The key to the second half of the App is to win users’ time. What are the ways to play?

In 2017, the second half of the Internet officially began. O2O , e-commerce , travel... different industries have entered the second half of the game. Basic applications on the mobile Internet , including social platforms, are no exception. The main theme of the first half was the battle to expand users based on the demographic dividend. However, with the end of the demographic dividend period, the second half will either involve seeking growth in new markets such as overseas or rural areas, or tapping into the value of existing users. For apps, the key to the second half is to get users to open more apps and stay longer. In short: retain users and gain their time.

Why is the second half of the App game a race against time?

Zhang Xiaolong said in his year-end speech that mobile Internet is not about making computers more compact and easier to move, but a brand new application ecosystem. In the PC era, Internet giants wanted more users to visit, so traffic was king. In the mobile Internet, apps hope to be opened and retained by more users. Listed companies will announce indicators such as the number of active users and user usage time, but they will never announce indicators such as PV and UV that were of great concern in the PC era. This shows that in the mobile Internet, traffic is no longer king, but attention is king.

What is the difference between traffic and attention? In the era of traffic, websites will want you to open more pages. We will see that portal editors will split an article into multiple pages or simply pop up different pages automatically in order to increase traffic. In the age of attention, apps want you to browse the information flow more often, or directly stay on a certain video page to watch, and then the app’s ads will appear in the information flow or video at the right time.

When you spend time on an App, it means that your eyes are focused on that App, which means that your attention is given to that App. In the second half, it will become increasingly important for apps to gain more user time.

• First, it is difficult for new mobile apps to have a chance in 2017. The user growth of existing apps has reached its peak. Either most Chinese people who use mobile phones have been attracted by them, or everyone who should use a certain app has already used it. It becomes important to get existing users to spend more time on the App.
• Second, the cost of importing users, whether from Guangdiantong or other platforms, is high. More importantly, the island effect between different apps makes it difficult to import attention to each other. Apps have to rely on themselves to attract attention and form a closed loop of traffic. Self-generated traffic is very important.
• Third, if PC Internet monetizes based on traffic + advertising, then mobile Internet monetization is more diversified. In addition to advertising, you can sell content, memberships, and merchandise, and you can even make big movies based on IP to make money. The prerequisite is to have enough attention. The foundation of shopping malls is traffic, and mobile Internet requires people's attention. To put it bluntly, it is an eyeball economy.

In short, gaining more user time will be the key to the battle in the second half of mobile apps.

How are mobile apps grabbing users’ time?

Seizing more user time and attracting attention has become the key task of more and more apps. How do apps do it?

1. Content.

Content Internet is a trend that has already emerged in 2016. The popularity of live streaming and internet celebrities reflects this point. Cheetah Mobile and Baidu Mobile, which are more " tool- oriented", have launched content strategies, and Taobao and JD.com, which sell goods, have launched live streaming and content platforms. Zhang Xiaolong said that WeChat hopes that users will use it and leave, but whether it is the launch of the public platform , the release of mini-programs , or the upgrade of short videos to long videos, it shows that WeChat has been continuously occupying more users' time through content.

Last year, there were two Chinese stocks whose market value more than doubled, one was Weibo and the other was Momo, both relying on content strategies. Weibo has become " Toutiao-like ", circled self-media , wrote long articles, and supported technology to promote short videos and live broadcasts. Momo was initially positioned as a stranger social networking app, where users would meet strangers on it, ask for their WeChat IDs, and then leave. Just like dating apps, users wouldn't spend much time on it. After Momo launched its video social strategy at the end of 2015, it launched the Moments and group video functions last year. Its live streaming revenue exceeded US$100 million in the third quarter, accounting for 70% of its total revenue. Users can consume content while socializing, and open Momo to watch live broadcasts and short videos when they are bored. Tang Yan's long-term vision for Momo is to "play a very important role in China's pan-social and pan-entertainment industries." The pan-entertainment positioning means that Momo will continue to focus on content. After making a fortune through live streaming, Momo has become a giant with doubled strength. Next, it may launch content such as graphic public platforms and long video aggregations. It is also possible to get involved in the upstream IP industry of content and make movies.

2. Community-based.

Content alone is not enough to grab users' time - content alone is media. There are many mobile new media platforms, such as video sites, news clients, magazine and newspaper new media apps... But introducing human elements and strengthening social elements will have a stronger "time attraction".

QuestMobile's second quarter data showed that Momo's quarter-on-quarter growth in total usage times and total usage time reached 25%, far exceeding the second place. The reason why Momo is able to seize more time is that its stranger social attribute has always been there.

On the one hand, content is a social tool that can improve efficiency. For example, people hope to meet girls through live broadcasts, and girls are subconsciously willing to socialize on Momo live broadcasts (that's why so many people give rewards, you know). Users have a higher success rate in meeting girls through live broadcasts than by saying hello, so users consume content not only for entertainment and information, but also for social interaction (it is difficult to achieve this on Weibo, WeChat and general live broadcast platforms , so live broadcasts are not as good as Momo's). On the other hand, social sharing itself can generate a large amount of content. WeChat has become the Chinese version of Instragram because people are happy to share pictures with their friends in Moments.

Introducing the human element into socialization or community allows content consumers to become producers, while achieving decentralized content distribution, making the content ecosystem more active, richer, and more interactive. The end result is: the time users spend continues to increase. Taobao Mobile and JD.com are not only focusing on content, but also on community. Toutiao itself is a large content platform, but it is becoming more like Weibo, allowing the people behind the content to show up and interact with readers, which is also a form of community. The user retention time in communities such as Zhihu and Tieba also exceeds the average level. They are strengthening their content because content + community (social) is the magic weapon to attract time.

3. Hardware.

Apps expect to be opened more often by users, and usually attract users' attention through message push. Now that apps are constantly increasing the frequency of message push, users are already a little annoyed. However, in my opinion, the real magic weapon to seize users' time is hardware, or bottom-level.

The time users spend on smartphones is equal to that of all mobile apps combined. Therefore, we see that Meitu made mobile phones, and it was this strategy that allowed this skin-smoothing tool to be successfully listed and have a market value of 5 billion US dollars; Xiaomi first made mobile phones and then launched many apps and products with ease. Xiaomi, Huawei, and OPPO have the most user attention. In order to gain more user time, Yidian Zixun simply chose to sell its shares to OPPO in exchange for the opportunity for information to appear automatically on OPPO phones; Alibaba did not make mobile phones, but it made an operating system, YunOS, to seize user time from the bottom up.

Smart devices that attract users' attention are not just smartphones. Smart TVs have become mainstream. People spend a lot of time watching TV, so more and more apps are going to TV to compete for users' time. Video companies like iQiyi are all cooperating with smart TVs, and some Internet companies have even started making their own smart TVs. Live streaming apps, information apps, and e-commerce apps are all competing for the TV desktop. There is no doubt that more apps will appear on TV in the future to compete for users' attention.

Judging from the success of Momo and Weibo, the most direct way for mobile apps to capture users’ time is “content”. With users, there is potential demand for content consumption, which in turn may attract content producers, form a content ecosystem through monetization models such as marketing and appreciation, and ultimately keep users’ time on the platform. If we can add social (community) elements to the content, and if we can get involved in hardware and enter more terminals, our ability to capture users' time will be stronger. It is worth noting that not every App is suitable for contentization: first, users must have the need to consume content on the corresponding platform, and the content attributes must be consistent with the platform positioning; second, a monetization model must be formed, otherwise it will not be able to attract content producers. If it is a low-frequency, background-oriented app, or if the number of users is not large enough, it is not easy to turn it into content. For apps, turning it into content just for the sake of turning it into content may not work. If you want to attract more user time, you have to find other ways.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article is @互联网阿超 and it is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!