What is the background data of the most popular application in WeChat?

People often use the phrase "becoming famous overnight" to describe celebrities, and such celebrity products often appear on social networks. In the first half of 2015, Zuji, which had just entered the social network, set off a sharing craze on WeChat Moments and became a hit app.

So, how do the "fans" behind these celebrity apps that have quickly spread across the country change? What kind of reference value can user data information bring to developers? Xu Zhibin, author of "Social Dividend 2.0: Instant Explosion", analyzes the background data of "Zuji" to reveal everything for you!

This article is reprinted from Antarctic Circle, author: Xu Zhibin. The original article was slightly edited when reprinted. The background data shown in the original article has been officially authorized by Zuji.
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Since the end of 2013, I have used the term "national-level applications" to describe this type of entrepreneurial applications: applications that explode almost the moment they enter social networks, and then quickly sweep away millions or even tens of millions of users.

However, this type of application has always been shrouded in mystery. We have heard of it many times, but we don’t know what its real backend data is like. While writing "Social Dividend 2.0: Instant Explosion", I visited and communicated with several explosive applications one by one, and opened the backend to check the data of each one until the new book was completed. Among them, Zuji is a recent case that broke out after the deadline and submission to the publisher. Therefore, the editing work was suspended, and we once again supplemented the detailed data of this application in detail.

Today, you may wish to take a sneak peek in the article.
December 3, the new version of Zuji will be launched
Blockbuster mode launched on February 4
On February 8, the number of new users exceeded 3,000
On March 7, the number of new cases increased by more than 10,000
On March 9, the total number of users reached 100,000
March 13 AppStore Travel Category Ranking (Free)***
On March 14, the total number of users reached 1 million
On March 15, the daily increase exceeded 1 million, AppStore overall ranking (free) ***
On March 18, the daily increase exceeded 1.5 million (this value remained for 3 days and then began to decline)
On March 21, the total number of users reached 10 million
On March 26, the AppStore ranking fell to second place
March 29: Daily increase of 500,000
On April 4, the number of users increased by 340,000 per day, and the total number of users reached 17 million.
…

On March 13, 2015, Zuji became the top of the AppStore Travel Category List (Free). On the 15th, Zuji had more than 1 million new downloads and activations per day, becoming the top of the AppStore Overall List (Free). Since March, this creative photography mobile social application, which aims to help users take photos of old and new scenes, or compare photos, has become a hot topic of discussion on WeChat because of a "blockbuster mode" function, and began its explosive journey.

The "blockbuster mode" allows users to take a photo and create a blockbuster-style picture, and then share it on social networks. This feature triggered a rapid increase in users. Three days later (March 18), the number of new users per day exceeded 1.5 million. By the 21st, the total number of Zuji users reached 10 million. After that, the data began to decline. By April 4, when the total number of Zuji users exceeded 17 million, the daily increase was maintained at 340,000, and it had entered a downward phase.

The data in the figure below comes from the new user trend chart of Umeng statistics analysis:

(The red part is temporarily displayed as 0 in the system because the data for that day has not been counted. It does not mean that there were no downloads that day. This is common sense that any entrepreneur knows.)

To a certain extent, Zuji was unable to escape the influence of the "law of rapid decline" and began to enter a stage of decline in activated user data after one month.

Yes, the new book "Social Dividend 2.0: Instant Explosion" summarizes the explosion into four explosion laws, namely "New Law", "Short Law", "Friends Law" and "Fast Decay Law". On the surface, the "Fast Decay Law" is a result, that is, after these applications become popular, they will inevitably fall rapidly. It seems that the faster they rise, the faster they fall.

However, if we look at some other basic data during the same period, we will have some new understanding of “rapid aging”.

Users share photos made in Footnotes to WeChat Moments and Sina Weibo, accounting for more than 93%. The actual data cannot show the proportion of sharing to WeChat groups and sharing to a single friend. If it is possible, it will be found that the proportion of sharing to groups may account for a larger part of the remaining 5.62%. These sharing destinations are all users who want to show more friends, showing that the demand for users to share Footnotes photos is based on a user demand-based state of "shaping their image in the eyes of others" ("new" law).

Under this demand, photos are one of the simplest media with the lowest threshold for users to use and understand (the "short" law). In the past, many applications such as Meitu Xiuxiu, Moman Camera, and Face Meng have emerged one after another, and Zuji has become one of the biggest beneficiaries. In the future, this demand will obviously give birth to new explosive applications.

Retention is an indicator of the length and frequency of user use, that is, whether users will come back to use the app the next day after downloading and activating it, and whether they will still use it seven days later, etc. It is one of the core data that wireless Internet companies pay the most attention to on a daily basis. This set of data shows that detonation has a positive and active impact on user retention, especially for a non-high-frequency service that does not need to be used every day or multiple times a day. The atmosphere of user discussion and multiple sharing among friends (the "friend" law) formed after detonation has a huge impact on user retention and stickiness, as well as the number of times it is used.

In fact, when analyzing the data, there was not enough time for comparison. If we look at the background data again today, we will see more targeted data and inspiration.

Another set of full data analysis by Zuji also showed the stability brought by the detonation.

This set of data shows how many percentages of every 100 photos created by all Zuji users every day will be shared on major social networks, and also shows the equilibrium and stable state after the detonation. We cannot obtain the production-sharing ratio before the detonation, and it is inferred from the relevant data that it is not that high. The detonation obviously increased the production-sharing ratio. In reality, a single user will create multiple photos, and finally choose the one that he feels the best to share on social networks. Therefore, if we look at the ratio of users to sharing, the percentage will increase several times.

The above basic data (new users, sharing destinations, user retention, production-sharing ratio, etc.) are closely related to another set of basic data, namely "sharing". Social services and applications that hope to make full use of social networks to obtain users, traffic and brand effects, one of the prerequisites is that users share information on major social networks, so as to gain an advantage in the "smart pig game".

The data source in the figure below: Umeng daily sharing volume trend chart

In reality, Zuji’s retention data was affected by factors such as unstable servers and App crashes. When too many users flooded in, Zuji’s server crashed, preventing users from using and experiencing this emerging app. In order to ensure basic user experience, Zuji closed some other functions, such as searching for friends, which partially affected user retention and the new user data brought about by the spread of sharing.

This is a problem that a small team will face. Although it can provide services to a large number of users, it is not realistic to prepare sufficient resources such as servers in advance and to expand the team quickly. Like the "Smart Pig Game", it is a realistic move to rely on the existing open platforms or cloud service teams in the industry to quickly respond to the current situation of a surge in users and traffic. Another reference comes from the Surrounding Nervous Cat team, which uses 100 minus the number of steps in the actual game to form a sharing message. The original intention is to help reduce the time users wait for server calculations, which reduces the pressure on the server and avoids the pain of crashes. Reducing user costs will also bring additional benefits to the entrepreneurial team.

The "Short Law", "New Law" and "Friends Law" of the four laws of detonation in "Social Dividend 2.0: Instant Detonation" work together to cause a large number of messages about a certain application or event to be shared with users, which is often called "screen swiping". While promoting detonation, it also causes the user's information flow in social networks to be monotonous and boring, which in turn causes boredom. Therefore, to a certain extent, this boring detonation also violates the user experience and causes users to leave.

The "Law of Fast Decay" emphasizes that "the shorter the usage time, the faster the decay rate", which is not only for applications and gameplay, but also refers to the length of time to provide a pleasant experience, user benefits, and the freshness of the benefits. Users use this new gameplay because they need to "shape their image in the eyes of others" and make themselves look different from others. But when everyone uses the same "blockbuster mode" or other applications and services, this "status demand" from the heart disappears. As a result, the number of new photos taken tends to decline. In addition, it is also related to the fact that when users first use Zuji, they consume all the historical photos within a period of time, and there is a shortage of photos suitable for making "blockbuster mode" taken in various scenes afterwards.

These two reasons ultimately led to a decline in the number of shares, which in turn affected the attraction and influence of users' friends, dragging down various data, especially the influx of new users. From these basic data, it can be seen that it is not the application itself that is declining rapidly, but the motivation for sharing.

Because of this, after the "fast decay" law occurs, it will prompt users to find new ways to play or promote applications to launch new ways to play, which will once again stimulate the "new law" to take effect (one detonation will lead to a bigger detonation), and a new round of cycles will begin again. At this time, what will you do?

***, I recommend reading the well-received book "Social Dividend 2.0: Instant Detonation".