What's left of private social space?

With the growth of micro-letters, the number and activity of the users of the micro-trust circle are closely followed. Because micro-mail through the mobile phone contact to import the relationship chain, the original location of acquaintances social QQ space, Renren and other platforms, because the number of friends in general too much, was squeezed into the "Pan-social" area, and today's micro-trust friends Circle, as a more private social spaces. So after the micro-mail, is there room for private social intercourse?

After observation we can find that for light users, the use of various social products are similar, because the number of friends is very limited, active is not high, many are used as private social. However, for the moderate to heavy users of social products because of the number of friends, it has a real demand for private social:

1, through the contact of poor screening to introduce the composition of "acquaintance social", the user less able to reveal their true ideas, often satisfied with the display of psychological and day-to-day communication needs;

2, "pure private social" can "really do yourself", free and pressure to express themselves, is "antisocial" social, so can produce more content and activity.

As the micro-letter itself is a platform-level universal communication tool, the user's friend number will be uncontrolled growth, and its privacy will continue to decline, users can not set up a circle of friends for each contact permissions. So as users grow more and more, the circle of friends is likely to get closer to the "Pan-Acquaintance Society" attribute. In other words, as the micro-letter further growth, the circle of friends will gradually withdraw from the "private social" competition.

The author presents an empirical model here: Describe the relationship between the activity of individual users on social platforms and the number of their friends, please explore.

According to the model, when the micro-trust circle loses its privacy, its content and activity are progressively lower than those of private social applications, similar to the amount and activity of other acquaintances ' social activities. So, if a private social platform is open to other social networks, the private social platform becomes the content upstream of all other social platforms and is highly competitive.

The path of private social development lies in the instrumental and coterie

However, "private social" promotion, there are natural barriers. The root cause is that "pure private social" each user friend limited number of users, it is difficult to form a network of links to accelerate growth and activity. The friends brought in by the seed users because no more friends, often become dormant users, with low the activity of the seed users.

The successful experience of path lies in two aspects: the first is the tool, path debut, not the "private social" concept, and called themselves "private photo sharing network", the media coverage of the commentary, it is also widely recognized as a photo-sharing tool based on the added fun of the intimate social elements. The stickiness of the photo-sharing tool (2010 photo-sharing or a more popular application) provides fun outside of social attributes, reducing the initial user's sleep rate. Since then, the focus has gradually been on the concept of private social networking.

Next is the small circle, the path after studying the user to use the data, discovered "the family social" this area, the family user relations has become the net structure, has evaded joins the initial stage not to have the active friend the barrier. In fact, this is the commonality of all social circles, whether it is sports teams, entrepreneurial team, dormitory students can form this small circle, to circumvent the initial user sleep state.

Although in China, because of the structure of one-child family, parents ' children's educational level is disjointed, resulting in "family social" difficult to promote, but to find the right point of entry, the main coterie social, there will be a certain degree of success May.

In order to further enhance the stickiness, the domestic private social application should learn from the path, strengthen its own tool stickiness. Even path, version 2.0, is very good for the product experience, and users are willing to use the app when the number of users can grow faster. At present, domestic completely plagiarism of the poor domestic application of the path has disappeared a number of, including the "beautiful engraved" and other applications have no repercussions. Only a few sincere teams are still trying. For example, the VERYCD team recently launched the "footprint" version 2.2 on the basis of the category of path products, the further launch of the photo wall, calendar memories, site memories and other social memory tools features, while the technical means to greatly enhance the use of network fluency. This is a valuable attempt, but the prospects for the future are still to be looked at.

How to educate consumers to distinguish between social and intimate social networking, strengthen private social concepts, how to break the user growth barriers, how to reduce the rate of dormant users, each column is not good cross, if you can cross the past, you can usher in a new world.