How are popular products created and operated?

A while ago, the Moments were flooded with Oasis and ZAO. The subsequent media reports made people recall those popular products that once left their mark on the Moments.

Today, the Love Circle Product Research Group will take you through a review and summary of the 17 popular apps we have pursued over the years.

"Best Seller"

An identity that carries both halo and curse.

From "phenomenal products" to "monthly apps", countless familiar names have experienced their glorious moments in the envious eyes of others, and most of them have left their epitaphs on the list of people who died after having a brief enjoyment of their lives.

But for many products, a hit product means honor, resources and traffic, and means that the team can stand at the top of the mountain and be worshipped by all directions. Therefore, since WeChat took over this market, “flooding the friend circle” has become everyone’s yearning and some people’s belief.

"It's better to die in a fire than to die in no fire at all."

2013~2014: Moman, Face Meng, Wumi

On October 25, 2013, Moman Camera topped the App Store just three days after its launch, setting astonishing records including 3.25 million new downloads per day, ranking first in the overall rankings in more than 160 countries and regions, and having over 100 million users in seven months.

"Bring people into the world of comics." This is Ren Xiaoqian's dream.

Engaged in gift design, she founded Baishun Huanian with her university classmate Huang Guangming. They use digital cameras to capture human faces, process them into cartoons, and then affix them to customized gifts. Later, they were invited to the Shanghai World Expo to provide cartoon passport production for tourists, with daily sales reaching as high as 300,000.

Huang Guangming said: "Everyone always cherishes his or her own face. If you put this face on any product, the value of this product will instantly increase by 1 to 1.5 times for this person."

But the booming business made the two men see a fatal threshold: it takes only 5 minutes to produce a passport, and 300,000 people is the ceiling. With the surging development of mobile Internet, Ren Xiaoqian and Huang Guangming decisively cut off their offline businesses.

Finally, the Moman Camera successfully shortened the time from 5 minutes to 5 seconds. This time, Ren Xiaoqian brought the entire circle of friends into the world of comics.

However, when it comes to portrait comics, Moman Camera is not the only one.

On November 26, 2013, Faceu released the Android version and landed on the App Store one month later. Unlike Moman Camera, Faceu does not require users to upload photos, but instead allows users to directly create their own cartoon characters by pinching their faces.

Faceu’s founder Guo Lie used to work for Tencent and is a post-90s anime geek. He often said: "How the product will eventually develop into is determined by those born in the 1990s." The name and style of Faceu may be inherited from this young product concept.

Unlike Moman Camera, which reached its peak as soon as it debuted, the number of downloads of Faceu did not begin to surge until May of the following year, and it topped the App Store during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. At that time, the team was working overtime all night, and it was the investor who called to tell Guo Lie the news.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and Faceu soon fell from the altar. By the end of 2014, its ranking even fell behind its predecessor, Magic Camera.

Guo Lie himself also realized that: "Lianmeng is for the purpose of making avatars. The need to change avatars is not very common. You may use a cartoon avatar this time, but you may not use it next time. Every product has its own mission, and there is no need to have too high expectations for it after it is completed."

Obviously, the missions of Moman and Lianmeng have come to an end here. From being glorious for a time to disappearing from the limelight, the feeling is just like drinking the water, only you know how it feels.

In addition to these two self-animated avatar applications, there is another product that must be mentioned in 2014, that is Wumi, which topped the social list for a month.

“This app is amazing! Secrets - anonymous revelations from friends!”

In April 2014, a link like this flooded the WeChat Moments. News such as "a female boss who raised tens of millions of yuan came out", "a female star stole things from a luxury store", "an IT tycoon was arrested for taking drugs in a hotel room in Beijing" spread like wildfire, first dragging the Internet circle into it, and then the entire circle of friends got involved.

This anonymous social application quickly became popular on the entire Internet. The irresponsible remarks provided an outlet for all gossip, rumors, voyeurism, and offensive desires. It not only pushed secrets to the top of the social rankings, but also pushed it to the forefront of the industry and the media.

On May 8, Secret was reported by the original American version of Secret and was removed from the shelves by Apple. After it was renamed Wumi and put back on the shelves, it was removed again due to insufficient control over negative content. Finally, WuMi reappeared on the App Store through cooperation with YouMi. But the "Wu Mi Leak Gate" is still continuing to ferment.

“There are no secrets that cannot be told.”

Perhaps even the founder Lin Chengren himself did not expect what kind of demon was lurking behind this warm slogan. If Moman and Lianmeng allow people to show their beautiful and interesting selves, then Wumi opens the dark Pandora's box in human nature.

2015: Foot Notes, Xiaoka Show, 17

Moman and Lianmeng fell from the sky like meteors, and Wu Mi, who was full of malice, gave everything he had but still failed to have a good ending. But the story of the hit is still going on.

In March 2015, a "film and TV still" that no one had ever seen appeared in the circle of friends, followed by the second, the third...

These blockbusters with perfect quality quickly went viral, and the source of the blockbusters, "Zuji App", also came into the public eye.

In fact, Zuji, which is based on "movie shooting locations", is a very niche product. Founder Yang Liu once worked with partner Yu Wenqing to develop a software called "Today in Leslie Cheung's History" to record Leslie Cheung's historical footprints. Yang Liu felt that this matter could be done on a bigger scale, which led to the subsequent records.

"Travel with movies", Zuji originally belonged only to movie and travel lovers, until the emergence of blockbuster mode, which aroused the movie sentiment of the entire circle of friends.

"Everyone has a dream of being a director. By using this function to take a photo and add subtitles, you can be the director of your life." Yang Liu, who graduated with a major in film, television and drama literature, obviously has a deep affection for movies.

On March 11, Zuji topped the App Store, which directly caused the server to be paralyzed for four days, and the app crashed as soon as users opened it. But all this failed to dampen everyone's enthusiasm. In the following months, Zuji upgraded its service architecture, swept the photography rankings in dozens of countries, and successfully obtained tens of millions of US dollars in financing.

It is regrettable that the sentiments in the circle of friends came and went quickly, the blockbuster model ultimately failed to break the curse of the quick death of hot products, and photo social networking ultimately failed to usher in a true winner.

At the same time, the first hit product of video social networking - Xiaokaxiu - was born.

Xiaokaxiu is the second short video product under Yixia Technology. It imitated the dubsmash that swept Germany last year. It provides clips from popular film and television dramas and allows netizens to lip-sync, which has created a group of funny performance-oriented people in the circle of friends.

Of course, as the brother of Miaopai, Xiaokaxiu’s popularity also benefits from Sina Weibo, which is closer than its own father. On July 6, Wang Luodan posted a funny video on Weibo imitating Venus recorded using Xiaokaxiu. Later, Zhang Yishan and Jiang Xin also joined in, and Xiaokaxiu ushered in the first wave of crazy downloads.

Afterwards, Xiao Ka Xiu appeared on Happy Camp and posted #在线lip-syncingcontest# on Weibo, which reached 570 million views and completely ignited the entire Internet. The number of daily active users of Xiaokaxiu quickly reached 5 million.

"I originally thought that it would take two years for short videos to explode, but Xiaokaxiu has brought that time forward," said Zhou Wei, managing partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers China and a Series C investor in Yixia Technology.

The cleverness of Xiaokaxiu lies in providing a creative paradigm. Han Kun, CEO of Yixia Technology, believes that "domestic users are not good at creating original content, so we proactively provide scripts to users so that they can produce stories without much effort."

Of course, Kuaishou and Douyin will completely overturn the perception that domestic users are not good at originality in the near future.

Now, the emerging short video will soon be overwhelmed by another trend, that is, mobile live streaming.

When Xiao Ka Xiu was at the height of its popularity, Taiwanese artist Huang Licheng was finalizing investment for his live streaming app "17", and the investor was the national husband Wang Sicong. At that time, 17 was already the number one app in Taiwan.

After receiving the investment, 17 started to distribute the coins. On average, he gave the anchor 1 dollar for every 1,000 viewers. This model attracted many users to start broadcasting. However, since 17 has taken almost no content supervision measures, many users will do anything to attract viewers, resulting in a large amount of sensitive content on the platform.

But it was precisely these contents that made 17 successful. On September 3, 2015, the incident of a Taiwanese woman giving birth through a live broadcast caused 17's ranking to rise rapidly. It ranked first in the App Store in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the United States, and topped the Chinese free list on September 25.

The next day, Wang Sicong pinned a Weibo post with a screenshot of his 17 accounts on his Weibo account with more than 16 million followers.

But as the saying goes, "Success and failure are both due to the same person", on September 29, 17 was removed from both Apple and Google platforms due to content supervision issues, becoming one of the shortest-lived hits and missing the mobile live streaming era that it had personally opened.

2016: faceu, Pokemon GO

By 2016, Faceu had become a thing of the past, but no one expected that Guo Lie would emerge with his new product, becoming the only entrepreneur in China to have two consecutive products to top the overall list.

And this product is FaceU.

In January 2016, this beauty camera that mainly uses dynamic stickers launched the topic #全民吐彩虹# and invited Yu Menglong, the Ninth Prince in "The Rise of Phoenixes", to help. It topped the app list in one fell swoop and continued to dominate the list for the next three weeks.

However, the two times of passing the imperial examinations brought trouble to Guo Lie. "Will FaceU become the second Faceu?" is the question he faces most every day. But in fact, when developing this product, Guo Lie had his own idea: the goal of FaceU is social interaction.

Guo Lie admitted that the inspiration for FaceU's dynamic stickers came from Snapchat and SNOW. If the team simply wanted to create a selfie hit, it would only take three months to achieve the current data. "But we spent nine months on IM. We first got the process right and then attracted users."

According to Guo Lie's idea, after using tools to reach a hot spot and attract huge traffic, the cold start problem of social networking will be solved. Sure enough, FaceU struck while the iron was hot and launched its social function: Meet Cute Friends, a dating function similar to Tinder. In addition, FaceU also has an address book and self-destructing message functions.

"Ultimately, we want to be a social networking platform for acquaintances," said Guo Lie.

As for the results, we already have the answer today. Although it may seem a bit hindsight now, the facts have proved that so far no tool-type product has successfully entered the social field.

On the other hand, while FaceU has attracted a lot of attention in the country, Nintendo has driven the whole world crazy.

On July 7, 2016, Nintendo's mobile game Pokemon GO was first released in Australia and New Zealand, and then landed in North America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other regions, and topped the US game charts for nearly a month.

The classic IP with a long history and the dimension-breaking augmented reality experience have made Pokemon GO sweep social media around the world in a short period of time. "Trainers" even risk their lives to go into the mountains, break into police stations at night, and steal boats to go out to sea, just to catch a Pokemon. Although Pokemon GO is not available in mainland China, the number of readings of related Weibo topics has quickly exceeded 100 million.

The money-making ability of Pokemon GO is even more astonishing. After only ten days in the US, the game revenue it generated was equivalent to the total revenue of all other games. 63 days after its first release, global revenue exceeded US$500 million, making it the fastest-growing mobile game. During this period, Nintendo's stock price soared by nearly 75%, and its market value increased by US$12 billion!

However, like all popular games in history, the popularity of Pokemon GO quickly faded. Two months later, the number of active users dropped by 80%, and Nintendo's stock price rose and fell like a roller coaster.

But as the first "phenomenal AR game", this achievement is enough to leave a significant mark in the history of mobile games.

2018: Climb to the Top, Travel Frog, Sweet Customization, Bullet Messenger, ZEPETO, Yinyue

The popular calendars skipped 2017 and exploded in 2018, with two becoming popular in January alone.

The first one is the second live broadcast app "Chongding Conference" supported by Wang Sicong.

On January 3, a Weibo post by Wang Sicong broke the calm of the live streaming industry, publicly endorsing the HQ-like quiz app "The Rush to the Top". The setting of sharing the prize money by answering 12 questions correctly quickly attracted a large number of users, and the mechanism of inviting friends to obtain resurrection codes brought viral spread to the summit.

For a time, the news of "Wang Sicong throwing money around" became known to everyone, and the "Rush to the Top" conference also took advantage of this to reach the top ten of the overall list, with the highest number of online viewers in a live broadcast reaching 1.7 million.

Soon, Yingke’s Cheese Superman, Toutiao’s Millionaire Hero, Huajiao’s Millionaire Winner, Douyu’s Millionaire Brave, and Yizhibo’s Golden Ten Seconds joined in one after another, and the prize money was raised from the initial 100,000 to 200,000, 500,000, and then 1 million. The live streaming industry has once again entered a bloody battle.

However, just as the top conferences were preparing to enter the Spring Festival bloody battle, a ban issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television cast a chill over the entire industry: any organization or individual that does not hold an "Information Network Audiovisual Program Transmission License" is not allowed to start an online live quiz show.

The first trend of the new year, “live answering questions”, was strangled in the cradle.

Another hit this month is a Japanese mobile game called "Travel Frog".

Travel Frog is a placement game. The special thing about this game is that you don’t know when the frog will leave or when it will come back; you don’t know where it has gone or who it has gone with; when it stays at home, it will read books and write diaries, but will never communicate with you; when it is not at home, you can only know its news through the celebrity cards it sends back.

No one expected that without any Chinese translation, the Traveling Frog would suddenly top the game list, causing those warriors who played Chicken in Erangel and the girls who raised their husbands in Love and Producer to switch sides and start claiming their "frog son". Even the hot topic on Weibo became "Waiting for the frog to come home".

The popularity of Traveling Frog even caught its creator Mayuko Uemura, who is far away in Japan, by surprise: "We never thought it would be so popular in China." But perhaps, this is the best interpretation of the "Buddhist youth" that has been all over the screen recently.

Time has unknowingly come to May, and a social software called "Sweet Customization" suddenly topped the list.

This app, which claims to be a high-end dating app, actually comes from the notorious American porn website Seeking Arrangement. The "SA" on the sweet custom logo also comes from this. In this app, boys need to fill in their assets and income to be certified as successful people, while girls can choose to become charming sweethearts.

To put it bluntly, it is a dating platform for people looking for support.

Such a standpoint undoubtedly caused Sweet Customization to be criticized by public opinion, but what is surprising is that the Weibo account of Sweet Customization began to be updated as early as 2014, and the App was also listed on the App Store in 2016. It is hard to imagine through what channels such a product was introduced into the country.

Three days later, Sweet Customization was taken off the shelves, becoming a small episode in this year's hot-selling relay. Next it’s the boss’ turn to come on stage.

On the evening of August 20, Luo Yonghao grandly launched the Nut Pro 2s and the so-called most disruptive Nut TNT workstation at the Hammer conference, and also introduced two small innovations: Bullet SMS and Infinite Screen. Unexpectedly, the next day, "Can the Bullet SMS released last night replace WeChat?" became everyone's top concern.

Two days later, the widely-watched Bullet Messenger unsurprisingly topped the App Store charts.

Bullet SMS is a communication product developed with the original intention of improving communication efficiency. It has made certain improvements in voice reading and message reception, and is very compatible with the TNT workstation released by Hammer. However, the high hopes given by investors and the industry to "disrupt WeChat" really seem like being forced into a rut.

However, the entire industry has been looking forward to a product that dares to challenge WeChat head-on for a long time. With the media fanning the flames, Luo was happy to go with the flow and make the story bigger. In this way, Bullet Messenger obtained 150 million yuan in financing in just 7 days.

However, “ social networks may come and go, but WeChat remains forever” , and everyone has seen the ending of Bullet Messenger. It changed its name to Chatbao and disappeared from the public eye. Luo Yonghao switched to selling e-cigarettes.

2018 is coming to an end, but there are still two phenomenal products about to be launched: ZEPETO and Yinyue.

ZEPETO is a face-shaping and dress-up application from South Korea. Backed by NAVER, the parent company of the Japanese and Korean social software LINE, it can be said that ZEPETO is the QQ Show of LINE.

In September 2018, ZEPETO officially entered the domestic market and chose to start its promotion from Xiaohongshu. It created a small climax in October and then began to dominate the charts for 10 days on November 30.

The biggest feature of this software is that you can take photos with your friends using your own virtual image. In addition to various couple photos and selfies with best friends, you can even find the celebrity’s virtual image and take photos with him. For a while, the entire WeChat Moments and Weibo were flooded with ZEPETO, almost making people think that they had broken through the dimensional wall.

Judging from its performance in the global market, ZEPETO once ranked No. 1 in the overall rankings in 14 countries and regions, and No. 1 in the social rankings in 32 countries and regions. It also ranked very high in countries such as South Korea, the United States, and Japan.

This trend reminds me of the cute face back then. Unfortunately, the 3D version of ZEPETO also couldn’t escape the fate of Face Cuteness. After topping the list, it still encountered an unstoppable decline.

Next, let’s take a look at Yin Yu, which broke out almost at the same time as ZEPETO.

Officially launched in November, Yinyue is known as the last dark horse of 2018. In just over a month, it has taken the first place on the social list. If it had not been overshadowed by products such as ZEPETO, Duoshan and Personal Income Tax, it would probably have been a potential to dominate the list.

Yinyue is a voice social software for singing karaoke songs in succession. It has three modes: "Sing Along", "Sing the Song Quickly" and "Everyone Leads the Singing". The basic form is that the first half of the song is given and the user takes over the second half. Users compete with each other to see who knows more and sings better. Of course, there are also some netizens who are very funny and don’t sing but just act funny when they get on the microphone.

This fun way of playing quickly became popular on Bilibili and Tieba, and was welcomed by many young people.

Judging from the ranking alone, Yinyue’s curve has been rising since mid-November and has remained at a high level until February. It is more stable and durable than other social apps like "Bullet Messenger" and "ZEPETO" and a game app like "Travel Frog".

However, Yinyue’s performance in social aspects is not satisfactory. In terms of karaoke, there are big brothers Changba and Kugou ahead, so it is still very difficult to get rid of the "explosive dilemma".

2019: Spot, ZAO, Oasis

Entering 2019, the social networking industry has become increasingly lively with a series of hits appearing one after another, and social networking among young people has received more widespread attention. The first hit product of this year comes from a young team of post-95s.

In March, the big fight between Chatbao, Duoshan, and MaChong had just subsided, and a little-known app suddenly took the top spot on the social rankings. It is Spot, created by CEO Chen Ziling, who was born after 1995.

Spot, which was launched as early as 2018, is a map social software that imitates Zenly. Its UI is bright and colorful, with a strong post-00s temperament. In terms of product design, Spot includes novel features such as map walkie-talkie, emoticon bombing, anonymous group chat and music conversation.

What really made Spot popular was the checking-up videos on TikTok. On the Spot map, you can see your friends’ current location at any time. This setting turns Spot into a “check-in tool” for couples. This kind of "intimate social interaction" can be said to be deeply "loved" by young people.

However, Spot forces users to turn on real-time positioning, and it cannot be turned off when the App is not in use. This practice has been questioned by many. As to whether map social networking is sufficient to break through the walls of WeChat, there is also a big question mark.

Next, let’s talk about two apps that have been very popular recently. One is Oasis produced by Sina, and the other is ZAO produced by Momo.

Let’s talk about Oasis first. I still remember when three social products were trying to copy WeChat at the beginning of the year, Wang Sicong said: "It would be better to make an Instagram picture + reward social app."

So Sina created Oasis, which is just “ins+Little Red Book”.

On September 2, Wang Gaofei officially launched Oasis with a Weibo post, positioning it as a "lifestyle and fashion social platform produced by Weibo." Weibo, which is at the forefront of social networking, has personally challenged the Chinese version of Instagram, attracting a large number of people to come and watch. The next day, Oasis ranked first on the social list.

However, controversy soon ensued. Not only is the style very similar to Instagram and Xiaohongshu, but there are also many unreasonable aspects of the product, such as frequent crashes, inability to modify usernames, and inability to conduct private chats. Unfortunately, before the product was perfected, Oasis was removed from the shelves due to infringement of its logo image.

Although it has been put online again after adjustments, overall, Oasis is just like last year's Bullet Messenger. Apart from its prominent origin, it does not have enough highlights. In China, where photo-based social networking has been completely defeated, it remains to be seen how far Oasis can go.

The last one is ZAO, which still sits firmly at the top of the overall list.

“You only need one photo to perform the best show in the world.”

This face-changing application developed by Momo immediately dominated the App Store as soon as it was launched. In just a few seconds, ZAO can replace the characters in movie videos with your face, fulfilling your dream of acting on the same stage with your idol. Overnight, the entire circle of friends participated in this cosplay feast.

But at the same time, careful netizens pointed out ZAO's unreasonable user agreement, its unfair terms on portrait rights, and the potential security risks of face-scanning payment fraud. The old account of deepfake synthesis of celebrity pornographic videos was also dug up. ZAO's reputation instantly plummeted.

Fortunately, Momo's public relations team responded quickly, publicly apologized and revised the user agreement. Alipay also publicly clarified that ZAO's face-changing technology could not break through Alipay's face-scanning payment. However, WeChat still justifiably banned the sharing of ZAO.

Judging from the ranking, this episode did not affect the popularity of ZAO, but in essence, there seems to be no difference between ZAO and the former Moman, Facemeng, and even the later ZEPETO. Perhaps it won’t be long before we witness the fall of another hit product.

Summary: The essence of a hit

"My traces have been left in the sky, and the whole world knows that I have flown there."

What kind of product can be called a hit? Products that experience a surge in downloads in a short period of time, top the app charts or even dominate the charts for a short period of time, and attract a lot of participation or discussion can be called hot products.

“Hot products are manufactured”

Regarding the hit product, some say it was an accident, while others say it was a deliberate plan.

Most stories about accidentally hitting the mark are probably just “stories”. You know, even in this era of self-propagation, it is not easy to create a hit product that will be spread by the whole nation. We have reason to believe that hit products are manufactured. Therefore, we would like to pay tribute to all the creators of the hit products:

“You have a deep understanding of products, as well as a deep understanding of communication and behavioral sciences, and you put them into practice with great results.”

There is a motive behind any action, and behind any hit product there must be factors that make it a hit. In 7 years, there are 17 best-selling products. Each one is different, but the logic behind them actually has a lot in common and universality. Presumably, the creators of these hit products would have more or less certain expectations and judgments about the subsequent explosion when the products were launched.

The conditions for creating a hit product are actually not complicated, they are:

Fresh products + self-propagation mechanism

A good cook cannot cook without rice. If you want to create a hit product, the first thing that matters is that the product itself is fresh enough. The above 17 popular products were more or less, and of course most of them were more or less, eye-catching in terms of product form when they were first launched. Of course, such new products only have the potential to become hits.

The categories of “new” can be roughly divided into new tools, new content, new environment and new gameplay.

The key to becoming a hit is the design of the subsequent self-propagation mechanism, which runs through the entire life cycle of the product. Almost all hot-selling products rely on massive sharing by the entire nation, and the most common and direct way is to share on WeChat Moments.

However, the basis for nationwide dissemination and sharing is determined by the personal behavior of each individual, so giving each individual a sufficiently convincing reason to share is also the basis for dissemination and sharing. If the reason for sharing can reach users at the national level, then it must be the greatest common denominator of the reasons why everyone shares on WeChat Moments.

Therefore, the content shared by popular products must have nothing to do with the shaping of a unique personality, but is closely related to the sharer's implicit expression of a "better self". This desire to display and show off a "better self" is the greatest common denominator of reasons for sharing on WeChat Moments across the country.

This kind of sharing is a fusion of "selfishness" and "altruism".

While sharing, many people also left messages under their own Moments to emphasize "This is xx App". Because purely "selfish" self-show is often unfriendly, but if you are recommending a fresh and fun product, everything becomes very natural. Moreover, this kind of "altruism" appears to be the promotion of new products, but in fact it is conveying a kind of "priority showing off right".

Therefore, this kind of low-risk, low-error sharing that combines "self-interest" and "altruism" will be very popular in everyone's circle of friends in the early stage, but will be obviously weak in the later stages. Because sharing in the post-dissemination stage has lost the "priority to show off", and the sense of superiority of foresight is completely gone, and it will become chasing old tricks, boring and belated.

If someone today shared his various face-changing videos on my Moments as if he had discovered a new continent, I would feel a little clumsy and embarrassed. But this does not mean that ZAO has lost its influence. ZAO, which is still ranked first in the overall list, must be spreading and diffusing among people in other circles.

To sum up, the viewpoint that the creators of hot products must adhere to is that the sharing mentality from the user's perspective is:

I shared you just to make myself better and get more points in my circle of friends!

Of course, the above classification only applies to 16 products, and the only one that seems out of place is - sweet customization.

The novelty of its product is slightly lacking. At best, it has built a new scenario. As for the dissemination mechanism, there are not many shares on WeChat Moments, and even if there are, they are only regarded as news. This is not a mass-market dissemination at all. After all, Sweet Customization is a product that is somewhat "shady".

But in the face of underlying needs, all methodologies will seem redundant. After all, Freud regarded "sex" as the primary productive force, and such a rigid demand naturally has the potential to become a hit. As a result, this product was circulated in various WeChat groups. After all, we have our own personalities in our circle of friends, but this is not necessary in a small group of close friends or a "resource exchange group".

But some things are ultimately unacceptable to the world. So whether it is Sweet Customization, or the former Wu Mi and 17, they use the dark side of human nature to induce people, and the result is death the fastest.

“Where is the future of blockbuster products?”

Today is the future of the past. We don’t need to be prophets to infer the future of blockbuster products. As long as we shift the time point forward, we will have the so-called "future vision."

Of these 17 apps that once dominated the app list, only five are still in the top 1,500. Three of them have just topped the list within the past year, including ZAO, which is currently at the top of the list. As for whether these three products will still be among the top 1,500 in two years? Time will tell, but my guess is: no.

The staying power of a hit product is a natural genetic defect . Explosive power and endurance are perhaps two things that you cannot have both. Expecting to run a marathon at Bolt's speed is certainly exciting, but it is really hard to run.

On the other hand, hot products are more reflected in breakthroughs and innovations in product functions and scenarios. They have no technical thresholds and are easy to copy and transfer. Therefore, once they are verified to be effective, even before the verification is completed, major traffic users will enter the market.

For example, the "Rush to the Top" event made us realize that the product updates and iterations of leading companies are astonishingly fast. Although large companies also evaluate the probability of success internally, they would rather pay for failure than miss out. In this case, even if the product we have worked hard to create is successful at the first try, there is a high probability that we are just paving the way for others.

It is precisely such defects that determine that the future of the hit product will not last long.

Bullet Messenger, which changed its skin and reorganized its genes, died after being renamed Chatbao; the "Chongding Conference" was later renamed "Hotspot", and its business was still to provide entertainment and interactive challenges, where people could make money while playing, but it was also taken the initiative to be removed from the entire network at the end of August for unknown reasons.

The rapid rise and fall of such borderline series as Wu Mi, 17, and Sweet Customization proves that unorthodox and unorthodox ways will often quickly disappear from the world.

Other products have been adjusted to varying degrees compared to the original ones. Pokemon go struggles tenaciously on the US app list and still occupies a place, but compared to its past glory, it is now showing signs of fatigue.

The only one that can be called a "good ending" is FaceU. Although the team also tried the great idea of ​​creating a Chinese version of Snapchat in the middle of product development, dreams could not defeat reality, and ultimately they invested 300 million US dollars in Toutiao, which is regrettable. But after all, it is the only survivor among the seven years of sensational hits.

After joining Toutiao, the FaceU team subsequently developed products such as "Qingyan" and "Jianying", both of which performed well. Maybe it is really nice to take shelter under a big tree. The creators of hit products may just want the heroism of building an empire. Who would be willing to be a lone hero when they can hold on to someone powerful?

“A hot item that shouldn’t be pursued”

It should not be pursued, not from the user's perspective, users can still be happy to see hot-selling products. The "should not be pursued" here refers to the perspective of entrepreneurs and investors.

Because creating a hit product is a very difficult thing in itself, and it is even harder to have a hit product that can have a successful ending. It only happens once every seven years, and Faceu is the only one that does. At the same time, when investing in hot-selling products, they are often very expensive. After comprehensive evaluation, it is actually a very low cost-effective thing for everyone.

The motivation for entrepreneurs to start is also very important. If you are planning to start a business with a longer timeline, then choosing a blockbuster product will undoubtedly multiply the extremely low success rate by 1/17. This is simply the limit of self-challenge - self-destruction.

If it is to prove oneself, and one feels that no one cares about one's ten years of hard study, and one wants to become famous overnight and known to the world. In this way, more or less, people regard hot-selling products as a kind of belief. A hit, reaching the top, countless eyes, infinite glory, the feeling of being at the top of the mountain.

It seems that after completing the practice of becoming a hit, you have obtained the Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, and can "command the world and no one dares to disobey." When you are ready to overthrow the world, you will find in the end that you will be completely subdued by this world.

After all, the only one who can lift the Dragon Slaying Sword is the Lion King, and the young guys in the martial arts world generally can't do it.

The pursuit of blockbuster products continues. Even if there is only a slight possibility of disruption, it will make us, the entrepreneurs who are restless by nature, excited. It is easy for us to imagine that we are the one who wins the lottery, because everyone who starts a business will more or less believe that he or she is a little luckier than others.

However, regarding the hot products, our Love Circle product research team’s view is:

Look at hot products rationally, don’t chase them blindly, or even stay away from them.

After all, "History is a mirror that can help us understand the rise and fall of nations."

We hope that we can:

“Stubborn but principled, enthusiastic but not impulsive, optimistic but not blind.”

—Max Weber

Author: Hiro, Hanzhi

Source: Love Circle Product Research Group