Zuiyou APP product analysis report!

Why was Zuiyou able to stand out among many entertainment community products, jumping from 979th place in the App Store overall ranking to 5th place in the overall ranking in February 2017, becoming a dark horse in community products? What is unique about this product on the right? This article will focus on analyzing the product functions and give readers an in-depth understanding of Zuiyou, a unique, niche and "approachable" community product.

1. Market Analysis

According to data from iiMedia Research, the scale of mobile social users in China reached 862 million in 2019, and is expected to exceed 900 million by 2020.

iiMedia Research analysts believe that the huge scale of mobile social users also means more market possibilities. It can be seen that in addition to instant communication applications and Weibo blogs that have deeply penetrated into life and become a part of life, content communities have also occupied a piece of China's mobile social landscape.

Due to the particularity of the content community's own products, the accumulated content breeds a unique atmosphere and culture of the community. At the same time, it also meets the users' needs for content communication and introduces an interactive mechanism between users. It can more effectively consolidate the relationship chain, meet the users' communication needs, enhance user stickiness, and successfully occupy a place in the market.

I will analyze several factors that promote the development of community products from the following aspects:

• Seeking a sense of identity: Humans will feel lonely when there is no communication that is consistent with their inner values, and community products allow users to quickly find "similar" people and thus gain recognition;
• Get fresh information: In the stage of rapid development of the Internet, users need to quickly find the information they want and are interested in from massive data, and the rapid update of community product information and personalized recommendations also meet this demand;
• Killing boring time: Users need to obtain "fragmented information" to kill boring time such as waiting for the bus or before going to bed.

2. Product Overview

2.1 Product Introduction

(1) Product name

The word "Zuiyou" originally refers to the user comments that were first forwarded on Weibo, and often also means the funniest and most widely recognized comments. This is also in line with the overall positioning of Zuiyou - "funny and amazing comments" and "saving unhappiness."

The official description of Zuiyou: Zuiyou is a super interesting interest community used by young people. Not only the posts are interesting, but also the comments are so imaginative that you can’t stop laughing. Accurate recommendations help you find people with similar interests, and there is always a topic that will keep you entertained.

(2) Product logo

The Zuiyou logo was launched in 2014 and has been revised many times, but the main body continues the original blue background and yellow octopus, which is eye-catching, unforgettable and iconic. The current logo was revised in 2017 and is still in use today.

2.2 Product Data Analysis

(1) Application ranking

From the ranking data provided by Qimai, it can be seen that Zuiyou has been ranked outside the top 100 in the 2016 entertainment list, and its ranking has gradually risen, and currently remains around 30th on the entertainment list.

From the 2017 ranking of Zuiyou provided by Qimai, it can be seen that Zuiyou jumped from 979th place in the overall list to 5th place in the overall list on February 19, 2017. The reason behind this significant ranking improvement is a series of promotional activities held by Zuiyou on Happy Camp in 2017, which led to a large influx of new users.

(2) Downloads

The average number of downloads in the last three months is 5,847.

(3) Rating and review

According to Qimai data statistics, as of June 10, 2020, the score of all versions of Zuiyou is 4.8, with a total of 234,384 ratings, of which 216,051 are five-star ratings, accounting for 92%; the latest version has a score of 4.8, with a total of 139,644 ratings, of which 126,146 are five-star ratings, accounting for 90%.

According to the reviews, the product is rated very highly.

2.3 Product History

The earliest version of Zuiyou was launched on December 17, 2014. Its initial official positioning was "the most exciting community for post-90s people in the universe, with more fun campuses, great comments, great replies, and more humorous selected micro-topics." In April 2016, the official positioning of the product was "saving unhappiness," which has become Zuiyou's popular slogan.

After continuous version iterations, the function on the right is also constantly being improved. The figure lists the more important function releases from 2014 to the present.

During the version iteration process, Zuiyou gradually formed its own brand community. Some classic functions such as video barrage, wonderful comments, voice chat room, etc. have continued from the release to the present, and have been continuously optimized on the initial version to form characteristics, which have become the brand characteristics of Zuiyou.

However, during the iteration process, some functions did not receive good feedback after they were launched, and thus existed briefly and disappeared. For example, the "Right List" function similar to NetEase Cloud Music's "Playlist" function released in 2017 did not receive a good response after its launch, and was gradually replaced by other functions; some user interactions are also constantly being optimized, such as the original swipe left to delete posts you are not interested in, which has gradually evolved into a "×" in the upper right corner. The version has been updated 51 times in the past year, and the user experience has been continuously optimized.

2.4 Target Users

Zuiyou’s initial official positioning was “the most exciting post-90s community in the universe.” From the data provided by Analysys Qianfan, we can also see that Zuiyou users born after 1995 and under the age of 24 account for nearly 50%.

A survey report on Chinese youth born in the 1990s shows that 28.9% of them use instant messaging software for leisure and entertainment, and entertainment needs are ranked only after communication needs. 4.1% of those born in the 1990s would add strangers as friends on instant messaging software, while 25.9% would not add strangers.

Judging from the data provided by iResearch, most people born in the 1990s are not averse to meeting strangers and are willing to use social software to expand their circle of friends and make more friends.

We can also see from the update log that Zuiyou has a young team that is close to users.

3. Product Features

3.1 Functional Overview

The official description of Zuiyou’s functions is as follows:

• Wonderful comments: Great netizens make witty and clever comments, with clever and brilliant finishing touches. It’s not just the posts that are funny!
• Topic community: In the colorful topic community, you will always meet a group of people who resonate with you! #We are all hard-working students, #I was shocked at the time, and we started chatting about super exciting topics!
• Dynamics: Share your real life, meet warm companions, happy or unhappy, there is always someone here who understands you!

3.2 Functional structure diagram

4. Introduction to core functions

4.1 Unique comment function: Comments are often more interesting than the post itself

For a community product, the comment function is indispensable, but what is the advantage of Zuiyou’s comment function compared with other applications?

(1) Divine Comments

The product description on the far right says “The comments from great netizens are witty and clever, with clever and brilliant finishing touches, and it’s not just the posts that are funny.”

In fact, it is true that in the far-right community, amazing comments are often more distinctive than the posts themselves. On the far right, comments on the post are displayed with the number of likes. If your comment receives the most likes, it will become a "great comment" and will be displayed on the recommendation page together with the post, and will be displayed at the front of the comment area. This way of displaying comments also encourages users to create secondary content.

(2) Comments on the video - short video comments

For video content, Zuiyou also provides a "God Comment" function, but this time the "God Comment" has become barrage.

Barrages are also common in other apps. Do you want to know what is so good about the barrage on the right?

Let me count the three treasures:

• Yibao: Voice barrage, the most realistic way to chat while watching;
• Second treasure: Barrage has attitude, barrage can be upvoted or downvoted, all bad barrage will disappear;
• Three treasures: Wonderful barrage, which adds the finishing touch like wonderful reviews.

The display form of the divine barrage is also very interesting. While watching the video, the community users' secondary creation of the video content, the "divine barrage", will be displayed at the bottom of the video, which is even more attractive than the video itself.

(3) Various forms of comments

In common apps, such as Weibo, Moments, Zhihu, and Bilibili, comments can only be limited to text or pictures, but Zuiyou's comment format is very unique. It combines text, pictures, voice, and video, and up to 9 pictures or videos can be posted in the comments. It even supports a mixed format of pictures and videos, which is more in line with the theme that comments are secondary creations of the original content. The rich comment forms attract users to the comments, achieving the effect that "comments are often more interesting than the posts themselves."

The excellent comment function also makes the comment area a distinctive feature of Zuiyou. Although most of Zuiyou’s funny posts come from external products, Zuiyou’s internal ability to recreate content far exceeds the original content itself.

Fundamentally, comments and barrages are also a kind of re-creation of content, which is one of the reasons why Zuiyou has developed so rapidly even though it does not have a large amount of original funny content.

4.2 Topic Community - Where Does Good Content Come From?

As a community product, Zuiyou also has its community attributes. Community products are designed to gather more people with similar interests. Zuiyou launched a topic community, allowing users to find content that they are more interested in within the product. And add a "talker" role within the topic to allow active users to participate in topic management.

In addition, each user's contribution to the topic itself will also be recorded. This mechanism jointly promotes the positive development of the topic community.

Zuiyou officials put popular sections such as "Games" and "Hanfu" on their homepage for promotion.

On the other hand, as a UGC product, the source of Zuiyou’s funny content comes more from users’ reposts of content from other products, such as Zhihu, Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, etc., commonly known as “moving”, rather than original creations by internal users. Because the cost of publishing high-quality content is very high, how to obtain a large amount of high-quality content at low cost is the key to community development.

Zuiyou initially encouraged users to obtain high-quality content from outside, publish it to the Zuiyou community, and then have its users create secondary works on it. Correspondingly, Zuiyou’s function of parsing external links is also very powerful. For example, when posting, if you enter a Bilibili link, it can be directly parsed into a video, making it convenient for users to watch.

Although this content operation model has brought a large amount of high-quality content and traffic to Zuiyou, it has also been criticized. Zuiyou also gradually guides users to create original works and rewards them for original works, such as the "Yo Master Identity Authentication" and "Original Yo Master Identity Authentication" added in the new version. Users can "feed" original works (similar to the reward function), and original authors can get rewards through likes, comments, interactions, fans and other forms, which increases the probability of users producing high-quality works.

The official also launched the "Most Right Yo Master Ranking List", which allows users who provide content for a long time to increase their influence, thereby encouraging users to produce content over the long term. I believe that in the near future, Zuiyou will produce a large amount of original and excellent content.

4.3 Socializing - Meeting interesting people

In addition to meeting users' most basic entertainment needs of "saving unhappiness", Zuiyou has also further explored the social needs of the post-90s generation.

The initial social forms were limited to interactions in the comment section or private messages. During the version iteration, Zuiyou continued to add new social functions to meet the needs of post-90s users for stranger social interaction.

The "Discover" section on the right has been committed to the development of social functions and has been revised many times. The basic functions are as follows:

(1) Paper airplane function

The paper airplane function is a unique function tailored for stranger social interaction among post-90s generation members by Zuiyou, and it has also received a very good response.

The paper airplane function can be divided into two functional modules:

• One is "match chat", where the system randomly matches a user to start a chat, and you can set the gender of the matching object;
• The second is the nearby function, which is similar to the upgrade of the drift bottle function of QQ Space. Users can choose to throw a paper airplane and write a message on it to find like-minded people.

The so-called "paper airplane" has a special rule: the chat lasts for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, you can choose not to continue the chat or reveal your anonymous identity to continue getting to know each other. This is also in line with the social norms of the post-90s generation.

(2) Expansion function

The new version has added an “expand list” function in the discovery module. Users can use the expansion list card, edit the “expand list declaration” and language, and publish it in the expansion list module to gain more friends and attention.

(3) Spatial dynamic function

Space dynamics is a feature that has been added to You recently. Space dynamics is similar to the personal space of QQ and the circle of friends of WeChat. It allows you to publish your daily life, share your real life, and meet warm companions. Other users can get to know you by visiting your space dynamics.

However, since most community products are for “non-acquaintance” social interactions, the frequency of use of spatial dynamics is generally not high. At a later stage, you can consider optimizing the space dynamics into a "message board" or "diary chatter" function, or adding an internal forwarding function to the product, so that you can quickly understand the user through the content forwarded by the user.

(4) Language play function

Voice has always been the feature of Zuiyou. Yuwan is Zuiyou's gradual development towards maturity based on the original voice chat room. Different from the common video live broadcast format of other APPs, Zuiyou has developed the voice live broadcast function in a unique way. Compared with video live streaming, the threshold for voice live streaming is relatively lower, and the forms of interaction are richer. You can "queue up" for microphones in the live broadcast room. As long as you want, every user can participate in the voice interaction, which also makes it easier for peers to quickly establish friendships.

4.4 Community atmosphere: interesting, loving, attitude-oriented, and respectful of originality

Every community product has a set of rules to constrain user behavior, and Zuiyou is no exception. The Far Right Community Management Norms and Far Right Convention clearly stipulate the "Far Right Prohibited Behaviors" and "Far Right Boycotted Behaviors". The official "Far Right Convention 3.0" is described as: interesting, loving, with attitude, and respect for originality.

In order to maintain a good community atmosphere, the product needs to clean up spam messages, including advertisements, spam posts, inappropriate remarks, etc. The cost of group norms and content review is huge. Therefore, in addition to the official professional technical team and review team, Zuiyou also set up a "talker" for each topic as the topic manager. Users directly manage and help screen high-quality content and filter people or content that do not meet the rules.

In addition, Zuiyou has adopted a "reviewer" mechanism. Active users with no violations can apply to become reviewers: helping to select high-quality posts, filtering out posts that do not meet the standards, and reporting illegal posts. The "reviewer" function has been in use since its initial launch and has developed into a review area consisting of four modules: post review area, comment review area, advertising review area, and attack and provocation review area. Such functions reduce official maintenance costs, make users feel involved, and maintain the cohesion of the Zuiyou community.

For individual users, the comments they make can be liked or disliked. Posts and comments that do not comply with the rules will be spontaneously "disliked" by users, which, to a certain extent, also improves the norms of the group. In addition, comments that users have made can be viewed on the homepage. This is a very special feature. It is precisely because of the existence of this feature that users will think twice before making inappropriate remarks.

In addition, Zuiyou also has some "Right with Attitude" functional modules to promote positive values ​​to young people, an official "Little Right Police Officer" account to handle reports in a timely manner, and a "Little Black Room" function to publicize punishments. To a large extent, these have played a positive influence and positive role in the community atmosphere.

Overall, Zuiyou’s spam cleaning function is relatively complete. Malicious comments and abusive language will basically be cleaned up in a timely manner. Advertising posts and marketing accounts are also relatively rare. This is inseparable from Zuiyou’s unique management model.

Therefore, Zuiyou has also formed a set of conventional "unwritten rules", which represent Zuiyou's values ​​and are also a reflection of the cohesion and sense of belonging of the Zuiyou community. Users call themselves "Right Friends" and have also held collective activities such as the "Zuiyou Sightseeing Tour", "North-South War", and "Gift Exchange".

4.5 Diversified Commercial Realization - I Want to Make a Living

As Zuiyou continues to develop, commercial monetization functions have been gradually added to the product. In November 2019, Zuiyou’s VIP membership function was launched. Member rights include: theme skins, avatar hangers, dynamic backgrounds and other decorative functions. In terms of basic functional usage experience, there is not much difference between members and non-members. From the perspective of KANO needs, membership functions are more about satisfying some "excitement needs".

Zuiyou has also gradually added advertisements, from splash screen ads to ads inserted between posts, but Zuiyou's ad push is very "smart". The traffic-generating ads are mostly for social, gaming, live-streaming, and part-time apps, such as: One Week CP, Love Circle, PICK Voice, Part-time Cat, etc., which are precisely delivered and more in line with the age group of the target users.

The latest version also adds functional modules such as mini-games, voice live broadcast, and the best products, exploring commercial monetization methods from different directions.

In addition, Zuiyou has some more thoughtful features, such as the "Pictures and Text" section on the homepage, which allows users to watch videos when it is inconvenient.

5. Conclusion: The uniqueness of Zuiyou

Zuiyou has positioned itself accurately since its emergence in 2014. Through continuous optimization and improvement, it has formed its own unique system:

• Wonderful comment function: re-create the content, be witty, and make a brilliant finishing move. What is funny is not just the post, forming a unique and attractive wonderful comment culture, and everyone can be the producer of wonderful comments.
• Topic community function: In the colorful topic community, you will always meet a group of people who resonate with you.
• Audit function: allows users to personally participate in the construction of community norms and form a good community atmosphere.
• Paper airplane function: a unique way of socializing, which allows you to find like-minded friends while saving yourself from unhappiness.

In the process of gradual development, Zuiyou has gradually formed a unique community culture, allowing every user to find a sense of belonging in the Zuiyou community.

The famous writer Xiao Youjun once said: "An outstanding young person should have three qualities: a mind that breaks through the sky, endless optimism, and gentle kindness." And our Zuiyouli is full of such people! This is also the original intention of the Zuiyou community.

However, there is still a long way to go:

(1) Improvement of product user experience

There are still some minor problems with the product development:

From a structural perspective, some small interactive designs still have room for improvement. For example, the post collection function requires three clicks: share – collect – select favorites to successfully collect. The complicated collection steps make the collection function extremely unused.

From the framework level, the interface design on the far right is no longer simple. The partitions on the homepage are rather messy and can’t even fit in one line. “Less is more”, you can consider simplifying the homepage interface and hiding the infrequently used functional partitions by categories.

(2) Innovation in content

Although the existing content operation model can obtain a large amount of high-quality content in the short term, in the long run, introducing original content is still a very necessary means. Zuiyou is now also making efforts in content innovation, and I believe that in the near future we will see Zuiyou produce high-quality original works.

(3) Commercialization

As we all know, it is difficult to commercialize community products. How to achieve the expected commercialization effect without losing users is also a road full of difficulties and obstacles.

(4) User loss problem

As promotion and operation continue to advance, many non-target users have also flocked to the Zuiyou community. The massive influx of non-target users may affect the community atmosphere and lead to the loss of old users. How to promote accurately and how to retain new and old users are also important issues facing Zuiyou.

I believe that in the near future, Zuiyou will develop better and better and move forward with its original intention.

Author: Coke without ice

Source: Coke without ice

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