It is difficult to highlight the encirclement, and product innovation and product survival are more difficult.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Gudao“, author Gudao.
The reason we want to push this today is to talk about the history of the development of these startups, and the second is to remember that they are currently being removed because of well-known reasons.
In a sense, the immediate and little red book and the early knowledge of the b station represent the two fate of the niche app: either into the mainstream or inexplicably die.
“Little Red Book is a city with a variety of people in the city.”
The head of Xiaohongshu has repeatedly claimed this in public. As everyone knows, when the city is big, people are “mixed”, and the city is naturally chaotic.
July 30, Xiaohongshu was removed from the Android app market.
Huawei application market, application treasure and other Android application markets have been “not available for download” Xiaohongshu APP. Currently, only Apple App Store can still search and download Xiaohongshu APP.
In July, another “small and beautiful” social application instantly “suddenly stopped” and suspended the service for an unlimited period of time.
In the last Weibo commentary, the users also gathered for more than a month, and the last Weibo became the most commentary.
And the same sadness is the little red book user, who slipped it off at the moment, but found that it could not be downloaded anymore.
Small Red Book and immediately serve only the niche people from the beginning, Commercialization and liberalization will also push the little red book and the immediate abyss after the user’s size becomes larger. Process, how did all this happen?
Start
For a long time, China’s mobile Internet has been in a giant situation for a long time, and many giants in the Internet era have entered the mobile app market, and due to various wars, Competing for Internet traffic, niche apps are hard to be noticed.
Until 2013.
In that year, Mao Wenchao knocked on the door of the Chinese Internet market with a “Little Red Book.” At that time in China, the development of online shopping and the rise of Haitao made Mao Wenchao see new opportunities and rumors.
In 2003, Mao Wenchao left his hometown of Wuhan and was admitted to Shanghai Jiaotong University to study mechanical and electronic majors. He went all the way, and he got two consultations at McKinsey and Bain before graduation.There is a point of reaching “one shot and red”.
In the eyes of immediate users, this seems to be just an app that really has small and beautiful features.
In May 2015, when it was established less than five months ago, it immediately received the angel round financing from Zhenge Fund and Ping An Venture Capital, and the subsequent financing rounds also appeared. Tencent’s figure.
Since the establishment of the company for four years, the company has become the “darling” of the post-80s and the post-90s with the control of accurate information, no advertising, and the construction of interest-oriented communities that focus on young people. The current DAU is over one million. The valuation is more than 150 million US dollars – such performance, in many “challenging double” social players, it is not bad, the industry is also very concerned about immediate attention.
Back to Xiaohongshu, entering 2018, once compared with the old e-commerce platform such as Suning, in less than half a year, the sales reached 700 million yuan, ranking the top five cross-border e-commerce in 2018.
The most different thing from traditional e-commerce is that Xiaohongshu is not just a pure e-commerce, it is more like a UGC platform, and it has slogan “Share a new way of life on the little red book.”
The niche app with a small user size is hard to sustain, and the top-level traffic app developed by the giant presents a completely different feature.
The application from BAT that is familiar to users is actually occupying a large part of the market share, and it also divides the demographic dividend of the application market. For a niche app with a small user size, it brings The difficult situation of being difficult to grow up, and the pursuit of continuous growth of users is naturally unsustainable.
As an aboriginal mobile Internet, young users have experienced too many ways to play, and it is difficult to find a new excitement.
After the noise, a chicken feather
In June 2019, Mao Wenchao published an internal letter, in which he said that the number of monthly users of Xiaohongshu has exceeded 85 million, and the UGC content of lifestyle has gained more than 10 times.
The Mao Wenchao and the team at that time did not understand that the UGC content that enabled Xiaohongshu to be successfully realized, that is, the sword is also a constraint.
The immediate team didn’t even think that your app would be the first big melon in the 2019 social app circle.
On July 11th, a software update was announced this month, announcing a “technical upgrade”, and the most important thing is that in this notice, there is no explanation at what time the upgrade will be completed.
Users @无少 commented on this: “The road to community transformation that immediately sets the circle as the first screen has to be upgraded without a few steps.”
The main reason for this “upgrade” is probably related to a review of the software by the relevant departments in July.
On July 5th, the Guangdong Internet Police notified 1048 apps that had excessive coverage of user information.
Among them, including 42 apps immediately, there are over-range reading user call records, SMS or MMS, collecting user contacts, known accounts on user devices, and super-privileged user device microphones to highlight security issues.
All the way down the development, the user’s cohesiveness is extremely high, and at this stage it has to stop.
A few people will feel that some giant social platforms are not good because of the large user base and the mixed life.
“I support different opinions, but on Weibo, I think more people care that you have to be like the values they think. If you are different, there will be many people who will marry you in various ways. Private letter to you, human flesh, this has caused a lot of trouble to my life.”
Li Tao is a digital enthusiast. He said that on Weibo, whenever there is a new product release, although there are more people discussing it on Weibo and more opinions, there are many opposites. .
“Say the product and say the product. Every time the digital fans or bloggers will take other people to step on it, and finally set off a battle. In fact, this is really unnecessary for traffic. I feel on Weibo. There is a feeling that you have to stand in the team.”
Different circles don’t have to be strong.
This is a very important reason why many users turn away from Weibo.
“Create a circle of friends that you are paying attention to. Everyone is a simple discussion. If you want to see it, you can see it, don’t want to see it, you can unfollow that circle, and you won’t be like a friend circle or Weibo homepage. There is content.” For the immediate and sudden removal, Li Tao feels that it is difficult to find a substitute now.
If Douban is a very literary world, it is an “online salon” that is more niche and more independent, but because the giants occupy more markets, there are few people who can actually use the moment. .
The Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious in the software day, the head application takes up more traffic, and the niche application is hard to stand out.
Also in this month, the “Life Guide after 90, 00” Xiaohongshu also ushered in its “water reversal” period.