The article is from the WeChat public account: Interface News (ID: wowjiemian) , reporter: Lin Beichen, picture from: Oriental IC
On February 28, a stranger social product called “Uki” was re-launched on the app store. Few people know that it has suffered a vicious incident in the Internet circle against competitors.
Recently, according to the Shanghai Putuo Procuratorate’s announcement, in July 2019, Li, a partner of an Internet technology company, found that an “u *” APP platform has similar functions to his company’s “s *” platform. In order to crack down on competitors, Lee instructed his subordinate and company employee Fan to collect illegal content on the Competitive App platform and collect it through “phishing”: if no illegal content is found on the other platform, use his registered account Post the offending content on the other platform, and then take a screenshot.
Uki founder Sun Mingjun confirmed in an exclusive interview with the interface journalist that the “u *” in Putuo’s prosecution announcement is exactly the stranger social software Uki he founded.
From the beginning of November 2019, Uki APP has been removed from mainstream application stores one after another, and will not be available again until the end of February 2020. During this period, Uki’s daily registered user volume experienced a cliff-like decline, and the company’s operations were suspended for a time.
Uki was maliciously smeared by Soul employees
In November last year, Uki, a startup company, suddenly received a notification from an app store saying that its app “has been taken down for violating relevant laws and regulations.” Soon, several major application stores have taken down Uki. The supervisory department also called and informed that the reason for the product’s delisting was “there is harmful and vulgar content related to pornography” and asked for correction.
Sun Mingjun told the interface journalist that on the Uki platform, usually only pictures that have passed the machine + manual review can be finally published and seen by others. After investigation,Uki staff had detected suspicious accounts uploading pornographic pictures during the review process at that time, and immediately deleted the information without posting it online.
Uki also found that both accounts that posted harmful information came from the same address, and they quickly changed their avatars after posting pictures of harmful speech. Uki decided to report to the Shanghai Putuo District Police, where the company is registered and where the office is located.
On February 19, 2020, the public security organs submitted the case to the Putuo District Procuratorate for approval of arrest; on February 25, the prosecutor contacted Uki by phone; at the end of February, Uki successively received notifications from the app store stating that the product Can be restocked.
Soon after the APP was launched, Putuo Procuratorate issued a notice. The notice stated that in October 2019, “s *” company employee Fan had registered two accounts on the “u *” platform with his and his colleagues’ mobile phones respectively, and posted harmful comments and pictures related to pornography through the accounts, screenshots Then report to the relevant departments.
In other words, the screenshots of Fan ’s report did not pass Uki ’s image review mechanism, but stayed in the initial stage of uploading images to the website.
According to the investigation by the interface journalists, the “s *” in the announcement is exactly the product Soul similar to Uki.
Tianyancha’s information shows that Soul is affiliated to Shanghai Anymen Technology Co., Ltd. It was established in June 2015. The legal representative is Zhang Lu, and the only senior executive with the surname Li is named Li Long. In addition to Shanghai Anyman Technology Co., Ltd., Li Long also serves as a supervisor of Shanghai Souer Information Technology Co., Ltd. The company’s legal representative is also Zhang Lu.
The interface journalist dialed the switchboard number on the Shanghai Anymen Technology website to verify. The other party said that he was not clear about the matter and that he had not resumed work and could not respond to the incident.
Soul’s current financing status has reached the B + round. Public information shows that Soul received an angel round of financing in December 2016 and a round of financing in June 2017. The investors were MFund Magic Capital and Morningside Capital; in January 2018, the company received a round B financing. The investor For DST and Yuansheng Capital. The company’s C round financing amount and investors have not disclosed to the public. At present Zhang Lu is a major shareholder with a 74.93% shareholding.
Uki’s qualifications are not that rich.
Uki’s main body is Shanghai Niu Ca Information Technology Co., Ltd. Tianyancha shows that it was established in April 2015 and received A round of financing in August 2018. The amount was not disclosed. In August 2019, Jingwei China invested in the transaction amount NeitherDisclosure.
It’s not just the user that is losing
Uki founder Sun Mingjun is a post-90s entrepreneur. According to him, Uki APP was launched in mid-2018, and by the end of 2019, the number of users was about 25 million. As a young startup company, Uki’s corporate structure is quite flat. The company currently employs nearly 300 people, of which the R & D and product teams account for the majority, and there are also departments responsible for information security.
In terms of business models, Uki’s monetization model is virtual gifts, skins, and dresses purchased by users, which are in the early data accumulation stage. Sun Mingjun believes that the number of daily active users, monthly active users and user duration is the most important value of Uki.
In the social field of strangers, products are often taken down due to pornography. In the first quarter of 2019, products such as Hello voice, shimmer, and audio encounters were removed from the App Store. In April 2019, the National Internet Information Office launched a special rectification of niche instant messaging tools, and 9 stranger social software such as neighbors, chat, whisper, and whisper were shut down. But this is the first time a product has been removed from shelves due to a malicious report.
For this unexpected incident, Sun Mingjun was helpless. In the interview, one of his most common words was, “We only knew after reading the prosecution’s announcement.”
During the product removal period, Sun Mingjun and company employees did not stop working. Although the Putuo prosecutor’s announcement explained that the “u *” company was closed, in order to continue the normal operation of the business, the Sun Mingjun team was still working normally within those three months.
Sun Mingjun told interface journalists that Uki suffered losses in this incident in three aspects: the number of users, revenue and brand reputation.
For an app that does not use advertising and marketing as its main source of income, word-of-mouth and gameplay models are the most important factors in attracting new users, and the key to determining user retention.
Sun Mingjun estimates that from a quantifiable perspective, Uki missed at least 5 million new users within three months of the product being removed. Non-quantifiable losses, including the loss of old users caused by the loss of brand reputation, affect the favorability of new users, etc., it takes a long time for the company to digest these effects.
The Spring Festival was originally a social peacePeak growth in Taiwan. According to Sun Mingjun, during the Spring Festival from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019, the user growth rate of Uki APP is 5 to 10 times that of non-holiday. In fact, whether it is around the Spring Festival or the May 1st and 11th holidays, Uki’s user growth can achieve more than 5 times the usual.
Sun Mingjun believes that the practice of a large number of social products is to focus on head users, and the social needs of ordinary people have not been met. Uki’s positioning of this product is based on algorithmic wins, which precisely match users in the user pool. In an interview, he also teased himself, “I hope that ordinary people like me can find suitable chat partners.”
According to the “2019 Stranger Social Industry Insights” released by Mob Research Institute, from the perspective of installed capacity, Momo, Tantan, Soul, and Uki are among the top four in the industry. According to Ai Media Consulting, the number of social users of strangers in China is expected to reach 622 million in 2019.
For the plan for 2020, Sun Mingjun only wants to “digest the impact of this incident as soon as possible, complete the established growth goals, and strive to achieve profitability.” He believes that Uki and strangers must have a market for socializing, and he will work hard to bring this home The company has been operating for a long time.
The article is from the WeChat public account: Interface News (ID: wowjiemian) , Reporter: Lin Beichen