The old driver's car can be opened as soon as it is opened. Can Alipay's "socialization" work? (Turn)
Sentence / Shirasaki
The discussion about whether Alipay wants to socialize has never stopped. Three months ago, the life circle module was moved from the secondary page to the home page. It can be seen that Alipay has paid enough attention to the establishment of the social relationship chain strategically. In the past two days, two circles have become popular, and they are full of selfies of beautiful women showing their breasts. These are the two circles of "campus diary" and "white-collar diary". With the invitation to join the feed stream on the Alipay homepage, it has attracted widespread attention. , these two circles have attracted the attention of more than 4 million users and are still growing.
1. Why do you want to develop the life circle?
In the previous article "Is Alipay really socializing? As mentioned in the article, Alipay, as the flagship product of Ant Financial, has contributed more than 60% of the valuation of Ant Financial, which is rumored to be about to go public. Put Alipay side by side with WeChat, which has 800 million monthly active users. The recently launched Life Circle, Ant Forest, and In Place are all specific scenarios used to address activity.
Alipay does not want to be the same social tool as WeChat, and it cannot be done, but it needs to solve the low-frequency product pain points, which is the core of the Alipay team's repeated attempts over the past year. WeChat is first a communication tool, and then a chain of acquaintances is added. The inherent cognitive habits of users are difficult to change today when the mobile Internet has entered a mature stage. Users will not chat on Alipay. Alipay is first a payment tool and a tool for integration of financial services, and now it also hopes to join the social relationship chain. This time, Alipay is targeting the weak relationship chain between strangers, and the life circle is like a square, where strangers can get to know, show themselves, and build relationships.
Bai Qi has studied several life circles such as "Maimai Internet Elite Circle", "Jianqi Financial Management", "Campus Diary" and "White-collar Diary". The first two are presumed to be operated by a third party, while the latter two are obviously operated by the government. , the power of diversion is very strong, so there is a detonation of concentrated time, which is due to the innovation of the home feed flow mode in Alipay version 9.9.
2. Can Alipay operate the life circle well?
Social networking is an area that any giant wants to bite down, but lack of energy is a common problem for most companies. Just as Alipay has had the function of life circle since version 9.0, but users may not use it when they see it. In this case, you do it for nothing. This is pure product thinking. Now, Alipay has begun to treat the treasure of life circle with operational thinking. Whether it can become an effective help for Alipay to increase its activity and establish a weak relationship chain, the real test is its operational ability.
Social network or community products have a law of magic that has been verified many times: it originates from a gun, declines from chicken soup, and dies from micro-business.
Now it seems that Alipay is in the first stage, using elements such as beauty and sex to stimulate the curiosity and hormone secretion of male users, and stimulate the show-off psychology of female users. Therefore, Alipay chose the two circles of "Campus Diary" and "White Collar Diary" as the first batch of popular models. The rules of the circle are also set up cleverly. Only girls can post content, but boys can go in to read, comment and give rewards. , but if you want to comment, your sesame credit score should be over 750. In this case, selfie photos of women with exposed breasts become the most rewarded content, and the closed feature of the circle product will allow all new female users to see what kind of content is more popular at a glance, thus forming a positive cycle.
Bai Qi has been wondering whether Alipay has found a lot of trusts to warm up, and after seeing the picture below, I suddenly realized that campus girls and white-collar women are the most popular groups to send selfies, and this is also the concentration area of micro-business.
Smart micro-businesses always have a keen sense of smell to identify every opportunity for traffic bonuses, and diligently explore the rules, then add friends and start their business. Some methods may be very crude, but for them who have no promotion resources, showing their chest and sending a selfie may not be a big deal. They can add a few more friends, some people praise their beauty, and there are local tyrants to reward them. Not for it.
When making a community product, it doesn’t matter how many people come in to see it, what matters is user retention and content precipitation.
For Alipay, the prosperity brought about by elements such as beauty and sex is the easiest for operators to indulge in, because the data will look good in the short term, but users will be tired. It is still unknown whether Alipay can operate the life circle well. The "campus diary" and "white-collar diary" will be very popular these days. Many people are willing to watch it out of curiosity and freshness. This is the beginning of the real test of operational capabilities.
For a big company like Ant Financial, and for a national-level product like Alipay, it's actually a bit taboo to play side balls. There are some things that small companies can do, but big companies can't. Momo started out as a tool for dating, but it took a lot of effort to clean it up before it went public, which is also true.
3. The essence of life circle is community, not social
A lot of people confuse the concepts of community and social, but in fact there is a big difference between the two. Taking similar examples, we can see that WeChat is a social network, and Tieba is a community. For social products, there are inherently strong genes. The more people on this product, the more attractive people will continue to socialize on it, and the higher the cost of replacing new social products, so it is difficult to beat WeChat. social products. Community products are different. It doesn’t matter how big or small, a community of 100 people can be maintained, and a community of 100,000 people can also be maintained, and communities of different tones can exist independently at the same time.
Although Alipay cannot become a social network, it still has hope of success as a community.
The core of social products is people, so if social products want to succeed, they must find ways to promote the establishment of human-to-human relationships. Take the scene in life as an example, you go to my house or I go to your house, or a group of us have an appointment to go somewhere together.
The core of community products is topic content, which is the communication around the theme, so if community products want to succeed, they must maintain the tonality of the community and the consistency of content topics. Taking the scene in life as an example, an independent community is a square in a city. For example, there are people dancing square dancing in this square every night. Well, those who are willing to dance square dancing together, please join. For example, this square is for parents to give their children a blind date. Well, parents who have this need come here to meet with their children's photos and information. This is the community. Baidu Tieba, Douban Group, and Tianya are all excellent representatives of online community products. A large number of small communities with warmth, tonality and emotion have emerged on these platforms.
Community and social are not binary oppositions. The relationships established in the community can evolve into a social relationship chain, from weak ties to strong ties.
Therefore, Bai Qi is optimistic about Alipay's current efforts in the life circle. The circle is actually an independent community, and each community has a theme. A community for financial enthusiasts to communicate, "Campus Diary" is a community for students to communicate. This themed community can help users socialize with strangers in Alipay and establish a weak relationship chain. Coupled with accurate push invitations based on user portraits, it can ensure that the users invited to join are all in line with the theme of the circle.
4. What are the possibilities and opportunities in the life circle
Even wechat merchants have such a keen sense of smell. We also have to think about whether this place has become a new traffic bonus platform. After all, Alipay has 450 million real-name users. If Alipay can operate the life circle, it must be worth considering whether there is any Take advantage of the possibilities.
1. Thematic circles based on interests and locations
There used to be a group called "Eating, Drinking and Playing in Beijing" on the Douban group. It was called the "Pao Group" for some special reasons, and its popularity ranked first among all Douban groups. It introduces itself like this: every person in Beijing has a Beijing complex, this huge city wraps all kinds of people in it with the most tolerant attitude, workers on construction sites, white-collar workers who go in and out of offices, businessmen , artist, wandering singer. If you've ever been in this place, you'll know it's a very human group, essentially a typical location-based, Beijing-themed circle.
There are many long-tailed and magical themes on Baidu Tieba, such as the dubbing bar, which is filled with a group of big players who can switch their voices freely. They learn from each other and exchange dubbing experience together. For example, stars, fans gather in the bar to discuss everything about idols. For example, Sanmumu, this is a place where Jolin Tsai's black fans gather to discuss how to be black. It is small enough. As mentioned above, it doesn't matter how big or small, as long as there are common topics and common interests, they can gather together into one. Community.
Then Alipay's life circle, whether it is based on interest or location, is a promising direction. For Alipay, the biggest advantage is that it has real-name user data, it knows who you are, knows your location, and knows Your preferences, know what your usual consumption scenarios are, and recommend suitable circles based on user data matching.
It is expected that we will receive invitations for new various themed life circles on the Alipay homepage soon.
2. Merchant life circle combined with Alipay scene
Word of mouth is another focus of Alipay's recent efforts, and it is also one of the most important life scenarios in the Alipay APP. As the most extensive hobbies, eating, drinking and playing is easy to gather in the community. If there are merchants who cooperate with Alipay to operate the life circle , then the life circle is not only the scene that promotes consumption in the store, but also the place to collect user feedback.
If all the life circles are officially operated by Alipay, it will definitely not last, so the life circle gives the possibility of "third party" cooperation. At present, Alipay has opened circles for some third-party partners, such as Maimai, Jian Seven financial management. These partners operate the Alipay life circle as their own user base, and will arrange the operation team to intervene in management. For Alipay, someone helps to activate the life circle. For third-party partners, there is a new user operation position. In fact, is a win-win.
Finally, I was thinking, is Alipay's product manager inspired by the first episode of the third season of the British drama "Black Mirror"?
Original link: https://www.huxiu.com/article/172347.html