Technology has temperature.
Text | Gong Xiaoli
Yesterday, Zhang Chaoyang announced that Sohu officially launched a social product , FoxYou, which is the fourth product to join the social war this year.
After a short experience, it is not difficult to find that Fox Friends is actually like a simplified version of Weibo, and the core functions are basically the same. In addition, fox friends will automatically follow Zhang Chaoyang after registration, and the latter currently has 2.525 million fans, that is, more than 2.5 million users have registered fox friends. To tell the truth, this user volume is not to say that compared with a billion users of WeChat, or even less than the number of fans of some head WeChat public accounts.
As one of the founders of China's Internet, Zhang Chaoyang's influence on China's Internet process is obvious to all, and he founded Sohu in 1998, which is a significant stroke in the history of China's Internet, which also brings him unparalleled status and wealth.
But with the development of the Internet in China, Zhang Chaoyang himself and Sohu gradually faded from the center of the stage.
When Weibo was in full swing, Zhang Chaoyang found that he seemed to have missed an era, so he announced to the outside world that he would invest an uncapped budget to do Sohu Weibo. Crazy investment can not reverse the decline, due to the inability to retain high-quality big v, insist on less than half a year, Sohu Weibo basically has no voice.
When zhang chaoyang returned after a year of retreat, he found that Tencent had actually done WeChat and felt that he had missed an era again.
"Missing Weibo and WeChat is like slapping me twice left and right," he said in an interview with Mr. Yang.
When Zhang Chaoyang carried out portal reform in 2015 and wanted to "recreate Sohu", he could only run to Sina Weibo to announce, and said, "It is a pity that Sohu's sns did not do it, so he had to borrow Sina Weibo to make some noise." Later, there was no sound.
Today, Zhang Chaoyang said that Sohu News and Sohu Video are Sohu's present, and Fox Friends is the future of Sohu. It believes that Sohu's business model is already very clear, and to achieve a larger number of users, social networking is a good way.
Last year, in order to attack mobile social networking, Sohu deliberately created the "Fox Friends National School Grass Competition", "The Fox Friends National School Grass Competition is actually the resurrection of Sohu's social networking products." Zhang Chaoyang said.
It's just that the real resurrection of this product is postponed by a whole year compared to the prelude.
This year, social products seem to have a powerful shock wave, and many companies have launched their own social products. The most famous is that on January 15, today's headlines, hammer technology and Wang Xinxin company synchronously launched the multi-flash, chat treasure and toilet mt, these three products, on the first day of launch, triggered a hot discussion in the circle, attracted a large number of users to download the experience, completed the initial user accumulation.
However, a few months have passed, and all three products seem to have encountered obvious development problems. This is also the problem encountered by almost all social products that want to challenge WeChat after WeChat, that is, the momentum is huge and the end is sloppy. Won a large number of insider torrent users download experience, but can not solve the retention problem.
When a person downloads a new social software and finds that their friends are not necessarily in the software, it becomes very troublesome to communicate. That's it, many social products, lack of stamina, difficult to maintain.
Fox friends focus on stranger social networking, it seems not to involve the problem of inability to communicate, but after fox friends have brought registered users through this publicity campaign, how to leave them? By Shopping ads, or by news feeds?
In this regard, Zhang Chaoyang did not seem to think clearly. For the product design of Fox Friends, Zhang Chaoyang said that Fox Friends will not do content recommendation in the app based on the failure experience of past social products, Fox Friends will not do big v authentication, and the survival of users in Fox Friends mainly depends on their own activity.
In the face of this humble version of Weibo, if it is not very necessary, people should not subvert what they are used to.
If it were not for Zhang Chaoyang's influence, Foxyou users would not have grown to more than 2.5 million in one day, which is similar to Luo Yonghao's push bullet SMS and its similarities.
After Luo Yonghao's death, the aura will fade and the product will be abandoned.
A social product, if you want to break through quickly, must have the drive you just need and the ability to cause a frenzy.
Think back to the social software we used to use, easy to believe, rice chat, exchanges... They all received the Good Guy Card. It is difficult to say whether the specific product is good or not, but the corresponding needs of the product have been fully met by the competitors, and the transfer cost of the user is too high. You are very good and hard and I really like it, but I already have someone.
Momo, meet, soul... Some software that focuses on stranger social networking was once ridiculed as "sex sex" software, with limited and unstable users. The first quarter of this year's financial report shows that Momo, whose performance has been soaring two years ago, is ushering in its difficult period.
The cruel social battlefield is no longer suitable for Zhang Chaoyang of the "Buddhist system".
"Before, I didn't care much about finances, I didn't care much about making money, I always thought about new products, and now the most important thing as a CEO is to bring the company to profitability." We are engaged in a lot of areas, including video burning money, including competition from other portals, my immediate goal now is to bring the company to profitability, the long-term goal continues to be able to make some good products, generate some long-term competitiveness. ”
However, Sohu has fallen too far behind and can no longer withstand the toss.