The term "Killer App" or "Star App" is a dazzling term. Fifteen years ago, when the Internet boom came, most people's first entrepreneurial idea was just to make a webpage, just like now in the era of mobile Internet, outsourcing to make an app can make money first.
At this time, some visionary people said that we should make a Killer App without a temporary profit model to attract enough users' attention, which is the future. So, Atexin started learning from Yahoo and created a Sohu; a software company called Sitong Cube started working on a portal; Baidu also stopped selling enterprise search and wanted to build its own portal; Tencent was inspired by ICQ and pagers and created a long time called OICQ, which was popular but not profitable.
The results later became clear. China.com, which had been making money from webpages, no longer exists, while companies that insisted on making Killer Apps became the new entrance to the Internet. Companies without a profit model can burn venture capital money first; after burning venture capital money, there is enough traffic to sell advertising and make money. Making a Killer App has become the golden rule of Internet entrepreneurship and investment.
In the era of mobile Internet, apps have become a visible and tangible term, and they are icons on the phone's desktop. What content or services are placed in this icon depends only on the creator's technology and imagination. If it accidentally becomes a Killer App, it will be worth a fortune. At this time, it not only attracts users' attention, but also occupies their pockets, fingers, senses, and all their fragmented time. The only remaining question is: what to do?
At this time, the first challenge of a mobile Internet Killer App is encountered. All apps can be essentially divided into two categories: games and applications. It goes without saying that making games, you can create an Angry Birds, but it is difficult to create a second one. However, no matter what type of application you make, you will encounter the same opponent: users' curiosity and time.
The essence of mobile applications is the same, not only because they occupy the same size icon on the desktop, but also because they can access the same sensors and address book. Their content is nothing more than text, images, sounds, and videos. In order to increase user stickiness, people and places were introduced, and investors also packaged a term that is easier to sell stocks: "SoLoMo", which stands for social, local, and mobile. So all mobile applications have transformed into social applications.
The real problem arises: how can you satisfy everyone's social needs with just the shell of an application? Or balance the social needs of the majority of users? Taking WeChat, which is currently booming, as an example, in order to constantly satisfy people's curiosity and desires, various features of adding strangers as friends have to be added; and in order to increase stickiness and value, communication functions between acquaintances have to be strengthened. The demands of these two directions are undoubtedly contradictory. Everyone can tolerate opening several QQ windows on the Internet or PC desktop, one for chatting with clients and one for flirting with strangers, just because the desktop is large enough and the background can be resident, and ten fingers can handle it. Once moved to the phone, it is hard to imagine a single social application that can meet the different social needs of 50 million users, or just to contact and exchange messages with QQ friends on the PC side.
Therefore, Path's theory is to limit the number of friends. The more friends there are, the less sticky and desirable the interaction becomes. Originally, you would only send photos of your own daughter to a few relatives and friends to see, not to 50 internet friends. But this theory also brings a problem. Although the frequency of interaction increases, the scale of the user network is difficult to expand. So in the new version of Path2, the limit of 50 friends has been expanded to 150 people, and image sharing has become a more general life status sharing. However, this modification does not fundamentally solve the contradiction between "more people see, less interaction" and "less people see, more interaction".
The reason why Killer App has become a business also has another meaning. It means that startup companies can start with a Killer App, attract enough initial users, and then gradually turn this Killer App into a platform. In the Internet era, this business model can exist because Internet platforms have become stable and traffic can be converted between them. However, in the era of mobile Internet apps, it is difficult to redirect traffic from one app to another, and everything has to start from scratch. The length of users' curiosity also becomes the lifecycle of an app being deleted from the phone's desktop. You have to constantly satisfy users' curiosity, making an app more and more bloated.
So now, mobile Internet entrepreneurship has become a vicious circle. Whether it is a large company or a small company, everyone is pursuing a Killer App or a Star App. In vertical fields, some Star Apps are starting to appear because there is not enough competition in vertical fields and users do not have many app options. In general fields, it is a lively scene, with one app after another. However, mobile Internet companies have not found a good entry point. They are just adding one or a few icons to Apple or Google's two major entrances. Their users lack patience and are fickle, treating apps as fast-moving consumer goods.
On the PC, the real Killer App is the operating system. There are four Star Apps: the browser turns the PC into a machine that can access the Internet; the editing software turns the PC into a machine that can type; the graphics software turns the PC into a machine that can draw; and games turn the PC into a game console. On the phone, the real Killer App is still the phone and text messages. Star Apps are forming and will inevitably have several characteristics: the icon represents a service that is simple and clear enough to meet the needs of most people. It is also cross-platform and cross-device, accessible from my PC, Android phone, or iPad. It will not do things you don't want to do (such as excessive push notifications or adding unnecessary friends), nor will it hinder you from doing what you want to do (such as using this service in other apps). In other words, it needs to be open, both in terms of mindset and technology.
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