(Chinese Version)

The concept of social networking by sharing photos was a hit around 2012, when Instagram was acquired by Facebook for US$1 billion in April that year. Instagram’s estimated market value has been increasing since then. Inspired by Instagram’s success, Chinese entrepreneurs saw a promising future for photo sharing social networking apps. All of sudden, everybody seemed to be investing in photo-sharing social networking apps in China.

It followed that photo-sharing apps, whether big or small, were launched one by one in Chinese domestic market. However, most apps quickly paled into insignificance. On June 1st, IN, a Chinese photo-sharing app, surprisingly completed 300 million RMB Series B financing, bringing hopes to photo-sharing app developers. Will Chinese photo-sharing apps grasp this opportunity and make a difference?

The difference between foreign and domestic photo-sharing apps

Instagram: The very first model for Chinese domestic photo-sharing apps

The majority of Chinese domestic photo-sharing apps were developed by imitating their foreign counterparts, Instagram, and then making minor alterations and adjustments along the way. There is a long list of Instagram’s followers or imitators, though none of them get to become popular as Instagram did.

Instagram allows users to upload high-quality square-sized photos, provides personalized filter effects and strong sharing function. It is designed as a photo wall. Instagram focuses on photo editing and social networking. With around a dozen of free special effect filter digital image processors and geographical position detectors, it has accumulated abundant user data, which mostly comes from overseas users.

At first, Instagram stands out due to its highest-level filter effects among similar apps. The earliest users were quite high-end. They were passionate about photography. Some of them were professional photographers who had high standards for the quality of pictures. Instagram supports compressing and sharing pictures on several social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flicker and Tumblr. Instagram was quite easy and handy, which may help explain why it quickly attracted a good number of professional users, even without much marketing and promoting.

Later, as many celebrities opened their own accounts on Instagram, a large number of ordinary users began to use Instagram. Instagram gradually becomes a photo-sharing social networking platform, in a way similar to micro-blogs. Fast-growing users go hand in hand with the management problem. Besides, users can’t be classified easily. Today, advertisements can often be seen in Instagram, seemingly turning its back on its original intention of building a photo-sharing community. Nude selfies even penetrate into Instagram, attracting male users to download. The biggest problem now Instagram faces is the management of users and their uploaded contents.

In and Nice: Obvious commercialization that focuses on brand promotion

The basic app structure of Chinese domestic photo-sharing apps, such as In and Nice, are almost the same as Instagram. What’s more, these apps’ developing logic, function and operation mode are also identical. All of them feature photo-editing, tags and sharing. In and Nice both emphasize on brands promotion. At first they focused on tagged brands display and can be applied in commercial activities. In this way, they can sketch a comparatively accurate user model via large-scale pictures recognition and tags information, thus offering huge room for cooperation with companies, brands.

The difference between In and Nice is that In focuses on female users while Nice has more male users. Dressing techniques and fashion brands take up much of the user interface of these two apps, though normal themes such as food and pets are also included. They give people the impression of earlier China’s e-commerce apps, such as Mushroom Street and Beauty Talks. One might expect that In and Nice will follow their development model and first serve as shopping guides, then develop towards e-commerce platforms, though In and Nice seem to pay more attention to branding.

Meituxiuxiu and PhotoWonder: More like photo editing tools than social networking apps

Meituxiuxiu has a large number of users because of its powerful beautification function. It has more users than PhotoWonder and has become a mass-market product. However, its obvious instrumental value makes it hard to transform into a social networking platform.

At present, Meituxiuxiu and PhotoWonder are more like photo editing apps. If they want to build a separate user community, more social networking functions must be included in their designs. 

Common problems of Chinese domestic photo-sharing apps

As an important information transmission carrier, photos carry and transfer information in an intuitive and simple manner. Photos are more attractive today since most people’s time is fragmented and they don’t bother to read mere texts. With the spread of mobile devices and the mobilization of contents, the advantages of photo-sharing apps are becoming more and more obvious. Developers at home and abroad have all been trying to bring out more innovations. However, there are still a lot of problems left to be solved in the entire industry.

1. Plain copycats, no highlights in functions

Current photo-sharing apps or websites generally have similar frameworks and functions. Homogenization is a severe problem. No highlights can be found in these apps’ functions. Most of these apps include functions such as taking photos, beautifying pictures via filters, sharing, commenting on others’ posts, liking a photo, following other users, locating, tagging photos and discussing. No single app is creative enough to attract a large crowd of users.

Personally, I believe developers of photo-sharing apps should focus more on how to extend their apps’ functions and bring about more innovations, so that their apps can stand out among numerous similar apps.

2. Difficulty in managing users and contents

The problem in managing users and contents is always bothering social networking products. At the beginning stage of a product, limited users can be effectively categorized and managed. However, growing users, increasing contents production and low entry standard of original products all contribute to disorders in management. Although labeled interests and topic settings can be used to primarily classify users, effective management hasn’t really taken place.

As a photo-sharing app develops, such problems as increasing purchasing agents on In and Nice and nude selfies on Instagram ensue and need to be solved in time. If these problems can’t be effectively dealt with in time, these apps might face lawsuits.

In this case, photo-sharing apps’ developers should take strict management and regulation measures on their products. This is a must for the continual development of any app.

3. Unclear products orientation

Various photo-sharing apps don’t have a clear orientation for themselves. They are not sure whether to be a photo-sharing platform or an app with commercial use.

Instagram first appeared as a platform for sharing photos. Its non-commercial nature attracted a lot of users. However, Instagram’s users are different from Chinese users because of the cultural differences. Chinese people prefer posting selfies and food, while foreign users usually post high-quality photographs whose themes are mainly families, pets and scenery. Thus, Instagram has been developing very well on its path towards a photo-sharing platform. However, domestic photo-sharing apps are inclined to develop with commercial uses that take advantage of Chinese users’ posting habits. At first, they advocated to users the emphasis on social connections, however, then they began to drift towards a strong marketing path. Transformation is hard. They are now stuck in an embarrassing stage, where user number stops growing due to the lack of distinct features, while old users stop updating.

Thus, clear orientation and positioning is extremely important for products. Developers should set positioning strategies at the beginning stage of the business and stick to the plan. If a product has to go on a commercial path, then be clear about it and carry out a detailed business model. Overlapping with other social networking products would only result in the loss of users.

Another problem we need to discuss about photo-sharing platform is the positioning of their users and content quality. I personally believe that domestic photo-sharing apps should set clear standards on content quality, whether they accept only high-quality photographic artwork or daily life records which are more inclined to be shared and commented. In this way, they can pinpoint and cultivate effective users，making it beneficial in their future development.

There remains huge potential in Chinese photo-sharing app market. Chinese app developers should learn from Instagram, the world’s largest social networking app of this particular field, however, blind imitations will only lead to death. Let’s look forward to a photo-sharing app with Chinese characteristics and best caters to Chinese users.

 (The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Technology Comments, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.)

Translated by Selma Xu(Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.