AI products quietly compete for super entrance

This article analyzes how AI products can enhance their competitiveness by optimizing user entry design, explores the intersection of technology and market, and solves the problem of how AI products can be integrated into daily work and life.

Recently, there are two small product news in the technology circle. Have you seen them?

First, WeChat input method has taken a step towards AI, and the "Ask AI" function that was previously tested on a small scale has been officially launched. In any place where you need to type, such as chatting, you only need to enter a question and press the "=" key to get the AI's answer directly.

Second, the American company Open AI has also launched the computer version of Chat GPT, which was previously tested in grayscale. You can call out the window by pressing option+spacebar, throw questions and pictures to it, and get answers quickly. It is not new that the software has launched a computer version. Since I downloaded several AI applications, my way of working seems to have been completely changed. No matter whether I press the left or right button, I can call out several AIs. What can they do for me? Carving based on "basic text application".

For example: looking for summaries, answering questions, finding information, generating pictures, and even making four-dimensional maps; to be honest, I don’t use many of these functions, but they do provide many possibilities. However, what aroused my greater interest was why these AI products have strengthened the design of user entrances in the second half of the year? After careful research, I feel that I have a better understanding and foresight of AI application scenarios.

01

American scholar and business consultant Clayton Christensen put forward a point in "The Innovator's Solution".

Successful innovation requires two things:

1. Make the product simple enough for everyone to use
2. Improve usage efficiency

This statement must have made little sense when the book was first published in 2003, but it makes a big difference when you hear it again in 2024; because in the past 20 years, many Internet giants have made product promotion strategies based on this standard, and each technological update has proved the accuracy of the view. If you look through the history of the Internet over the past few decades, you will find that the book records many business strategies and specific stories, all of which tell us a truth: whoever controls the entrance can control the world.

What is a "gateway"? In a broad sense, this word, in business and technology, is like the door through which we go online to find information and solve problems. From ancient times to the present, people have always been very interested in exploring the unknown, so the pursuit of these gateways has never stopped. Whoever controls the gateway can attract more users; whoever can accurately predict the future and understand user needs may become the owner of the gateway. In the early days of the Internet, gateways were divided into three categories: information, social networking, and e-commerce.

In the PC era, Google and Baidu were the main portals for searching for information online. People searched for portal websites through browsers and used search engines to index and display information, and eventually search engines monopolized the market. The relevant situation is still vivid in our minds. After the mobile Internet, people began to use mobile phones. Apple redefined the super portal with "iOS+App Store". Facebook or WeChat became the main places for sharing information and socializing. People no longer used only one search engine to find things. Instead, there were segmented portals such as WeChat, Taobao, and JD.com.

Although large companies use platform-based methods to control super portals, the established market structure has not changed much. Therefore, the competition is like the battle between heroes in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". All parties can only change various strategies to gain more market share. When the market share is segmented to a certain extent, many homogeneous apps appear and products become a disaster, just like when the e-commerce industry went from PC to APP, you could download 50 different apps at the same time between 2015 and 2021. In this case, the focus of competition has gradually shifted from controlling the portal to the product itself, and then from product quality to service, and finally evolved into a "user-centric" competition strategy.

Do you know how many entrances there are and what competitive strategies people adopt during the period of product technology competition?

02

In the C-end user scenario, you may have heard of the word fission.

You invite me, I invite you, share and cut, and everyone participates invisibly, and the network effect is rapidly amplified. In this way, products or activities can achieve rapid growth and diffusion at a very low cost. With the popularity and success of "fission" in the market, many companies later set up related positions, such as: Chief Technology Growth Officer, Fission Marketing Manager, User Growth Expert, etc. Therefore, their core points to one point: product diversion. Simply put, use one product to help another product increase exposure and guide users to use or understand new product features. But, do you know?

There are often two types of relationships in product forms, namely "father-son relationship" or "brother relationship". What is a father-son relationship? As the name suggests, it is a father and a son. There are many APPs on the market with a large user base, and they are thinking about how to increase the exposure of their new products; for example: adding a "silhouette" entrance to Douyin, and adding a "video number" entrance to WeChat. The core is that father and son have a "blood" relationship. What is a brother relationship?

Mature products on the market, because of the fierce market competition, although they are not in direct competition, they will help each other and win through mutual exposure. For example, JD.com members can enjoy the membership benefits of iQiyi, which is a typical mutual assistance. So, what is the purpose of this assistance? There are two points:

• Acquire new users
• Building an Ecosystem

In terms of acquiring new users, whether it is for consumers (TOC) or for businesses (TOB), every time a new product is launched, it will be promoted through various channels to attract users. Usually, some mature and user-trusted products are used to help divert traffic. Because the products have won the trust of users, using them to divert traffic can make it easier to establish an initial user base.

Not only new products do this, but even mature products have to continuously increase exposure and traffic when the market is fiercely competitive, so as to maintain competitiveness and market position. For example: guide you to download, follow, register and experience, etc. When it comes to building an ecosystem, this is not difficult to understand. Over time, the company will continue to launch new products related to the original products to form a complete corporate ecosystem. In the process of developing successful products, gaps in certain functions are often found, which will give rise to more product lines.

These product lines will become more and more sophisticated as the business deepens, and there will be more linkages between them, eventually forming a closed-loop ecosystem with sustainable development. Just like Alibaba has invested in many companies, Tencent and Toutiao have built their own "family buckets" to ensure that different products can support and link each other. Once the infrastructure is well built, a solid corporate barrier can be formed.

03‍

In addition to the investment-based strategic layout of the ecosystem, how do you design the jump entrances between products?

If a product has complex functions and requires a dedicated operating interface to handle more details, it will be used as a standalone application to adapt to more vertical market segments. This change can already be seen in the current AI field. ChatGPT has split into multiple versions such as 3.5 and 4.0; Tencent Hunyuan Big Model has also incubated specialized products such as Tencent Yuanbao and AI Questions. Another way is the In-Interface Module. This means that if a function is part of our operation, make it into a small module.

For example, when we use some software, you may notice that there is an intelligent grammar checker in the document editor, or an intelligent report analysis tool in the financial software. There are many benefits to doing this.

First, users can use these new features without leaving the software they are using or switching to other software, which greatly improves the convenience of use; secondly, this modular design also makes it easier for developers to update and maintain functions, ensuring that the software is updated as user needs change and remains technologically advanced. The bottom navigation button is also an option, especially in those super apps, especially mobile apps. Sometimes, a function is only a small part of the application and is not the main focus of the user, but it will be placed in the menu bar.

For example, in an information app, there will be a dedicated button to refresh the recommended content; or in an e-commerce app, there will be a smart shopping assistant; this design not only saves screen space, but also makes important but not frequently used functions easy to access. In addition to the above three, the one I want to mention most is: floating button.

The left mouse button calls up 3 AI tools, from search, translation summary, to PPT making. The whole process is occupied. I think it is useless and terrible. Why do I say that? On a mobile phone, if there is an AI function that you often use, then the floating button is very convenient. It allows you to quickly access certain functions without taking up too much screen space or affecting other things you are doing.

However, the problem with mobile phones is that each APP is a closed environment. Imagine that your phone is equipped with Feishu, Enterprise WeChat and DingTalk. Every time you want to use the different functions of these APPs, do you have to open each application separately? This means that each APP lives in its own world. No matter how many softwares are integrated into its ecosystem, it cannot change the status quo. You can only switch scenes in a closed environment. Therefore, the advantage of this design is that it helps the application remain independent and secure, but at the same time, it also increases the complexity of user operations, affecting efficiency and experience. However, the situation is different on computers.

If a product has universal attributes and is frequently used, a floating button can be used quickly by users, and the button can also span different products. Isn't it convenient? You can start this function immediately at any time with just a click of the mouse. Because it becomes a super portal, and the super portal is the first stop for traffic collection. Think about tools like WeChat input method and Sogou input method. Isn't it terrible? It starts to grab your attention from the first stop when you turn on your computer. Therefore, becoming the first step for users to operate after turning on their computers is very important for AI products, and even more important for platform-level AI products.

04‍

So, why do AI products care about the first step users take when turning on their computers?

First of all, no matter what product we use, all activities seem to revolve around "tasks." In other words, as long as you turn on your computer, there must be a task attribute that forces you to do something.

Secondly, because of the agent, if the ultimate goal of AI products is to develop into AGI, that is, to enable artificial intelligence to think, solve problems and learn like humans, then in the office or other working environment, we first need an agent, which should help us handle tedious, repetitive and low-value work, freeing up more time for us to engage in more creative activities. A good user portal must provide users with a seamless work experience.

Think about it, when we used to work on computers, we had to open a software first, and then find the required function. There were many steps and it was quite troublesome. Now, we can call the function by simply clicking the right button of the mouse. Isn't the whole process very efficient? In addition, the super portal can also collect more training corpus in specific fields. What is corpus? Just like animal feed, AI also needs the right corpus to train. General models are already mature in handling some basic tasks, but in specific fields, small models lack enough corpus.

There are two big problems here:

First, most companies do not have their own knowledge base, which means that it is difficult or even impossible for them to effectively use small models to solve professional problems because they lack sufficient data to support model training.

Second, it is difficult to explore problems in more detailed scenarios. It is almost impossible to expect team members to record knowledge, and most knowledge is implicit. Even if it is recorded, it is difficult to generate much added value. It lacks the necessary depth and background. Therefore, these two problems restrict the development of small models. Now, these problems can be completely solved with the portal.

For example, if someone who often does academic research simply activates AI with the right button when searching for information, wouldn’t he inadvertently provide feedback to AI? Therefore, on the one hand, the portal gradually shapes the way users ask questions and take actions, making AI functions more in line with actual needs; on the other hand, it also provides more possible space for large models to move towards agents.

In fact, the development of technology is to make our work more efficient and to make people less hard-working. There is a great demand for office scenes, and everyone wants to improve the efficiency of work and innovation. When AI technology enters a new stage, many large companies are considering how to quickly apply powerful models to actual work. Everyone is wondering what the super application of the future will look like? At this time, people will think that the ultimate solution is an AI assistant. In fact, compared with a super assistant, most ordinary people are more concerned about: How should I use this thing? The invisible place is the beginning of the competition.

Everyone has his or her own mission, and the mission drives us forward. If a product can be designed with the mission as the core, then it can truly help us have a deep interaction with technology and gradually become an indispensable part of our life and work.

In summary:

Super portal is the Excel moment of AI products. Is there any solution that goes one step further than the super right click of the mouse? However, I am looking forward to the day when I can open my phone and call out the application I want to use with one click; open my computer and complete all the work processes with one click.

Author: Wang Zhiyuan; Source public account: Wang Zhiyuan (ID: 878436)