"Several VC institutions have begun to mobilize teams to study the investment opportunities brought by this field in depth." On February 21st, a person in charge of a venture capital institution told Zhitong Finance APP that there are many top domestic investors and investment institutions.
The valuation of FanBook is still unclear. In contrast, Discord’s current valuation has reached $15 billion after rejecting Microsoft’s $12 billion acquisition in April 2021, and its founder Jason.
Citron is preparing to open the door to IPO.
In fact, such a comparison is obviously extremely unfair. Discord has about 300 million users, 1.5
Billion monthly users; Although the FanBook of the latecomers came out soon, it only took more than half a year to cultivate a number of servers with 100,000 people, and it was officially launched to the market in July 2021.
Who is Discord behind the contrast? Discord is a super social tool in the new era. It is the fastest growing, most active software on the earth in 2022. It is a free network communication software and digital distribution platform specially designed for the community. At present, about 18% of American Internet users use it every day. In some descriptions, Discord is praised as a tool of advanced production, as "the infrastructure of the Meta-universe", and even in the social and meta-universe fields.
(former FaceBook) poses a challenge.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Discord.
Is triggering a wave of follow-up. Since 2019, a variety of China versions of Discord have emerged. At present, there are six models that attract people’s attention, such as: Haoshuo, Kaiheila, Manhole Cover, MEW, Nokia NokNok Tencent and Q Yuan. Other products are still silent, and Fanbook is gradually emerging from the circle, which has great potential to stand out.
This kind of innovation is not accidental, and it is driven by multiple industry factors. The core consideration of Fanbook’s cultivator, Dream World, must be to meet the increasingly complex business needs of users from an industry perspective. Chuangmeng has been deeply involved in the game industry for more than ten years, and has gained over 100 million users, deeply understanding the long-term pain points of game manufacturers for user operations. Based on this, Chuangmeng has carried out in-depth practice and layout for Fanbook business. Previously, Chuangmeng has successfully introduced its deeply hatched marketing SaaS products to the market, winning praise from many customers including the industry’s leading manufacturers.
As a game with a user volume of 600 million people, shortly after FanBook was launched, Giant Network’s "Ball Battle" was invited to open a community on it, and then quickly tasted the sweetness.
Prior to this, Ball Fight had been running on Tik Tok for about 5 years, and accumulated more than 1 million fans. Two months after the community was set up on FanBook, more than 30,000 players poured in, starting from 0 to more than 30 CHANNEL, and it took only 20 days to reach 60,000 users from 30,000 users.
Note: FanBook community and channel map of "Ball Fight"
Zhitong Finance APP sees that in the community where the ball is fighting on FanBook, its interface consists of a server (equivalent to a community or a super group), a channel, a chat area and a member area. More than 30 CHANNELs cover different discussion topics, including official game dynamics, skill discussion, finding teammates, etc., and the corresponding theme interface has detailed real-time chat content, and the channel is still expanding.
This is similar to Discord’s product interface.
In Discord’s APP, it consists of various "Servers (communities)", and each server is divided into different ones.
"Channels", the channel is regarded as a product set that meets the needs of different scenarios in the community; Based on Channel, there are many interest or function groups in each Server. Server
Therefore, it has more community attributes, links users with common interests and provides a sense of participation for each member.
A former IBM technology magnate who used FanBook said that FanBook is a tool for B-side docking and C-side equal communication, which can enable game companies to better connect with game fans and listen to their voices anytime and anywhere; Multiple Channels can communicate and market different issues quickly, avoiding user’s interruption.
FanBook and post bar are similar in content, but there are differences. "Even if there are hundreds of thousands of users, it is still an advertising model in theory, and there will be other corporate advertisements coming in. On FanBook, the manager establishes a SERVER. The highest manager is you. Who is invited to come in? Pictures, sounds and videos can be filtered. " The above-mentioned pre-IBM technology is frank, so that the balance between the openness of the platform and the effective control of private domain content can be achieved.
Through Server and Channels, users can communicate with each other through text, pictures, links, movies and audio in the chat channel of the software. By analogy, Discord is more like a domestic one.
YY+ Forum+WeChat/QQ Group and other three different categories of products.
Zhitong Finance APP noticed that the Server on FanBook is already very rich, including games, education, investment, training, sports, NFT and other fields. This is equivalent to the early days of Discord. In contrast, the latter has distributed millions of active ones.
On the Server, these servers cover different fields such as games, investment, politics, animation and so on.
Another difference is that at present, the game Server accounts for more than 90% of FanBook, but with the increase of non-game users, Discord’s game Server has dropped to about 60%.
What they have in common is that games are the foundation of their development. Discord and FanBook started because of their founders’ years of development and accumulation in the game industry and their deep understanding of game socialization. The difference is that FanBook’s game Server mainly plays casual games; Discord heavy games account for the largest proportion, such as Night at the Fortress, SpellBreak and PUBG.
Mobile, clash royale, My World, etc. formed Server in Discord in the early days.
More importantly, through Discord and FanBook, game companies create a Server, which not only makes it a platform for face-to-face communication with gamers, but also a new publicity platform.
Zhitong Finance APP noticed that in addition to the giant network, games such as Mini World, Subway Parkour and Dream Family have been settled on FanBook.
According to the person in charge of the venture capital institution mentioned above, at present, on FanBook, Subway Parkour has more than 100,000 players, which is the Server with the largest number of fans, while Dream Family has reached more than 70,000. "These two games are represented by Dream World". From this point of view, Dream World is trying to reverse its huge fan base to FanBook. This game-based social attempt is exactly the same as Discord.
Starting from the game, starting from the game users to do community, which is similar to DISCORD, but also the difference between FANBOOK and many China versions of DISCROD.
Beyond the social framework, Discord’s vigorous "bot ecology" has become the engine for its strong rise.
Robots on Discord can be simply understood as various "plug-ins" or small programs similar to WeChat. Platform users can add various bots on the Server according to their own needs. These bots
There are many types, for example, some support Tik Tok and YouTube content, some bot is RSS information push, and some bot provides the function of assisting community operation.
According to Discord’s description, more than 3 million BOTs have been created, some of which have been millions of Server on Discord.
Widely used.
Note: BOT Ecology in Ball Battle
According to the aforementioned institutional investors, the bot on FanBook can be created by itself. Considering that the number of BOTs is only over 100 shortly after its launch, it also means that there is a large room for growth. Interestingly, FanBook is connected with WeChat and can use WeChat applets, and the number of applications of WeChat applets has exceeded 1 million, which means that FanBook can be directly connected to the applet ecosystem.
At present, the only channels for users to obtain Discord bot are Google direct search and Top.gg, which are similar to the official bot of Apple APP Store.
Store needs to be established urgently. But for FanBook, it can be shared with WeChat applet, and developers will not encounter difficulties in developing bot in FanBook.
From the perspective of user experience, Discord’s bot ecosystem is very important. A series of extended functions provided by bot make the user’s experience on Discord non-stylized, each of which
Server can set unique rules by using different bot combinations, and manage, interact with the community and play games. This is the "game sense" that distinguishes Discord from other social platforms.
The main reason.
Zhitong Finance APP saw on FanBook that there are 850 members in a Server named "Zhidao". On the Channel, there are RSS subscription robots, casual game robots, Tetris robots, check-in robots, etc., which can provide rich applications in the community and combine the ecology of games, investment, sports and reading.
Opening the FanBook interface is actually blank, and you need a directional invitation to enter. If there is no invitation, FanBook is empty, and Discord is the same mechanism.
After the golden age led by Facebook and Twitter, Discord was born in this way, mainly because it gave users the greatest autonomy. For this reason, it also gave up many common social games, with no "fans" and no algorithm recommendation. The interweaving of these factors constitutes
Discord users have a unique sense of community identity and grow rapidly.
Compared with social media, Discord is more like a "native metauniverse". It was built spontaneously by gamers, pioneers of the metauniverse, and flourished in the shallow river. From games to education, to investment communities, sports, blockchain and NFT, fanatical fans rely on Discord service to communicate and communicate.
More importantly, Discord has become the first choice for various Web3 projects, including
NFT, DAO, investor communities and start-ups in the field of encryption, etc., all of them have built their own natural infrastructure in this shiny and unformed Web3 world.
The person in charge of the above-mentioned institutions said that FanBook appeared earlier, and its products have been polished for many years. Like the flying book of bytes, it began to be used internally in 2020. "Part of the content of Chuangmeng Tiandi itself is to operate the game users. It turns out that there are hundreds of groups of QQ and WeChat, which can’t be managed, so FanBook was developed. With the maturity of development and application, the market opportunities were found, so it was launched in the second half of 2021.
At present, in addition to giant, mini-play and other game companies, more game companies are setting up Server in FanBook, which will bring in more gamers of their own. And these gamers, these young people, will become the aborigines of FanBook and the foundation of the construction of the meta-universe.
Based on the understanding of the game, FanBook is also building its own meta-cosmic infrastructure, and then extended to NFT, DAO and other fields, and its greatest advantage comes from the help of the parent company Chuangmeng Tiandi.
Dream World, founded on February 14th, 2011, is actually well-known in the mobile game industry in China. Fruit Ninja, Subway Parkour, Temple Escape and other well-known classic works are all dreamers. Enchanted gardens is one of the most popular casual games for users. By the end of the second quarter of 2021, Dream World had an average of 138 million monthly active users and an average of 5.8 million monthly paying users.
The above-mentioned IBM technology holds that if 1/10 of the 138 million active users migrate to FanBook, FanBook can establish its own advantages of expanding the city; At the same time, the deep understanding of Internet users in China and the precipitation of industry resources for more than ten years are the advantages that most China Discord versions can’t match.
Illustration: NFT, the creator released by Dream World.
In the forward-looking product layout, NFT is a very important means of IP protection and operation. In addition to the community, Dream World also tries products. During the Spring Festival in 2022, Chuangmeng Tiandi launched 9 limited-edition NFT+ physical collections with the theme of "Year of the Tiger", totaling 2,600 copies, which were sold out in a few minutes.
In fact, starting NFT on WEB3 is the first step of FanBook. In addition to making technological breakthroughs on the platform and blockchain, it will also return the property rights to the creators, and keep the traffic and user and user behavior data on the platform itself; At the same time, based on the direct connection of the user’s ownership, the creator is given a technical realization opportunity.
According to Zhitong Finance APP, FanBook is currently discussing with UNITY developer community, the largest game development community in the world. If the two forms cooperation, FanBook will get greater promotion and market influence, and more functions and BOTs will emerge.
In view of Discord’s appeal, the followers of China version are favored by the market. For example, Huang Xiwei’s "Good Talk" with Zhang Qian has already been invested by Lenovo’s Junlian Capital, while Zhichun Capital has invested in "Open Black", and more capital is pouring into this track.
The aforementioned institutional investors believe that the story of the Internet community is sexy, and there is a successful case of Discord in the front, which is easy to be valued by capital. However, some APP interfaces are very similar to Discord, and the future business model is the same. China has its own national conditions, and which follower can come out in the future, "the key is the transformation of ecology and China".