Wen | Zhang Shule
Many people are familiar with a story about "grains of rice and chessboard":
A king wanted to reward the inventor of chess, so the inventor came up with his dream: to put grains of rice on the board. The first compartment puts 1 grain, the second compartment puts 2 capsules, then 4 capsules, 8 capsules, 16 capsules... Until it is placed in 64 tiles.
The king laughed and thought he was stupid, but the truth was that the grains of rice that had been emptied of the whole world were not enough to fill the chessboard...
Of course, this arithmetic question is not without answers.
It's just that for strangers to socialize, people think that the number of people and even the total number of young people will always be its ceiling, and it must be a social stock market.
But the myriad possibilities of social connections between strangers have turned its world into a chessboard.
A chessboard that all the grains of rice in the world are not filled.
It's just that strangers socially always seem to have difficulty breaking through the invisible walls in the chessboard, how to break?
The number of users, the age stage, these are seen as the biggest barriers for strangers to socialize, and may not be a problem.
Strangers' social needs, unlock the number of puzzles with "three tricks"
If you look at acquaintance social networking in the same way, it's easy to see the ceiling: you can't jump out of Dunbar's law for 150 people, and the connections may all be calculated in 150.
There is no limit of 150 people for strangers to socialize, but it takes quantitative change to trigger qualitative change.
Where does the quantitative change come from?
Get as many strangers as possible into social apps.
The performance of Zhiwen Group (formerly Momo Technology) in 2021 may provide a path.
Its latest financial report shows that in 2021, the net revenue of Zhiwen Group was 14.5757 billion yuan, of which the fourth quarter revenue was 3.6742 billion yuan, exceeding Wall Street expectations.
This achievement is largely due to the fact that it has done one thing right: Tuoke.
In addition to the existing Momo and Tantan, Zhiwen Group began to try to launch various social apps. In addition to the stranger socialization that was originally good at, the main shooting chat click, the positioning of the short video social eye, the hertz specializing in audio social networking, and the modo based on the real dating scene and so on are intensively launched... The result of casting a wide net is an increase in the probability of trial and error success, such as social products hertz and pairs for the domestic market, which achieved profitability in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Not only that, but in overseas markets, Zhiwen Group has also gained.
Wang Li, CEO of Zhiwen Group, revealed that for the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) market, the user and commercialization level of its voice social application "SoulChill" is still in its early stages, but its monthly flow is equivalent to the sum of Hertz and pairs.
At the same time, Tantan's exploration of overseas markets has also been successful. Data from third-party platform data.ai shows that in the second half of 2021, the scale of tantan users and revenue in the Indonesian market has always been ahead of Tinder, and the December turnover is 1.4 times that of Tinder. According to market research institute Apptopia data, in January 2022, the US dating app installs increased year-on-year in the top 5, and Tantan ranked among them.
Why can it suddenly fight a series of beautiful battles at home and abroad, the strategy of Zhiwen Group is not complicated: through global raiders and localized operations, coupled with a characteristic social experience, a three-pronged approach can effectively complete the surge in the number of users again.
Of course, success won't be so easy. For example, Hertz facing China, and SoulChill facing overseas are mainly voice social, but in localization, the former pays attention to talking, hitting the loneliness of young users in China, and the latter focuses on interest, to break the barrier between local interpersonal reality...
Compared with the previous large number of voice socials entering under the burst of the Clubhouse but breaking into the sand, this is obviously a different scenery.
The social pain points of strangers have been broken, and the number and activity of users have increased exponentially, and the total revenue of the independent new App of Zhiwen Group will reach 304 million yuan in 2021, nearly 3 times year-on-year.
The chessboard broke the wall and had a chance.
The possibilities for socializing are endless, and age is not an issue
For a long time, social products have been plagued by the age solidification of users, whether it is acquaintance social networking or stranger socializing.
As you get older, your social needs change and it seems to become a subconscious, but is that really a problem?
On the surface, maybe so.
A survey of Analysys Qianfan data in October 2020 showed that about 16% of Momo users under the age of 24 and about 27% of the 24-30 years old in that month, the sum of the two is less than 50%.
This has become one of the most intuitive data proofs that the industry believes that Momo is old.
But the problem is that all along, Momo has maintained a stable momentum in terms of both revenue and monthly active users, and users have increased in age, so why is the social demand of strangers stronger?
The answer may be to tap into the social needs of strangers as they age.
But this is still just a starting point, keeping an app evergreen is only a small goal, if you can "by the way" under the natural increase in the age of the user of the application, the "older" application trial and error successful experience, transplanted to the relay application, what will be the result?
Tantan, in fact, is the relay of Momo's user file in the 20-year-old age group, and in addition to the attempts of membership and live broadcasting, the virtual gift business that has become the second engine of Momo's main APP revenue growth has also begun to gradually integrate into the ecology of Tantan.
Every age level has its own way of socializing. The age of the main user of a single application is irreversible, so it is passed down from generation to generation with more applications...
More importantly, the accumulation of this historical experience will become thicker and thicker with the process of continuous trial and error, and leave more room for subsequent applications to social imagination.
In fact, The Zhiwen Group has also clearly expressed this "copy-paste" wish.
Wang Li said that for apps that have been launched and whose profitability has been verified, "Zhiwen Group plans to replicate this successful model and launch several other products in succession, with the goal of having more than a dozen profitable apps in the next 3-5 years, while occupying a leading position in certain segments." ”
In the number of users continue to open up the global market, in the user social needs continue to reach more connections possible, so that the social between strangers, there are horizontal and vertical longitude and latitude, the possibility of various social combinations naturally has like "rice grains and chessboard" like the exponential surge of combat power.
The invisible wall in front of strangers' social "chessboard" has been crumbling, and it is no wonder that The Zhiwen Group has dared to distribute a special cash dividend of 3.5 billion yuan to shareholders for the fourth consecutive year, which shows the confidence of management in the future.