So what if I’m on the list? Faceu’s genes destined him to be a failure soon!

Recently, Faceu Technology has made its presence felt again. After going viral on WeChat Moments in 2014, Faceu, led by Guo Lie, quickly fell into silence and has been silent since then. Until the end of January this year, Faceu, which had been released for four months, topped the list again. Teacher Nan Qidao called it "the only young entrepreneur who has led his product to the top of the app store twice in a row." There were constant praises on the Internet, some analyzing why Faceu was successful, and some analyzing Faceu's gameplay and marketing features... However, can Faceu products really escape the curse of dying out after a short period of popularity? Did Guo Lie really grow from the failure of Faceu? Has this entrepreneur, who was born in 1989, worked at Tencent for a year and received investment from IDG, really grown up?

1. Why do some products become popular but then die out?

If we want to analyze the product development prospects of Faceu, we must go back to a concept, that is, apps and h5 products that are popular but die quickly. For some reason, some products are able to quickly become popular in social circles, becoming extremely popular for a while, dominating Weibo, and occupying the circle of friends. Eventually, they are marked as popular by being ranked in the top three of the Appstore overall or sub-chart. But after becoming popular, these products seemed to be cursed and fell into a vicious circle. They became monthly or even daily disposable products and quickly fell into obscurity. Among these products, there are Wandoujia , Baidu Magic Picture, and Papapa, which are invested by Professor Kai-Fu Lee, and other companies' apps such as Faceu, Zuji , Crazy Guess Picture, and Magic Camera, as well as H5's Neurocat, Crazy Penguin Fighting, Microsoft's Howold, and Bing's Mind-Reading Robot. Why do so many products become popular but then fail?

1. Products are based on functionality rather than strong demand

These rapidly popular products all have one thing in common, that is, they use a product function as their entry point. In short, a large part of them are tools aimed at realizing an innovative function, using a new function that has almost never existed in the market or has never been satisfied to leverage the entire market. For example, Zuji became popular with its first-ever movie-style blockbuster picture-making tool, Xiaokaxiu became popular with its first-ever expression dubbing function, Papapa became the first to implement the online KTV music function, and Drawsomething became the first convenient online picture guessing function... However, the biggest problem with these new functions is that they are just functions. After successfully attracting users' attention, they can no longer arouse users' hormones, and can no longer bring any freshness or things worth showing off. This is the state of "when you stand naked in front of me, I won't even get hard." Products that truly have long-lasting vitality are those that start from user needs and meet users' unmet needs.

At the same time, products based on functions or innovative models are also most likely to be copied by competitors. Within a week of the popularity of Shenjingmao, many products with the same functions were launched online. After Zuji blockbuster became popular, Meitu XiuXiu quickly followed up and launched the same function, and Zuji's users were quickly intercepted. For users, since the products I often use already have the current popular functions, why do I need a new APP? Even for ordinary Meitu users, the blockbuster picture mode is completely original to Meitu XiuXiu, is it enough to remember? Sorry, I haven’t heard of it, let alone the attribution of innovative functions.

PaPa and Wandoujia, both created by Kai-Fu Lee, are such products. They quickly became popular with the help of Kai-Fu Lee's Weibo and social circle, but their functional elements led to their rapid demise in the later stages.

2. Low product stickiness and failure to retain users

Products based on functionality need to constantly innovate in order to continuously inspire waves of sharing and climax from users, but how easy is it to achieve continuous climax? There is no era of male sex pills unless you are Ken Shimizu, but there is only one Ken Shimizu (Tiger Sniff Note: Japan's top AV actor, who once ejaculated 15 times in 90 minutes). Therefore, many products neither have the ability to continuously innovate and launch new demands to meet users' ever-increasing psychological expectations and psychological satisfaction, nor do they have community-based social mechanisms to retain users. They cannot keep up with functional innovation, cannot create tools, and cannot derive communities, so users are lost. It took only four months for "You Draw, I Guess" to drop from 14.6 million daily active users to 1.9 million daily active users, and the Faceu Baidu Index dropped from a high of 477,000 in May 2014 to only 8,000 in June.

3. Lack of profit model and lack of self-sustaining ability

Many products that became popular overnight may not have expected that they would become popular so quickly at the beginning. Most of them are the spontaneous works of small teams. When the products were first launched, they had no idea about the profit model or did not design it at all. When the products became popular and received investment and needed to consider the profit model, they found that there was no suitable profit model except advertising. In the end, they could only either continue to not have a profit model and use big products to attract more users to fool investors, or use simple and crude advertising banners to monetize, which seriously interfered with the user experience. Therefore, the lack of an efficient profit model is also a major reason why popular products cannot be sustained.

4. Unable to meet the needs of different users

When the iPhone became an arcade machine, its pretentiousness disappeared; when Douban was open to all users, its magic ceased to exist; when LV became a mistress bag that everyone could identify, BOTTEGAVENETA started to become popular... When popular APP products emerged, they also faced the same problem. What really makes users willing to spread a product is that the product can overcome what kind of person the user is and what kind of qualities the user possesses. "I" hope that my friends will think that I am such a person, with connotation, creativity, morality, compassion, and innovation... Therefore, when a product with new functions first breaks out, it can arouse the phenomenon effect of users competing with each other, and at the same time indicate that "I" am a person who accepts new things. However, when the circle of friends, the circle of Weibo, and even the circle of life are all phenomenal events, how to reflect the uniqueness of "me"? Only true harmony yet difference can arouse users' continued attention and usage.

In "Mass Communication: A Functional Exploration", American scholar C. R. Wright proposed that users can obtain spiritual satisfaction, new identities, and new ways of socializing through entertainment. However, if a popular product can no longer achieve the spiritual pleasure of users, then it is obvious that the product will quickly decline.

2. Faceu is doomed to be a product that becomes popular but dies quickly

On September 14, 2015, one year after the failure of Faceu, Guo Lie launched his second APP product - Faceu. This product topped the overall app ranking list at the end of January this year. For a time, reports about Guo Lie and Faceu once again dominated the Internet. Guo Lie said: "We believe that Faceu will not repeat the mistakes of Faceu. As for why there was no screen-sweeping effect similar to Faceu in the circle of friends after it topped the list this time, the reason is that we want to make a long-term product." Guo Lie's answer was "In fact, we have already tried it once with young users." In my opinion, this is a bit like the statement that I believe it anyway. Before Faceu topped the Appstore, I had also played with it. In my opinion, as a project run by the same founder and a product that became popular 45 months after its launch, Faceu, like Faceu, is destined to die out quickly, and this curse may come faster than Faceu.

1. Faceu is a combination of contradictions, and Guo Lie has not figured it out

Faceu is the first product launched by Guo Lie. However, from its popularity to its decline, the product form of Faceu has remained unchanged, including the product iteration which still aims to make user avatars more fun and iterate more templates. But Faceu is different. Maybe it’s because of the failure of Faceu, which went from being popular to being silent, or maybe it’s because of the in-depth thinking about the failure. Judging from Guo Lie’s strategy for Faceu from its actual launch to its popularity, the Faceu product itself is a combination of contradictions and has been wavering. Guo Lie himself has not figured it out, although he said in an external interview that "the Faceu product was developed since the end of 2014, and it was decided at that time to treat Faceu as a long-term and key project."

1) The awkwardness and entanglement of switching from chat and social products to photography and video tools

Faceu currently tops the Appstore overall rankings in the Photography and Video category, but Faceu actually uploaded itself to the Social category when it was launched in September. It can be said that Guo Lie learned from the failure of Faceu that it is necessary to develop tools and social networking in order to increase user stickiness, retain users, and break the curse of a quick success and then die out. So he hoped to use social methods and communities to drive the development of Faceu, but unfortunately it was not very popular after several months, so he had to change the category to photography and videography, and then relied on celebrities + KOL communication + marketing joke accounts to successfully become popular. I remember that the last catalogue to be moved was the equally popular Zuji, which was adjusted from the travel category to the photography and video category, but of course it eventually fell silent.

But it has to be said that Faceu products have always been walking on the line between tools and social networking, always thinking about doing social networking for the sake of user retention rather than for the sake of products. Therefore, Faceu’s press release introduces itself as “a photo social software called Faceu.” From a product perspective, Faceu is for socializing for the sake of socializing, and the product logic is rather crude. Faceu's in-product socializing allows users to add strangers within 200 meters, address book users, WeChat, and QQ users as friends, but there is no concept of community or community platform in the product. Introducing friends is only for sending pictures you have made to your friends individually. Faceu wants to keep users in the community, but it does not provide a platform like Meipai and Xiaoying to retain users. At the same time, the calls to WeChat Moments , WeChat, and Qzone used by Faceu are not social, but just a sharing platform.

Therefore, the purpose of establishing the social attributes of Faceu is to introduce relationships with acquaintances such as WeChat and QQ, as well as relationships with strangers around, into the Faceu platform, and then complete the use of the product on the platform to generate social content. However, picture social products such as Meipai first introduce social relationships after social content is available, thereby giving birth to more and better content. Social relationships and social content are not a chicken and egg issue, but social content comes first, then social relationships, and social relationships then give birth to better content. If the situation is reversed, social relationships will be a source without water, and users will not import any social relationships. Look at how much it cost for the Alipay APP, which has 270 million active users, to import social relationships without social content. However, the 2016 "Five Blessings" event that mainly promotes social relationships will pay 200 million real money, not to mention the 269 million sponsorship of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and the hundreds of millions of cash red envelopes on New Year's Eve. Alipay, a tool with even greater users, is still struggling to do social networking without social content, let alone Faceu's team of less than 50 people?

2) From sad photos to cute photos, Faceu’s marketing positioning is swaying

In the early days of Faceu, it was positioned as “a picture chat app for taking funny photos”, but now it is positioned as “a super cute special effects camera”. From funny photos to cute photos, it can be said that it is a complete change in marketing positioning, and it also shows the failure of Faceu's marketing positioning and communication strategy. This means that Guo Lie's positioning of the new product has returned to the cute face two years ago, both of which are to impress the post-90s generation with cuteness (of course, this is not to say that cute positioning is bad. Cute positioning is the best positioning to reflect the beauty of the post-90s generation. Zhang Xiaolong also said that cuteness is the primary productive force, but Guo Lie's strategy is to try ugly things and then retreat to the previous cuteness. This shows that in his heart the value of funny photos may be greater than cuteness). Guo Lie's strategic thinking after two years has failed. His understanding of the post-90s generation is not as Guo Lie said in the interview, and Faceu's rise to the top was not achieved overnight. As for whether Faceu will fall to the bottom after reaching the top, I am afraid Guo Lie himself will not have much control over

The good fortune that came with Faceu's popularity may have also befallen Faceu, which was not a result that the team could have clearly anticipated. When Faceu was first launched, it was promoted through barrage video sharing websites A and B, QQ Space, the official Weibo, and Faceu's product pages, which were popular among post-90s users. However, the response was mediocre.

The rainbow marketing campaign that led to the popularity of Face Meng and was borrowed from Snapchat is essentially a creative "ugly + cute + creative" approach. It is still ugly in essence, and it is difficult for such ugly users to remain loyal. After all, when faced with platforms open to the public such as Meipai and Weibo, users are more willing to share beauty rather than ugliness for a long time.

2. Faceu is not as popular as the media reports

Public opinion believes that Faceu's success is due to its topping Appsotre, but in fact, topping the Appstore is not only due to the product itself, but also to the control of the Appstore download ranking rules. Even if this rule is a black box, there are some basic rules to explore. For example, games are more difficult to list and photography is easier to list. A daily download of 150,000 may be able to enter the top five. However, Faceu is far from being as successful as reported, nor as successful as industry insiders believe. The first manifestation is that there is no longer a screen-sweeping situation similar to Faceu and Zuji in the circle of friends. In response to this, Guo Lie's answer is amusing: "In fact, we have already been swept by young users."

Another data that shows that Faceu is not so successful is the number of user reviews on the app store and the Baidu index. Faceu has only 736 ratings in the Appstore, compared to Faceu's 2789 ratings, Moman Camera's 6384 ratings, Zuji's 3790 ratings, and Meipai's 145,000 ratings. Linglong Salon APP, which is still in the internal testing phase and has never been to the top, also has 334 ratings... Of course, you can say that the ratings are inflated, but even compared with its own products, Faceu's 736 ratings are far from reaching the popularity of Faceu's 2789 reviews. If we look at the Baidu Index, the peak value of Faceu is only 24,000, compared with the peak value of Faceu at 477,000.

3. Faceu continues to make the same mistakes as Facemoe

Another important reason why I am not optimistic about Faceu products is that Faceu is still repeating the mistakes of Faceu. More than a year of thinking does not seem to have brought any particularly significant growth to Guo Lie's Faceu Technology's product team.

Mistake 1: Failure to continuously surprise users and retain them.

Faceu is still using the failed trick of Faceu, which is to attract users with a single novel function. Users will drive the popularity of the product because of this surprise, but the continuous sense of surprise is still lacking. It seems that all Faceu can do is to constantly update stickers and templates to attract users, but after users try a single function for the first time, it becomes particularly difficult to stimulate their climax again. Users are becoming more and more picky, but Faceu is still using the trick that has been proven to fail by Faceu. Even if Faceu may embed snapchat's story function in the near future, this is still just a resurrection of a single function. After borrowing the snapchat function, Faceu will only decline as quickly as Faceu. What's more, a single function is the easiest to be borrowed by competitors. Meipai, in, and nice, which have larger and more active users, can quickly launch the same new function at any time.

The failed attempt at community functions caused Faceu to fall back into the safe zone of tool products, ending Faceu's dream of user stickiness ahead of schedule. Guo Lie's attempt to borrow the user stickiness product experience of the community failed, and he went back to the old path of first building tools and then seeking a community. However, Guo Lie himself did not understand this path, and he could only take one step at a time and see how the road ahead went. Of course, is it possible to ignore the long-term vitality of the product and just get a round B financing just to create another hit product? I won’t speculate.

Mistake 2: Products are copied but not truly localized and innovated

Faceu draws on the product experience of Uface and Imadeface, or it can be said that it is a Chinese improved version of these two products. In terms of functional innovation, apart from borrowing and localization, there are not many innovative features. Faceu is also a borrowed product, mainly borrowing from snow and snapchat, especially Snapchat, and has been accused by netizens of pixel-level plagiarism. Faceu includes overall functions, including double-clicking to replace the front and rear cameras, self-destructing messages, and the national rainbow-spitting campaign that ignited Meipai. It completely uses the marketing model of Snapchat. Snapchat also has the story function that allows Faceu to "borrow from others", but after borrowing all the experience of Snapchat, how can Faceu find new G-spots for users?

After Faceu made pixel-level references, there was no real Chinese innovation, which led to Faceu's lack of vitality. After all, many domestic apps such as Alipay and Wumi have copied features like the self-destructing message function, but they did not become popular. Moreover, this feature itself is inhumane in Faceu. Snapchat launched the self-destructing message function for the humane "evil" purpose of allowing lovers to send some hehehe pictures. Of course, it was ultimately proved that this did lead to the rise of Snapchat, but Faceu's main users are the cute photos of those born in the 90s. Is the self-destructing message function really suitable for them? What’s more, there is a screenshot notification reminder, but what’s the use of such a feature?

The author has no moral obsession with borrowing foreign products and quickly reusing them in Chinese products. He even hopes that more teams will directly introduce models that have been verified abroad into China. After all, verified models are undoubtedly more likely to succeed and attract investment. However, there has never been a model that can be completely successful by copying. In addition to the well-known national conditions of China and decision-making costs, the failure of foreign teams entering China is also due to the inability or unwillingness of products to be localized in China, which is also a problem that cannot be ignored. Meituan went further than Groupon only after it truly penetrated into users' lives, and WeChat quickly surpassed WhatsApp only after it creatively launched the shake function.

Mistake 3: Product managers born in 1989 underestimated the role of human nature

Whether it is Steve Jobs, Zhang Xiaolong or Zhou Hongyi, they all achieved a deep understanding of human nature and then created products that changed the world. Zhang Xiaolong said, "Product managers should understand human nature like God, and the ultimate goal of products is to meet human needs." A good product and operation must cater to one of the seven deadly sins of human nature. But it has to be said that both Faceu and Faceu use cute attributes to attract users based on a function. The lack of humanity behind it is also a major reason for the rapid decline of Faceu. Faceu's imitation does not fit the basic psychology of domestic users, let alone innovation. But the human experience is exactly what Guo Lie, born in 1989, lacks, and it is also what the entire young team of Faceu lacks. In his New Year's Eve speech, Luo Zhenyu judged that Wang Shi would definitely defeat Baoneng with the following statement: "This old bird has been in the business game for 30 years. What hasn't he seen? This is the confidence that I, a man in my 40s, have in the older generation of entrepreneurs." Although I do not agree with the role of such empirical judgments in business, I have to say that in terms of product logic and understanding of human nature, the accumulation of time and extraordinary experience are the most valuable. However, the experience of human nature is exactly what a 27-year-old boy lacks. Without humanity, how can we talk about the humanized concept of products? Even Zhang Xiaolong has to analyze users’ dark psychology all day long in order to make them happier without saying it explicitly, let alone a young person? Therefore, as the senior writer of Huxiu and founder of the social application Traveler, Pan Guan said: "Guo Lie is inexperienced and has limited experience of human nature, so he is not good at socializing." The author agrees with him.

In addition, Faceu’s marketing method is also worth pondering, that is, relying on ranking for promotion. Faceu targets users born in the 1980s and 1990s. The PR articles after ranking in major media have indeed stimulated the attempts of core users born in the 1980s. However, Faceu’s main user group is not the post-80s who are the media audience but the post-90s who have lower regular media coverage. Therefore, it may be questionable whether the PR soft articles after ranking will help user growth. Of course, if it is done for investors, then this is still a good promotion method.

Guo Lie’s understanding of users is also worth pondering. Among Faceu users, 60% are female, 20% are male, and 20% are unknown. Guo Lie said: "For unknown gender, you can understand it in any way. I can only say that young users nowadays are indeed very different." In fact, in the field of picture social networking, the gender of users is no longer the 55-45 ratio of traditional Internet. Take the picture social software IN as an example. When it was first established, women accounted for 98%. Even though the number of male users has increased since then, the proportion of female users now remains around 90%. Beauty Camera, a sub-brand of Meitu that cooperated with Faceu, initially had more than 90% female users, and now it is still close to 80%. Nice, a picture community that started with male seed users , had only 20% female users in the early stage. After removing the gender restriction function, the current number of female users has reached 80%. Therefore, it is not that these young users are different, but that the industry attributes of picture tools are like this.

3. How far is the road to success for popular products?

After Faceu, Moman Camera, Zuji, and Zhao Nimei became popular, Moman received tens of millions of dollars in financing from Alibaba, Faceu received two rounds of investment of tens of millions from IDG, Zuji received 10 million US dollars in financing from Sequoia, and Zhao Nimei received tens of millions of RMB in financing...So no matter from the perspective of product popularity or capital market recognition, they are all successful products. But their rapid decline afterwards is also regrettable. How far is the road to success for popular products? Only by solving those problems can we go further?

1. Retaining users is the key. Only with users can there be follow-up

The popularity of a product means that the product has met user needs to a certain extent. At this point, it is useless to discuss whether there is strong demand or weak demand in the existing product form. The only goal and possibility is how to retain users and how to continue the popular product form. This is a big challenge for popular products. There are three main ways to retain users:

1. Expand the community to retain user relationships and generate as much content as possible

2. Launch new features or gameplay to continue user attenuation, and constantly stimulate users' G-spots through technical or operational means.

3. Launch new products to form product clusters, and cross-recommend products between clusters to divert users

4. Increase barriers to prevent products from being copied by competitors

These three methods all lead to the same goal, which is to retain users as much as possible and discover new interests of users. The reason why many products quickly become silent after becoming popular is because they fail to do this, fail to capture users' continuous G-spots, and fail to retain users. Many popular apps spread through social media such as WeChat and Weibo, and quickly explode by sharing them in social circles of acquaintances, but they do not have any social or content accumulation of their own, which is why tragedy is inevitable.

2. Product transformation, product positioning shifted to the community

A truly long-lasting product is never one that is based on an innovative and simple function. A dead product is either not very useful or has no lasting use. However, in order to maintain long-term popularity after becoming popular, it is necessary to transform the product. There are two types of transformation directions:

1. Tools: Transformation from products to tools

2. Vertical communities keep user relationships and content within the community

In any case, users need to be given a reason not to uninstall the product, either a regular tool, such as Meitu XiuXiu; or content, and it is best if this content is something that users can DIY and generate spontaneously, such as same, Douban groups, and Meipai content generation. The key is to change the product direction and make up for the shortcomings. However, even if you are making tools, you still need to transform into a community in the end. Otherwise, the collection of user big data and product monetization will face tremendous pressure in the end. Men are loyal but not faithful, while women are faithful but not long-lasting. It is very difficult for popular apps, especially those targeting women, to make women loyal.

Of course, the product must introduce human nature. One of the seven deadly sins of human nature must be pride, jealousy, wrath, laziness, greed, gluttony and lust. Look at how 17 and Xiaoying quickly gained users, and look at the human nature thinking behind the WeChat red envelope pictures.

3. Get a large sum of money or find a sugar daddy

If the popular product is already a community in a niche market and user relationships are still developing in a healthy manner, then congratulations, you can just develop steadily or get VC money. If it is just a tool or an app with a single function, then finding a father or getting a lot of money or finding a father are the only options, otherwise it will be a flash in the pan like the Nervous Cat. As long as you have money or a godfather, you don't even have to worry about commercial monetization. The purpose of getting money is to use more funds to try more possibilities. In my heart, I still prefer to find a godfather, implant a single product into the ecosystem of a large company, extend the product's life cycle, and then take advantage of hot spots and daily operations to easily maintain the long-term vitality of the product. If Faceu is bundled with Tencent, if Faceu is directly embedded in the Meipai product form, it will definitely not be in its current state. Instagram is a community that was born under the semi-transparency of Facebook and the unfriendly attitude of Twitter to pictures. However, it is hard to say whether Instagram would have maintained its current growth speed if it had not been sold to Facebook. Without a godfather or big money, when the popular product dies, users will have long forgotten that you still existed in their minds.

4. Moderate commercialization

Making money is the essence of business, and it is also indispensable. However, the Chinese Internet user base and the prospects for user growth under the promotion of VC are far more valuable than making money, and it is easier to get more investment. At the same time, except for a few Internet companies such as BAT and NetEase, most Internet companies find it difficult to break even. Therefore, if popular Internet products are faced with the choice of profitability and development, they might as well give priority to the speed of development, assume their own profit model on the basis of development, and gradually verify the profit model. Similarly, investors favor the prospect of profit far more than the current profit amount. Of course, if you just want to make a one-time deal, that's another matter. Membership, value-added services, advertising space, and access to advertising distribution alliances such as Google, Youdao, and 360 Search are all good choices.

A popular product undoubtedly increases the presence of the development company, attracts investors' attention and has the potential to get more investment, which is a highlight on the company's resume. However, products like Faceu, Moman Camera, Tiantian Ptu, Papapa, etc., which entered the market with a single function and successfully detonated the market, could not escape the curse of dying out after becoming popular due to inherent genetic defects. Faceu completely inherited the genetic defects of Faceu and was also developed by the same product team. If Faceu still used Faceu's operation and product ideas after becoming popular, then Faceu would be doomed to die out after becoming popular. However, judging from Faceu's current product strategy, even if it imitates Snapchat's new functions, the decline of Faceu is only a matter of time. The author and his friends uninstalled it half a month ago, even though it was not yet popular at that time.

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