Social products are by nature lonely, full of hunters and traps

“Man is a social animal. He needs to associate with his own kind, to love and be loved. Otherwise he cannot live.

What do you mean by social?

This time, let’s start with “social.” What is this social thing we’ve been talking about for so long?

Sociability, in the Eastern sense, means the connection between people. And the connection between people is embodied in social behavior.

In the Internet age, social behavior has become more diversified. Any information interaction between people can be considered social behavior. The message can be either a text picture or a body language. Face-to-face verbal communication is social behavior, as is physical communication such as shaking hands and hugging. Forwarding, commenting, liking and following on the Internet are also social behaviors.

So under what circumstances do people engage in social behavior?

Everyone is lonely sometimes. Do you remember those nights when you lay awake with no one to talk to? Do you remember the time when you were full of anger, or you had no place to pour out your grievances? Remember when you wanted to share in your accomplishments, but no one was there to celebrate? Need someone to comfort you, but no one to lean on?

When a new generation of intellectual youth are immersed in “your loneliness, glorious defeat”, I do not know whether anyone has thought about when loneliness will appear and disappear? Why do we engage in social behavior?

loneliness

It is an inescapable shackle for life. From birth to death, nothing ends.

Human beings are social animals. They need to express their attitudes, to show their individuality, to be recognized by others, to love and be loved. We need a continuous sense of social connection.

When feelings of social connection are weak, loneliness emerges and intensifies. We engage in a range of social behaviors to eliminate loneliness and enhance social connectedness. If someone doesn’t engage in social behavior even as their sense of social connection continues to erode, it can easily lead to mental illness like depression. Oriental friends have had such an experience.

Loneliness is one of the things that drives us to engage in social behavior.

Economics is built on the premise that everyone is self-interested.

Suppose everyone is selfish. Oriental is not a hypothesis, but in junior high school as an axiom throughout life. The axiom is self-evident, simple and crude. Everyone pursues the maximization of his own interests under the condition of constraint. During the war, many heroes like Dong cunrui sacrificed themselves for victory in battle. Many people think they are selfless and great. The East greatly respects the heroes of the war and considers them great, but does not consider them selfless. Because before the hero is overwhelmed by the war consciousness, the belief of justice and victory for him more than his own life. In order to maximize their value, they are willing to sacrifice for their country.

Self-interest is not only reflected in economy and material, but also in spirit and emotion.

When we’re not feeling lonely, we also engage in social behavior for profit. Interests are diverse, workplace and love may make people engage in social behavior. Benefits are visible money, invisible personal enhancement…

People engage in social behaviors for benefits, but they also engage in less social behaviors when benefits disappear.

The sense of social connection and interest are not completely independent. The relationship between the two is like that of ambiguous men and women, who often appear as lovers at the same time, but deny it.

Socializing brings a sense of social connection and benefits. So what is the value of social products?

Social products solve the problem of loneliness, but can bring a sense of social connection and benefits.

Social connection point

Next, I’ll introduce you to something interesting — social connection points. As the name suggests, social connection points are “points of convergence” that bring people together. I can’t think of a proper word to describe it. The term was coined by colleagues.) Remember this, every connection point should have value. Eliminating loneliness creates a sense of social connection, or benefits.

Every social product has one or more connection points.

Now let’s explore the social products on the market and try to figure out where they connect.

The towering trees of the social forest

In this forest, wechat is a towering tree, absorbing all the sunlight and rain, and the living space of other plants is severely compressed.

Wechat wants to connect everything, but the first thing it does is connect people to people. Based on this, the connection of payment scenarios such as catering, shopping and travel can be carried out.

Ali doesn’t want to connect everything? Alipay’s efforts to join the social scene have yielded little, because an important point is that the connection between people can be extended to the connection between people and tools, but it is difficult to reverse the connection between people and tools.

So where does wechat connect?

When we meet for the first time, we will not leave each other’s phone numbers like before, but scan business cards and wechat. Wechat, as an IM tool, has replaced the phone calls and text messages that previously connected people in more scenarios. Similarly, when the social relationship between two people develops further, users will naturally migrate from other social products to wechat.

Wechat itself evolved as a connection point during the short time window in which users migrated from PC to mobile. Wechat can not only eliminate part of the feeling of loneliness and create a sense of social connection, but also bring certain benefits.

As the passport of the Internet era, wechat is firmly locked in the social contact of acquaintances. Wechat has become a necessary way for us to communicate, but it is not a good solution for finding and making friends with strangers.

Stranger social deadlock, what is it that we are missing?

“The city is the forest, every man is a hunter, every woman is a trap.”

As MENTIONED earlier, wechat as an IM tool can only partially eliminate loneliness. Therefore, even if the living space is “narrow”, thanks to the grace of nature, all kinds of social products are like tenacious strangler plants, hoping that one day they can wrap and strangle the tree that blocks the sun, and then occupy the upper layer of the forest.

Tinder, Tantan, friend impression, Same, Hug… In order to solve the loneliness that is hard to hide and nowhere to put, and to bring more benefits to people, whether visible or invisible, the plants in the forest compete to exude their own unique breath. Vow to grow a flower of Puja Remonda in this lonely place.

But is reality really a fairy tale? Fairy by Tate. You believe is a fairy tale, don’t believe is a lie.

When it comes to what we all think of when it comes to strangers’ socializing, Oriental posed a small question on wechat moments on a whim. The enthusiasm was beyond my imagination and I received more than 10 responses in a short time.

In addition to the circle of friends, Dongfang also did a small survey around him. When it comes to strangers’ social networking, what will come to your mind immediately? To my surprise, most of them turned their lips up slightly and smiled at me. It’s telling me, you know!

Overall, the number one keyword that almost always comes to men’s mind is dating, and the pain point is not dating. Women may be reserved and the key word I get back to is trust, but we don’t date!

All kinds of stranger social products are beginning to be known as YP artifacts. Note that it is prefixed by. Except momo took the opportunity to put the hat on itself in a promotional video.

Tantan said, we don’t advocate dating. But how many of those who do not have the purpose of engagement? Tantan or every day to brush, what if the appointment?

Momo now says life is more possible. But how many people have condensed the meaning of “more likely” into a single word — about.

Did you notice a terrible thing?

About, the concept has been amplified to the entire stranger social product!

What’s the problem? Apart from the product design and the product concept they want to convey, the connection point that users focus on is the “contract”. The connection points that users care about within the product do not shift at the whim of the product manager. Users voluntarily choose “covenant” as the connection point, once this connection point disappears, users will quickly lose. Unless new join points can be generated to replace or override existing join points. It’s hard to judge whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

But is this normal? A friend answered the question.

“Dating is just under the cloak of the Internet, some not so beautiful facts (just like the goddess after beauty) are packaged to stimulate those who cannot seek, and this desire dissatisfaction, stimulate the spread of those minority events, but also let the so-called” public “be deceived. The background is people’s pursuit of stimulation under the fickleness of The Times — precisely from the emptiness of the spiritual world and the lack of faith. In fact, the demand for social contact is because people are more and more lonely, read the public account, the more articles, the more life of others, the more far away from their own. As far as I am concerned, the happiest years are those when I am working with a group of friends towards a common goal. Wasn’t there a need to socialize back then? That sense of belonging, security, inner fulfillment and time are essential needs. And today’s inequality, which is called over-purposeful and over-demand-oriented, is socially dysfunctional, unhealthy, unsustainable, does not provide a sense of security, belonging, loving and being loved, and means that needs are not actually being met.”

I quite agree with my friend. On the one hand, users using contracts as connection points is socially unsustainable, even unhealthy and deformed. On the other hand, my dear friend’s loneliness problem remains unresolved. What he wants most is the sense of belonging, security, fulfillment and happiness brought by working together with a group of friends for a common goal.

Friends’ loneliness stems from the lack of real social contact. The sense of belonging, fulfillment and happiness is the sense of social connection brought to him by real social interaction.

Therefore, the establishment of real and effective social interaction is the problem that social products should solve! It’s not the quantity that determines whether you’re lonely, it’s the quality of your social life.

So are there products on the market that create real, effective social interaction? The East can answer you positively, yes. But… Maybe the form of existence is a little different from what you think. Because they are like the transparent dew in the morning, attached to every plant, wechat group, QQ group, Douban group, Momo group…… They are also like faint, glowing stars hidden in the universe, too small to attract your attention when you look up at the sky, and you would not know that the people on the planets are “alone” and free. Of course, there are plants that grow as independent, the east has seen its future strong vitality, and no matter it is abroad or home, had similar products. They may be neglected beasts.

Finally, how do you build a social product that works? This needs to be discussed in conjunction with social connectivity points.

At present, the East has only a preliminary idea of this problem, but it has not been fully formed. So welcome interested friends to discuss with me.

Dongdong fang is currently researching social products. Welcome discussion, no quarrel.