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Helo is the app with the most users in the world, with more than 800 million users, more than 450 million daily active users, and hundreds of billions of messages sent every day.

Behind this is a huge operating cost.

In the past year, Helo's operating cost was $2 billion. In the future, as more and more users and more and more functions are added, the operating expenses will only increase.

Such high operating costs actually pose a great risk.

Even Boss Ma has seen it.

The current social advertising model has huge hidden dangers, which is not as long-term and stable as e-commerce advertising. In summary, the current Helo business model has great hidden dangers. It is unlikely to make operating losses. No matter how bad social advertising is, it can still make money.

The United States is an advertising superpower.

As early as the 1970s and 1980s, some media people felt panic because the commercial mechanism of advertising would lead to an era of entertainment to death. Now the total size of the advertising market in the United States has reached 300 billion US dollars!

This is equivalent to every American, and business owners will spend an average of $1,000 on them every year.

Half of these ads are Internet ads.

Therefore, no matter how much hidden dangers social advertising has, it is impossible for Helo to fall into losses.

Especially now that Helo’s circle of friends is becoming more and more popular, it is naturally more and more favored by advertisers. Even if the industry declines in the future, and App promotion advertising, which plays a core role in the social advertising market, declines precipitously, Helo’s ability to make money is still guaranteed, and advertising fees of tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars are not a problem.

The problem is that the model of relying solely on social advertising is a bit too simple.

Especially here is not like China.

Helo has many competitors, and there are many fun and interesting social apps constantly appearing.

In this regard, we must be more cautious.

Helo is now walking on one leg.

This is a strategic risk.

Just like Douyin.

In fact, the largest advertiser in China has always been Alibaba, until Douyin completed the transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change.

The original Douyin was a social product with super traffic, and all the money it earned was social advertising.

This is a bit disappointing.

In terms of advertising revenue, let alone Alibaba, even Penguin can’t compare.

Later, Douyin upgraded its strategy from walking on one leg to walking on two legs, and successfully developed e-commerce business, allowing Douyin to have e-commerce advertising while having social advertising. E-commerce advertising is a qualitative change, and it is the key to Douyin surpassing Penguin and Alibaba to become the largest advertiser in China.

It is a bit inappropriate to do e-commerce advertising on Helo.

There needs to be a new breakthrough.

Zhou Buqi called Lu Qi, Tang Binchen and Kurian to his office, and everyone discussed it in a small range to see whether Kurian's payment idea is reliable.

Speaking of paid products, Zhou Buqi has no say.

Including Tang Binchen, Lu Qi, and domestic people such as Zhang Yiming, Guo Pengfei, Liang Rubo, Wang Xiaochuan, and Fu Hongliang, all of whom followed the big boss Zhou, and played the free model and the traffic business.

As Internet products, free products and paid products have completely different underlying logics.

Netflix is ​​a paid product.

But Netflix's model is easy to understand, which relies on exclusive and monopolized copyright resources. However, software with a paid model is a completely different concept. In the field of paid products, Zhou Buqi dare not say that he is the chief product manager. Kurian is the chief expert. Many products of Ziwei Cloud, such as network disk, notes, account books, cloud video, intranet, online store templates, etc., are all paid products.

Kurian has just been appointed as the executive director. He is somewhat proud and in a good state. Before he sat down, he said straight to the point: "I am not saying that Helo should be converted into a paid product, but that paid services should be opened according to different services."

Zhou Buqi encouraged him and said with a smile: "If you have any ideas, just say it!"

Kurian said: "In some mainstream countries, users' usage habits of social products have been determined. For example, China is WeChat, South Korea is KakaoTalk, Japan is the Japanese version of Helo, Russia is Telegram, and Thailand is Viber. Once user habits are established, it is too difficult to change."

Tang Binchen said: "Indeed, better product services and product innovation are needed."

"Uh... not necessarily." Kurian was not very Agreed, "Helo does need further innovation and services, but it may not be able to change the usage habits of some countries. I haven't seen the detailed data of Helo's global business, you only gave me the data of South Korea."

Tang Binchen nodded, "The data of South Korea is the most representative."

Kurian said: "Yes, it is South Korea. We can see some clues from the Korean market. In the past year, Helo's activity in South Korea has been decreasing, and its revenue has also decreased."

Tang Binchen said: "Well, more and more Koreans have chosen the local KakaoTalk."

Kurian said in a deep voice: "Once a competitor appears, this is a trend, and it is also the biggest drawback of free products. The loyalty of free products is too poor. What about Russia? How is the situation there?"

Tang Binchen said: "Russian data is growing, but this is related to the fact that Russia's mobile Internet market is still in a period of rapid growth. It is not as developed as South Korea, and the popularity of smartphones and mobile Internet will be 2-3 years slower, and it is far from saturation. ”

Kurian said decisively: "That means that within 2-3 years, the number of Helo users in Russia can still grow. But what about two or three years later? Because of some complex international factors, I believe that Telegram is the most important player in Russia." People’s favorite communication product. Once the Russian mobile Internet market enters a mature stage, and there is still a competitor like Telegram in the market, Helo will inevitably have fewer and fewer users.”

Zhou Buqi nodded and said: "In the past few years, we have made great achievements relying on the free model. However, there is no perfect model. The free model has many advantages, but it also has shortcomings."

Kurian said: "The poor viscosity is the biggest shortcoming."

Zhou Buqi concluded: "Free products are promoted quickly and have poor stickiness. Paid products are promoted slowly and have strong stickiness."

Kurian echoed the compliment: "Quite good."

Lu Qi pondered and said slowly: "Many of our paid products are actually different from traditional paid software. We are paid products on the Internet and adopt a 'free + paid' model. Relying on free Promote it, and then launch appropriate paid services to increase user loyalty through paid services.”

There was no need for Kurian to compliment him. He solemnly said: "It is true. The 'free + paid' Internet model is indeed more competitive in the market than traditional paid software. But the shortcomings of poor user stickiness are also It’s obvious. I gave an example, such as our online disk business.”

"you say!"

"Our network disk EverDrive can be said to be the most successful SaaS product in the world. There are more than 380 million users worldwide and more than 70 million paying users. The annual membership fee revenue exceeds 5 billion US dollars. Nadella came to power and became After becoming the CEO of Microsoft, they quickly made a series of changes, the biggest change being their Microsoft cloud disk.”

"A threat to us?"

Zhou Buqi really didn't take Microsoft OneDrive seriously because he had never heard of this name in his previous life. If Microsoft's network disk was really launched, it would have spread to his ears like thunder.

Kurian said: "There is a certain threat, but it is not serious. The core is that we are a paid product. Microsoft Netdisk has launched a series of very competitive package services, and the prices are very competitive. But what is the result? Our EverDrive’s paid users have not lost, and have even increased by 8.2 million in the past six months. However, the active ratio of free users has declined, which may be due to Microsoft’s network disk. This case is very representative.”

Zhou Buqi nodded solemnly, "Indeed!"

Microsoft's cloud disk OneDrive has launched some competitive packages, which means the price may be lower than its own cloud disk EverDrive.

However, EverDrive has not lost paying users.

On the contrary, many free users of EverDrive have gone to Microsoft.

You know, they are free users!

Microsoft's package prices are low and are only relevant to paying users, not free users.

What actually happened was very abnormal. The paid users did not leave, but many free users left.

Lu Qidao: "This is actually a mentality of longing for the expected space. Free users have greater expected space, so they are willing to choose more affordable products; paid users, because they have already paid, and the expected space is saturated, then will be more loyal."

Zhou Buqi agreed, he was very experienced in this, "Well, it's just like finding a partner."