Swipe Jieyin, Jieyin.
The daily laughter Shake sound, major nodes Shake sound. We release videos in Shivering tone to sunshine life, in Shivering tone hip-hop singing and dancing to follow the wind entertainment. It's like, we used the circle of friends five years ago.
Now mention the circle of friends, the first reaction is often social pressure, is set visible invisible three days and six months to deal with. For example, remember the last time a college buddy posted a circle of friends?
Friends invisible circle of friends, torn between sending or not sending the circle of friends, filled with advertising graphics operated by the private domain. Scrolling through, the usual conversion path is still nothing new.
WeChat has been trying to slow down the social pressure, typical is the read after the video dynamic (now called status), but the status quo is the number of people who use it is very few, and does not solve everyone's problems.
As a product manager, I've been looking forward to WeChat's solution. But it wasn't until I paid close attention to the way my friends and family used Jitterbug that I realized Jitterbug was the product answer to everyone's stress-free socializing.
One, the square and the stage
Different products have different qualities, which are synthesized by many product details. The very different practices of the circle of friends and Jitterbug present two product forms.
1. Circle of friends square, four-dimensional space with time
Longer in the open class image of the metaphor - the circle of friends is a square. Friends pile up, single people into the scene, we in the square quickly turn around (browsing), and then join the discussion (comments) or eye interaction (like).
The premise of the square is relationship, we all know each other, and the distribution of information through the timeline adds extra value to the relationship chain before we stop by.
The core of the plaza is browsing, actively come down and take a turn, stay a little longer if you see something of interest, and see you next time if you don't have any fun. We know there's a new dynamic by the little red dots that prompt us.
But the difference between the reality of the square is that the Internet product more time dimension, compared with the offline square of three-dimensional, the square of the circle of friends is more like four-dimensional. If you have the intention to see, the circle of friends more time to develop the dynamic line.
Here we can see all the dynamics from the first half to the second half of the mobile Internet, recording the whole process from high school to college, from the beginning of the workplace to the old driver, from shy love to marriage and children. The Circle of Friends Plaza, augmented by four dimensions, exposes every day of our lives as we once were.
This potentially discoverable time egg is the source of stress now, where we must make our own timing choices and distribution privacy choices in order to peacefully post a circle of friends that matches the state of mind of the moment.
The four-dimensional space with time is the source of stress.
2. Jitterbug Stage, Forgetful Platform of Joy
In contrast to the square analogy of the circle of friends, what about Jitterbug? Jitterbug is the stage, yes it is the stage.
Single column full-screen immersive form, colorful and dynamic video, as if we are sitting on the stage, watching a scene happening on the stage.
Watching Shake Shack's stage show, we rejoice in the hilarious, are moved by the touching, praise the updates of family and friends, and sing the praises of the courage of strangers.
Going with the flow, we follow current events at Jitterbug. From time to time, we ourselves record life updates on Shake Shack and go to the stage to bring performances to our friends, family and strangers.
Compared with the design of the circle of friends square, the stage is built with two characteristics, one is the focus on the immediate, and the other is the anticipation of the next scene.
The single-column, full-screen form of distribution, with its undisturbed perspective focus, ensures that the distribution is seen as it is, in the context of the moment, without contamination.
The fast switching of recommendation sorting and the easy operation of swiping up and down ensures that even if you're not a fan of the video of the moment you can still look forward to the next one.
It's a win for time. In the age of information flow's competition for attention, who remembers what was once there? For example, if you've been swiping Shakeology for two hours, can you recall which videos you just swiped to?
This is the benefit of recommendations. Brushless and uninterested, we only want to scroll through to see what's going on, and when it seems like the fun never ends, few people deliberately look at what you and I used to do.
Maybe three or five years later jitterbug will also have time pressure, but now in the jitterbug record is like 14 years of friends, everything is just beginning.
Two, the impact of the relationship chain on the pressure
If you carefully analyze the root cause of social pressure, the answer is the relationship chain. We don't want our history to be discovered by our first-time friends, so where exactly does the relationship chain have an impact on socialization?
1. The value of the relationship chain is content-weighted
Social is presented as chat and content, chatting with each other and interacting with each other's content.
It may seem like the difference between social and community, but the difference between social and community is greatly minimized by the influence of the relationship chain.
Social/community products both value human relationships, and when there is a chain of relationships, users chat on their own, and their intersections in life make the social proposition already valid.
But what to do when there is no relationship chain? Find an identical interest, build a scene from strange to perceived, and let users 'discover'.
That is to say, under the influence of the relationship chain, the user does not have to go to the discovery, just focus on the offline intersection of online. What we see in the circle of friends even the daily fodder and salt, but also because of the friends of the addition of meaning.
The circle of friends in the product iteration is the first relationship chain, and then the flow of information, daily chat is a heavy social activity, each good + keep attention is a light social form. From heavy to light, go with the flow.
Back to stress-free socialization, what we are stressed about is the content, not the chat. It's the quality-weighted nature of the relationship chain that releases the reluctance we once had.
Advantage is disadvantage, this is kind of WeChat in the state of doing 24H after reading the difficulty.
2. Jitterbug weakens the value of the relationship chain
The biggest difference between Jitterbug and WeChat on information flow is the closed private domain and the open public domain.
The premise of WeChat's socialization is that you have to add friends before you can chat with each other and like your friends' circles. But Jieyin is a tool that can be played alone without friends. There are no Facebook's 7 magic friends here, just interesting and fun content.
Why do users go to the circle of friends? Because they care about their friends and desperately want to know how they are doing? Because they genuinely want to like each other's awesome updates? Probably not.
The premise of genuine concern requires a focused audience, but before swiping the circle, the user doesn't know which friend has updated their news except for the avatar that prompted the update, which means that the user opens the circle without anticipation.
The underlying need for no anticipation is to find something fun to look at at the moment of boredom. Friend's dynamic is the fun thing to do, because with the relationship chain + content, the circle of friends is very nice to look at.
But the fun content may not need the relationship chain of the addition can also be very fun, can be colorful beauty handsome, can be laughable paragraph, can be the explosion of news, can be the star broke the news, these originally than the circle of friends is even more exciting.
Shake sound does not need the support of the social relationship chain, but also to solve the brush the circle of friends is to solve the current demand for boredom, which is a competitive alternative relationship.
3. Shake = microblogging + circle of friends
So what happens if Shake gets a relationship chain? In fact Jitterbug has already gained the relationship chain of users.
ShakeYin's acquisition of the relationship chain is actually not difficult, and only requires two key steps: one is to locate groups based on LBS, and the other is to look at the changes in the behavior of both sides based on the mutual recommendation of the content.
The fellowship of likes + LBS is the relationship chain, and mutual likes are the network of relationships that may also recognize each other. As a product with 300 million daily activities, the relationship chain has been fully covered with the addition of information flow.
The likes and follows are lower cost social verification, and the one-sided action is to complete the content weighting of the relationship chain once. Therefore, the relationship chain is also no longer a barrier to WeChat.
With the relationship chain, Jieyin is the product form we see now, hot current events + interesting and fun + exploration and discovery + friends dynamic.
The first three would have been the basic disk of Weibo, and the latter is the presentation of the circle of friends. Now Jieyin = microblogging + circle of friends.
Three, Jitterbug's stress-free solution
How many solutions are there to stress-free socializing? Definitely more than one.
1. Content-oriented, people-oriented
Friends and Jitterbug, the former is people-oriented, the latter is content-oriented.
The attention of the circle of friends is people, as evidenced by the friend avatars that prompt updates. Traveling food plus selfies to get the number of likes in the circle of friends.
Users' attention in the circle of friends is always kept on people, based on relationship plus to consume content.
The attention of Jitterbug is the content, and it is the emotion of "look at this video is sent by Nim Er-uncle" that is sent by the users. The user's attention is the content, not the content sent by friends.
Changes in the organizational structure of the information, the algorithm changes in the recommended content, so that the user profile in the jitterbug is not so three-dimensional.
In the scene of social pressure, the content that is not three-dimensional and not focused is more advantageous.
2. Let the user does not have time to create pressure
Time-added black history is a source of social pressure, the premise of this thing is established is that friends took the initiative to go through our black history. But what if there's no time?
WeChat's solution is "hide", half a year visible, three days visible is hidden, 24H automatic disappearance is also hidden, the user in the release because they know that the content will be hidden, but also relieves the pressure to release.
The solution of Jitterbug is "new", the endless recommended content is new, the content mixed with "microblogging circle of friends" is new, and the attention that has been focused is new, so users naturally don't have time to go through the history.
Jieyin's intention is certainly not to be stress-free, but the way it's presented now has solved most of the social stress. Add to that the fact that Jitterbug also has the ability to 'hide' time, and the pressure plummets once again.
3. Eliminating someone's assumptions
Interesting question: why do users feel socially pressured to be afraid of someone coming through their friend circle?
The realistic answer is that users themselves often go through their friends' circles and discover their friends' dark history. Then realizing that they too could be turned over, the pressure builds.
It's a kind of 'persecution paranoia', a shackle that the user creates for him/herself in an invisible way, which ultimately creates social pressure.
But what if users rarely go through their friends' histories on their own initiative? Would users care about their own black history when they can no longer discover their friends'?
Without the guesswork, there's no more pressure, and this kind of relaxed spontaneous posting is something we don't see much of in the circle of friends anymore, but the pressure needs to be released eventually.
Based on the changes in user behavior and mentality, let's see a large number of friends have begun to record their lives in Jieyin, harvesting comments from friends and likes from strangers, which was originally a sense of social identity given by the circle of friends.
Yes, the long-lost stress-free sense of identity.
Fourth and finally
Sometimes we have to recognize that times have changed.
Circle of Friends evolved into its current perfect form with more than 40 internal tests in the beginning, and has not changed much since then. Even the newly added video numbers and live streaming in the past two years fit the beauty of the circle of friends.
But now, from a critical point of view, the circle of friends graphic-led timeline, both in terms of content and efficiency, is gradually being replaced by short videos that slide up and down.
The new social products may not be focused on chatting. The chat format doesn't need to change any more, but isn't the circle of friends a possible replacement? We don't need a new WeChat, we just need a new circle of friends.
Shake it, it's the circle of friends.
#Columnist#
Wang Hai, public number: product manager encyclopedia, everyone is a product manager columnist. Netease product experts, product growth and business models have in-depth research.
This article was originally published in everyone is a product manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Title image from Unsplash, based on CC0 protocol