Image source @ Gel App
Wen 丨 深火 (ID: shenrancaijing), author 丨 Wang Min, editor 丨 Jin Jiepan
Gel, fire among young people.
Young people who are active on social platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat groups are busy wearing, showing status, and leaving IDs, just to add more gel friends.
Product managers and operation practitioner circles have also begun to discuss this acquaintance social APP and analyze its selling points and functions. Because it has 3D avatars, online space and social functions, it is also regarded as a metaverse social concept APP.
On February 11, less than a month after gel was officially launched, the ranking surpassed WeChat and QQ, and reached the top of the AppStore free list.
Jelly user homepage image source / gel
It is out of the circle, but the position of "list one" is not easy to sit.
Many users just downloaded the gel for a few days, began to complain that it is not even the most basic product experience is not done well, Caton flashback, message delay problem has not been solved, there are plans to abandon.
Questions followed. The gel was first accused of violating user privacy, and then was accused by a number of users and brands that the avatar in the APP was suspected of plagiarism, and the self-proclaimed "hacked" gel was busy coping.
However, despite these doubts, many practitioners have evaluated after experiencing gel that "there is always a shadow of some explosive products in the past". Some people say that some features have been seen on the acquaintance map social software Spot software before, and some people think that it is a combination of the 3D avatar social application ZEPETO and the real-time positioning application Zenly.
Under the concept of metacosmology, the hottest evolution direction in the post-mobile Internet era is the "metacosm". In the current chaotic period, hardware and software are very lively, some people try to seize the market in the alternating period of hardware products, and some people want to survive the melee of acquaintance social products.
Since the second half of 2021, from the rainbow universe of the world show, Baidu's Xiyuan, to the slow planet produced by the startup... Regardless of whether these apps advertise the metaverse or not, but because of their avatars, social relationships, online space and other characteristics, they are regarded by the outside world as social apps with the concept of metaversics. The same is true of the gels that appear in 2022.
However, these apps have just become popular, and most of them are still in a very preliminary stage, and it is difficult to escape the "moon throwing curse". And as the new favorite of young people, how long can the vitality of gel last? The answer is probably not optimistic.
On the evening of February 13, the third day of the Top AppStore free list, The Gel brought a bad news: the APP took the initiative to take down the shelves, suspending new users from entering, and the announcement said that it would focus on improving the existing user experience.
Gel, how to brush the screen?
Gel, how does it attract young people?
Internet designer Su Xin began to be curious about this problem not long after the gel product was launched, and soon became a gel user at the invitation of a friend.
As soon as he opened the app, he was attracted by the trendy design. "Splash screen animations are cool, virtual character costumes are trendy, and the friends list is very novel, a bit like collecting blind boxes."
Of course, the most poignant thing about him is that the avatar design is very suitable for his aesthetic points. This is also a point mentioned by many gel users.
Enter the Gel APP, the first step is to create a tide play virtual 3D image for yourself through the form of "pinching face". Because they like to wear the virtual image of the gel, many young people have recorded their gel weekly wear on social platforms.
Avatar Reload image source / gel
The avatar, to some extent, reflects the style and attitude of young people. Some young people have replaced their WeChat avatars with gel avatars, and have left IDs and friends on multiple platforms. A gel user told Shen Yan that he commented on a Douyin video that he "wanted to add a gel friend", and the reply soon had 500 messages, "all of which are ID".
"Young people are tired and still need 'something new' to stimulate." Su Xin believes that compared with other young people's virtual social apps that he usually contacts, Some production details, such as costumes, animations, and friend showcases, are more attentive. One user, who was also impressed by the details, mentioned, "Walking on the map during the day, the avatar also has a shadow." ”
What can young people do on their gels except pinch their faces and change their clothes?
The positioning of gel is "online apartment with close friends", emphasizing being a favorite self, inviting good friends, and real friends to come in, and the maximum number of friends list is 50 people. The positioning of acquaintances socially allows young people to dare to show the state casually and truthfully on this APP.
Su Xin's use of the gel is mainly to invite friends and "poke a poke". Poking a poke seems to him like a Weibo "@" or a WeChat "pat".
Zhou Xing, 25 years old, saw many users on Douyin on February 11 discussing gels, and followed the trend of downloading. The next day, he happened to have a hot pot game with a few friends, so they added gel friends to each other in advance.
With this hot pot game, he has experienced the core functions of adding friends, setting dynamics, location sharing, and "this moment" similar to the circle of friends.
They have just entered the gel full of freshness, before going to the appointment, they began to synchronize the dynamics and plans on the gel, and they will also change their own dynamics according to the actual situation, sleeping, brushing drama, playing games, moving bricks, and when you look at the virtual image, you can see what everyone is doing. WeChat groups that used to communicate were left out.
Waiting for the afternoon to go out one after another, Zhou Xing and a few friends opened the real-time positioning function for each other. Real-time location sharing on the gel is ridiculed by many users as a "chagang artifact", and it is also more suitable for acquaintance social networking.
"With the gel map, I can guess who might be late." Zhou Xing said that when he was shabu-shabu, he also sent a photo of the hot pot bureau on the jelly like a circle of friends.
Zhou Xing shares the dynamics of the hot pot bureau on the gel Image source / Gel
Some users commented: "Moving offline life status and ideas online and seeing what friends are doing is much more interesting than just sending a circle of friends." ”
In addition to the vivid painting style and the freshness of young people, many Internet operation practitioners have said that the popularity of the gel also has a certain relationship with the fiery metaverse concept.
Cloaked in the cloak of virtual social networking, the essence is an upgraded version of the "dress-up experience game"?
Although the gel has caught fire in the young people, it is not new.
Let's start with the metaverse social concept that first came to mind by users. Although the official introduction of the gel APP does not define itself as a meta-universe social software, it can almost find the same model in the meta-universe social concept products that create online space for users, allow users to create avatars, and interact online in real time.
The concept of the metaverse defined by Roblox, the "first share of the metaverse", needs to have 8 key characteristics, namely identity, social, immersive experience, low-latency communication, pluralism, anywhere, economic system, and civilization.
The real mature metaverse social APP has not yet appeared, but the latest metaverse concept products are some advertised as "metaverse", and some are defined as "metaverse products" by the outside world, but they all involve some of the 8 key elements, especially 3D avatars have become standard.
Rainbow Universe and Xiyuan, which are advertised as metaverse social apps, spend more time meeting specific elements of the metaverse. Rainbow Universe has not yet been officially launched, relying on the "hunger marketing" of only 350,000 houses released, attracting a large number of players to buy and sell houses in the early stage of internal testing. There is also a VR version in Xilang, which allows users to listen, shop, communicate, and watch exhibitions in the virtual space.
It is regarded by the outside world as a slow planet and super QQ show of the meta-universe social concept product, and the virtual space is more experiential. In Su Xin's view, the qq show upgrade has a 3D virtual image, as well as a super QQ show that can dress up the QQ nest, which has more advantages in packaging and production.
Slow Planet is more focused on voice socializing. Entering the slow planet, after the user establishes the avatar, he can enter the square from the small space, and after approaching other users in the square, the system will automatically open the real-time voice and text pop-up window, and the user can chat together, and when away, the dialogue will automatically close. Moreover, after entering a specific occasion such as a café, it can also trigger the function of a specific occasion.
The party island of the recent byte internal test, the official said that the positioning has nothing to do with the metaverse, but because of its characteristics such as virtual image and online space, it is also regarded as a metaverse social product by the outside world. A user who got the invitation code to participate in the party island test told Deep Burn that its main line is "activity", which is to find friends to complete certain things together.
However, compared with the above products, the new product produced by Cyber Elephant Group's Little Information, which refers directly to the acquaintance social network, is the upper limit of 50 friends through the real map social networking, and the core gameplay is "avatar + map social".
However, many users always feel somewhat familiar with these functions. Some users said that they had seen it on spot software before, and some people commented that it was like ZEPETO and Zenly complex.
Zhou Wenjing, an investor in Chunni Capital who pays attention to social networking, believes that as a social product, the originality of the gel is not strong, she said, "The gel is just a mature team, which has gathered some mature gameplay. ”
"Pinching faces", "dressing up", and sims of gamified social experiences are the "core" of the logos.
Many users are attracted by the style of the gel, but after "pinching people", "do not know what to play next". There are also users who complain, "Empty form, but lack of functions that can be experienced repeatedly."
A number of Internet product related practitioners said to Deep Burn that gel still lacks irreplaceable functions. Zhang Fengxin, Internet operation manager, said that "all acquaintance social products are facing the problem of excessive migration costs", there are not many acquaintance social products on the market, and there are very few that allow users to really migrate from WeChat and QQ.
How long can the gels in the meta-universe packaging be on fire?
The freshness of a group of young people about the gel has disappeared and is going to unload the gel.
The frequency of gel use in Su Xin's mobile phone has decreased, "after the function is familiar, the frequency of opening the gel now has dropped by at least half compared with the first few days of download." Zhou Xing and a few friends, after two days of deep use, felt that the gel power consumption was serious and planned to uninstall.
The gel, which has just been launched, has dissuaded a wave of users because of the imperfection of many product basic functions such as caton flashback and power consumption.
User questions about products are also increasing. After climbing to the top of the Apple App Store free list, Gel was questioned about "leaking user privacy", using user WeChat, QQ number and other privacy information, in the face of this doubt, the official statement denied and said that it had called the police. The gel product manager also posted a long post on Weibo to explain.
The character image and painting style, which is considered remarkable, have also been questioned by many parties as "virtual dress plagiarism". Some bloggers said that the same outfit appeared in the gel as in their past notes. There are also accessories brands that posted that they saw a flower bag very similar to a cross-body bag created by their own brand last year.
Gel was questioned for plagiarism Image source / Little Red Book, Weibo
Social product practitioners are well aware that the early download volume is high, the significance is not great, and finally it depends on user retention. The product experience is not good, there are more and more voices of doubt, word of mouth is affected, and Gel is facing no small challenge in user retention.
In response to the recent increase in users, online transmission of infringement of user privacy and other issues, the gel issued a notice on the evening of February 13, saying that in recent days, gel has encountered continuous, organized attacks, in the major platforms by malicious rumors, in the app store by the water army brush bad reviews, in this regard has taken legal action.
Gel also admitted in the announcement that in the 3 weeks of listing, the Caton problem has not been solved ("Card even the code has come out"), delay, flashback, inability to enter and many other problems do exist, in order to focus on improving the existing user experience, take the initiative to remove from the app store, suspend new users to enter.
Many practitioners said that once the user uninstalls, it is doubly difficult to let the user re-download. Whether gels can continue to become popular, they all think is unlikely.
"Any new social product, it is not easy to fire now", in Zhang Fengxin's view, many users have a good initial impression of gel, which is very rare for a veteran information company such as Cyber Elephant to make this product that abandons the original experience.
But he also stressed that from the perspective of "Chagang Artifact", the gel must be socialized by acquaintances, and the 3D engine can interact with friends more likely and fully. But the interactivity of the gel is not enough. Because between acquaintances, what is really needed is to get rid of text, voice, video restrictions, more real-time and more online communication, that is, what needs to be improved is "social efficiency", at present, gel can not meet this standard.
Zhou Wenjing said that socializing with acquaintances has always been more difficult than socializing with strangers. Stranger social can be compatible with each other, for example, users may use Momo, Tantan, soul at the same time. But acquaintance social products, in each stage of hardware products, there are basically only 1-2 models. "The vast majority of people are still concentrated on WeChat or QQ."
But it's not that the acquaintances who socialize don't have a chance. In her view, it is only in the stage of hardware change that acquaintance socialization can really develop. At present, it is in the era of new and old hardware alternation from mobile phone hardware to VR and AR hardware, and it is also the stage when a new round of acquaintance social products has just started. After the new hardware is truly popularized, the situation of "unifying the rivers and lakes" of new products in the field of acquaintance social networking will also be basically formed, and it will be too late to re-enter the game at that time.
"The timing of the gel is right, and it's right to grab a certain crowd." Zhou Wenjing believes that the starting point of social products with long-lasting vitality of acquaintances must be to impress the core needs of a specific group of people, and only when there is a share in this group and a network effect can the influence be gradually expanded.
Since the launch of the gel, it has captured a wave of young people after the 90s and 00s, but it is still a little far from the standard of "reaching a high share in a certain group of people".
A number of meta-universe social concept products that were previously launched have been hot down. After Rainbow Universe tightened its control over second-hand transactions in virtual houses, many users switched positions. As for Baidu's Xilang, Su Xin believes that "from the aesthetics of packaging and design, it has failed to capture the hearts of young people."
Will the gels be short-lived and follow their old path?
Under the concept of meta-universe, the breakthrough of the next generation of acquaintance social products has emerged, and it must be more gamified, virtualized, and online. Against this backdrop, the answer to the question seems less important. In 2022, there will be more social products for the "metaverse" era, and the gel and they may all belong to the exploration of the chaotic period.
Note: At the request of the interviewees, Su Xin and Zhou are pseudonyms in the text.