In December of last year, when I was writing the 2016 annual interview, I had interviewed Cai Shunyi (Leon), who was responsible for the product of the micro whale VR mobile app. At the time, the topic of our exchange was: How does a mobile APP product develop rapidly within six months? Iterate to meet the content distribution requirements of the VR platform.
Last weekend, Little Whale VR just launched a VR live broadcast for the Super League football game. In the face of such heavyweight Super IP content, the live broadcast will continue for half a year. What kind of support will the micro-whale VR do on the mobile APP? What changes and improvements have taken place in the VR mobile app in the past six months? With these questions, I once again interviewed Leon.
Inside: Pay attention to sports and variety VR live, plan to create paid content
Our communication starts with the content first, which is what I call "internal". Leon told me that the development direction of this year's micro whale VR is to focus on VR live broadcasting, which is centered on sports and variety. In particular, the introduction of heavyweight IP such as Super League and China’s new song is the whale VR platform. The biggest difference in other platforms. “Our technology and solutions in the live broadcast field can form a very good closed-loop system with the support provided by our platform. This advantage is not available in other platforms currently. We will continue to consolidate this advantage and add micro Whales are some of the exclusive resources on the content side, and we can make VR live broadcasting this year very well. From the product's point of view, in order to better support live content, we will mainly use force from two directions."
The first direction is to increase the interactivity of the live broadcast. Interactivity can effectively increase the stickiness of user participation. Now it is very popular that “barrage is more interesting than video, and reviews are more exciting than newsâ€. In fact, this is the truth. At present, the micro whale VR team has implemented barrage and an egg in the VR live broadcast. At the same time, it supports the user's voice launch screen, which solves the problem of inconvenient text input on mobile VR. In the future, the team will also increase the reward function in the VR broadcast so that viewers and fans can support their favorite team or star. All these changes are to increase the interaction and enhance the user's sense of participation.
The second direction is to try to achieve user payment in some high quality content. Content payment is a very common practice in recent years. Currently, it has been widely used in the audio and video field. Leon said that the team has plans to start paying for some premium sports or variety of VR live broadcasts to cultivate user's pay habits and help the team achieve Provide better service to users.
Take the VR live broadcast of the Super League event as an example. Leon told me: "The VR live broadcast of our Super League has just been launched and is still in the promotion period, so the live content is 'limited free'. As the season advances, we will add new features based on the product. In order to adjust our fee-charging strategy, we will charge certain competitions or package and sell them for the whole season after the time limit is waived. Of course, the premise of fees must be that we have done a very full live broadcast experience and it is worth the user to pay. Then we will open the payment, and on the other hand, we will play a small amount of money. In our opinion, whether the user is watching a live broadcast or a variety show, as long as the atmosphere is properly constructed and the user can bring good emotional relief, the user may have The team or celebrity that they love and support generates rewards, and we will support this behavior in later products."
I personally agree with Leon's point of view. First of all, interactivity has become an indispensable part of video content (whether live or recorded). Users prefer not only to watch live broadcasts, but to participate in them, becoming part of the entire event or performance, and VR’s Immersive and live feeling just to meet the needs of users. Secondly, content charging is a necessary means to promote service promotion. Only if content is realized and content services can truly form a closed loop for healthy development, the function of supporting content charging is a problem that all subsequent VR content platforms need to solve urgently.
Outside: A more concise UI and a smoother experience
After talking about the content, here we talk about the so-called "outside" part - GUI and features. At present, the latest version of the mobile app for the whale VR on Android is 2.9, while the latest version for iOS is 2.7. In terms of the GUI, the new version has changed greatly from the previous version, making it easier for users to use. Leon explained that in the previous version, the team did not highlight its own platform nature, but mainly sought visual impact because the user did not know much about VR content at the time. With the enrichment of content and the construction of its own platform, the team continued to sign contracts with more content partners and introduced a large amount of PGC content. Under the condition that the content of the platform has gradually increased, the platform has gradually emerged.
"In an inappropriate analogy, based on the characteristics of the platform, we will tend to be similar to the WeChat design in the GUI. WeChat to adapt to more levels of users, for the GUI design will tend to be popular, and reduce some features Part of our thinking is actually the same, when we position ourselves on the platform, we hope that our GUI will be acceptable to everyone, not the niche group feel cool, but most users do not accept, we have to avoid this Situation."
Specifically, in the current new version of APP, the tab bar at the bottom of the page has changed, including the middle VR mode button, and now the main Tab column includes five. The first tab "home page" is the main content recommendation page, which mainly carries all the recorded content. The second column "VR live broadcast" shows all the live broadcast content. The user can make an appointment to watch the content to be broadcast and can watch the ongoing VR. Live broadcast, there are also live video clips on demand. The separate use of the live broadcast section as a Tab bar also reflects the importance of the micro whale VR for live streaming.
What I particularly notice is the brand new third column "Focus". Leon told me that in the past, user acquisition of content was mainly recommended by the microwhale VR operations team, and now users can pay attention to certain content partners on the platform (such as happy entertainment), and then these publishers will update the content. It is presented to the user through the user's watch list, similar to the functionality of the subscription. "After the number of content partners signed with our platform has reached a certain level, it will naturally form a decentralized situation. In the past, we used a broadcast method to recommend to users what we thought was good, and now we are talking on the platform. With more and more roles, users can not only get content through our recommendations, but also can focus on specific content according to their own preferences. We also hope to give users more choices."
In addition to a number of changes in the presentation of content, the new version also offers users multiple options for content playback. Now the user selects any piece of video and realizes automatic play on the details page. A small window at the top of the page plays the video. Some information of the video is displayed at the bottom of the page. At this time, the user can also select full-screen mode or VR mode for viewing. Leon said that the team understands the needs of many users during the product iteration process. At present, users are relatively unfamiliar with VR content. Therefore, the team hopes that users can enter the details page and they can learn that VR video can go 360 degrees with the mobile gyroscope at the first time. With new experiences such as rotation, if users want a deeper experience, they can choose to watch in full screen or VR mode. The richness of the viewing mode is also a means to enhance the user experience.
Change: Continuous iteration is the king
After talking about "inside" and "outside", our topic will eventually fall on "change", that is, product iteration. I asked Leon what he was most impressed with on product iterations in the past six months. He told me that he was watching the Faye Wong concert at the end of last year. "At that time, we were the first player to broadcast such broadcast-level VR broadcasts in China. At the same time, we tried to charge users. The challenge was very large. We built a payment system in less than a month. At the same time, we also achieved a better live streaming effect, and the team paid a lot of effort. After we proved that we have two very important behaviors, such as making a large-scale VR live broadcast and user payment, we have decided to focus on this year. Tilting the direction of live broadcasting, with the evidence of Faye Wong's live concert, we are more confident that we can continue to deepen our attempts to pay for users during the Super League event."
For the upcoming Super League event live broadcast, Leon said that the project team spent six months to prepare and test, repeatedly testing the VR live rendering effect. “Before, Faye Wong concert was conducted in a relatively closed space at a time. While the Super League live broadcast involves different venues and weather conditions, we need to change the characteristics of different venues in shooting equipment, subtitle special effects, etc., I believe With the deepening of the Super League event, we will certainly be able to do every game better than the previous one. We will also come up with more tricks to enrich the audience experience."
In addition to the product itself, the Micro whale VR also has some advantages in basic technology direction, such as the octahedron pyramid projection algorithm that can improve the network data transmission. Leon told me that the algorithm had not been fully applied to all the content of the platform before, and the team is currently fully applying the algorithm. "In the future, all of our content, whether it be third parties or our own content, whether it is high-definition or ultra-clear video, will use the octahedron algorithm, so that we can ensure that every video is accessed with the best efficiency. The octahedron algorithm will also be used for all of our live broadcasts, because streaming is streamed in real time, and the octahedron algorithm can increase the efficiency of network transmission by 60-70%, so the value of the user experience in live streaming is even greater."
In the exchange with Leon, I heard the most vocabulary is "change", I am in the VR industry, deeply experienced that the VR industry changes in the past year is really fast. In 2017, I rarely played dizzying VR games, and the overall level of VR video has improved a lot compared to last year. In this fast-changing era, constant updates and iterations are the only kings. Finally, I would like to congratulate Little Whale VR on the smooth running of the Super League event. I also hope that the micro whale VR's attempt to pay for content can achieve certain results because it is of great significance not only to the micro whale VR but also to the entire VR industry. The realization of the content will have extremely high reference value.
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