Video Social Networking, Will It Work?

For startup companies like Qupai, they don’t really have the strength or energy to do commercialization. The user base and traffic flow are the most fundamental factors when it comes to commercialization, which, unfortunately, are exactly what they are lacking right now.

(Chinese Version)

Editor’s Note:

Apparently, now it isn’t the best time for video social networking products to blossom. However, many players are still holding on to this particular sector. The failure of Tencent’s Weishi has proven to the market that video social networking is indeed a special sector that requires extra hard work to handle even though many people are still making efforts to make something out of it. For instance, Qupai’s founder Wang Qiangyu is positive about the future of video social networking despite all the obstacles that have been presented to companies in this sector. But for startup companies like Qupai, they don’t really have the strength or energy to do commercialization. The user base and traffic flow are the most fundamental factors when it comes to commercialization, which, unfortunately, are exactly what they don't have right now.

Video social networking is no doubt standing at a crossroad right now. Where are the users? Which direction can this specific sector go for? Here’s an in-depth report from our journalist at TMTpost on this very matter, hoping to answer some of these questions:

Xiao Fan tapped open Instagram on her phone and started to modify the photos she just took with her favorite filter Ludwig. After that, she posted them on WeChat’s Moments.

It was on June 20th, the mid autumn festival, and we were in the Beijing Garden Expo at that time. According statistics from the event organizer, about twenty thousand people participated in the 2015 Color Run in Beijing, among whom Xiao Fan also ran along. Unlike most participants, Xiao Fan didn’t really come to the event to run. She went there to take photos. Just like other young girls, Xiao Fan was also into posting pictures on WeChat: during the first three weeks of June she posted 33 posts on WeChat, 19 of which were photos she took. It might seem a lot right? But in fact, compared to her friends, it’s pretty normal.

“Shoot a video? Look around. It’s all chaotic here. What can I possibly film?”

She pointed at people running around her covered by color powders: “Plus, my data traffic is about to reach the bottom,” she said.

During the color run event, there actually weren’t many people using smart phones or tablets to shoot videos. On that particular day, about 30 updates on Xiao Fan’s WeChat were about this event and only two people posted videos. But due to the poor quality of the videos, Xiao Fan could hardly tell where her friends were when taking the videos.

“Video social networking? It’s just a proposition I guess,” Xiao Fan said. After expressing her opinion, she took another selfie with a cute pose and started to edit it on her phone with a serious face.

Without a doubt, Xiao Fan’s opinion represents a majority of users’ perception on video social networking. But in fact, video social networking is not so much of a flop as many think in China. If we look at it from a different perspective, we might find that this sector, this market, actually has great potential.

The fallen penguin

“This is a classic case in which an industry giant falls from the sky.”

This is how Wang Qiangyu commented on Weishi’s failure.

In 2011, Weishi was rolled out to the market as an app that provided video call service, similar to Skype. And it was also in that very year, the now gigantic WeChat was developed and launched into the market by Guangzhou-based developer team of Zhang Xiaolong. Both product managers of these two products wouldn’t have thought that they would be the in the spotlight for Tencent’s failure in video social networking.

Now let’s have a look at the market in the US. In June, 2012, Dom Hofmannm, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll together created Vine, a short-form video sharing service where users can share six-second-long looping video clips. Only 4 months after the alpha version was developed, Twitter spent US$30 million to acquire it before being launched into the market officially.

During that time, besides Vine, startup companies that focused on the field of video social networking such as Viddy, Keek and Tout also rose from the ground.

In that very summer, newly founded startup company Tout received US$13 million in Series B round of funding. Tout is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and view 15-second videos, known as "touts". It attracted over 12 million visitors within just a year and its users even included Shaquille O'Neal, who later announced his retirement on this very platform, and reality show host Prost. O'Neal’s retirement announcement helped the platform get over 500 thousand views in just three hours.

In January, 2013, Vine came online. It only took Vine a month to amass over 2.8% of the most active users on Twitter. In April, Vine rocketed to the top one on iTunes’ free app chart.

Weishi was launched in September, 2013. It allowed users to upload 8-second short videos and its early investment on promotion reached over several hundred millions. It’s really hard to say if Weishi was inspired by Vine’s success. Weishi even got Huang Xiaoming and Fan Bingbing, who both were the most popular and probably most expensive celebrities in China, to shoot a commercial for promotion. The commercial campaign turned out to be a great success both online and offline, grabbing much attention for Weishi.

“You know, sometimes, being too rich could be a huge problem,” Wang Qiangyu had his own opinion on Weishi’s failure, which had been a constant topic among his colleagues and other people in the same industry. “Tencent is simply a gigantic company, with all kinds of resources at its disposal. We really envy Tencent. With all the advantages it has, Tencent was able to gather a great number of users in a short time, since celebrities have a great impact on the market. But when Weishi started to copy other products, everything crumbled. I believe to run a content community well, the community must have a unique voice, which is what Tencent really lacked. Without a unique voice to attract users and set itself apart from the crowd, then it’s very natural for Weishi to drop.”

Besides Weishi, there was also Meituxiuxiu’s Meipai fighting for users in the market back then. Meipai had a very popular feature that enabled users to create a small music video of their own, which later Tencent decided to integrate into Weishi in an update. From where Wang Qiangyu’s standing, this seemingly good move destroyed Weishi’s uniqueness. Weishi went even further by extending its video length limit from 8 seconds to 5 minutes. Its constant changes no doubt made old users frustrated and made it hard to attract new users.

The worst part was that celebrities who were hired to do the promotion also lost interest in using Weishi. After the initial period, the quality of the celebrities’ videos became poor and the frequency of uploading a video also decreased. Users that were attracted to the platform by them naturally lost the incentive to use Weishi as well. In November, 2014, the general manager of Weishi’s product division, Xing Hongyu, handed in his resignation and joined 58.com, leaving the chaotic Weishi team without a proper leader behind. Under these circumstances, Weishi’s team was almost dismissed.

Tencent’s very first attempt in the video social networking sector turned out to be a terrible failure. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the story.

In the 2014 6.0 update, Weishi had transformed itself from a video call product to a video social networking product. As for Tencent’s another product, WeChat integrated short video filming function as well.

However, both products’ video functions turned out to be disappointing in some levels. Wang Qiangyu told our journalists at TMTpost that his team had discussed with WeChat’s team and they didn’t really think highly of WeChat’s short video function. In fact, some even called the 6.0 update version a failure.

“I don't’ think WeChat’s Moments is meant for video viewing because videos are more vivid and have most shocking contents,” Wang Qiangyu raised his own doubts on Moments’ video service. “But the thing is, WeChat’s Moments is designed for viewing pictures and texts, and therefore it doesn’t have the full capacity to make video viewing better.”

Wang himself is currently developing a short video app called Qupai, but it is facing the same obstacles just like WeChat and Weishi. But still, every video social networking product faces the same problem: how do they find users and guide them form a certain user habit?

A new wave

“Video social networking will become something big, we do believe that,” Wang said. “After Weibo and WeChat, we think there is going to be some products that have major breakthroughs in terms of the format of contents. It’s just like smart phones in the earliest time, however, it requires time and many other conditions to develop.”

A survey conducted in 2014 showed that the proportion of the younger generation that used Vine lagged a little behind Twitter. This March, Twitter acquired video streaming app Periscope at US$100 million. Another streaming app named Meerkat also emerged on the market, becoming popular in a flash. All these successes indicate that video social networking does have the great potential to become the mainstream.

Video social networking products in China are unique, and, of Chinese characteristics.

Ever since the rise of Weibo 6 years ago, Chinese users have grown accustomed to posting texts and pictures on social media platforms. But as for American users, they had already formed such habits on Facebook and Tumblr long before. So here’s a 2 to 4 years gap between American users and Chinese users, which will result in different situations for video social networking products to grow in. In this case, it’s harder for Chinese social networking products to transform from mere pictures social networking to video social networking.

The explosion of smart phones in China also boosted the development of social networking product in the country and shortened the gap in user habit between American and Chinese users.

To accelerate the development of video social networking products in China, developers have to adjust one ultimate question: why would users choose our product? To put it in a more professional context, the question will be what are the user scenarios for video social networking products such as Meipai and Qupai?

Before Qupai, Wang Qiangyu’s startup project was an interest-centric social networking product. Whether it was Qupai or his former project, user scenarios have always been his main concern on projects.

From his point of view, compared to static contents such as pictures, videos are more fitted for the developmental pattern of social networking products. Videos that are limited to a length of several seconds or a bit more have more possibilities when it comes to expressing something creatively. And diverse possibilities have always been the main force that drives social networking products forward.

In other words, for social networking products such as Vine, Qupai, Meipai, and Weipai that focus on vision and sound, they already possess the freedom for users to create something more and are in a higher level than traditional products. Additionally, video social networking also expands users’ ability to express and gives them more possibilities to go for drastically. It not only makes it more fun for users to interact with each other in the process, but can also stimulate others to share the contents they like and sparkle interaction. 

Perhaps Xiao Fan’s story can indirectly confirm Wang Qiangyu’s opinion. On that day Xiao Fan received 14 likes and 21 comments from her 3 photo posts on WeChat’s Moments while her friend who uploaded three short videos got 24 likes and 18 comments.

Twitter users that got accustomed to text posts later became Instagram users for pictures contain more meanings than words. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, picture social networking products no doubt are more competitive in terms of expressiveness. The same thing could also apply to video social networking products.

The diverse formats of contents can bring more depth and scope to users in creating original contents. Videos have more capacity in showing the reality or any other things that users want to convey. And this diversity will also further push content producers, which are, the users, to participate, interact and create more.

This is the fundamental concept that video social networking products such as Vine and Qupai are based on, a combination of traditional social networking concept and a new content format.

“From the perspective of history, there would always be an invisible force driving users and technologies forward, making breakthroughs in the forms of contents,” Wang Qiangyu concluded. “Forming a user habit is extremely hard, but you have to overcome it with patience and the resources you have. After all, all major products encountered the same issues in the beginning, right?”

Thresholds

Let’s try to make something out of the user scenario problems mentioned above now.

Video as a new form to social networking provides a new possibility for users to express the contents in a more interesting and engaging way, compared to photos. But this doesn’t mean users would give up on texts and pictures based social networking products.

Or, we can put it this way: when a product is innovative enough and have the capacity to bring new experiences to users and generate and meet users’ demands, then this particular product would push users to create suitable user scenarios, attracting more new users as a result.

“This is the application scenario, where normal users can achieve many things with videos. The cost will be lowered to the bottom as well,” Wang Qiangyu has many visions for the future applications of video social networking. From where he’s standing, these possibilities are the future of Qubai.

But even Wang Qiangyu, who’s positive about the future of video social networking, admitted that for most ordinary users, video social networking products did have some thresholds.

After talking to WeChat’ team, we learned that Tencent’s developers thought users’ worry about their data traffic was the main factor that contributed to WeChat 6.0’s failure. However, most video social networking products, including WeChat and Qupai, all have the technology to compress videos to the size of 1 to 2 MB.

As mainstream telecom operators lower the data fee and improve their telecom infrastructures, data traffic is actually becoming less of a problem for shooting and posting videos online.

“For video social networking apps, the most fundamental thing is to make it convenient and easy for users to generate contents,” Wang Qiangyu concluded the qualities that a well-designed video social networking must have. “Once you make your users feel it's extremely simple and comfortable to use your product, then you can call it a success. Additionally, you need to make it fun.”

The simplicity we mentioned above includes product logic, user interface, and the operation process etc. We can consider them the physical appearance of social networking products. They directly affect how users think about the products. And in Wang Qiangyu’s mind, they need to be simple and beautiful, and that it’s the initial period that very video social networking product has gone through.

However, making the formats of the contents and the contents fun can’t be achieved by the developers. It’s up to the users.

This happens to be the biggest obstacle in the path to success and prosperity for video social networking products. Most users, after using the products for some time, lose the inspiration and incentive and shoot videos. Generally, they just don't know what’s fun to shoot.

Although the length limit on videos is designed to handle this problem and make it easier to use the product, the problem itself still exists. The production rate and frequency of contents, especially those of great quality, decline as the video social networking products’ lifespans extend, which would eventually result in the loss of users and declination of user activeness. Subsequently, these video social networking products lose users that produce high quality contents and won’t be able to keep old users or new users. It’s indeed a horrible repetition.

In this case, video social networking products try everything and every angle they can to appeal to the market and keep their users, enhancing the interaction of their communities and make them active.

All roads lead to Rome, but the harsh reality is that there are only a few roads are shorter.

Weishi tried to attract potential users by getting famous celebrities in real life to do promotion campaign while Meipai and Weipai were most focused on using PGG  (Professional Generated Content) methods such as hiring ordinary models, actors and thumbstoppers etc. to make them stand out in the market. Surprisingly, Meipai turned out to be rather successful and had amassed over 100 million users in just 9 months after the launch.

Dilemma

In comparison, Qupai appears to be pretty low-profile and, just common.

“We believe that the mobile Internet is a decentralized structure. The product we want to make here is a platform that connects friends together,” Wang Qiangyu couldn’t reveal any information on Qupai’s user data since he had already received an investment from Alibaba. But we could tell from him that Qupai was not a mainstream video social networking product yet.

Even though Wang Qiangyu admitted that he himself would also be interested in the videos that celebrities uploaded, but still, what he’s really into were contents produced by friends around him. Wang Qiangyu had always felt that way all along. Qupai started off pretty much as Weishi to use celebrities to attract users. But Weishi’s failure and his understanding on the decentralized Internet eventually made Qupai go for a different path.

On Qupai, there aren’t professional generated contents produced by celebrities and thumbstoppers. Instead, it provides a platform for people to mingle and entries points such as ‘people nearby’ and ‘interesting people’ to let users to find contents they think are fun. In most cases, users find new friends on the platform by looking up their friends’ friends. Additionally, Qupai is planning to integrate video live streaming function into its platform and cooperate with Foxconn to manufacture hardware device like GoPro. Qupai aims to use these methods to extend is user scenarios.

“I don’t really get it. It’s PGC model but everything it makes just videos people watch on a phone. So except for the length of the videos, how is it different from traditional video websites such as Youku, Tudou, and Bilibili? ” Wang Qiangyu firmly believes that decentralization is the core of social networking. “And your videos are not as good as those on video websites. What features can you bring to the table to survive the competition? ”

In fact, Wang Qiangyu doesn’t really know whether what he believes is right or not. This is an unknown blue ocean. It’s an application that doesn’t possess much advantage in the market. It’s also a complete opposite concept and approach of social networking. All there factors indicate that Wang and Qupai still has a long way to go to achieve success, and it’s going to be difficult and confusing road to go on.

“I don’t care about success or failure, I just want to go for the right direction. Humans are weak at heart and we are limited by the current situations. Only a few can foresee the future. Those that dare to hold on to the right direction are even fewer.” Wang Qiangyu said these fancy words in a serious tone, which even made me wonder if he had prepared this speech beforehand.

So I redirected him to the topic on Qupai’s commercialization to get a glimpse of his true thoughts.

“We haven’t thought about that yet. We don’t really pay much attention to the commercialization now,” he explained when we were discussing about the possibility to add a virtual community currency to the platform to make actual profits. Though Wang Qiangyu understands that video itself possesses advertising potential and it’s also of Alibaba’s interest, but for startup companies like Qupai, they don’t really have the strength or energy to do commercialization. The user base and traffic are the most fundamental factors when it comes to commercialization, which, unfortunately, are exactly what they don't have right now.

In some ways, however, these disadvantages could also be potential advantages.

Due to the fact that most players don't pay much attention to commercialization, Wang Qiangyu will actually have more opportunities to experiment on his product. After four months of testing and research on the like-Comment-based interaction system, they are now developing a new interaction system that is similar to bulleting.

On the other hand, Wang Qiangyu’s firm belief in the decentralization idea became a filter to screen the users and investors of his product. The investors from Alibaba were pretty upset about him for not hiring celebrities for promotion campaign at first. But after getting to know Qupai more, they just let Wang do whatever he wants and don’t really interfere in anything.

“Entrepreneurship is hard. The most difficult part would be the struggles within you. Every entrepreneur will encounter similar things. And only those who could overcome their inner struggles and make the right judgment would become successful.” Wang Qiangyu said to me emotionally.

It’s unknown whether or not Qupai will become successful in the end. But what we do know right now is that Xiao Fan is enjoying herself at the moment.

On Father’s Day she shot a short video for her father and it actually got quite a lot comments. “OK, maybe video social networking is not as bad as I think. It’s actually quite cool,” Xiao Fan said in the end.

 

 [The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Hu Yong, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.

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  • Something for good looking people(¯3¯) we ugly people can go kill ourselves

    回复 2015.08.08 · via android
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