Image source @ Visual China
Wen | pencil said
In the dull social track, an app similar to the "voice version of Soul" has "small fire" these days.
A report that "Baidu once again laid out social networking and launched new stranger social products" made the "Hi Circle Circle" positioned as stranger voice social network get a wave of free traffic. According to media reports, hi circle is actually an entrepreneurial project of Baidu's school recruitment team.
"Yesterday there was a sudden fire, and there was a big wave of traffic." In the face of the sudden traffic, its official operation staff said to the pencil road. According to him, it was originally intended to wait for the iteration to be publicized.
From the product point of view, the "minimalist" page setting of hi circle does give users some freshness, but whether it is the "soul test" when the user registers, or the slogan such as "just to cure your loneliness", or you can see the shadow of other strange social App predecessors from the hi circle.
Baidu frequently lays out social aspects, what kind of idea is it? Voice social networking is not a new thing, why do big manufacturers want to plug in? Can voice socialize with phenomenal products?
01 Baidu made a "voice version of Soul"?
"Just to heal your loneliness."
With this slogan, an app called Hi Circle has recently been quietly launched in major app stores. According to its official introduction, Hi Circle is a voice social app that uses sound to find people who really understand you, communicate with your heart, and have similar interests.
20 days after going online, the Hi Circle has become a little popular.
"Yesterday there was a sudden fire, and there was a big wave of traffic." In the face of the sudden traffic, its official operation staff said to the pencil road. According to him, it was originally intended to wait for the iteration to be publicized.
However, the popularity of the Hi Circle is not because of its product strength, at least for now, but because of the "backer" behind it - Baidu. In the past two days, a report that "Baidu has once again laid out social networking and launched new stranger social products" has made the Hi circle get a wave of free traffic.
Hi Circle is the baidu team doing the product? For this question, the relevant personnel of the Hi Circle circle gave the pencil a positive answer. In the WeChat community announcement of the Hi Circle, he also said that his team was a group of "slash youth moving bricks in BAT". According to Tech Planet, hi circle is actually an entrepreneurial project of Baidu's school recruitment team.
In fact, Baidu has not done voice social software for the first time, and it can be said that it has always had a deep obsession with the field of social networking. From the campus social app "Zheng Whale Says", the anonymous social App "Earpiece", the video social App "Let's Go Together", the voice social App "Sound" to the interest social APP "You poof", it can be said that all the possibilities of social products have been tasted. However, the volume and volume of these products have not continued to grow, and they have always been tepid, not to mention the emergence of phenomenal products.
In the view of an investor, this hi circle may also be just a small event that Baidu has done conveniently. "After all, in large factories, countless ideas are born and executed every day, and this kind of 'cheating' type of internal entrepreneurship is too common."
At present, Hi Circle can only be downloaded in baidu, 360, OPPO, Xiaomi, Huawei and Meizu app stores, taking the Huawei app market as an example, the number of installs shows the lowest "less than 10,000", and only one person scores. Its official operation staff introduced to Pencil Road that channels such as Apple's App Store are expected to be launched this month.
At the beginning of the launch, Hi Circle also provided a welfare plan in the user community, and highly active users can get irregular bonus red envelopes or gifts, "weekly users can get 5 yuan cash red envelopes". A senior user of social products said to Pencil Road, "I came to make friends, not to receive small red packets, suddenly there are parents brushing vibrato, fast hands to receive red envelopes inside the taste." ”
In fact, the Pencil Road inquiry found that the hi circle trademark was registered by Baidu in January 2019 and classified as scientific instruments, communication services, social services, education and entertainment. This is just one of the largest trademark libraries in Dachang. The most recent trademark registration update was in February this year, adding the app icon design of hi circle.
02 A social app that "can't be simpler"
As a voice social app, one of the highlights of the Hi Circle is that users need to complete the pre-"soul test" for the first time to register, match people with similar interests to conduct voice chats, and find the TA who knows you best.
However, in the "soul matching" point, people can't help but think of another product on the market. "Isn't this the soul of learning?" Some users commented.
Compared with Soul's classic "personality planet" and the basic concept of personality matching, the Hi Circle is still slightly concise in terms of soul matching. There are only two points of "personality DNA" plus three points of "interest DNA" to form a basic user tag, and according to the actual use experience, this so-called DNA does not have a so-called matching function, of course, it may also be that the number of users in the Hi Circle is still small. If you look closely, you will find that in the square of the Hi Circle, the same user will always post content multiple times.
"Concise", at present, is the biggest feature of the Hi Circle App. It allows users to post sound bubbles, and other users can tap on the bubbles to hear each other's thoughts. If you meet your own standards, you can send a private message to the other party, or reply by voice directly on the current page.
"Sound bubbles" are also the biggest feature of the Hi Circle, users can create their own sound bubbles with a certain topic as the main purpose, and then this bubble will be fed into the content library, which makes it almost as a "voice version of the drift bottle". The Hi Circle is hoping that through the simple dating game of "sound", the chat mechanism can be quickly established.
Of course, this "concise" project currently has many shortcomings. For example, occasionally the App will appear stuck screen, requiring the user to log out and log back in to resume use; for example, when the user changes the user's avatar and nickname, there are also bugs that cannot be modified; for example, the voice bar will be a little open or there is no sound, and the noise reduction effect when the user records is not ideal.
Of course, as a new team of new products, these are inevitable situations. Hi circle staff told users in the community that the team will also improve and upgrade the App after that, and in a few days a new version will be launched, and even the gameplay may not be limited to voice social, "The picture is about to debut." ”
However, after adding graphics and text, Hi Circle may be more like other social software on the market. In addition, as a stranger social software, the Hi Circle can not avoid the problems that Momo and Soul have encountered: voice is just a means of greeting, and when users change from strangers to acquaintances through the Hi Circle, they inevitably flow to WeChat. How do you keep users in your app for a long time? This is a question to consider after the Hi Circle team.
03 Difficult business with low threshold
In fact, voice socialization has become difficult to define as a separate track. "At present, the social apps on the market basically include the function of voice chat. Voice has become one of the basic features of almost all social products, but different products will have different qualities. Du Xin, founder of Mud Lotus Capital, who had angelized in Soul App, said to Pencil.
Why is it always easy to use voice as a breakthrough for social products? This has to do with the characteristics of the speech function itself. Compared with text chat and video chat, voice chat does not need to bother typing, organizing language, communication is more efficient and in-depth; it can also retain some mystery and create more imagination space; it can also avoid the psychological pressure caused by many users due to facial anxiety and unfamiliarity with each other during video chat.
In recent years, in the scenes of marriage and love socialization, game accompaniment, interest dating, and spiritual companionship, a number of products featuring voice chat functions have emerged. For example, the "TT Voice" of the game voice track, as of the first half of last year, the average number of monthly active users reached 16.2 million. Women's "Sweet Companionship" to the online companion social platform has attracted nearly one million registered users in only half a year after the product was launched.
Domestic and foreign Internet manufacturers have also repeatedly lost and lost in this field. In China, in July last year, Tencent launched a voice group chat app called "Q dimension" on the App Store, and before that, it also launched an app that focuses on voice chat such as echo and light chat, but these products have not achieved good results so far. Abroad, Twitter launched the voice chat function "Spaces" for global users in April last year, directly competing head-on with the then-explosive voice chat room "Clubhouse".
Therefore, for Baidu to do social, and even to do voice social, in the eyes of investors, it belongs to "routine operation, not unexpected." Du Xin said, "Overall, although capital has bet less on new social products in recent years, for large manufacturers, social products have always been an important source of traffic that is difficult to ignore, and they will definitely persevere in the social field." ”
From the perspective of the growth logic of the consumer Internet, the traffic sources of products are nothing more than three: tool value, content value, and interpersonal relationship.
The value of tools is the easiest to imitate, and it is long past that era. In terms of content value, Baidu's attempts started late, and it is not good at content production and algorithm recommendation, which is difficult to attract and retain traffic. In addition, Baidu Search, which missed mobile opportunities, its traffic channels are also narrowing, and more and more users are turning to other content platforms, such as many users taking Xiaohongshu and knowing that Baidu is used.
"So Baidu definitely hopes to create new opportunities in terms of content and social networking." This is also the usual conventional way of playing in large factories, through a variety of small teams to do a variety of products to try, it has become, do not achieve the pull down and change a new one," Du Xin said.
From the user side, each generation will have different product preferences and emotional needs, so it is necessary to constantly innovate to meet the social needs of different generations. Du Xin believes that "the pressure and anxiety that modern people have to bear are getting stronger and stronger, especially the group of young people in China, on the one hand, they are relatively lonely from childhood, on the other hand, they are in an increasingly inward social competitive environment, when desires are not satisfied, reality and ideals have a huge dislocation, how to adjust and transform the pessimistic depression and negative energy in the heart, directly prompting them to continue to have strong needs in social aspects." ”
However, there are also many problems in the voice social products industry. After the voice chat room model of Clubhouse exploded last year, there were also some imitators in China, but they all disappeared. In this regard, An investor Who knows a lot about the social field, Wang Feng (pseudonym), explained to the pencil: "The main thing is the content security issue, the voice chat room model is similar to online gatherings, which may involve some regulatory issues." ”
In addition, voice social platforms also have content security issues such as large-scale, pornography rubbing edge balls, and easy breeding of "pig killing plates". This requires the platform to adhere to its own tone and bottom line, and also needs to have a strong set of risk control mechanisms and operating methods to block criminals from the platform.
From the perspective of the entire social product track, there are very few products that can continue to be Changhong after an overnight hit. Du Xin believes that "a really good product depends on the gradual development of snowball, which requires the accumulation of long-term quantitative change to qualitative change." For example, whether the product side is good or not, the content is good or not, the operation is good or not, whether the large traffic can be received after it comes in, and so on. In his view, the original intention of the product is different, which determines the logic of traffic distribution behind it, and ultimately also determines the difference in the outcome of the product.