This article is from WeChat official account:Geekpark (ID: geekpark) , author: Wan Yu-ming, head Figure from: unsplash
After being “carried” by Musk and became popular in the Chinese Internet circle, Clubhouse’s first batch of Chinese apprentices have recently been collectively trained.
In the past week, several types of Clubhouse real-time voice communication products, including Talk Bar, Clubhorse, Capital Coffee, and Now, have been intensively launched. It is said that dozens of team products are waiting to be launched.
The Chinese Internet circle ushered in the long-lost excitement. A competition for the title of the Chinese version of Clubhouse is about to start.
Clubhorse logo and visual design｜Image Source Network
Is speed the most critical match point?
This seems to be a competition related to time and speed. Almost all teams work overtime during the Spring Festival. Internal incubation of large companies, addition of existing products to Clubhouse functions, and entrepreneurial teams as independent apps are currently the three main forms.
A product called Clubhorse may be the first among the seeded players. From the communication method that only supports voice dialogue, to the interactive process of user-created chat rooms, onlookers, raising hands to speak, and even product names, Clubhorse and Clubhouse are almost identical.
Clubhorse will be online before the Spring Festival. The speed advantage depends on the development strategy chosen by the team. Their priority online is the experience version based on WeChat applet development. Users log in with one-click through WeChat, and use WeChat’s existing social relationship chain fission, which is an efficient entry point. Only at present, the Clubhorse applet has been blocked.
Currently, the louder product may be the “Dialogue Bar” incubated by the Inke team. According to a 36kr report, Jiang Yuhang, the product manager of Dialogue Bar, revealed that he found Inke CEO Feng Yousheng on the morning of February 3 and said that he wanted to make this type of product. He was told that the project could be launched that afternoon and the project was officially launched that evening.
It took only 4 days, and the development of the dialogue bar on February 7 has been completed. One day of testing on February 8. The first version was submitted to Apple on February 9, and the TestFlight version was passed on that day. On February 10, Dialogue Bar was launched on Android and Apple stores.
This is almost a development trajectory measured in days. Inke CEO Feng Yousheng explained the importance of speed. He believes that this type of product will compete with giants in the future. The first thing to run is speed, because this is an exponentially disseminated product. “If there is a half-month, one-month advance The exponential spread of China, and if the giants come in, they will spread.”
Is first mover advantage really the most critical match point? At least, from the current situation, the time cost and difficulty coefficient of making a similar product with Clubhouse’s ready-made design drawings are not as large as expected.
These products that work overtime and go online are still incomplete in terms of experience. After the experience, many users said, “It feels like the DEMO version, the sound often freezes and the operation is not smooth”.
Ten years ago, similar product races appeared in the Internet field in China. KIK, a communication tool based on mobile smart phones, has started an IM tool war. A number of products such as WeChat and Michao have become seed players.
Pre-emption is really important. Michao was launched one month earlier than WeChat, and it had an advantage in early user growth and performance. However, the key element that ultimately determines success or failure is how to localize the product reasonably, introduce innovative features in a rhythmic and strategic manner, involve more users, and maintain the product experienceThe growth of the district is boosted.
When Clubhouse only had 1500 seed users, as the main investor of this product, A16Z not only invested money, but the partners also became Clubhouse users. They spent eight or nine hours a day on it, and they also attracted investment. The CEO of the company and celebrities from the Hollywood film and television entertainment circle experience together.
When Clubhouse accumulated millions of users, the entry of “top-tier” Musk once again pushed the circle of this product to a wider boundary and also pushed it to the world of China’s Internet.
For the Chinese apprentices at Clubhouse, choosing to play high during the cold start phase will actually face a series of problems.
First of all, when the product mechanism and performance are not perfect, the introduction of KOL with a large number of popular appeals, can the product itself be able to catch it.
Talking about this event organized on February 20th, the start of this event was delayed due to a large number of users. It is understood that recently, Dialogue Bar has taken the initiative to remove products from the App Store, and users who have registered and downloaded them can use them normally. The explanation given by the team is that the current product is not perfect and it is difficult to provide a better user experience for larger users.
Secondly, relying on the big V and KOL to involve more users is that the product gives users the mindset of “I can meet the big V and chase stars”.
Zhu Xiaohua, the person in charge of Dizlaw’s product, told Geek Park, “From our experience, Big V will definitely not continue to play. They may just play for a while, and it’s okay to use him as an early drainage method. However, it is difficult to continue to do it as a user’s mind.”
Back to Clubhouse, it is not a re-operational product. At least when Musk and other big V enter the market, there is no trace of recommendation in the content of this product. The attraction of Clubhouse lies in the richness of content, the equality of dialogue, and the high quality of communication.
Using the product form of Clubhouse, it is also valuable to make a voice version of Weibo. But more clubhouses want to continue to operate, and it may be a longer-term and important way to do refined operations for mid-waist users, to build a community atmosphere, and to retain users.
A protracted battle that continues to burn money
If clubhouse products will eventually go to the community, this is also a protracted battle that requires mastering the financing nodes and preparing to burn money.
More than one practitioner who wants to get involved or has already stepped into the research and development of Clubhouse products told Geek Park that this track is very expensive, and the entrepreneurial team should not try it lightly.
Joshua is an early founder of Clubhouse-like projects in China. In an interview with Phoenix Technology, he stated that the application he launched was called “Juju”. It was tested in an internal test at the beginning of last year. The product interface and functions are similar to Clubhouse. In November last year, because of the delay in obtaining financing, he could not support the high server cost. Juju was forced to shut down.
Joshua calculated an economic account: “I was also using the technology of the sound network at the time. The price was 0.007 yuan per minute, and it was calculated that there were 1,000 people in a room and the duration was 2.5 hours. The payment for this room alone is 1050 yuan.”
After working at Juju for half a year, Joshua has spent almost half of the 400,000 to 500,000 seed rounds he prepared in advance, with only more than 200,000 left on his hands. At its best, Juju had about 2,000 users. Because of insufficient funds, it has been afraid to let go of registration and attract more users.
At the beginning of last year, Clubhouse received a $10 million investment from a16z and raised another financing earlier this year. The size of this team is said to be a team of less than ten people, and most of the funds are spent on voice technology support. Clubhous-like entrepreneurship may not be affordable for small teams.
More importantly, the monetization model and commercial closed loop of such products are still being explored. Recently, the founding team of Clubhouse and investors also talked about monetization based on membership, events, tickets and other models. Just how strong is the ability to monetize? Whether it can support the continuous operation of such products is currently unknown.
An industry insider said that the greatest significance of Clubhouse may lie in the definition of an interactive way of using voice for efficient and high-quality communication. It will become a template, the basic configuration of a content product, and the corresponding content field and industry. Do the combination.
So, for clubhouse-like product entrepreneurship, speed may not be the most important gamePoint, how to understand Clubhouse, localize the effect of this function, and refinement may be more critical.
At least, for the first batch of Chinese apprentices in Clubhouse, it is difficult to distinguish the winner or loser.
This article is from WeChat official account:Geekpark (ID: geekpark) , author: Wan Ming Yu