent, traffic has become the largest source of revenue for tool products. The tool product also lacks the imagination, becomes one of investor's least optimistic products. There may be exceptions, such as two-dimensional code scanning software, which, because of the role of "2" in the O2O chain, still has a great imagination.

Because of the attributes of the tools, these products have chosen to transition to life service platform, there are various routes in the transition, there is through the cloud computing, there are vertical social, there is to do life service integration, there are other not summed up, and more waiting for entrepreneurs to explore.

By the way, many mobile Internet tools are doing open platforms, but at home, a brutal fact is that the traditional Internet open platform has not been done, operating for several years only a few giants continue to work (Baidu is not yet), in this case, how to transfer this edge mode to mobile phones. Listen to elder brother to advise: the focus of the transformation of tool products, is not on the open platform.

Original address: http://guangne.com/2013/03/12/xiaochanpin/