18 days after the hit of Wonderful Duck

This article first briefly introduces the Miaoya Camera, then describes its current popularity, analyzes how long the Miaoya Camera's popularity lasts, and finally analyzes the life cycle and long-term fate of a hit product. This article is suitable for brand owners to learn how to seize the opportunity of a hit product.

“If you haven’t heard of the MIA Camera app, you’re already behind the times.”

As an AI photo-taking WeChat applet, Miaoya, which claims to "generate a unique digital avatar", has become the second product in the technology circle after ChatGPT. You only need to upload 20 photos of your face or upper body, and then pay 9.9 yuan to get photos of various styles. The effect can be said to make the hippocampus "unemployed", which makes users amazed by its effect.

Since its launch on July 17, the popularity index of MiaoYa Camera on WeChat has reached 18786610. The Baidu Index also shows that the popularity has reached 7646 three days after its launch.

Regarding the popularity of the MiaoYa Camera and the concerns it has caused, on August 3, Zhang Yueguang, product manager of the MiaoYa Camera, said in an interview with Jiemian News and other media that the MiaoYa Camera is not aimed at "replacing Hippocampus and Tianzhenlan". In his opinion, the real experience that offline photography brings to customers cannot be replaced. The MiaoYa Camera will serve more users in underdeveloped areas who have demand but find it difficult to enjoy high-quality photography services.

But there is no doubt that at a time when Chinese Internet companies are caught up in a war of models, the emergence of Miaoya Camera can be called disruptive innovation, but the birth of a hit also makes people deeply worried about its long-term development. Although Miaoya Camera became famous in the short term, this halo only lasted about two weeks before it began to decline. The WeChat Index shows that on July 31, the Miaoya Camera index dropped to 3108966, a drop of 84.5% compared to its peak. The Baidu Index for the same period was 3041, a drop of 60% compared to its peak. At the same time, the score of Miaoya Camera's mini program also dropped to 2.4 points.

From being popular to falling into obscurity, from being sought after by everyone to being abandoned by everyone, many popular products always repeat this cycle of rapid birth and rapid death. Can Miaoya Camera break this curse? In addition to paying attention to the impressive achievements of Miaoya Camera, how should we treat the life cycle and long-term fate of popular products?

1. From traffic to users, Miaoya has achieved precise harvesting

What is not well known is that the team behind MiaoYa Camera comes from Alibaba's big entertainment - Youku.

It is not difficult to find through Qichacha that the company to which the application belongs is Weixu Network Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., whose legal representative, executive director and general manager is Zhang Long, who is also the legal representative, executive director and general manager of Youku Video (Xi'an) Media Technology Co., Ltd. Weixu Network Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. has a close relationship with Alibaba. In addition to the legal representative Zhang Long being a senior executive of Youku, the company's supervisor Feng Yunle also works for Alibaba companies such as Youku, Hema, AutoNavi, DingTalk, and Fliggy.

Youku also announced that "Miaoya Camera" is an internal entrepreneurial project of Youku. According to relevant reports, the project is currently led by senior product expert Zhang Yueguang, who was previously in charge of Youku's short video and live broadcast business teams.

Although he had worked for Alibaba in his early years, Zhang Yueguang later left and joined ByteDance, where he served as the person in charge of products such as Time Camera. Therefore, it is not difficult to guess that the experience of Time Camera in his early years may have inspired Zhang Yueguang to make Miaoya Camera. This was also confirmed by Youku employees. An internal employee of Youku told Zero State LT that Miaoya Camera was indeed Zhang Yueguang's entrepreneurial project, and Zhang Yueguang also returned to his old employer in 2020 - becoming a middle-level manager of Alibaba Entertainment.

The sudden popularity of the Miaoya Camera can be said to have made Zhang Yueguang famous overnight. However, a careful analysis of the reasons behind the popularity of this product shows that, first, it found the user's high point, and second, it achieved rapid monetization. Miaoya Camera has not only become a popular application among young people, but has also impressed many middle-aged people. Judging from user feedback, Miaoya Camera has accurately grasped the human needs for "beauty" and "cheapness".

When people see their own AI photos, whether they are cute, dignified, or elegant, they can't help but share the beautiful photos. And the action of sharing will trigger a new round of fission. This is especially useful for middle-aged people whose faces already have a sense of vicissitudes. From a business model perspective, Miaoya has also grasped the pain points of monetization. The 9.9 yuan threshold is quite clever. Less than ten yuan, it is the change in many people's WeChat wallets, and both students and office workers can easily own it. Compared with the price of 399 for a photo of Hippocampus and Tianzhenlan, "it's too affordable."

Compared with free AI photo production software, Miaoya Camera also solves the embarrassment of "first-time use". You know, most users will only use AI photo generation software once. Therefore, it is particularly important to seize the first payment window. From this point of view, Miaoya Camera can realize immediate monetization while harvesting user traffic, which is stable, accurate and ruthless.

But what happens after the harvest? When the outside world was still worried about how Miaoya Camera could maintain its traffic and popularity and whether its commercialization could continue, the problems of the B side of the hit product began to emerge.

2. Miaoya B-side: Long-term user experience and privacy issues

Everything has a B-side, and the MiaoYa camera is no exception.

Although it has been sought after by a large number of users, the MiaoYa camera is not perfect and has even been criticized by higher-level regulatory authorities due to privacy and data security issues.

First of all, let's talk about the user experience. To use the Miaoya Camera, users are required to upload at least 20 frontal photos, which is actually a relatively high threshold. Many users complained, "20 photos really discourage me, and I can hardly get 5 photos together." In addition, this app often freezes. The author has heard similar complaints many times: "I also want to generate an AI photo. After finally getting 20 photos together, the system shows: There are 5454 people in front of you who are making digital avatars. It is expected to take 12 hours and 30 minutes."

Secondly, Miaoya Camera also has major loopholes in terms of privacy and data security. Miaoya Camera's user agreement states, "In addition to any other rights granted to us, you hereby grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable, free and non-exclusive license throughout the world (including virtual spaces such as the Metaverse) to use your content in any form, media or technology (whether now known or later developed)." This means that the user's portrait and privacy can be used by Miaoya indefinitely. Although Miaoya Camera has changed this content after user complaints, it has caused more attention and thinking from the outside world to this issue.

If a user uploads 20 photos, and 10 million users use it, that would be 200 million photos. Moreover, through social fission, the number of users and data of MiaoYa Camera will grow exponentially.

Although the actual number of users of Miaoya Camera is unknown at present, we can estimate it by comparing it with Lensa, a similar foreign application. Lensa is an application that uses AI technology to generate avatars of various styles at once by inputting 10 to 20 personal photos. Its highest daily download volume once exceeded 15 million. From this, we can infer that the amount of data of Miaoya Camera is comparable to that of Lensa. Next, massive data and user portrait privacy will become the primary issues that Miaoya Camera needs to pay attention to.

Again, in terms of consumer rights protection, Miaoya Camera still has some imperfections. On July 27, Miaoya Camera was criticized by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee, saying that the staff of its WeChat team tried Miaoya Camera and paid 9.9 yuan, but did not get the photos they wanted, but could not get a refund. The Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee said that it had also seen some complaints from other consumers. For example, a user deposited 6 yuan in the program but could not use it for synthesis costs, and asked for a refund, but the other party maintained an attitude of never refunding.

There is no clause related to refunds in the user service agreement. The only thing related to refunds is a line below the payment prompt that says "Once the purchase is successful, no refunds are supported."

The Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee said that it supports and encourages new technologies to generate new scenarios and create new demands, but companies should also pay attention to consumer rights in the commercialization of new technologies. Miaoya Camera's gray small print "Once the purchase is successful, no refunds are supported" on the payment page is suspected of infringing on consumers' fair trading rights. Many lawyers also said that Miaoya Camera's clause that does not support refunds is an invalid and overbearing clause.

Behind these many problems is the long-term development dilemma of the MiaoYa camera after its brief popularity.

3. AIGC’s Short-term Prosperity and Long-term Innovation

Although the emergence of the Miaoya Camera has excited many entrepreneurs in the AIGC field, does the popularity of the Miaoya Camera mean that the spring of AIGC is coming?

Perhaps it is too early to say this.

First of all, the business model of AI-generated images is not new. Synthetic photos are actually the product with the most hit applications on the Internet. In addition to the "military uniform photos" that once swept the screen, Beauty Camera, Magic Camera, Face Meng, Xiaokaxiu, ZAO, etc. were also "Internet celebrity" hits in Internet entrepreneurship. The only difference lies in the advancement of AI technology. The once crude AI face-changing technique has begun to become more like real photos taken by a camera. From this perspective, Miaoya Camera is not a major innovation in the AI ​​era, but the best application that iterates on the shoulders of its predecessor.

Although the emergence of Miaoya Camera seems to have given people a glimpse of the AIGC landing scene, in essence, Miaoya Camera is still stuck in the business logic of quickly harvesting users and traffic. It has long been an industry convention that equates traffic with money in Internet startups, but both Miaoya Camera and various AIGC applications have proved that the way to make money with past experience is failing.

To be honest, the core of the AIGC field is still technological innovation.

At present, the training of large models in each industry is not a one-day job, and the cost is high. According to the Guosheng Securities report "How much computing power does ChatGPT need", the cost of training GPT-3 is about 1.4 million US dollars. For some larger LLMs (large language models), the training cost is between 2 million and 12 million US dollars. Based on the average number of independent visitors to ChatGPT in January of 13 million, the corresponding chip demand is more than 30,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs, with an initial investment cost of about 800 million US dollars and a daily electricity bill of about 50,000 US dollars.

All the training does not mean that the product will definitely make users pay for it. In the field of AIGC, it is not the first one to make money that will have the last laugh. Only those who truly find user needs, applications that solve user problems, or companies that provide new value to the industry and achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement can truly survive the cycle.

From this perspective, is Miaoya Camera an innovator? Yes and no. Perhaps the best time to answer this question is to see how Miaoya Camera will develop in the future and whether it can continue to be popular in the next 18 days.

Author: Zhao Mengqiu WeChat public account: Zero State LT