What kind of problem is this thing really made to solve?
This is the sentence we said the most in the meeting, simple and powerful, but also to find out who is a stupid product manager, those who are busy drawing prototypes and stacking functions all day long, when faced with this sentence, it is undoubtedly sad, because he has not thought about this problem at all.
Every industry should have some essential solutions, pay attention to some, not one, because they will hold each other back in all aspects but promote each other, I think everyone who comes into contact with new things, new industries, if you want to surpass others in a short period of time to get the commanding heights of this industry's thinking, you must understand its essential solution.
The so-called essential solution means that no matter how the industry does, how the environment changes, and how the technology changes, it is solving these problems. When you fully understand its essential solution, you can find the way forward.
Here are some of my thoughts and summaries of the essence of social products, if you can see, it happens that you are a product manager of social products, I believe it will save you at least 2 years of trial and error time for your long career.
01
Essential solution
What problems do social products exist to solve?
Before answering this question, I want to say my understanding of the product, the product is too formal word, so that everyone does not have a direct understanding of it to the bottom, I think, no matter what industry or what segment, the product is actually a service, the service itself comes with supply and demand attributes, you have demand, I come to serve you, give you solutions, and in the process of service, there will be some circulation of information, currency, perception level, these flows we commonly known as transactions.
There must be transactions in the service, but the transactions that everyone is usually familiar with refer to currency transactions, in fact, there are non-monetary transactions, such as social products. But what exactly is social product trading?
To be honest, I don't know, because there are too many kinds, but I know the purpose of their trading: to build relationships.
There are many kinds of relationships, normal and abnormal, but this is not the point, the point is that there is an indispensable link before establishing a relationship, that is, through two-way screening. There is no one who has established a relationship with someone else, which is illogical, only those who have established a confused relationship with others, these are two different concepts, don't mess with it.
What about the premise of passing two-way screening? Show the information used for screening, luxury cars, real estate certificates, graduate schools, etc., I am just giving examples, but these examples are indeed the information that is often displayed, why? Because of the high certainty and easy to pass the screening, the essential reason is that behind these things can let the other party know the value itself for a short time.
In the early days of the establishment of most normal relationships in social networking, men actively display value for women to screen, at least in the mainland, but also determined by supply and demand, social climate and other factors, human beings also have this gene.
Value will also be divided into two categories, physiological value (avatar and life photos) and social value (position company school, etc.), dating social products will pay great attention to the shaping of physiological value, while marriage social products, will pay more attention to the shaping of social value, which is the difference in product process caused by business differences;
Now there are many social products that do physiological and social value transformation in order to pursue the ultimate and omit the step of uploading data, which is really confusing.
So you see, social products exist to help users build relationships, which is the initial stage, after all, after the relationship is established, it may not be long-lasting. Maybe he's a scumbag, and we've got to stop here, and the relationship has to end; maybe he's too bored to talk about three sentences a week, and the relationship is better than nothing, and it's better to flirt with someone else.
For social products, the most important indicator is how many of the new users each day have established effective relationships.
There are two important points here:
The first way to establish a relationship is very important, probing left sliding right sliding is a kind, WeChat shake is a kind, Momo based LBS search is a kind, theoretically with which can be used, but it must be simple! Because of the complex way of establishment, users will be confused, the penetration rate of establishing relationships will not go up at all, and new users will leave when they come.
And the complex way will make the user feel too burdened, need to reserve time to use, rather than piecemeal time to use casually, which creates a gap in the frequency of use.
The definition of the second effective relationship can be many, which can be the interaction rate in the later period of time, or it can be n-day retention, but it must be able to be defined effectively, don't engage in those vanity indicators that are established that are effective, and deceive yourself for not long.
Social products, users will only think of one thing: what kind of efficiency I use, to know what kind of quality of people, and this process of building relationships, must be decentralized, that is to say, you must pay attention to the balance of the relationship when designing products, most of them must be many-to-many, can not have a star effect, centralized relationship.
You imagine: a person has tens of thousands of followers, this is the establishment of social relationships, this is the relationship between idols and fans, this person does not have the time to chat with everyone, no matter how good the operation can not pull the establishment of these relationships.
02
How to operate
Social product cold start, how to do it? Let's start with the idea:
Have you ever been to a nightclub? Why do people like to go to nightclubs? Why is the stereo so loud? Really for the sake of listening to music?
Nightclubs are the best place to review social products, and the operation of nightclubs is the best cold-open template:
What do you think is your motivation for going to a nightclub? In order to see some people who are of high quality that you don't usually have access to, they may be bumpy in appearance, they may be the children of some family business with amazing wealth, no matter what level, their quality must be very high.
You are because you can contact these people who usually can't reach the nightclubs, the door is casually stopped by Aston Martin, people open dozens of royal salutes just to congratulate the atmosphere of a certain life day, will not be used to drink, scarce things are attractive.
People who are actually exposed to these things are not very likely to go to nightclubs, they will go to private clubs, where there are more scarce things. It's like you don't have anything to do without going to clear it. Because all passers-by are consuming, I have no expectations, and I also go to drink.
You went to the nightclub, but you know that maybe you and those beautiful girls can't talk at all, after drinking a few glasses of impulsive consumption, you find that there is a woman at the next table, obviously she is not very beautiful but it is OK, but the sound in the field is too loud, to hear the words of the other party, you can only get closer.
After a few "intimate" chats, you find that everyone is ok, add a WeChat or something, and have time to come out for a meal.
Explain it in our words
Is to get a group of head users first, this part of the user is used to attract waist users, they will be well protected, the general waist users can not contact them at all, the purpose of the head user has two: one is to drain, the other is to identify the key groups of waist users (rich, beautiful, talented, etc.);
The contact between the key population of the waist and the head user has created a possibility and a fantasy for the majority of waist users. But the most critical thing is that a large number of waist users are active with each other, improving interaction and improving long-term retention.
The waist user is your core group, the tone of this group determines the tone of your product, this is the core competitiveness of your product, is a barrier, is a moat, because strangers socialize, the cost of user migration is very low.
Oh forgot to say, the above are all social products in the field of stranger socialization, because I think the word social refers more to strangers, and acquaintances can only be called communication at best.
Author: Jacobs Look for the asymmetry between return and risk