From the perspective of TikTok: How to make a product that makes users "addicted"?

Short videos are really popular. Once upon a time, as an entrepreneur in the short video industry, I firmly believed that it would become a "hot spot".

Now that " Tik Tok " is so popular, the vision I once had has finally come true. I am not only deeply gratified that the product proposition at that time has been put into practice. Looking back on the past and reminiscing about my youth, I can be considered a pioneer in the short video industry . From 2012 to 2014, I focused on the project for two years and finally achieved the final result. Without any marketing budget, I had 1 million users and 140,000 active paying users. Although it cannot be compared with "Tik Tok", it was still worthwhile for me at that time.

After the shameless self-YY, let’s get back to the topic. Two questions: How to make a product that makes users “addicted”? What are the future challenges and explorations of short videos?

How to make a product that makes users "addicted"?

"Tik Tok" is a product of Toutiao. In addition to "Tik Tok", Toutiao also has another short video application " Huoshan Video ". Like " Toutiao Today ", "Tik Tok" is a killer product that kills time.

The dominant players in this field are the social tools and games produced by Tencent, the most representative of which are WeChat and Honor of Kings . We will wait and see whether Toutiao can become a challenger to Tencent products. This article mainly explores the four stages of making an "addictive" product by extracting the common characteristics of Kill Time products.

1. Demand stage

As the saying goes, "Eight or nine out of ten things are not satisfactory, but only two or three can be discussed with others." From this we can see that in most cases, normal people have relatively negative emotions, such as boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, indecision, etc. These emotions often make us feel slightly painful or angry, and we unconsciously take actions to relieve them.

Kill Time products are the confidants of these emotions. As the saying goes, “Money is easy to get, but a confidant is hard to find.” The importance of a confidant is that it can not only make people forget the unpleasant things, but also make people happy.

Corresponding to the Kill Time product is the Save Time product. We are both Kill Time product users and Save Time product users, but we allocate different time to the two products. Many products contain both Kill Time attributes and Save Time attributes, depending on the different purposes of our users. Most of the products that can make people "addictive" are kill time.

Kill Time products: The core is to satisfy human nature. The more instinctive human nature stimulated by the product functions, the greater the product value and the stronger the motivation for use. Even WeChat in its early days promoted features like shaking girls and dating guys; Momo ’s dating and TikTok’s various showing off and embarrassing features all target instinctive needs...mainly manifested in games, shopping, socializing, gossip, news, etc. If we define time-killing products in one sentence, it is: happiness and satisfaction based on instinctive emotions.

Save Time products: The core is to meet efficiency. The more the product functions improve efficiency, the greater the product value and the stronger the motivation for use. For example, the supply and demand efficiency of the supply chain; the collaboration efficiency within the enterprise; the application efficiency of knowledge...mainly reflected in education, business, politics, medical care, etc. If we define a time-saving product in one sentence, it is: improving the efficiency of redundant links.

There is no strict either-or boundary between the above two products. Some are purely for killing time, some are purely for improving efficiency, and some can do both.

For example, TikTok is currently used purely for killing time; SaaS apps like DingTalk and Alibaba Cloud are used purely to improve efficiency; WeChat is a combination of the two, satisfying human nature while improving efficiency at the same time .

Products that purely release human instincts are more likely to make people "addictive". Users of different ages, genders, regions, job natures, and social statuses have different needs and levels of addiction. Among them, young users have plenty of time, do not like to control human nature, and are proactive in trying new things and spreading them. Therefore, many Kill Time products are aimed at young users.

2. Use phase

When human satisfaction triggers the motivation to use, the motivation is transformed into action, which requires the ability to use. To lower the threshold for product use and improve user capabilities, the product needs to be simple, convenient and easy to operate.

For example, simplifying the operation process, lowering product prices, etc. We have listed 6 types of costs that users need to pay for using our products. If these costs can be reduced, the user's ability to use the product can be improved.

1. Monetary cost: Common pricing strategies are free and low price. However, this is not the case for some products. There are many ways to become addicted, and sometimes the high price is the most obvious. For example, LV bags, with high prices, attract more buyers and make many girls "addicted" to them, willing to buy fakes.
2. Image cost: appearance and taste. Being afraid of ugliness and loving beauty are the instinctive needs of modern people. The design of Apple mobile phones and the beauty of “Tik Tok” are all about reducing image costs and showing off taste. Image costs are also reflected in certain categories, such as Durex and sexual products. Talking about them might have been taboo 30 years ago, but now anonymous purchases on the Internet can reduce image costs, and the image of this category itself has developed to the point where it can be discussed openly in public.
3. Action cost: the time and energy required to use the product. Recording "Tik Tok" requires action. How much time and energy will it take? Can some processes be simplified? Is it more efficient to match multiple special effects to one video?
4. Learning cost: The mental effort and time required to use a product. The most direct one is the thick "Product User Manual" for hardware products. Children with Apple phones can easily get started, and the elderly can use it quickly by chatting on WeChat.
5. Health cost: Fear of death is a psychological driving instinct, which is said to be more scientific than the sexual drive advocated by Freud. Therefore, unhealthy products, such as addiction to tobacco and alcohol, not only require health costs, but also image costs. It seems that Keep is also quite addictive.
6. Decision-making cost: Users’ decision to use a product is usually influenced by third-party reviews, word of mouth among people around them, buyer reviews, celebrity recommendations, and other factors. So, in order to reduce the decision-making costs of users, you know why you should create your own media .

In addition to reducing the above 6 common user costs, the scarcity of limited-edition products, different usage scenarios, and promotional discounts can all increase user motivation. For example, Xiaomi’s products are scarce, and Juhuasuan has promotional discounts. The positioning scenario of many self-media is when users are lying in bed at 10 o'clock in the evening, and the reading data of articles pushed during that time period is best.

3. Dependency stage

The characteristics of "addiction" are long single use and high frequency of use. Achieving these two points proves that users are obsessed with the product and are very concerned about and dependent on certain features. How to bring more satisfaction to users is to provide continuous incentives to users. The incentives are mainly manifested in the following three ways.

1. Social Incentives: Humans are social creatures and our lives depend on interaction with others. In the process of interaction, we seek to be accepted, recognized, respected, loved, and liked, and then enjoy it. For example, on WeChat, after posting a circle of friends , I always keep thinking about how many people liked my post.
2. Exploration motivation: Everyone has the desire to explore, and this psychology may come from the desire of humans to hunt prey in the early hunting era. Directly targeting the current shopping psychology, the information flow of "Toutiao" and "Tik Tok", where there is endless new content when you scroll down, is also based on this psychology.
3. End motivation: a sense of compulsion we have. For example, an unfinished movie , an uncompleted game, or the message numbers on an app can all inspire us to end our compulsive emotions.

There are two other ways to design incentives.

1. Known variable incentives: such as likes on WeChat Moments , which are known incentive methods but pursue changes in the number of people being motivated. The praise at the bottom of the article "Everyone is a PM" is a known incentive method, but it pursues more changes in amount. If you feel that this article is helpful to you after reading this, please start giving praise immediately. This is the conspiracy of my article. Promotions, discounts and rush purchases are all known incentives.
2. Unknown variable incentives: For example, random rewards in games are called "character" by users. Unknown rewards allow users to continue to explore the game, such as slot machines. The gameplay of mahjong and chess varies in each game. Of course, the information flow of "Toutiao" and "Tik Tok" and the endless content that can be found by sliding the screen are also included.

4. Habitual Stage

When a product meets the needs, users open it frequently and for a long time after use, and become quite dependent on it. At this time, the product needs to pursue long-term value and allow users to form the above dependency cycle. Products that form a dependency cycle mean that the ultimate goal of the product has been achieved and user usage habits have been cultivated. At this time, users not only use the product, but also invest in it. There are five ways to make users addicted to apps in the long term.

1. Reputation: If users use the product for a long time, their own reputation will be higher. Currently, the most direct way is to become a Tik Tok celebrity, an Internet celebrity , or a big V. Taobao ratings, game accounts, QQ levels, credit card points, etc. are all manifestations of increased credibility value through long-term use.
2. Fans, when users use the product for a long time, the number of their friends and fans increases. For example, Douyin fans, Weibo fans, public account fans, WeChat friends, QQ friends, game friends, etc. are all inseparable relationships that need to be carefully cared for and maintained, and no one is willing to give up.
3. Skills: Users use the product for a long time and master skills that are beneficial to their work and life, such as chess and card games, which can also become life skills in their spare time. The operation of PS has become a work skill, a skill for shooting Tik Tok short videos, a skill for writing articles, etc.
4. Content: Users use the product for a long time and store more valuable content for themselves, such as photos and blog posts in QQ space.
5. Data: Users use products for a long time and accumulate more convenient data for themselves, such as songs from music apps, resumes from recruitment websites, and bills from financial products .

summary

The above four stages make users dependent on the product and develop long-term usage habits.

At this time, the user's lifetime value has been maximized. The author mentioned in a previous article that business data growth is mainly about pursuing the growth of user volume and user value. Products that form a double-growth data model are good products, and products that meet the above four stages to develop long-term usage habits must be double-growth products.

Challenges and future exploration of short videos

Has the now popular TikTok, as well as its initial attempts at e-commerce shopping guides, already cultivated long-term usage habits among users? Can short videos really become a corporate battlefield like WeChat official accounts ?

What follows is an evaluation of the challenges and future explorations of the current short video industry based on the author’s now aging short video entrepreneurial experience. Therefore, in addition to being purely fictional, the story is also somewhat arrogant. Please just treat it as sensationalism.

1. Industry Challenges

Audiovisual license: commonly known as the "video license". 56.com was once forced to close for more than a month for rectification because it did not obtain a video license, resulting in the loss of a large number of users and the loss of its competitive advantage over Youku and Tudou. According to news reports a few days ago, Douyin seems to have not yet obtained a video license.

Bandwidth cost: In addition to spending money on marketing, video products also require very high server bandwidth costs, which is something that even a big company like Toutiao that has plenty of money cannot ignore.

Review: The difficulty of video review has increased by more than one order of magnitude compared to that of text and images, especially for a completely UGC video platform like "TikTok". It is impossible to rely on machine review to ensure the health and deduplication of content, and a large amount of manual review costs are required. If e-commerce shopping guides are started, more unknown review items should be added.

Content: Tudou, Youku and other video platforms all tried UGC content in the early days, but in the end it all turned into a competition between PGC film and television IP and top professional content. The main reason is that our national conditions are different from those of other countries. The reason why UGC can be successful on YouTube abroad is that foreign users are more willing to express themselves and compete to upload high-quality videos. However, we Chinese are relatively humble and low-key. We lack the driving force for UGC and are not very enthusiastic about uploading high-quality videos. I wonder whether the current new generation of post-95s and post-00s, as well as mobile Internet , and the special effects functions of short videos can mobilize user enthusiasm. At present, even Douyin has encountered a situation where the short video content is highly similar.

User cost: Video formats are not only costly for operators , but also for users. Users need to pay more action costs to shoot videos, especially high-quality content. In addition, the video format itself takes up more memory than pictures, consumes more power, and requires more mobile data .

Commercialization: The monetization of long video platforms is mainly through patch ads. Patch ads and long videos are very consistent, so the business model works. In fact, all major long video platforms have tried e-commerce shopping guides at different times, but both the user experience and shopping guide conversion rates have been disappointing.

Compared with short videos, patch ads are short videos themselves, so the monetization model of patch ads is not valid. Other models and e-commerce shopping guides are still in the testing stage, so the commercialization challenges of short videos are greater.

2. Future Exploration

1. For e-commerce shopping guides, using videos to verify the effect is more realistic than using pictures, and can also give users a more dimensional product perception. The difficulty lies in the fact that the shopping guide scenario has very high requirements, and how users can form e-commerce conversions under a social mentality.
2. Wedding, wedding is a relatively rigid demand video application scenario, generally speaking, wedding companies will make an album video, the cost is relatively high. If the short video is to meet the needs of weddings, a specific video special effects template is required, and the video clarity will also be very high.
3. Baby, recording the baby's growth process is the instinct of all mothers, and it is also another relatively rigid video application scenario besides weddings.
4. Blessings, holiday greetings, birthday wishes, and apologies are also good video application scenarios.
5. Advertisements, the cost of shooting and producing video ads is very high, and the ad patches themselves are also short videos.
6. Technology, holographic, AR and other new display forms of video application scenarios have great room for expansion and imagination.

summary

Before the popularity of "Tik Tok" and " Kuaishou ", there have been many attempts and explorations of short video products, some of which were launched by big companies, such as Tencent's " Weishi ", Sina 's " Miaopai ", Meitu 's " Meipai ", and Tmall Taobao's "Main Picture Video". Except for "Meipai" which was once popular, other short video products are actually not very good. "Weishi" has also been shut down and has been rumored to be revived recently.

Now that TikTok has become addictive for its users, does this prove that the viable path for short videos has been settled? The author is still full of questions at this moment. How long and how big this short video fire will burn in the future remains for us to look forward to.

Summarize

The motivation for writing this article stems from the author's previous short video entrepreneurial experience. Looking back on the original entrepreneurial product that has disappeared for a long time, the regret that remains in my heart was finally stimulated by the current short video spring.

As this flower of short video slowly blooms, it is as beautiful as the first encounter. The prosperity and splendor of the moment is enough to comfort the fleeting years. So there is this look back today, a collection, a story...

The author of this article @陈峰旗 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games