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This generation of young people have long been unable to integrate into the social process of "eating and drinking mahjong KTV" of their parents, but in reality, they are limited by time and space and cannot expand their social circle. They establish contact with strangers outside the life and work circle through online games and thus have emotional connections. Games have become the social currency of a new generation of young people.
Mobile games and e-sports have long been popular in the streets. At the moment of winning the championship, the popularity in bilibili live broadcast room has reached more than 400 million, and the popularity of Tiger Tooth live broadcast has reached more than 300 million. Judging from the popularity of its various online platforms, e-sports live broadcast has long been a national entertainment activity.
The market scale of the game has derived the social demand of the game, and the upcoming TT focuses on the social voice of the game, thus harvesting 100 million users. However, under the precedent of many social platforms that died of social atmosphere, 90% of users are TT voices after 95 s and 00 s, but people have to worry, can game-based socialization go on healthily?
From game voice to social tools
At first, TT voice was just a voice tool.
In 2012, the mobile game industry in China began to enter an explosive period, and a large number of game practitioners rushed into the game content production industry in an attempt to create an explosive game. However, at that time, most games were still in the initial stage, and there was no perfect voice communication system, but the need for players to communicate in time was very urgent.
Based on this, Fun Pill Network chose to start from the game voice tool. In 2014, TT voice became an instant hit. In the first year, the number of registered users exceeded 3 million, and the number of online users exceeded 60,000. In one year, the running water exceeded 100 million yuan.
However, it is difficult for tool apps to achieve considerable revenue. Moreover, after 2016, more and more games that need to be "blacked out" have added built-in instant voice systems, and the core business of TT voice has been impacted, not only because the ceiling is too low, but also because the tools themselves have become chicken ribs.
"Blackout" in the game itself is a social way, therefore, social transformation has become the easiest path for TT voice to cut in. In 2018, TT voice gradually added live voice, expanded chat, pia drama, dynamics and other kinetic energy, which was deeply tied with explosive mobile games such as the glory of the king and Peace Elite, enabling gamers to directly perform voice hacking, teaming up, scoring and other operations within TT voice, broadening the use scenarios of TT voice, and the average online market for daily users exceeded two hours.
In the field of game socialization, TT voice can be regarded as a deep-rooted player. For example, in finding a playmate, the glory of the king’s matching mechanism does not allow too much difference between segments. Many players find it difficult to match the right teammates and opponents with the same segment because the segment is too high or too low, but TT Voice can find the right playmate with the same segment based on the game and gender, so as to recognize gamers who have the same topic cognition.
In fact, not only mobile games like the glory of the king Peace Elite have voice social needs, but other games also have voice social needs, but many minority games have no funds and strength to add voice built-in and social channels. The "quick matching" of the "black channel" on TT voice homepage not only covers high-heat mobile games such as the glory of the player, the peaceful elite, the call of duty, the fifth personality, but also covers leisure and educational games such as light encounter, gobang, you draw and guess, which makes TT voice not a vassal of a certain game, but the best playmate of the game, and can inject fresh blood into the platform while stabilizing old users.
In addition, TT voice is not only satisfied with finding suitable game playmates for players, but also based on user interest tags and other information, using system algorithms to gather people with similar interests in the virtual room voice room by distributing playmates, finding radar and other functions, and sharing audio, video, pictures and other contents in real time to achieve the purpose of making friends. In addition to "playing in black", TT voice also opened content sections such as finding playmates and entertainment.
Judging from these functions, TT voice is not only a tool, but also a social ecology based on games, which meets all the online entertainment and leisure needs of this generation of young people.
Therefore, TT voice also has a living space outside the game content. According to publicly disclosed data, the unique TT voice has accumulated more than 100 million users by 2020, an increase of more than 80% from the previous month. In addition, the platform MAU reached 20 million, of which the post-95 s, that is, Z generation users accounted for as high as 90%.
During the first half of 2021, users spend about 158 minutes in TT voice chat rooms every day, and users initiate more than 850,000 voice chat rooms every day, an increase of 45.6% compared with the same period in 2020.
Sullivan pointed out in the report that TT voice has become the largest mobile voice social platform and the largest player-centered mobile social platform in China according to monthly users and income data.
The ceiling is too low and it is too difficult to grow.
According to the data of China Game Industry Report 2020 released by China Game Industry Research Institute, the number of game users in China will reach 665 million in 2020, with a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. In other words, there is one TT voice user in every six e-sports players.
However, it is worth noting that TT voice is actually known outside the deep e-sports players. Because almost every popular game has its own social function, players can achieve basic needs such as communication and team formation in the game. With the improvement of the voice communication system of the game itself, the chances of players opening the voice-assisted APP are bound to gradually decrease.
Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that TT voice survives in a crack, and this crack makes it difficult for TT voice to make a breakthrough in market scale.
In addition, there are too many voice social software, and the substitutability of TT voice is very high, not to mention that WeChat QQ can open black communication games in groups, and there are also black-opening software such as YY voice, KK voice and hello voice in the market to compete with it. In contrast, the competitive advantage of TT voice is not clear.
According to the prospectus, in the first half of 2021, the monthly activity of TT voice reached 16.2 million. Compared with the social products such as Gathering Times and Momo, the number of monthly users of less than 20 million is not large enough.
The ceiling is too low, the loyalty is not enough, and the user payment rate is also very low. According to the data in the prospectus, the monthly living payment rates from 2018 to 2020 were 7.3%, 7.1% and 5.3% respectively, and even fell to 5.1% in the first half of 2021, the lowest level in history.
In addition, the target users of TT voice are the post-95 s and post-00 s under the age of 24, but this young group has limited spending power and it is difficult to promote more consumption.
Moreover, the acquisition cost of TT voice is not low. According to the prospectus, in 2020 and the first half of 2021, the network and marketing expenses of Fun Pill Network increased by 123.06% and 120.88% year-on-year, both higher than the revenue growth in the same period and higher than the growth rate of paying users.
In addition, as an auxiliary tool APP, TT voice also needs to solve the problem of user retention. At the beginning, TT voice can be downloaded because of the formation of playmates, but after a short period of acquaintance and pairing, playmates who form fixed friends often develop into daily communication software such as WeChat /QQ for voice, dialogue, making friends, opening black and other activities.
As far as social tools are concerned, most of WeChat and QQ are bound with offline real social information, so the probability of users uninstalling software and accounts is very low, but only a small social APP with Internet strangers’ "friends", which leads to a higher probability of uninstalling software and accounts because of the low maintenance cost, making it difficult for users to really keep them.
In this way, TT voice has become a diversion middleman of WeChat QQ, and it is difficult for users to really stay. In fact, this problem is not only the embarrassment of TT voice, but also the embarrassment that all niche social tools except WeChat QQ are difficult to solve.
Risk involved in gray areas is high.
Almost all Internet companies want to socialize, and Ma Yun’s Alipay is no exception. However, social functions are easy to build in, but it is extremely difficult to make social apps.
In particular, it is indeed the common demand of a new generation of young people to make friends through games, but social interaction based on games can be an interest, but it is also easier to deteriorate.
With the development of Qinglang Action, many accompanying software such as "Bixin", "Little Deer Accompanied Play" and "hello Voice" have been taken off the shelves indefinitely because of illegal activities such as fraud and pornography, and social software accompanying games has become a high-risk zone for juvenile supervision.
Although TT voice has not been removed, it does not mean that it does not have this problem. On the home page of TT voice, the online number of blind date rooms has exceeded that of black-out, party, listening to songs and other rooms.
The content of "edge ball" can be said to be the user’s low quality, but TT voice belongs to the "ignition" in this kind of edge ball socialization, and the official attitude may even imply encouragement. Many users reported that TT voice received an "immediate private chat" automatically matched by the system after the initial download and registration, and the dynamic recommendations were all kinds of speeches and private messages.
Some media reports have pointed out that TT voice has voice rooms named after minors, and some voice rooms have voice contents such as suspected obscenity and abuse, and the report pointed out that the platform did not block these live broadcast rooms during the investigation.
On the black cat complaint platform, the number of complaints about TT voice is as high as 2,705, which is more than two old-fashioned voice software such as Momo YY live broadcast. The complaints include problems such as fraud, inducing minors to pay, and swearing.
There are also public reports this year. A 9-year-old girl from Guangzhou once got to know the suspect Lu Mou after downloading TT voice chat dating platform. Lu Mou gave her a red envelope in the name of giving gifts. Due to lack of judgment, she was cheated for 12,781 yuan.
TT voice expanding social interest content outside the game may encourage dangerous discussions. In the "expanding column" section of TT voice, there are a large number of underage users, and most of them are involved in puppy love, and the situation is extremely serious. The section of "Minors posting to find boyfriends in public" even has a very obvious recommended position in the APP, and even pornographic content shows obvious recommended positions, as well as obscure yellow-related drainage stickers.
Although social software can’t supervise all users’ languages, the target users of TT voice are mainly minors and young students under the age of 25. Are you sure this high-risk social interaction is not playing with fire?
At present, TT voice has no underage review mechanism. After downloading, registration can be completed only by receiving a four-digit verification code from the mobile phone, which means that minors can complete registration without even unlocking their parents’ mobile phones, and can be used to contact all users without their real names or any third-party information.
Judging from its official attitude, although the youth model has also been established, most of the contents under the model are subject education courses. Obviously, there is no active and healthy planning and guidance for the healthy socialization of minors’ interests.
Although the state has issued policies to restrict the related behaviors of minors’ games, the surrounding industries of games also need strict supervision. Whether it is live broadcast or accompanying play, enterprises should actively fulfill their responsibilities to protect young people, and should not lower the lower limit in pursuit of market scale.