2019 "Feiliao App" product operation analysis!

From the content of Feichat's promotional articles and combined with the basic form of the current product, it can be seen that Feichat wants to make a decentralized social chat product, but it is obvious that Feichat is currently in the pioneering stage and there is still a long way to go before achieving its goals.

Duoshan seems to be out of fashion, so let’s talk briefly about Feiliao today.

The next stage of Feichat should be:

1. Launched a series of features to quickly clean up friends you don’t contact frequently.
2. Operations intervene to maintain the atmosphere of the circle and weaken the rise of platform-level big Vs.
3. Select high-quality circles from the circles for operation and indirect promotion.
4. A way for KOL to manage fans.
5. From relationship → content, to content → relationship.

You know what to do, right?

I am not good at writing stories, and I don’t have much passion for writing stories. At the end of the article, I will recommend a classmate who is good at writing business stories. Of course, I won’t compare Feichat with too many apps, such as 12345. That is a high-P thing for some products. I have simply sorted it out above just to make it easier for you to understand. You don’t have to swipe left on Baidu to check why.

At the end of 2018, there was a rumor about "Feiliao App". As we were used to the form of IM products, everyone (especially us product locusts) thought it was just a pure chat tool like QQ and WeChat. But then on January 15th, the Spring Festival Gala of product managers, namely Toutiao's Duoshan, Wang Xin's Matou MT, and Luo Yonghao's Chatbao, three social apps were released on the same day, attracting the attention of product locusts (and WeChat Night, it is known as this year's Spring Festival Gala of social PMs), and the speculation and expectations about Feichat came to nothing.

People are so concerned about Toutiao's "Feiliao" (or Toutiao's social path) that they are probably just watching how Toutiao and Tencent compete. One goes from social to content, and the other goes from content to social. Toutiao has always wanted to get involved in social networking, and social networking is also the "dream" of Internet products. Toutiao is supported by a strong algorithm and attracts enough user attention through content, but ultimately the relationship chain has the most stable influence on retention. Of course, everyone hopes that Toutiao wins and refutes WeChat; but no one wants Toutiao to win either, after all, that would give them even less chance. The atmosphere of watching the gossips has been stirred up enough by the "Toutiao social dream".

Of course, as for Duoshan, whether it is a "smoke bomb" as everyone says, or it is really due to problems with the product itself, I won’t say much. At least everyone agrees that Duoshan’s most basic user demands and scenarios have problems, and Duoshan is basically stopped now, right? Anyway, Ze’s zlog is gone. After experiencing the "multi-flash smoke bomb", Feichat gave everyone (especially a Global PM product manager) a different experience.

In short, Toutiao’s social products are being watched by a group of product locusts…

Yesterday, Feiliao was launched on Jike (applause, no matter whether Ze is the first or not, it’s blown anyway). From last night to today, I have added 300 Fei friends and more than 20 "groups" ("circles" in Feiliao). Let me first briefly talk about Feiliao. (Of course, if you want to read an article comparing apps horizontally, you can turn left and leave. What I’m talking about is weird anyway.)

1. Positioning of Feichat App

I found a headline article from Feichat:

↑Search for TA in the chat room

From the content of the article, the positioning of Feichat App is summarized (this is what the product hopes and dreams for, and it is unrealistic from the current product form):

1. Interest social
2. Open social products
3. Discover communities with similar interests
4. Instant messaging products

Feichat aims to be a decentralized social chat product. The experienced driver found that the previous keywords seem to be very similar to JK, but don’t worry, I won’t make a horizontal comparison today.

Based on the positioning and goals declared by Feichat, it needs to accomplish two basic things: discover new content (basic interests and similarities) and discover new relationships. Of course, the most basic IM basic experience also needs to be done well. Based on the goals and basic requirements, Feichat's product form has taken on its current form that many people do not understand, but I think their product managers are professional and OK.

2. Feichat is viewed negatively

People who come into contact with Feichat today are no longer the "early adopters" in the product life cycle... 80% are product managers and investors (after all, Feichat was revealed by JK, which is not good, product locusts are a taboo). Today, people's criticism of Feiliao can be divided into three types:

1. Non-Product Manager

• I have too many friends and I don’t know any of them. I will start deleting friends tomorrow.
• It feels like there are problems with groups and teams. There are all kinds of advertisements, check-ins, and sharing of top-secret entrepreneurial information in the groups and teams.
• (Caused by the second-degree relationship method of adding friends) People are added as friends when they don’t know each other and don’t know each other well. It’s very annoying.

1. Product Manager

• I don't understand. A completion level of 5.0 is most likely dead.
• Feichat’s positioning is unclear and it is unclear what the user’s usage scenarios are.
• How Feichat attracted the first batch of regular users (the product locust knew very well that he was not a regular user^^).
• Be wary of the false prosperity of Feichat.

1. Bonus wool party

• Feiliao is the next TikTok, a social product specially designed for KOLs. Headlines lead to small groups, small groups accumulate useful information and fans, which are then converted to paid groups (of course, this is the same as when many of them first came out).

No one understands Feichat, because it is different from any familiar app nowadays, and Feichat’s groups, chats, dynamics, and even UI design have integrated the “appearances” of too many apps. At the end, I attached a Feichat product architecture diagram summarized by boyzcl. Feichat is indeed very "messy" (the picture is too long, so I put it here to give an impression of the reading experience.

3. Feichat’s underlying user usage path

However, if you look at it from a deeper level, from the user adaptation path/the underlying basic logic of the product, you will be able to understand Feichat. I can be sure that there is absolutely no problem with Feichat’s current product manager. He has thought it through clearly. Of course, one possible problem with Feichat is an operational issue (discussed below).

Please experience Feichat for 1 hour at last, and complete basic actions such as adding friends, being added as friends, joining/creating groups, joining/creating groups, posting updates, and interacting with updates at a high frequency.

Then look at the product usage path map below. I kicked out some paths:

1. User retention function.

2. Repeated behavior after user retention is active. Focus on the core "discovery→retention" path loop.

This is the current user usage path of Feichat. The core is "discovering high-quality content through high-quality relationships" (of course, for pure Internet products, the people found through theoretical second-degree connections are most likely not "high-quality relationships").

New user entry. Feichat recommends popular users, big V users, and then starts to work based on the second-degree connections of existing friends. At the same time, due to intentional product design, users can quickly add a large number of friends (one-way additions are not strictly considered friends). Feichat allows users to enter this cycle. Of course, high-quality relationships also come from groups (circles), group chats, friend sharing, etc.

From quality relationships to quality content. Combined with Feichat’s promotion, high-quality content about interests and hobbies comes from friends’ updates, interest groups (including groups in the same city), special groups, etc. Currently it is still "Friends Updates".

Relationship chain + content promotes the initial retention of users.

At the same time, the core of this product closed loop is the issue of content producers producing content. How to effectively motivate producers? Feichat cannot adopt the "fan system" like Jike and Weibo. What it pursues here is equal decentralized social networking. Therefore, the alternative solution for the product is to incentivize producers through groups and groups that gather fans (should be called like-minded people), convenient group and group sharing, and public homepages (this is why the bonus wool party says that Feiliao is a fan operation product prepared for KOLs).

Of course, the core of Feichat now is still the "relationship chain", relying on the relationship chain accumulated by Toutiao to allow users to add friends and connect crazily. This behavior is looked down upon by everyone, but it is the correct and only choice. Quoting the viewpoint mentioned in behavioral economics: the network goes from orderly links to chaotic links to small circle links in the final mature form (circles are directly linked by individuals), as shown in the following figure:

Figure from Professor Wang Dingding's "Behavioral Economics" page 120

Feichat had to build a "chaotic" high-density network from 0 to 1 to provide a foundation for the subsequent decentralized "circle" links.

Therefore, Feichat should launch a series of functions or means to delete low-frequency friend links (quickly delete in-frequently contacted friends in batches), as well as relevant means of operation and cooperation, to maintain and operate many small and fine circles and cultivate some small Vs (the theory of "community co-construction", I will mention the relevant article at the end)

If we can successfully get through the pioneering period and enter the ideal decentralized circle atmosphere. This is the ideal product usage path for product positioning and promotion, with high-quality content at the core:

The conversion funnel has changed from one centered on relationships, relationships → content, to one centered on content, content → relationships. This shift resulted in three benefits:

1. Truly realize the platform’s propaganda of “discovering like-minded people, socializing based on interests, and open socializing”. Because the scenario of getting to know people based on content naturally has a small number of social connections but a high density (compared to a simple interactive matching scenario).
2. The community atmosphere continues to function healthily. Good producers can succeed by producing high-quality content. Malicious users such as advertisers will mostly give up because they cannot quickly split and the cost-benefit is disproportionate (Zhang Xiaolong’s point of view when running a public account). Consumers can also see good content.
3. The relationship chain is reduced to the real "circle link" (the figure in "Behavioral Economics" above). Decentralized small circles can truly allow people with similar interests to make friends and chat (the original intention of IM products). Less harassment, better experience for everyone.

Of course, completing this transformation requires more operations.

1. Maintain the atmosphere of each small circle, keep it decentralized and flat;
2. Deliberately weaken the rise of platform-level influencers and influencer circles (Toutiao’s algorithm is OK);
3. Understand that you are a member of the platform's atmosphere management committee, not a dictator.

Finally, here is a user usage path diagram for products that use content to connect to social media:

In fact, I would like to talk about something that everyone is very concerned about: Feichat’s product architecture is chat, updates, and mine, but there is no “Discover Circles” page.

On the left is the Feiliao App, and on the right is the Domain App (there was also a dedicated topic discovery page before).

I understand that Feichat does not have a discovery page, and that the discovery circle list appears in the product sometimes and disappears sometimes. Because it is based on decentralization and equal social interaction, circle distribution based on relationships is better and more equal than distribution based on systems and algorithms (the logic of WeChat public accounts).

The premise of everything is to operate well...

Attachment:

1. An article co-created by the community

Whose community, designed for whom? Communities should be built by local residents themselves, emerging from the bottom up, rather than designed from the top down. "Collectivity and subjectivity are not contradictory. The subtlety between them lies in that subjectivity is the foundation, and collectivity is built on subjectivity, but the opposite is not true." Einstein also said: "Freedom is the whole, creativity is the individual."

Liang Dong, WeChat Official Account: Fanwuqi Cultural Conservation Studio Community Building | Whose community, designed for whom — Reading Yamazaki Ryo's "Community Design"

1. The product architecture diagram of Feichat summarized by boyzcl:

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Author: Warm J

Source: Warm J