How did Momo gain tens of millions of users in just one year?

In June 2011, Boss Wang (Wang Li called himself Boss Wang, the marketing director of Momo) asked Tang Yan, the founder of Momo: "Does this product have any competitors?" Tang Yan answered like a rookie at the time: "No." Boss Wang believed it. A year later, Boss Wang still believed this. “We are not the same as WeChat.”

After hearing too much about Momo’s entrepreneurial experience and stories in the media, let’s take a look at the “technical post” opened by Boss Wang, which talks about how Momo operates, why he chose to promote it on Weibo, how he views the concept of “hookup tool”, and how to plan the accumulation of stranger relationships on the product.

The earliest CEO Tang Yan was the editor-in-chief of NetEase. I was also at NetEase, responsible for the Weibo business of the news channel, but we had known each other for a long time. He first came out to develop the model with the team. By June last year, the product was almost ready to come out, so he gave me a brief introduction of what it was and invited me to come and do the operations.

To be honest, I had never done operations at that time, didn't understand mobile Internet, and had never used a smartphone. I only used Nokia to make calls and send text messages. I have never used WeChat and MiTalk and I know nothing about them. But Tang Yan feels that these are secondary when starting a business. What is important is that everyone has consistent values ​​and is easy to communicate with.

Momo has been online for one year and has gone through three stages of operation. The first stage was marketing promotion. After accumulating a certain number of users, it was necessary to consider the community ecology, to maintain and control, to establish logic, to determine what kind of users need to be retained and stimulate their activity, and what kind of users need to be filtered out, which is equivalent to the content construction stage. The third stage is the brand promotion stage, so that the market's perception of its functions is no longer as single as it is now. This requires product adjustments to allow users to engage at a deeper level.

Next year we will make a major improvement in our products. Now, one-third of our messages every day are sent by users who follow each other in both directions, which means that certain relationships have been accumulated in them. Then we need to create more space and content for them, as well as more levels of communication, to enable them to have new interactions.

Stranger social networking is a pseudo-concept. Any social relationship starts with strangers. I prefer to call mobile social networking Momo.

Why do you stick to Sina Weibo for operations?

There was no operational strategy to speak of at the beginning. I hate these empty words, so I just groped my way forward step by step. The product was just launched in August and is now facing a promotion stage. Initially, we only had an iOS version. When we were pushing it, we found that the iOS channel was very narrow and there was no third-party market. There were only some vertical websites such as Weiphone and 91, and websites that specialize in APP recommendations, as well as some CPC ads.

But I soon discovered that these channels had two problems: the first was that their cost-effectiveness was very low, which meant that the cost of acquiring a single user was around six or seven yuan. We were very poor at that time, and our start-up capital was only over 1 million yuan. The second is that it cannot be used as a continuous promotion method. For a website like Weiphone, the advertisement can only be pinned on the top of the forum for a week. There is no value in continuing to do so because the scale is too small.

So at that time I felt that I must find a channel that meets the following conditions: 1. It must be large in scale, have a large user base, and can be promoted continuously. 2. It costs less. At that time, I thought of two things, one was QQ Space and the other was Sina Weibo. Among them, the users of QQ Space are relatively young and are not our target users. So I think we should focus on promoting it on Weibo.

On Weibo, we initially just posted some traditional information, saying that a new product was launched and asked some friends to help promote it. At that time, the number of downloads in the first ten days was about dozens per hour. After some promotion, the number could reach a maximum of several hundred per hour. I think this approach is correct, but it must be changed to a more effective form, putting the product in a scene to tell a story. This allows users to remember to use it when they are in that scene. For example, when traveling, you can look for local Chinese people to get help, ask for directions, etc.

A Weibo post only has 140 characters, so I have to tell users what the product can help them achieve in a certain environment in a very short story. Users are very smart and will make associations when you give them a hint. It happened to be the time when Sina Weibo was at its peak of growth, and the communication effect was very good. I provided the content and used those marketing accounts as a platform, and then cooperated according to their pricing system.

This promotion method is very cost-effective. The cost of acquiring a single iOS user is only a few cents . Momo started doing this intensively about a month after its launch, carrying out different promotions every day and making some adjustments according to different time periods.

During the same period, we also did some work on Weibo, Renren, QQ Space, and Kaixin, but none of the results were as good as Weibo. The click volume of QQ space is very high, but the conversion rate is very low. So, our marketing on Sina Weibo lasted for a long time. The people gathered on Sina Weibo are of relatively high quality. I also did some promotions specifically targeting female users, using some emotional copy that they like, so the proportion of females among our initial users was very high.

Looking at products from an operational perspective

Activity is determined by the product itself. It doesn’t mean that just moving an Internet product to a mobile phone can be called a mobile Internet product. LBS is mobile .

At the beginning, Tang Yan told me that what he was making was a mobile version of QQ. He explained it very simply, but why did I feel so excited when I heard him talk about it? It is because first of all, the distance cost is knowable. On this basis, you can then look for people who have similar interests and hobbies as you, who may have work dealings with you, and who may be able to help you in some way. It will be very convenient to convert online relationships to offline relationships.

The earliest social relationships of our generation are based on parents, classmates, and work, and it is unlikely that we will get to know people who have no relationship with us at all. But everyone has a desire to break away from the existing circle and expand new social relationships. I first used QQ when I was in college in 2000. After adding a few classmates, I felt it was no longer fun because we were too familiar with each other and there was nothing to talk about. Later, I used QQ's search function to find girls in Haidian District to chat with. Why did you choose Haidian District? I was studying at Beihang University at the time, and the cost of meeting was relatively low. At that time, QQ played a great role in helping me expand my social relationships. But now it is becoming less convenient.

When we were working on Momo, we thought about what social networking is and what is the core of social networking? It must be to establish offline relationships . Your social activities cannot always be completed purely online. Cultural genes make Chinese people unwilling to establish direct connections with strangers offline, so they need an emotional foundation online. Tencent has paved the way for Chinese people to chat online first and then meet netizens offline. But Tencent and other social products have a problem: the conversion from online to offline is rather difficult . The products we have seen in the past had difficulty converting social relationships, so why did they decline? After chatting for a long time, we found out that we were not in the same place. You were in Guangzhou and I was in Beijing, so it was too difficult to meet. There is no trust in purely online relationships. Even the best of friends will become distant if they don't see each other often.

When I first came, the idea of ​​the product side was to make a very lightweight product, with not much for each user except an avatar and basic registration information. But I think that as a social product, it actually restores the real society, and should allow the different social advantages of most people in real life to be reflected on it : some people may be very beautiful with nice avatars; some may have an educational background and graduated from prestigious universities; some may work in Fortune 500 companies and be senior executives; others may be more profound, thoughtful, and interesting, and can be linked to Weibo and Douban to display. At that time, I felt that if I were to use this social product, I wouldn’t know how to use it. I’m not handsome and I can’t attract people with photos, but I have other things that I hope other users can know. After discussion, we decided to add these things into version 1.0.

What means are used to promote product activity?

Although many people talk about how to operate activity through manual means online, I personally think it’s all nonsense. I just judge that the activity of a community depends on the activity of female users, and the activity of female users depends on whether they get the social needs they want here, and secondly, whether it can avoid some offenses and harassment and give women a sense of security. So we arranged a team of seven or eight people to handle the reporting information every day. We receive about 20,000 complaints every day, and most of them are handled within 1 hour.

We have never actively promoted the idea of ​​"hooking up". But a social product with a bunch of beautiful female users, mainly peer-to-peer communication, and close geographical locations naturally led it in this direction, and the media likes gimmicks, so it magnified the story.

I don't have any particular aversion to the term "one-night stand tool". I was born in 1983, when there was a severe crackdown, and many people know what it is. Today we have more freedom to choose, which is a good thing. I don't like talking about morality either, I only believe in the value of freedom.

What I mind is that this is a rather narrow understanding of our product. We receive 20,000 reports every day, but there are nearly 50 million messages and 2.7 million active users every day, and less than half of the reports are valid. This shows that Momo is not all about harassment, and not everyone is chatting for one-night stands on it every day. We have repeatedly emphasized to everyone that the users here have more complex relationships and demands. However, it is unlikely that this brand image can be completely changed solely through public relations, unless you make major adjustments to your products and now provide a channel for acquaintances instead of the main line of stranger relationships. However, we will also pay more attention to the market.

This month, Momo will launch version 2.0, the main feature of which is to add groups based on location. We are different from the messy big square like MiTalk or the pure circle of acquaintances like WeChat. Our mechanism is very strict. We only allow 20 people at the beginning. We will eliminate those who are not active. We have the concept of group administrators. The creation and editing of each group requires manual review to ensure that what is presented in the end is a truly valuable group. What I want to do is to precipitate relationships based on geographical location. For example, there is an owner group based on the community, where all owners can join to facilitate communication and chat about issues related to children, property, and life. In the past, some property owners had QQ groups, but it was inconvenient to invite people to join. This is no longer necessary with LBS. Through Momo groups, you can find your neighbors, slowly transform them into acquaintance relationships, and slowly restore the city’s community culture. This may really change some people’s lives and help many people.

The operation of a group is more complicated. This group will require me to establish and guide it, including what form I want it to take, and I will come up with a complete set of logic. Momo’s operations team also needs to add people. There are 60 people in the company now, and only 12 of them are in operation, which is not a lot.

Next stage: Build relationships and work hard on LBS

Sedimentation relationships are our next issue, which involves whether our products need transformation. Our initial goal is to have users with whom we have already established simple relationships have continuous interaction on the product, making the product more vital. If users are given enough space and opportunities for interaction, they generally will not switch because the switching cost is relatively high, and if groups are formed in the future, the switching cost will be even higher. This is our key task in the next stage, and we are still discussing the specific form. My general idea is to give users more opportunities to express themselves, to show themselves in a more three-dimensional way, and I hope to provide more entry points for social interaction.

We hope to make some major changes in product 3.0. In addition to the new features, we will do some operational work to make users aware of what else this product can do. Otherwise, even if the operation was done very well in the past, to put it bluntly, it was still a one-to-one social scenario. In fact , QQ , WeChat, and Douban all have the function of hooking up, but their product levels are rich enough that " hooking up " is not a problem for them . So when the user base reaches a large number and the products become more diversified, no one will define you in such a simple way, because everyone uses it and everyone has different demands.

Our goal is to tap into the maximum value of geographical location. There is a lot to be explored here, and we can indeed change a lot of things. In fact, many LBS products were on the wrong direction from the beginning. What’s the point of signing in, which is like a puppy peeing? Who cares where you go? But if we view LBS from a social and localized perspective, it becomes an opportunity to transform online relationships into offline relationships .

The people you see in CBD are all white-collar workers, and the people you see near schools are all students. Every geographical location has its own social attributes, and you can associate many things with it. A few days ago, the mother of a friend of mine was sick and couldn't get an appointment. So he was browsing Momo in the corridor of Union Hospital, and saw a bunch of doctors and nurses. He picked a nurse and started to get in touch with her. He chatted with her for a long time and was very happy. He told the nurse that his mother was sick and couldn't get an appointment. The nurse immediately said, "No problem, I'll help you get one." Of course we don't encourage this, but once you think about it, you'll find that the prospects are very broad.

Commercialization or profit model is not a problem at all, but we are not in a hurry at the moment. We have no financial pressure, and this also requires market cultivation. Next year, our daily active users or UV may surpass those of portal websites. However, now everyone is advertising on portals because people are aware of them. Mobile Internet also needs a process of market recognition, and its value has not yet been fully realized.

In short, all of Momo’s future product designs will not deviate from the most basic point, which is LBS. My main job in the coming year is to maintain high user growth while maintaining high activity. Our current user daily activity rate is around 22% to 23%, and there were 2.7 million active users yesterday. After all, we are a startup company. We don’t have any KPIs and are not afraid of losing face. Our goal in product and operation is to hit the wall as quickly as possible, improve as quickly as possible, and try new things. But the most important thing is fast.