From the sudden popularity of faceu and same, let’s talk about how to make a fantastic “killer” APP!

• " Faceu has already ranked first on the free list!"
• "Wait, isn't this the same?"
• "This, can't be a fake? This is amazing!"

There is nothing new in China. At the end of every year, when families are reunited and students are full of hormones and have nowhere to vent, product managers always think to themselves that it’s time for an app to appear and go viral on WeChat Moments. The memories of last year’s little boy and his friends are still fresh in my mind, and everything seems like a story from yesterday. Sure enough, within just a few days, Faceu’s cute videos went viral on WeChat Moments. Two days later, same received the support of students on QQ space. However, entrepreneurs who are already used to this kind of phenomenon just watch from the sidelines: "It will probably be another hot topic and then die!"

Is this really the case? Are apps like faceu and same good projects? Is the team that produced them and made them popular a good team? How many steps does Faceu need to take to become WeChat for teenagers and the Chinese version of Snapchat?

This is the focus of this article. Remove all the PR and glitz, forget all the heroic stories and business legends, and what is the essential logic of a god-level product? What are the core criteria for a god-level good project? What is the core competitiveness of a god-level product team?

This question has long been a cliché. Product managers say that users must "know how to use, find it easy to use, and love to use" and "find little tricks to make users crazy". Investors say that "the market must be large enough, the team must be strong enough, the project must have grasped the pain points and have a moat, and the data performance must be good"... Today, Caigou is completely describing from an outsider's perspective and in a "wild" tone what qualities a good mobile App project should have. These contents may violate many common "classical theories", and you are welcome to criticize them.

1. The end of the “pain point” era

In recent times, the capital winter has arrived, and the industry has been pessimistic about the Internet. One of the most common arguments is that "the demographic dividend of mobile Internet has disappeared." What is the "demographic dividend of mobile Internet "? To put it simply, people often use some software when using PCs. When they start using smartphones on a large scale, they also need some corresponding APPs, because this demand is proven and self-evident. We need PS on the computer, and we have Meitu on the mobile phone. We use QQ on the computer, and we have WeChat on the mobile phone.

After years of rapid development and fierce competition, almost all mainstream software on PCs have corresponding apps on mobile phones. The pattern of these fields has either been determined or they have become a red ocean. In short, new players basically have no chance. What do these areas correspond to? Obvious pain points, habits that need no education.

Almost every entrepreneur will be asked a core question when facing investors: "What pain points does your project solve?" This question is easy to answer for toB projects, because as long as entrepreneurs have a deep understanding of the industry, it is not difficult to find problems. However, when facing toC projects where "everyone can be a product manager", after they talk about the pain points, they almost immediately face the next sentence from investors: "Is this really a pain point? Is it really painful? I don't need it!"

The reason why this problem arises is actually because the "recognized and obvious pain points" have already been solved. You want to be in touch with people anytime and anywhere, right? We have WeChat. Do you want to beautify your face with just one click? There are beautiful pictures to show off. Do you want to see which stores nearby have discounts? We have Meituan ...and the pain points you can describe next are often differentiated and segmented. If these things are not verified by data, they will appear very subjective and can easily be questioned in the same subjective way.

Therefore, we can conclude that the “pain point” logic is no longer meaningful when judging new Internet projects today, because common pain points have already become popular, and you cannot understand or verify uncommon pain points. Zuji’s “blockbuster” model is popular, but is the blockbuster a pain point? Xiaokaxiu ’s funny videos have become popular, but are funny videos a pain point?

The market has entered a new stage. For newcomers, the most important thing is not to rack their brains to dig out new pain points, but to conduct a more thorough analysis and segmentation of existing pain points, and find innovative, differentiated, and detailed solutions for people in different scenarios. Do you think it is too troublesome to use a mobile phone to take selfies? Do you want to easily take a good-looking, personalized and stylish selfie? OK, now you not only have filters, but also labels, cute stickers, two-dimensional elements, and especially for girls who like Japanese and Korean styles - in is here.

The era of pain points is over, and the era of creativity has just begun. "New players" must be a hundred times more creative than their predecessors in order to find new entry points. This is the era of "fun", and fun has become the primary productive force.

2. The beginning of the “fun” era

Before talking about the "fun" era, let me reiterate a point of view that the most important things for a good APP project are always three: acquiring massive users at low cost and high speed; retaining users in a deep and differentiated way; and making money from users in a rich, fast and predictable way. A fantastic killer application is nothing more than taking these three points to the extreme. in other words:

• Any project that requires crazy amounts of money to gain volume and cannot trigger spontaneous user dissemination is a scam!
• Any project that brings in a large number of users but fails to retain them and has “large inflows and outflows” is a rogue project!
• Any project that cannot ultimately make stable profits from users is a scam!

Do important things need to be said three times?

Judging from these three indicators, faceu is definitely a good project because it has easily completed the first indicator. The Faceu team is definitely a powerful team, because not only can they create hot spots, but they can also create hot spots again and again, so much so that people can't help but wonder whether this team already has some kind of "hot spot gene" or methodology. However, whether the latter two indicators can be completed well, or even just completing the second indicator, will be the key to whether one can become a "god". After all, the second indicator kills 99.99% of the toC projects currently on the market.

So, how can a product be spread efficiently in the market? Faced with the post-90s and post-95s groups who are becoming the main consumer force today, the author has visited them for two years and the two most frequently answered questions are "fun" and "practical". They download the apps because they are fun, and keep them for the time being because they are practical. This is different from what most product managers say, when young users open the app market , apart from the basic apps that "everyone downloads" such as communication, weather, and food delivery, their attitude towards other apps is mostly "whether they are interesting or not, and whether they suit their taste or not". They rarely say: "I need this, it meets my such-and-such needs." Why is kind downloaded? Those three little animals are so cute! Why are matchbox and moment used? This poetic conception is so fitting!

The thing called “fun” can be further divided into “five good things”.

1. Fun

That's right, it's fun. The usage process of this kind of product is either funny or cute, or as exciting as a game . Faceu’s magic video is so funny. As soon as I opened my mouth, I turned into a ghost face. I quickly posted it to scare others! Same selfie drawing is so interesting. I sent a photo, expecting someone to draw a beautiful one for me, but the result was... haha.

2. Lust

You read that right, it's lustful. All apps that can tap into people’s hormones and appear “serious” on the surface have an unstoppable magic . I remember that WeChat was originally a tool to take over QQ offline. Suddenly, everyone was looking at people nearby, you know. Why were there so many live streaming products tried in the first half of last year? 17 became popular all of a sudden, and Yingke is so awesome now. Do you think so many users watching the " Internet celebrity face " really care about her life and want to hear what she says? Aren’t you just enjoying the feeling of being watched and interacted while everyone is “chatting” and the law does not hold everyone responsible?

3. Good looking

Originally, I didn’t pay much attention to UI, and believed that the most important thing about a product is its “content”. Unfortunately, however, "good-looking" does play a significant role today. Aesthetically cute or classy, ​​in short, not low-brow, has become an early competitive advantage of a product. When you open “Open Eyes”, you immediately feel a sense of pleasure, and you are reluctant to delete the same, probably because the expressions in it are so cute that your heart melts.

4. Good "present"

It's just easy to use it to show off. According to the " social currency" theory, the use and dissemination of some products can itself become an endorsement of your personal image. Look, I used Zuji’s blockbuster mode, how tasteful and stylish I am. You see, I used a hammer note, which is a kind of craftsmanship. You see, I only use Evernote for taking notes. The best ones are the ones that can be used to "fart abroad".

5. Easy to use

This is the most basic one, specifically including two questions:

One is the interaction cost. I want to be high by completing several steps and making several choices. You see FORK is very interesting, but the interaction cost is too high. It takes me half a day to make each cartoon. I am not an art lover, so I can only stay away from it.

The second is density dependence, that is, whether it can be played when there are not many users in the early stage. For products that are more content or tool-oriented, it’s usually okay if there aren’t many users, and your experience will not be compromised. But LBS and IM are troublesome. Once there are not many users and there is no one around, the various "ideal" wonderful experiences promised by the product cannot be delivered at all.

Fun is fun, and fun has nothing to do with pain points. The problem that needs to be solved in order to be fun is to attract attention and spread quickly, to "stand out" and create topics that become phenomena, and to make users feel instantly satisfied and spread the word. It’s just a one-night stand for fun, why should I care what you’ll do tomorrow when the novelty wears off and you wake up from the dream in the middle of the night?

So the next step is "practicality".

3. The essence of “practicality” is dependence

When the user's novelty has worn off, the only reason that can make them keep thinking about and using this product is "practicality", and the essence of practicality is "creating a sense of dependence

, so that it cannot be replaced or discarded". So what is dependence? If you make an IM better than WeChat, will users become dependent on it? If you make a photo editing tool better than Meitu, will users become dependent on it? If you make a weather app better than Moji Weather, will users become dependent on it? If you "know how to use it, it is easy to use, and you love to use it", will users become dependent on it?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. We would never dare to assert that Meitu is the best photo editing tool, Moji Weather is the best weather app, and Meituan has the most favorable local life services... But there is no doubt that users rely on them, and this is more because the products have captured the minds of users from the positioning level, and then generated conditioned reflexes and neural circuits of "want... to find..."

To search for news, go to Baidu; to check the weather, go to Moji; to communicate with people, go to WeChat; to draw pictures, go to Meitu...

This is just like in life: if you want to give a gift to an elderly person, buy Melatonin; if you have a sore throat, drink Wong Lo Kat; if you are too depressed and want to drink something to stimulate yourself, look for Coke. Let me ask, is Melatonin definitely the best choice for gifts? Is Wanglaoji definitely the best choice for relieving internal heat? In fact, it is just to seize the user's mind and write a piece of code in your brain, which will naturally trigger a neural reaction once you reach this scene.

So, when all the obvious pain points have apps clustered there, every area of ​​the user's mind will be occupied by a product. Therefore, it is a hundred times more difficult to capture the minds of users and make them naturally dependent on you today than it was two years ago. Faced with this situation, newcomers have only two choices:

1. Upgrade

For the mind blocks that have been seized, we provide solutions that are more than 10 times more efficient than mainstream competitors. For example, the launch of the iPhone made all feature-based 3G phones look inferior, and people have been throwing their Nokia and BlackBerry phones into storage cabinets ever since. As a result, in the area of ​​"using mobile phones to surf the Internet and engage in rich entertainment like computers," Apple smartphones have become the new standard.

The problem with this route is that the threshold is extremely high and the risk is huge, and it is not something that ordinary players can handle. Even if you can spend a huge amount of money, who knows whether you will produce a new generation product like the iPhone, or a "monster" like Google Glass?

2. Find a different approach

Further segmentation and differentiation are carried out for the mind blocks that have been occupied, so as to create a "more attractive and appealing positioning". For example, in the field of online knowledge questions and answers, Baidu Knows can already solve most general problems, and Zhihu has seized the "high-quality, professional, classy and story-telling" question and answer area, which is extremely attractive to high-end people; when Meitu has already achieved the point of one-click beauty, but if it wants to highlight trendy fashion, it has nice; when thousand-yuan phones are already popular, what if you want to make thousand-yuan phones have the same design and high class as Apple, so Xiaomi appeared.

The core problem of this path is that the segmentation of the user's mind is actually limited. There are only so many habits that users can naturally develop every day. If there are too many, they will become tired and then disgusted with the choices and memories of "losing one thing while focusing on another". Therefore, differentiated segmentation strategies are often difficult to succeed. Mainstream products will erase your segmentation by imitating and following, or the segments you segment out are often very niche.

How about it? Do you feel that today's APP market has become an extremely terrifying intellectual game? The era when success can be achieved with an idea, a thought, a story, or a concept is long gone, because this is an era full of ideas, thoughts, stories, and concepts. So from which angles can we start to rely on this matter?

1. Efficiency dependence

In short, it means that users will always "invest less and gain more" than other products. When Meitu came out, it was more efficient than other drawing apps in beautifying selfies, and taking selfies is a much more universal need than taking pictures of artistic landscapes. It is more efficient to contact people using WeChat because other people don’t use other platforms at all. It is more efficient to watch interesting short videos using Kaiyan because other people don’t have this team that can carefully select them. Most of today's vertical products also have this concept, which is that the efficiency of obtaining content, relationships, and transactions in a certain vertical block is much higher than that of general platforms. If you are a girl who wants to know how to upgrade your consumption to a high level like a celebrity queen, then use Miss; if you want to become a professional football fan, then use Dongqiudi.

2. Habitual dependence

Dependence on efficiency will inevitably lead to the cultivation of habits, and then “once you get used to it, you can’t get rid of it”. Because although most people like to try new things, most people also prefer new things to old things . It is often extremely difficult to get them to give up old habits and adopt new ones. Therefore, the moat of a good project is often judged by whether it can trigger people's "natural demands and actions in a certain scenario", and once this thinking loop is formed, it is difficult to change. Once a good product achieves this goal, even if it is surpassed by newcomers in some parts later, its overall advantages will basically not be affected.

3. Emotional dependence

If users' definition of a product is no longer a "tool" but rises to an emotional belonging such as a spiritual harbor, this is very scary. Staying here and defending it is no longer related to the product's efficiency and cost-effectiveness, but becomes a spontaneous mission and obligation. Apple fans' religious support for Apple, Douban's literary youths' spontaneous maintenance of the atmosphere, and the explosive wars between Baidu Tieba all reflect this powerful force.

There may be two reasons for emotional dependence: personal sedimentation, users leave their personal milestones on it, so that it becomes their private territory, and only here can they find their most valuable retention; group belonging, the user's most important circle is here, only here can he feel the sense of belonging and participation in the group, and then feel full of meaning and power. This is like we see that students who have not graduated often use QQ more, because the circles are there.

From the above perspective, both faceu and same have a chance. The former aims to create a cute IM tool for young people, and the scenario of adding other users within 200 meters is also suitable for "classroom chat". In fact, faceu can be more radical. Cheng Leyi, the founder of Pocket Xiaoan APP, once tested the class chat scene formed after grabbing the course schedule, and the effect was surprisingly good. If faceu can directly form a chat scene around the "course", it will undoubtedly be more in line with the habits of young users. Just imagine, an IM that is often used in class, very cute and funny, and used by young people without supervision from parents or teachers, if it can form a sedimentation similar to Story, it may subvert mobile QQ in the future.

As an upgraded version of Tieba, same already has a stable tone and ever-changing scalability (various channels and various ways of playing) . If the channel structure and guidance are clearer, more powerful, and have centripetal force, and can effectively separate users of different tones (early same, recent same) , it may become the most suitable online dimension for young people.

In short, being able to take the second step is the key, which is almost the gate of hell for most applications. Applications that can break through this barrier and form stable, high-frequency, sticky traffic will be recorded in the history of mobile Internet. If "fun" is like a one-night stand caused by seduction, then "practical" is like marriage. Even if the passion fades and the novelty is gone, you will not separate again because of each other's habits, the risk of breaking up, emotional understanding, common experiences... The wine is no longer strong, but it becomes more fragrant as it ages.

4. Returning to business is inevitable

In the final analysis, any entrepreneurial venture must return to business. If you start a business purely for the purpose of making money, you will definitely not make a lot of money. Then starting a business without considering making money is ultimately hooliganism. Today, entrepreneurship is about using the power of technology and business to drive change in a certain area of ​​the world through insightful and forward-looking strategies, as well as their concrete products and business models, and making money along the way. So what should a good project look like?

First, the market can be monopolized. Only by making products with the goal of "monopolizing a certain block" can we stimulate the greatest potential energy to create the best things and thus generate the greatest profits. The market is always in full competition and always pursuing monopoly. Products that do not seek monopoly are not good products.

Second, profits are predictable. The most popular story in the past few years was "Increase the number of users first, and then you can make money in any way you want." Facts have proved that it is not that simple. After a few years, not many people who told this story made money. Even when the product finally started to make money, arrogant users said, "This is not pure anymore. The world is so big, I want to go out and see the world." Therefore, profitability is something that should be considered from the very beginning.

Recently, more and more people are talking about the "bankruptcy of the Diaosi economy". In fact, putting aside the discriminatory and indecent word "Diaosi", a product should pursue the "right" users with good paying ability and willingness to pay, rather than blindly pursuing user scale. You spend a lot of time and effort to attract 10 million users, 5% of which are active, and only 10% of them (50,000 ) are willing to pay. Which is more cost-effective: you find 500,000 suitable users, 50% of whom are willing to pay (250,000) ? When the profit objects, conversion nodes and even cash flow can be predicted, the situation of the project will be different.

Third, it is iterative and expandable. The most commonly mentioned thing in the so-called Internet thinking is the iterative thinking of taking small steps and running fast. The classic example here is WeChat, which has evolved from being the initial communication tool, to the QQ offline tool, to nearby people for stranger social interaction, to SNS friend circles, to public accounts for opening media, to payment and other forms of "lifestyle", and now is launching application numbers to become an OS, with the momentum of swallowing up the world.

However, iterative thinking is not so easy to implement today, because there are so many apps on the market. No matter where you iterate, there will be a more popular app that specializes in this waiting there. Unless you use high-dimensional to beat low-dimensional, or high-frequency to beat low-frequency, it is difficult to win.

On the other hand, users have already formed a certain impression of your product, and iteration often brings a sense of disobedience, making the product positioning unclear. This is like when we see Alipay trying to create an IM scenario, users are still hard to buy into it despite all its efforts, and Same, who has always been literary and lonely, suddenly starts charging for likes, and many of its die-hard fans say they can't stand it. Therefore, it is important that the positioning and main axis of the product are extensible from the very beginning. Otherwise, the fate will be doomed from the beginning and the ceiling will have been secretly formed in the minds of users.

Ultimately, whether this thing is reliable can be explained by money, whether it can gain a large number of users in the shortest time with the least amount of money, whether it can retain users, whether it can monopolize a certain block, whether it can form clear profit expectations, and whether it can invade and expand into other markets. From this perspective, it is undoubtedly reliable for Chen Yizhou to go into investment. Renren has copied all the popular trends but still cannot form a new breakthrough. Not only can it not seize a new positioning, but its original positioning has also gradually become blurred and dissolved. It might as well be like playing stocks.

So let’s move on to the last question: what kind of team is a good team? Is idea important?

5. The Real Moat

What kind of team is a good team?

Coming from BAT, are you professional enough? As a result, you find that many BAT people deeply understand how to work in a standardized and meticulous manner under the professional and complete system of a large company, but they don’t know how to write good documents from 0 to 1 when there is nothing. But what if there is no need for documents at all? We have developed a good skill of cross-departmental coordination and communication, but what if there are no departments at all?

Returnees from prestigious universities, have they undergone intellectual screening? As a result, you find that they are more suitable for things that require an international perspective, such as investment banking consulting or cross-border trade, but when it comes to the pain points and habits of most ordinary Chinese users, it is really impossible for a summer insect to talk about ice. To use an inappropriate analogy, it is difficult to make people who are surrounded by fine clothes and delicious food understand people who are looking at the rotten water bucket of a poor family.

Are there any specific resources and core technologies? It turns out that he never really had the resources and his skills weren't that reliable.

Complementary abilities and unity of purpose?

It’s not that these things are not important, but they are really not enough to be the core of judging a team. So is the core the idea? Here comes another question, is the idea important?

Facts have proved that the ideas that you think of on the spur of the moment and hide from others are probably already thought of and done by many people, so this is of course not important. But if you focus on a certain field for a long time and focus on the deep level of the industry, is it important to form a systematic idea with various strategies and details? Very important. Because there are many real things here, smart entrepreneurs and peers, when discussing projects, tend to talk about macro directions and ideas, but are reserved about key micro details. We call ideas at this stage reliable ideas.

But this is still not the most important thing, because when you have entered the market for a while and have made progress, there will always be smart people like you who see through your ideas, or even rich and willful fools who copy your routine. So what should you do at this time? Where is your moat?

The Red Sea is a necessity. Any market that does not have fundamental breakthroughs in product structure, business model, and application scenarios will inevitably fall into an operational war of competing for money. But if you achieve a breakthrough and win a short-term success, investors and entrepreneurs who understand the situation will follow suit enthusiastically, and then you will return to the old path of spending money to advance, spending money to obtain resources from the supply side and spending money to gain market share on the user side. The emergence of a large number of players on the track in a short period of time must be ahead of the market education and user stimulation, so the supply soon exceeds the stimulated demand.

And so the Hunger Games began, and reality was cruel.

Faced with an increasingly red market landscape, many companies focus on execution and funding rather than product innovation, and become increasingly lost in the rush to innovate. Most bosses who copy a proven model do not have particularly good thinking and vision. From the battle between thousands of groups to online education, from O2O to P2P, such stories have been repeated again and again. In fact, it has gradually become clear in which field it will appear this year.

Therefore, the real moat is not the team’s background, not the funding and execution, not the unique resources, but the company’s own capabilities - can it focus on the market and gradually go deeper, and have the ability to advance in a systematic iterative manner? From this perspective, the most important thing is not the idea, but the mechanism that can continuously generate reliable and awesome new ideas. It is a way of thinking that enables a company to constantly understand the future, discover opportunities, and generate awesome new ideas. Just like even though Steve Jobs has passed away, every iteration of Apple still attracts worldwide attention. Just like WeChat is going to launch a red envelope payment war this year, it is not as simple as just shaking, so we are all looking forward to what classic cases it can create. Just like the Faceu team has already created two hit products, we are all looking forward to seeing how Guo Lie will play with the next Faceu iteration.

Ideas can be copied, but the mechanism for continuously producing reliable ideas cannot be stolen by anyone.

The mobile Internet era has just begun, and it is estimated that it will take another 3-5 years before the end of the mobile phone era. At the end of the PC era, when people thought QQ had dominated everything, strong challengers such as Xiaonei, Kaixin, and Weibo emerged. So, will there be new god-level applications in the next three years? Let us wait and see.