(Chinese Version)

Editor’s Note:
On September 18th, the very first course at the Crazy Class started, concerning the next generation of social networking. Founders (co-founders) of four social apps shared the products they had developed on stage and accepted the crazy challenges presented at the scene. Among these guest speakers, Xu Ke was the youngest one. Xu Ke had already been interviewed by TMTpost previously about her person-hailing app that had brought up much of a stir in recent time. She stated on stage that ERA was not a dating app designed for people to hook up with others, but rather a revolutionary social product that connected strangers by utilizing the users’ fragmented free time and skills. To be more specific, ERA allows users to set up certain tasks on the platform, and users could pick some tasks to do to earn extra money and have social interaction with the task makers. In this way, the free time of users can have a quantitative feedback in cash, allowing them to create value with their fragmented free time.

In the crazy class, Xu Ke shared her own understanding and insight into social networking scenarios among the young generation. What kind of social networking tool that people born in the 90s need? What set them apart from other generations? What kind of Internet culture do they have? And what kind of market has this culture created? These were the questions she brought forward.

In the crazy class, Xu Ke shared her own understanding and insight into social networking scenarios among the young generation. What kind of social networking tool that people born in the 90s need? What set them apart from other generations? What kind of Internet culture do they have? And what kind of market has this culture created? These were the questions she brought forward.

In the eyes of Xu Ke, who was born in 1995, ERA is actually an O2O product that allows users to earn money with their skills. Outing task, using red envelopes to start a conversation, skill assistance, transaction guarantee system, and verification system are her product’s main functions. Users can post any daily life needs, or tasks, on ERA. For instance, people can post something like, “I feel bored today. I will pay you 10 RMB to watch a movie with me.” ERA enables users to find people that can help you finish your tasks.

Xu Ke believes that people born in or after 1995 are lucky because they are the first generation to enter information era from the industrial era and subsequently enter the Internet era. Compared to people born in the 21st century, they can better understand the innovative products made by the older generations and make use of existing resources. Additionally, the post-1995 generation is gradually becoming a new force in the business field, a force that’s closer to the future when compared to people born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

When asked about whether ERA was a hook up app targeting to take out Momo or not, Xu Ke stated that she genuinely respected Momo’s achievement. However, every major product has certain characteristics inherited from a generation, and the future will be the young generation’s world. In this case, it’s essential to understand the young generation’s social needs. Social apps don’t equal hookup apps. When two people interact, the ultimate goal here is not sex, but creating value together.

Social networking of the new generation is all about returning to pure social networking. Helping you know more people is not the sole use of social networking products, they also help you have real interaction with people in offline scenarios in a world that’s much more connected than ever.

Xu focuses more on the young generation and she gave out two examples to illustrate their unique cultural characteristics:

People from the 90s, they play hard

According to Xu Ke, she has a friend born in the 90s who played computer games all the time and didn’t study during his school life at all. That friend of hers eventually dropped out of school. However, after leaving school, he accumulated a lot of fans by playing games and making live shows. Up till now he has over a million fans and makes millions of RMB by playing games.

From Xu’s perspective, the fragmentation of skills contributed a lot to the fans economy and popularity effect, which enabled her friend to use his skills in gaming to cash in. There are a lot of things that can be considered as skills, some of which are quite amazing. Some people know how to play cute, some know how to write wow-receiving short stories, some know how to swear well, some know how to play games, some know how to cook a finger-licking dish, some are good-looking, some know how to chat with people, and some know how to get red envelopes etc. These are actually fragmented skills that people usually neglect. Many people born in the 90s don’t like to work 9 to 5. Instead, they are good at utilizing their fragmented time and invest more resources in having fun. Traditional students will not understand these.

Generation shock

Society is developing faster then ever and it’s still accelerating. Let’s just imagine that if some John who lives in the 90s suddenly enters our time, then he would probably be shocked by our technologies today. He wouldn’t have imagined that we could even complete tasks like having dinner, hailing a taxi and shopping with just a few taps on a smart phone. The technological breakthroughs and innovations that we are having today are just too overwhelming.

However, if John wants to use technologies in the 90s to shock people, he would need to travel back to more than 200 years ago in order to have a fully generation shock. In the information era, we only need ten years to experience a technological revolution. But before that, we would need a 200 hundred years time gap. This is what futurists have been referring to: when you are in a fast-developing society, the better society becomes, the faster society will develop, even more faster in the future.

Based on this theory, Xu analyzed the new market created by people born in the 90s and their play-hard culture. There are two stages:

Stage one: satisfying young people’s needs to show off

Xu really liked Nice’s tag function and Instagram’s filter function, two functions that could meet young people’s needs of showing off. In the eyes of the 90s generation, a product should either be fun, or useful or a good tool to show off.

Stage two: entering the phase of cognitive surplus

According to statistics, if we add up all the free time people have around the globe, then we would have about one trillion hours at our disposal every year. If we collect these time and make use of them, how much value can we create out of it? Xu wants to use social networking between strangers to utilize every minute of the users and give them feedback by offering money.

Xu doesn’t believe primary and secondary markets would enter an ice age, but it’s rather just that the order of the market is becoming more stable. And only in the ice age, when the bubble bursts, will good products make a leap. It’s a cleansing process of crappy products.

Besides that, when looking back at the Chinese culture, Xu found that the agricultural civilization we used to live in was based on cooperation. In the past, if you wanted to get some farming done, you literally could not complete the tasks on your own. Cooperation was a must to engage in production activities. Compared to the western world, Xu believed China had more potential to accept products like ERA.

Xu Ke is pretty much against all the critics that say entrepreneurs born in the 90s are not going to achieve any entrepreneurial success. From where Xu is standing, it’s quite true that the older generations are still the dominating forces in the field of entrepreneurship. But the thing is, every entrepreneur, startup and enterprise makes their own mistakes, and therefore it’s not responsible to just determine whether entrepreneurs born in the 90s are good or not simply based on their age.

What follows is the full transcript of Xu Ke’s speech, edited by TMTpost:

There’s a good old saying in the capital market that goes, “In the field of social networking, products are pretty hard to understand even though they appear to be simple on the outside. Entrepreneurs that dare to test the waters in this field are respectable dreamers.”

99% of social networking products all face extreme obstacles, obstacles that might lead to the end of them. Industry giants dominate the social networking sector while most new products find it hard to survive. Generally, only 1% of products could live through the fierce competition. Some of them might rely on buying traffic and other data to appeal to consumers and investors. But unfortunately the zombie users they bought couldn’t keep their data up and couldn’t cash in. Products that are able to cash in also have difficulties keeping active users. So we hope users could be just like honey, which would glue to our products, though they are more like flowing water: they come and go to other containments.

So before I made this social networking app, I had done many surveys and researches and I had also interviewed many people around me: if you don’t want to socialize anymore, would you have any social networking needs? The feedback I got was very interesting. Basically they asked a similar question instead of answering my questions: what exactly is social networking need? When I mentioned social networking between strangers, the first question they asked was the same: is this a hook-up app? It got me thinking. I started to question whether the ultimate function that social networking products would create was hookup service, and that whether the users would lose the interest in social networking gradually and eventually leave the platform. Social networking products actually degrade to satisfy the fundamental needs of people.

So we made an APP, an O2O product geared for users to cash in with their skills and techniques. In other words, users can put up many tasks on the platform for other users to choose from. When the tasks are completed, the task takers will get a certain amount of money given by the task makers.

Outing task, using red envelopes to start a conversation, skill assistance, transaction guarantee system, and verification system are our product’s main function designs. This is ERA’s interface, pretty similar to Uber. But we don’t distribute tasks like Uber, but rather give users the choice to pick. We believe ERA can help users cash in with their unique skills, talents or even credibility. Now you might start to wonder whether ERA would work or not. Well, you will probably have a conclusion after this presentation.

What will the next generation of social apps be like in the future? What kind of properties and features they will possess? The future seems to be far away, but it’s actually just around the corner. I feel that the future is near since I was born in 1995, in a generation that happened to enter the information era from the industrial age. The best part is we also experienced the process of entering the Internet era from the information era. During my early years, I used to have Nokia 197 and Sony Ericsson. I used to have over ten thousand messages in my phone. People born in the 21st century are different from us. They didn’t have the chance to experience the transition from information era to the Internet age. That’s why I admire entrepreneurs from older generations so much. They have made excellent achievements and contributed greatly to the Internet industry and their efforts are revolutionary.

The play-hard culture will create a brand new market economy

Let’s talk a bit about fragmented skills. Why call it revolutionary? Let me tell you a story. I have a friend who was born in the 90s, whom I met through gaming. In fact, many of my current friends, colleagues, and even people present today, get to know me through the Internet. So we are actually Internet friends. I also met my CTO through recommendation by my friend’s friend on WeChat. I met my partner on Momo as well.

This friend of mine played computer games all the time and didn’t study during his school life. He eventually dropped out of school. However, after leaving school, he was getting a lot of fans by playing games and making live shows on the Internet. Up till now he has over a million fans and makes millions of RMB by playing games. From my perspective, the fragmentation of skills contributed a lot to the fans economy and popularity effect, which enabled my friend to use his skills in gaming to cash in. There are a lot of things that can be considered as skills, some of which are quite amazing. Some people know how to play cute, some know how to write a wow-receiving short stories, some know how to swear well, some know how to play games, some know how to cook a finger-licking dish, some are good-looking, some know how to chat with people, and some know how to get red envelopes etc. These are actually fragmented skills that people usually neglect. Many people born in the 90s don’t like to work 9 to 5. Instead, they are good at utilizing their fragmented time and invest more resources in having fun.

Looking back, we didn’t have the 4G nor 2G mobile Internet in the 1990s. We communicated with each other by speaking face-to-face or through beepers. If you had a cellular phone at that time, that would mean you were super rich. Society is developing faster then ever and it’s still accelerating. Let’s just imagine that if some John who lives in the 90s suddenly enters our time, then he would probably be shocked by our technologies today. He wouldn’t have imagined that we could even complete tasks like having dinner, hailing a taxi and shopping with just a few taps on a smart phone. The technological breakthroughs and innovations that we are having today are just too overwhelming. He would also learn that now students don’t need to study hard to pass the college entrance exam to have a promising future. Now even school dropouts could achieve great success if they really have something special to offer.

I think he would totally be scared to death, since today’s world is just so different that the past.

However, if John wants to use technologies in the 90s to shock people, he would need to travel back through time about more than 200 years ago in order to have a fully generation shock. In the information era, we only need ten years to experience a technological revolution. But before that, we would need 200 hundred years. This is what futurists have been referring to: when you are in a fast-developing society, the better society becomes, the fast society will develop, even more faster in the future.

Now let’s talk about how the generation of the 90s creates their own Internet culture. To fully understand this Internet culture, first we have to figure out their opinions about making money and spending money. With that I have to bring up the game show streaming platforms. The most successful person is now worth over a hundred million and his name is Zhi. How does he make such mad money? Well, he does so by playing games, swearing on his let’s play show. He has attracted many views and has amassed a large fan base. His fans buy all kinds of virtual merchandise to encourage him and support his show. Zhi can literally make about ten thousand RMB in just an hour. This is really happening at this moment.

I want to mention our generation’s views on making and spending money here because we have to understand that most people of this generation don’t want to work nine to five everyday. In this fast developing age, things can be completely different in just a decade. That’s why the generation time gap here in China is just a decade now, or even just five years. Just think about it. Maybe some middle school classmates that weren’t good at studying at all would end up extremely successful on social media today with an enormous fan base. Perhaps they could make about a hundred thousand RMB per month just from advertising on their social media. Or perhaps some of your classmates who used to play computer games all the time in their school life would end up successful on live streaming platforms, making mad money. If I were one of those conservative and traditional students who listened to their parents and only wanted to be a state worker in the future, I would probably be devastated by these outcomes.

That being said, the play-hard culture of the 90s generation has created a new market. In today’s world we are generating more Internet slangs than that of the past time that’s dominated by QQ. The Internet environment today also boosts the play-hard culture.

So in this case, if you can’t keep up with the current trend, that means you are outdated. If people are talking about something that you don’t know, then means you can’t fit in. Such scenarios are common for my generation, which could also be considered as competitions. That’s also why young people today rely on their cell phones so much. Maybe you don’t eat for a day you can still live. But if you have to manage a day without your smart phone, you won’t survive.

Give feedbacks to every user on their fragmented time, with money

The play-hard culture will bring us a new market economy, that’s for sure. And some seasoned entrepreneurs have already achieved great success in the field such as Nice. Compared to people born in the 70s or 80s, me generation enjoys a better living environment and has higher standard, which makes them care less about practical use of products. However, they do care about one thing, that’s whether this product could be used to show off and satisfy their needs for social recognition. This is also the main drive for Meitu’s tremendous success.

I really like Nice’s tag function and Instagram’s filter function, two functions that could meet young people’s needs of showing off. In the eyes of the generation born in the 90s, a product should either be fun or useful or a good tool to show off.

Many people also asked me that whether ERA was a hookup app or not, and that if not, did it mean we were targeting all those hookup apps on the market to eliminate them. Well, just to clear the air, I don’t have such intention and I respect other entrepreneurs and their products. However, every major product has the characteristics of a generation, and the future will be the young generation’s world. In this case, it’s essential to understand the young generation’s social needs. Social apps don’t equal hookup apps. When two people interact, the ultimate goal here is not sex, but to create value together.

We are really reflecting on the current social products and trying to think deeper. That’s why 99% of our rivals who tried to copy us failed. Users are getting picky. And they need something more than just hookup service. Social apps don’t equal hookup apps.

In the second stage, the market will enter the phase of cognitive surplus. According to statistics, if we add up all the free time people have around the globe, then we would have about one trillion hours at our disposal every year. If we collect these time and make use of them, how much value can we create out of it? I want to use social networking between strangers to utilize every minute of the users and give them feedback by offering money. Just like I have said before, social apps don’t equal hookup apps, and that when two people interact, the ultimate goal here is not sex, but to create value together. If we were to define this situation, then I would say this is the phase of cognitive surplus.

Besides that, when looking back at the Chinese culture, I found that the agricultural civilization we used to live in was based on cooperation. In the past, if you wanted to get some farm work done, you literally could not complete the tasks on your own. Cooperation was a must to engage in production activities. Compared to the western world, I believe China has more potential to accept products like ERA.

From my perspective, the next generation of social networking will be pure, meaning it will be all about socializing. Social products will not just be tools to help you know more people, but rather a platform for you to connect the Internet with reality and have real interactions offline. So we encourage our users to be “real” on our platform. We are still improving our verifying mechanism. We want this mechanism to be an incentive for the users and we also want to cash in with it. We figured at the end of the day, it’s money that does all the tricks. Some users complained to us that ERA was too complicated and they were totally lost. So we launched a lottery activity for that. Suddenly, these users learned how to use ERA. They now know how to post tasks, send red envelopes, and cash in. Money does make the world go round.

It is normal for entrepreneurs to encounter failures

Many people have questions and doubts about me generation: can they really do entrepreneurship? Last month there were a lot of articles online criticizing well-known entrepreneurs around my age. In my opinion, although these articles had brought attention and users to those entrepreneurs that were being called out, I still think it’s unfair for media outlets to do so. From the very start the journalists had brought their own prejudice about these young entrepreneurs to their words and ideas.

In fact, the Internet industry is still a red ocean. More opportunists will come and try their luck. But the main forces in the field are not entrepreneurs from me generation. So it’s very offending to call them stupid or whatever when the bubble bursts.

I have read about some bad news about entrepreneurs of me generation, for instance, Ma Jiajia. People are saying that her product has some obvious flaws and usually if your product goes to the wrong direction it gets axed. To be honest I don’t agree with this kind of idea. Every entrepreneur will encounter failures. They all have their ups and downs during their entrepreneurial journey. It’s unfair to conclude a person’s achievement or a generation just based on a few mistakes. There’s a book titled The Crowd, which happens to describe the similar phenomenon, where people make each other stupid as a crowd.

I don't believe that the primary and secondary markets would enter an ice age. I would say that it’s just the order of the market is becoming more stable. And only in the age of ice, when the bubble bursts, will good products make a leap. It’s a cleansing process of crappy products.

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

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