Where are the future opportunities in China's social field?

Recently, advertisements for a social APP have been intensively played in elevators in buildings in Beijing. At the same time, news about mobile social financing has frequently been exposed in the past six months. Mobile social networking is currently a field that is quite favored by capital. Therefore, I have done some homework and conducted a superficial study of the industry, and would like to share some of my humble opinions with you.

Tencent 's 2014 annual financial report stated that WeChat has more than 500 million monthly active users, making it the undisputed leader in the social field. WeChat opened its SDK interface at the end of 2014 and launched industry solutions in early 2015. It is no longer just a social APP. WeChat has firmly occupied the position of China's mobile Internet entrance. At the same time, a huge ecosystem has been built around it, and it is still being improved and expanded. The WeChat Empire has stood firmly in the Chinese social landscape. I have the honor of communicating with people close to Zhang Xiaolong and learned about Zhang Xiaolong's future plans for WeChat. It is simply ambitious and fascinating. I will not elaborate here. This picture will naturally be displayed in front of everyone in the future.

Momo 's listing documents disclosed that as of September 30, 2014, the total number of registered users was 180.3 million. There is no latest data at present, but it is estimated that it should be over 200 million now. The 2014 Q4 financial report disclosed this year showed that the monthly active users in December 2014 were 69.3 million. Tang Yan has created a listed company in the social field under the nose of WeChat, which is admirable. Momo is also currently building an ecosystem in full swing, hoping to resist the erosion from other social software such as WeChat. WeChat's future is to connect everything, and Momo's ambition is obviously not that big. Its commercialization path is e-commerce and games. According to its recent recruitment information, Momo will soon focus on the show field. It can be expected that YY's good days of making money quietly will end.

In the social field, there are dominant players like WeChat and giants like QQ. In the eyes of ordinary people, the social field has been monopolized by Tencent, and the new opportunities it contains are slim. However, Momo has risen strongly, breaking the myth and creating a miracle. After Zhou Hongyi, there is another person in the industry who can challenge Tencent. His name is Tang Yan.

Even Ma Huateng and Zhang Xiaolong had their moments of foresight, but Tang Yan seized the opportunity and built a company with a market value of 3 billion US dollars. This is the wonder of the business world. So here comes my question: under the shadow of WeChat and Momo, where are the future opportunities in China's social field?

The social landscape in four quadrants

Without rushing to answer this question, let's analyze the current product landscape in China's social field. I use four quadrants to divide all social products currently on the market into four categories:

No matter how you divide the social field, it always goes from anonymous to real name (or you know his real name even if he uses a pseudonym), from stranger to acquaintance. Hundreds of social applications on the market now can all fall into these four dimensions.

Let’s first look at real-name social networking among acquaintances. WeChat has firmly occupied the dominant position (of course, WeChat also has stranger dating functions such as Shake and People Around You, and WeChat does not rigidly emphasize real names. But this is the strength of WeChat products. It can be compatible with various scenarios. However, in the mainstream view, WeChat is still based on social relationships among acquaintances in mobile phone address books and QQ friend lists).

Momo is the opposite of WeChat, anonymous stranger social networking. From the perspective of product strategy, Momo's success makes sense. After all, WeChat must first expand and strengthen its own territory, which gives Momo the opportunity to cultivate another completely opposite market segment. I think even if there is no Momo, there will be other social products to occupy this market.

Momo is already a leading company in this field. Let's observe whether there are other opportunities in this market segment. Several popular social products on the market: Nice, Tantan, Pengpeng, whether based on interest or location, are unfortunately all in the field of Momo. In addition, there is also a veteran strong team in this field: Baidu Tieba. The competition is really fierce. It is not easy to carve out a new path. But can we kill them all with one stick? Countless business cases tell us that big crocodiles build platforms, and we can still live well by choosing to do small and beautiful vertical businesses. Yes, the answer is yes, but when the market value is 3 billion US dollars, I think it's basically unnecessary. Unless social networking is just a standard feature of its products, grafted with other industries, such as the bread travel that I am optimistic about. I have the opportunity to talk about this topic later. So what should we do now? This does not meet the demands of capital seeking profits and entrepreneurial myths? Then we have to look at two other fields: anonymous acquaintances and real-name strangers, and see if we can find a company with the opportunity to become a company with a market value of 3 billion US dollars.

Once launched, social applications such as Secret and Friend Secret have been widely recognized by users, and everyone is having a blast playing with them. These products fully interpret human nature. Human nature is both good and evil. In an anonymous state, people suppress good and promote evil, release the little devil in their hearts, and mainly use their acquaintances to speculate about the people around them with endless gossip. They are extremely popular for a while, but my judgment is that negative emotions and gossip will have a place, but they will definitely not become mainstream. At the same time, a large number of false and malicious news are flooding, resulting in limited growth space for this type of APP, not to mention the difficulty of commercialization in the future.

Anonymous social networking among acquaintances should have other product forms besides those for breaking news, but they have not been explored in China yet. Perhaps Bang With Friends is an attempt, and there are currently no giants in this field, so it has the potential to succeed.

Then let's look at the field of stranger social networking with real names. This has always been an active field for workplace social networking. Because real names are generally used in work scenarios or scenarios that need to be taken seriously, in addition to the product form of workplace social networking, this field also has marriage and love products, but marriage and love scenarios are not strictly social scenarios. Apart from these two, there are no other product forms. It's just that workplace social networking has been on the road for nearly 10 years in China, and it has never explored a suitable path. Tianji.com, a long-established workplace social networking in China, has been silent for a long time; Linkedin has not made much progress in China. Everyone only uses LinkedIn as a database and query tool, which is still far from real social networking; it is said that Dajie.com is now struggling; there is only one newcomer in the market, Maimai, which relies on the 20 million US dollars (round B) raised to advertise in Beijing buildings and subways. Since it is a current star, I will say a little more:

1: Maimai is currently positioned as workplace social networking. In terms of product form, it has only shifted from PC to mobile. The highlight is the integration of an anonymous module, which includes functions similar to Youmi.

Second: In terms of the acquisition of the first batch of users, gray means were used. It is not groundless that Sina Weibo wants to sue Maimai. The issue of user privacy is not discussed here. Maimai used a very tricky method to acquire seed users in the early stage. It is the founder's instinct to use various forces in the early stage of entrepreneurship. Although it is not praised, this method also creates a good experience for users and quickly accumulates early users.

Three: Let’s not talk about the past. The current user structure of Maimai is very risky. It is mostly composed of three types of people: the first is the BAT and first-tier Internet companies, the second is the Internet entrepreneurs, and the third is headhunters and HR. The topics discussed on a daily basis are too far away from ordinary workplace personnel, and the main active ones are headhunters and HR. Although headhunters and HR are necessary components of the workplace social ecology, their voices are too many and there is a risk of overshadowing the main theme. Because of the content structure caused by the user structure, this has formed a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be said that there is huge room for development in the future, but on the other hand, it can also be said that it has restricted the development of Maimai. Maimai is particularly prone to becoming a self-High position for the Internet circle and the headhunting circle, and it is easy to touch the ceiling of user growth. Of course, Maimai only has millions of users now, and this bottleneck is still a long way off.

However, what we are talking about here is an opportunity with a market value of 3 billion US dollars. At present, it seems that we have not seen any hope for companies whose main business is workplace social networking to grow to the expected market value of 3 billion US dollars.

However, this field is the closest to money in the social landscape. On the one hand, real-name social networking has high commercial value, and on the other hand, stranger social networking is always a rigid demand for social networking. In the field of anonymous stranger social networking, there is already a company called Momo. We can fully expect that a company with a market value of 3 billion US dollars will also emerge in the field of real-name stranger social networking. Moreover, Linkedin has proved that this is a very profitable field abroad, but it has not yet found a suitable path in China. In the domestic social landscape, my view is that real-name stranger social networking will definitely occupy an important position in the social field, and there will definitely be a company that stands out.

How to achieve breakthroughs in workplace social products?

How can the workplace social networking sector find a breakthrough by leveraging the inherently friendly and social attributes of mobile Internet? In 2013, I wrote an article titled "Take Tianji.com as an Example to Look at the Dilemma of Chinese LinkedIn-like Websites", which is considered to be a bit of research in this field. Now that mobile has become the industry standard, I will look at the opportunities in this field again.

First of all, I think it should be a revision of the positioning. Workplace social networking, which is centered on work scenarios (growth, job hunting), should be revised to social networking centered on workplace people: it includes work scenarios and life scenarios.

Because Chinese people do not clearly distinguish between life and work, if you want a person to use one APP for social networking in work scenarios and another APP for social networking in life scenarios, this is a false proposition. On the one hand, users themselves cannot clearly distinguish them, and on the other hand, high-frequency life applications will inevitably defeat low-frequency workplace applications. Maimai's slogan wants to distinguish itself from WeChat, but this is a dangerous distinction. Are work and life intertwined in your WeChat Moments? In addition, many life scenes are work scenes, which cannot be distinguished at all. For example, I attended Huxiujun's cocktail party. Is this a work scene or a life scene? For example, I was invited by the Sichuan Tourism Bureau to visit Wenchuan New City. Is this a tourism scene or a work scene? Therefore, all social networking centered on workplace scenes must have no way out. Countless companies exploring workplace social networking in the past 10 years have proved this point.

What is the breakthrough point for social scenes centered on professionals? One of them is job opportunities. Traditional workplace social networking is based on this as the core appeal. Under the mobile trend, it has become possible for everyone to be an HR and a job seeker. This breakthrough point is P2P job hunting. Needless to say, this is what current workplace social applications do. I want to say that another strong breakthrough point is the most necessary relationship between men and women in life scenes: men and women in the workplace.

Don't laugh, I won't show you the data. Ask yourself, if a beautiful BD comes to discuss cooperation, even if the cooperation cannot be reached, you are willing to chat with her for a while. I won't ask deeper questions, people who understand will smile knowingly. Why? The workplace is the best place for men and women to get in touch. Momo is known as the "artifact for dating x", but what about the success rate? Whoever makes an appointment knows the bitterness. The current data is (someone has verified it personally): you send 100 friend invitations to girls, and only 1% of them pass the rate. This is still a long way from rolling in the sheets. Just think about how hard you have to work to make an appointment. Of course, in the eyes of product personnel like me, this conversion rate is determined by the attributes of the product. In the case of anonymity, it depends on appearance, car keys, and house keys to attract users. This conversion rate can be imagined. But what about people in the workplace? In the case of real names, with the endorsement of the company, colleagues, and friends, girls will be much less resistant, especially for invitations based on work scenes, the high pass rate of becoming friends can be imagined. Girls are not against dating, they just need to give themselves a legitimate reason to date. When work scenes and life scenes are blended and switched, is it still far away to have a successful date? Moreover, under the real name, the good side of human nature must be promoted, and the evil side must be passively suppressed. This is the rule accepted by everyone in mainstream society. So I think workplace men and women are a brilliant road for real-name stranger social networking for workplace people. From the product form, it is like a combination of Maimai + Tantan. Of course, I think it is enough to provide opportunities for acquaintance at the product level and provide product elements to improve conversion. The final result will naturally follow its course.

At present, no workplace social product has taken this path. In the real-name mobile fragmented social scene, I think this will be a killer application, and it may give birth to a company with a market value of 3 billion US dollars.

Of course, any social product, especially real-name stranger social networking, cannot avoid a social product. This is the black hole of all social products, that is WeChat. Because once strangers get to know each other, they will add each other on WeChat, and the relationship will naturally be inherited by WeChat. You can only see black in front of your eyes and have no power to fight back. This is also what I talked about with people around Zhang Xiaolong. People said that Zhang Xiaolong is not worried about Momo at all. Once strangers are transformed into acquaintances, it is WeChat's business. It is true that this is a topic that no one who makes social products can avoid, but we always have to think about what products can keep user relationships on our products for a long time and resist the conversion of WeChat. Momo uses interest groups and will soon join the show mode. The logic behind it is that WeChat does not deeply cultivate the field, but the user demand is strong, while avoiding the two product forms of IM and Moments that cannot be shaken.

Although real-name stranger social networking has the product form of "work" to resist WeChat, job hunting is not a high-frequency scenario and is not strong enough to keep users for a long time. At the same time, it can build some special relationships that are not suitable for transfer to WeChat, but this kind of relationship is difficult to become mainstream. I think this is also a headache for Maimai. It wants to segment users in terms of brand positioning: work matters are discussed on Maimai, and life matters are discussed on WeChat. But as I said before, this segmentation is a dangerous segmentation, and Maimai has no choice but to use such brand segmentation. I am stupid, and I have not yet thought of a particularly good product and method to avoid this black hole. But what we can work hard to do is to improve the efficiency of converting strangers into friends and quickly meet the rigid needs of real-name stranger social users. Among all stranger social products, this one provides the highest efficiency and the most real relationships, including work, men and women, and all aspects of life. I think there is no chance to become the next listed company.

How to promote the activity and conversion rate of real-name stranger social networking?

How can we make the most efficient acquaintances through real-name stranger social networking? As a product person, I have made some thoughts (this is considered useful information):

1: Main product forms: interesting topics around you (Maimai) + attractive opposite sex around you (Tantan) + job opportunities around you (Liepin) as the core.

Second: Product design and operation should focus on the following four key points:

1) Authenticity: Ensuring the authenticity of user information is the cornerstone of real-name stranger social networking and the beginning of all subsequent social behaviors.

2) Feedback: Feedback is a key point that any social product must consider in product design and operation. Any new user must be taken care of first. Once a user takes action in a social environment, it is fatal if there is no feedback. I especially admire the product manager who designed the like function, making it so easy for users to give feedback.

3) Improve users' ability to express themselves: The addition of product features such as video, voice, and multiple pictures is to allow users to better express themselves. Some dynamic H5 templates are provided to allow users to better express themselves at a low cost and provide social appeal.

4) Improve users’ social skills: Automatically match pictures, likes, dislikes, and create personalized content using templates. This product design is to help users reduce social costs, improve social skills, and express social needs. Original content is always a high-cost behavior.

Of course, a good product function design and operation strategy can cover multiple key points. For example, likes are not only a product that improves users' social ability, but also a product that can provide simple feedback. If product developers want to design new functions, they should see if they can fall into the above four points. Of course, there are other key points, such as noise control, etc., which will be a matter for the future development, so I will not go into details here.

The above is my thoughts and exploration as a product person. As the end of this article, I hope to meet more people who are researching social networking and cross-industry applications of social networking. To summarize: I think there is still a chance for a $3 billion company to be born in the field of real-name stranger social networking, but I don’t know who it will be.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.