Friend.tech Revelation How to Find the Next Web3 Social App Hit?

Friend.tech Revelation Finding the Next Web3 Social App Hit

This article attempts to explore the elements of successful blockbuster applications behind the popularity of Friend.tech.

Introduction

Recently, many people have been discussing whether the popularity of Friend.tech is sustainable. However, in my opinion, the sustainability of Friend.tech’s success is not the key issue. The key issue is that the popularity of FT itself is meaningful.

The popularity of FT in Social-Fi is like the death of Christopher Columbus in the Age of Discovery. Even if FT falls like its predecessors, it may have opened the door to the era of Social-Fi.

Since the era is about to come, this article attempts to explore the elements of successful blockbuster applications behind the popularity of Friend.tech, so that we can seize the opportunity in the era of future application outbreaks.

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Introduction II

When we mention the broad sense of Social-Fi today, I personally divide it into two subcategories:

The first category is protocol-based social applications: including Lens, Farcaster, Cyberconncet, Damus, etc. The goal of these applications is to revolutionize centralized social networks. Their slogans are “Twitter killer” and “WeChat killer,” aiming to build a social network belonging to Web3 from scratch.

The second category is Ponzi+ applications: many Gamefi and Socialfi projects are not fundamentally about games and socializing. They actually want to create a Ponzi scheme and then wrap it in a layer of game and social features. Social applications in this category are more about reshaping existing social relationships and adding value based on existing traffic platforms. They gradually transform (or die directly when the Ponzi scheme collapses) after attracting enough users through Ponzi schemes.

Purists of blockchain tend to favor the first category, but I believe that under the current user base and infrastructure level, it is difficult for the first category of applications to develop. It’s like if WeChat appeared in 2000, it would probably not surpass QQ without the popularization of 4G networks and the wave of mobile internet.

Therefore, today we mainly discuss the second category.

Main Content

In order to judge the potential for a Web3 social application to go viral, I believe there are three main points to consider:

• Whether it retains existing social resources as much as possible

• Whether it can redirect traffic from large pools

• Whether it has sufficient mechanisms for viral spread

1. Whether it retains existing social resources as much as possible

When evaluating a new Social-Fi product, especially the second category mentioned earlier, it is important to see if it retains users’ existing social resources as much as possible. This includes users’ reputation and social relationships. Essentially, it is about reducing user migration costs.

Just like when we use Web2 products today, we are often asked to sync our contacts. Helping users retain social resources is not only for the users’ benefit but also helps the project shorten the cold start time as much as possible.

One of the reasons why FT is successful is that it tries to preserve the user’s existing social resources as much as possible. Instead of asking users to create a completely new account on FT, it migrates the user’s Twitter account, and the user’s Twitter name and avatar become the name and avatar on FT.

However, FT did not migrate the following and follower relationships from Twitter.

During the migration to FT, users retain their reputation and personal brand on Twitter but lose their social relationships. However, this is already better than what most peers have done.

What FT is doing, excluding factors like FOMO investment, is essentially meeting people’s expectation of having normal social relationships with idols, media figures, and KOLs in a quasi-social relationship network.

In a quasi-social relationship network, the key is the personal brand and image of KOLs. In the transition of such relationships, it is necessary to preserve the key nodes in the original network. The advantage is that users do not need to painstakingly reshape their personal brands after switching social scenes. Users’ relationship networks can be quickly established through these key nodes.

The smallest account unit should be a social account, not a wallet

Nowadays, many web3 social products have wallets as the smallest unit of account. Wallets represent personal identities, and users create new accounts and accumulate social resources through wallets. This seemed fine during the rise of DEFI because the cost of migrating assets is much lower than the cost of migrating social resources.

However, in a social context, using a wallet as the smallest account unit is not the optimal solution. Using a wallet as a link means that users have to give up all the social resources they have accumulated. Even with domain systems such as ENS and Lens handle, the social resources they carry are far inferior to Twitter accounts. Therefore, a more suitable approach is to bind a wallet to a social account, rather than establishing social relationships based on wallets.

This actually involves the concept of DID. In Web3, we advocate for a unique decentralized identity that binds our soul. This DID can not only manage our identity but also serve as an entry point or key for us to use other applications. In the previous section, to some extent, a Twitter account is our DID because Twitter is more recognized. When we buy a Key on FT, we recognize Twitter, not the wallet account on Base. Therefore, doing a DID product fundamentally requires you to be able to gather huge traffic and have a large user base before discussing doing a DID. It’s not that you can become an entry point or key just because you have done a DID. WeChat and Alipay have already proven this.

2. Can you redirect traffic from a large pool rather than building your own pool?

Here we mainly discuss the difficulty of success or popularity. Why do we not have high expectations for protocol-based social applications but prefer Ponzi+ applications? It is because the latter is easier to succeed. It is easier to dig a hole from a large pool and divert the water to your own small pond than to build a large pool and fill it with water by yourself.

For example, let’s say China Unicom and China Mobile cannot make phone calls to each other. There are two solutions to this pain point.

• Solution 1: Solve it from the bottom. Either Unicom and Mobile change their own technology, communicate and allocate interests, optimize the infrastructure, and achieve interoperability between the two operators. Or, start from scratch and create a new operator that can make calls to both Unicom and Mobile without being restricted by either of them. Another option is to create a protocol layer that allows Mobile and Unicom to connect and achieve interoperability. Solving it from the bottom will be difficult and more complex because it first needs to be clarified whether the inability to make phone calls between Mobile and Unicom is a technical limitation, or if the two companies have different subjective intentions, or if it is a combination of both, as well as whether there are any historical reasons that have led to this situation.

• Solution 2: Create a dual-card dual-standby mobile phone. Users can buy two cards from different operators, and the phone will automatically recognize and use the corresponding card for dialing, so that users can achieve a seamless experience. The only thing needed is to buy two cards.

Solution 2 is a temporary solution and does not address the root cause. However, when there is a lack of resources and capabilities, Solution 2 is easier to implement.

Now, with the Web3 Social project, the initial idea is to choose Solution 1 and immediately challenge the dominance of WeChat and Twitter. It’s not that it’s impossible, but at this stage, the infrastructure of the entire industry is not yet well-developed, and there is a lack of imagination and creativity. Even something as familiar to Web2 product managers as making user operations seamless and lowering the barriers to entry needs to be concretized into a concept like “Intent”. It is too early to talk about disruption, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be disruption. I still believe that blockchain was born to bring about fundamental changes or disruptions, but the timing is not yet right.

The success of DeFi has led many in the industry to think that everything can be perfectly replicated on the chain and attract many users. However, at this stage, it may be more suitable to optimize or create plugins for existing products in the social aspect, and meet users’ small needs.

One of the reasons for the success of Friend tech is that it satisfies user needs in the transition from a large traffic pool to a small traffic pool (although I think this demand is quite small). For example, it satisfies the demand for KOLs to monetize their influence, the demand for NFT during the low period to satisfy the vanity of KOLs and ordinary users, and the demand to satisfy the mentality of ordinary people who admire strength. At the same time, FT is doing the conversion from public traffic to private traffic. Even if only 1% of the water flows out of the big pool, it is enough for our industry for a long time.

3. Are we utilizing the dissemination effect of social applications effectively?

One of the factors that determines the success of a social application’s gameplay and economic model design is whether it can naturally guide users to external traffic sources.

Whether it is a protocol-based social product or a Ponzi-type social product, they both need to solve one problem in order to succeed: how to spontaneously import external traffic into the network. Protocol-based social products require a large number of users to achieve the most basic network effect. Ponzi-type social products require incremental growth to pay for the early adopters.

Take FT as an example. KOLs can generate income from transactions involving FT. Within the FT system, users naturally have a tendency to import traffic from external platforms. This inadvertently completes a free coverage-style KOL promotion and cold start. After the first batch of buyer users enter, they naturally have the motivation to promote in order to attract new participants to provide liquidity for exiting.

Ponzi-type social products are more likely to leverage the viral effects of social networks because they can bind users to the project as a community of shared interests through their underlying gameplay. Users can spontaneously import external traffic without obvious guidance from the project. Therefore, it is particularly important to pay attention to the gameplay and model design of new applications in order to guide users to spontaneously conduct external traffic.

Protocol-based social products are relatively more difficult in this regard because the goal of the protocol is to achieve decentralization while satisfying users’ social needs. Encouraging users to spontaneously import external traffic requires subsidies to incentivize users to recruit others. Although tokens or airdrop points are almost free for the project, the growth they bring is more linear, meaning that the more you invest, the proportionally more you gain. It is difficult to achieve the explosive growth seen in Ponzi-type products within a short period of time.

Conclusion

Although FT’s success provides inspiration, I believe that luck is the main factor. From the product to the economic model design, it can be seen that the team did not initially expect FT to reach its current level. Even if there hadn’t been LianGuairadigm that weekend, FT might have faded away like the predecessors before it.

This industry has too many coincidences and random factors. The same product may have completely different outcomes simply due to the timing of its appearance and the players involved. Such randomness and some arrogance often become the root cause of missing out on projects. Those who missed out on StepN must have said, “Isn’t this just like the Qubu days?”

Therefore, attempting to find some universal lessons from FT’s success may not necessarily be effective. If a new era is about to come, all we can do is enter the game humbly, experience every possibility with an open and humble mindset, and then find the ultimate answer through the experience of crossing the river one stone at a time.

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