Can not doing what one wants be called rebirth?

Chapter 327 327. New product setting sail
“It’s better to optimize the homepage.”

"Hide the time on the phone, not just the time, so that users can't see all the information at the top of the phone."

“As soon as you enter the software interface, the short video will directly take over the entire phone screen.”

“Removing the bars is like hiding the windows, and using a black background is similar to the enclosed space of a movie theater after the lights are turned off.”

“Eliminate other distractions and immerse users as much as possible.”

Although Mr. Lu spent most of the long vacation resting, he did not neglect the core business he was concerned about.

For example, there is a short video APP that has been in the preparation process and is in the optimization and iteration stage.

Lu Jincheng, who values ​​return on investment and tends to be pragmatic, will not worry too much about the meaning of a name. It is enough as long as the data grows well.

So the name of his short video APP did not originate from A/B testing or fortune-telling by a master, but is still as simple as ever.

Even when he is in his hometown, he will attend the company's weekly meeting via video on time. There are not many people in the meeting, only middle-level managers and above participate.

Most of the time, he rested his chin on his hand, listening to meetings and typing, and rarely spoke.

A middle-level person who was present recalled that among the sparse words left by Lu Jincheng, only one sentence still lingers in his mind.

He has asked everyone a question since the early days of the founding team.

What can you do in 15 seconds?
Type 10 words, walk 20 meters, read 100 words.

Or, watch a short video.

The leading short video APP emerged in 2018, making 15-second short videos another window for people to understand the world.

Before Mr. Lu was reborn, the number of daily active users of the top APP in China exceeded 700 million, which means that one out of every two people is a loyal user.

The overseas version of TikTok covers more than 150 countries and regions, and tops the app store charts in many mainstream countries.

The outside world may not realize that behind such outstanding achievements, the configuration of their startup team is not strong.

Among them, there are product managers who are serving as product managers for the first time, designers who are responsible for overall design for the first time, R&D graduates who are writing programs from scratch for the first time, and operations interns who are exposed to the Internet industry for the first time.

——“It’s great to be young.”

This is the R&D team leader's evaluation of this group of people.

"It's a small company that was founded on a whim, with a startup team of less than ten people. If things don't work out, we can leave at any time."

This is how the top APPs got started with a lot of bumps.

Lu Jincheng, who had the advantage of foresight, told his team the same words.

He decided to seize the opportunity.

With the tenacity of always being an entrepreneur and a temporary young team, the young people officially set off in Jiangcheng.

In 2014, Huang Mingyuan officially took over a new project called "Miaoyin".

As the product manager of the new project, building an operations team is Huang Mingyuan’s top priority.

Making videos is part of the company’s plan.

As early as the beginning of the business, when Mr. Lu had a long talk with several programmers, he once said that video will definitely be an important product genre in the future.

However, in 2014, the cost of 4G traffic charges was still high. Compared with the rapidly growing mobile consumption of pictures and texts, the explosion of short videos still needs to wait for the right time.

By 2015, when we were preparing to enter the market, there were already several mainstream products in the UGC short video market.

Tencent has invested a lot of resources in promoting Weishi, Weibo has launched Miaopai, Xiaokaxiu and Meipai are targeting the urban young people market and already have hundreds of thousands of DAUs.

Kuaishou has begun to show its potential, gaining tens of millions of daily active users in third- and fourth-tier markets.

Musical.ly, created by a Shanghai startup team, has become a hit both inside and outside the country, topping the App Store charts overseas and becoming quite popular among young people in North America.

However, all this excitement belongs to others.

Miaoyin’s accumulation in multimedia technology is very weak and everything is still in its initial stage.

They seem to have lost the initiative.

"The company's top management didn't think highly of this project at first. They just wanted to try it out, so I was the only one who came out."

Luo Shaoqin is Miaoyin’s first product manager.

After gaining some experience at the front end of Dianjin Media, he went out to do human resources work.

Just when things are starting to get better, we have to start from scratch again to start a new project.

2015 was the peak of mobile live streaming, but short videos were not yet popular.

At this time, Lv Jincheng led the project team to take inventory of dozens of short video products on the market and summarized two pain points.

First, there are no videos of about 15 seconds.

Second, there is a lack of exclusive products for young people in first- and second-tier cities.

Therefore, this short video project, which is only 15 seconds long and attempts to capture the trendy and cool elements of young people, began to be developed intensively.

Most of the short video products available on the market are horizontal screen.

A small number of vertical screen products display multiple videos on one screen, and you have to click on them to watch them in full screen.

However, Miaoyin displays the video in full screen, and plays it automatically once it is opened. Many testers were shocked when they saw this.

"A big screen popped up and the video started playing by itself. I thought what the hell was this? I've never seen this before."

As a tester, Ji Shu still feels scared when recalling his first meeting with Miaoyin.

"It looked so strange, I wasn't very optimistic at the time."

During the first test, Lu Jincheng invited the development team and the testing team to have lunch together.

In a barbecue restaurant near Jianghan Road.

She has since gotten to know the other members of the team.

Product manager Luo Shaoqin is a typical tech geek, but he loves extreme sports and goes to the mountains in the suburbs to ride a motorcycle every weekend. He is a veteran in Dianjin Media, but has no experience as a product manager.

Content operator Wu Xianglong is familiar with various types of niche music and has little knowledge of the upcoming content operation work.

The user operation, which is still vacant, is basically handled by testers such as Ji Shu, but they have never been involved in the Internet industry before.

Several young people were eating skewers when the background music switched to a niche English rock song. Lu Jincheng, who has a wide range of singing styles, casually said the title of the song.

"I just thought. Wow."

Ji Shu seemed to be struck by an instant.

“Not only is Mr. Lu interesting, it feels like this is a very young team, and it seems like we can have fun together.”

No matter how unreliable he thought this project was rationally, Ji Shu was also emotionally attracted to it.

A young team that was hastily put together, a product form that has not yet been successfully verified, and the fact that starting a business is inherently risky.

The more Internet experience and common sense people have, the more reasons they can cite to be pessimistic about them.

But this time, Ji Shu decided to continue to take out large chunks of his time.

Mobilize your own fan base and help them.

Since everyone likes new things, why not make it a business, so that more people can play with it and find the joy of sharing the same interests? There was no ceremonial start time. After applying for funds from the boss, Huang Mingyuan moved his office to Zone D of Nanhu Industrial Park.

A leased office building.

Making a product is the first time for them.

Besides being excited, they were also more nervous.

In order to cater to the needs of target users, in addition to Lu Jincheng's opinions, the operation department also invited students from nearby schools to the conference room to listen to their discussions about what kind of products they liked.

Visually, some people like the candy-colored two-dimensional style, while others like the calm and low-key flat style.

Cui Sijin, who is in charge of the design direction, found that users can only make judgments based on products already on the market, and their imaginations are unlikely to go beyond the scope of their daily experience.

As Steve Jobs said, “Most of the time, users don’t know what they want until you show them the design.”

This was the first time Cui Sijin was in charge of the overall design.

"Perhaps every designer would have this thought: can I make something different? Mr. Lu also told me, 'Don't be too restrained when making this kind of product. Be bolder and find a highlight of the product.'"

At that time, most of the logos of competing products on the market were brightly colored, so Cui Sijin tried to make one with a darker tone.

With the help of bright colors, the style, which is both cool and exciting, was unanimously recognized by the team.

After the style was determined, the Miaoyin technical team immediately started the closed development of the new project.

Among them, Huang Mingyuan is the most senior and has work experience, and there are four other recent graduates and interns.

The designer takes out a large module every day, uploads it and marks it at two or three in the morning, so that R&D can participate in the development when they come to work the next day.

By the end of the year, the first version of Miaoyin was finally completed.

However, Dali did not perform a miracle.

The first version was full of bugs, and Cui Sijin was almost exhausted from editing it.

"I can't believe I did it myself. I worked so hard every day, but my boss is not satisfied with what I produced. It's so frustrating."

No one has any experience in making a brand new product from scratch.

The general layout that is common sense to the designer may not be implemented by the R&D department unless it is marked.

In addition, designers and product managers have to face daily soul-searching questioning from their boss’ assistant He Ying every time they report to them.

"Is there any benefit from this?"

“Anything that helps the user experience is profitable.”

Both Huang Mingyuan and Luo Shaoqin insisted on their own ideas about the products.

As a UGC content product, in addition to facing difficulties in functional experience, insufficient test users and submissions are the real insurmountable mountains for Miaoyin.

The cold start begins during the winter vacation period.

The Miaoyin team sent out group DAU emails every morning. After counting and excluding the accounts of all internal staff, the DAU of the emails dropped by half the next day.

Even submissions can be called out by operations.

The submission rate dropped, so the operation team livened up the atmosphere in the test expert user group and asked, "Why don't you post videos recently?" The video submission rate immediately increased by 10%.

The situation was so bleak that Ji Shu, who was temporarily called in to be responsible for user operations, was particularly suspicious of himself.

“I don’t know what I’m doing every day.”

Of course, she also doubted the product manager.

"The product is so poorly made that when I go to the fan group to recruit new members, they just ignore me."

During the testing phase, there was a technical KOL named [Teacher He] who studied abroad and was a fan of Ji Shu.

After experiencing the wonderful sound, he unceremoniously declined the invitation to join.

"This product is too crude. How can you drive on the highway with this broken car?"

But Ji Shu was not discouraged.

"I didn't ignore him because of what he said. I think what you said is very right. Please give us some suggestions."

At that time, similar products in China generally had the problem of audio and video being out of sync.

This delay of two to three hundred milliseconds is imperceptible to ordinary users. Mr. He has given suggestions to many similar products, but they have not been able to be corrected.

The Miaoyin team solved this problem at the very beginning.

Led by Lu Jincheng, guests from operations, products, technology and testing held a video conference together.

Adjusting one version after another, often changing one thing affects another.

At this time, we can only comfort everyone and tell them to use it first, and then think about how to solve new problems.

In order to improve the response speed to demands, the technical team proactively requested to cancel the demand submission process. High-level optimization and bug tracking can be inserted at any time, ensuring the iteration speed of releasing a small version every week.

In the absence of A/B data, in order to let the technical staff understand the problem, Miaoyin Operations specially set up a technical Q&A group to allow technical staff and users to communicate directly.

If there is a problem that cannot be explained clearly online, the test user will be invited to the office to discuss it face to face.

The legend of delicious food near Nanhu Industrial Park gradually spread among early users.

"There are only so many users. I really treat you well and chat with you every day. I listen to your feedback and it is eventually reflected in the product."

Early users are accumulating little by little.

The influence that Dianjin Media has established online has also extended to new products.

It's not just the anchors from Dianjin Media, the effect is spreading slowly, with more and more new users giving many suggestions on the product.

The sense of contribution from participating in it supports their growth with Miaoyin.

At that time, the Miaoyin team's workstation was on a high platform on the top floor of Building 3 in Zone D of the Industrial Park.

Operations and products sit in the front, and technology sits in the back.

It is common to update at two or three o'clock in the morning. Even when the logo light in the energy barrel goes out, everyone continues to work.

"If we can't do this, no one can."

Luo Shaoqin once sighed and expressed such emotion when he looked at the empty top floor.

After the release and testing in 2015, Mr. He was finally satisfied and stopped reposting videos he had posted on other products. Instead, he started posting original content on Miaoyin.

There are many cases like [Mr. He], and almost all early users stuck with it like this.

Users generally believe that Miaoyin is very innovative among similar products.

In fact, the so-called "novelty" when it comes to real work is nothing more than relying on Lu Jincheng's huge advantage in foresight and the staff's repeated packaging, testing and communication.

"I still want to thank Mr. Lu for his patience. Although the product has little traffic, he saw that we were still willing to work on the details, so he kept reminding us which direction to move forward."

Huang Mingyuan said this more than once.

The company had no technical accumulation in multimedia before, and there was only one stupid way to win users when it started late.

——Polish the functional experience to the extreme and produce products that exceed user expectations.

(End of this chapter)