Mentor: Kenny, TON Foundation
Edited by BeWater
Preface: On September 21, the second Growth Hacker Camp co-organized by BeWater and PANews came to a successful conclusion in Singapore. During this event, mentors from top projects and VCs in the Web3 field discussed core topics such as personal branding, growth strategy, community building, user retention and conversion, and brought valuable insights and inspiration to the audience.
This growth training camp has been well received. BeWater has compiled the content shared by the instructors into articles and set up a series of "Growth" topics for readers! The first article in this series is "TG Ecosystem Introduction and Gameplay Discussion" by Kenny from the TON Foundation. The following is a summary of Kenny's speech:
1. Basic introduction of TG ecology
TG: The third largest overseas social platform and regional market distribution
TG is the social platform with the fastest absolute growth rate in the world in the future. Its MAU has recently exceeded 950 million, making it the "WeChat" in the CIS region with a population of 240 million. Now it is a billion-level APP, and the target in the next three years is to reach 1.5 billion, which is an absolute growth rate of 50%. It is hard to imagine that WeChat and Douyin will have a growth rate of 50%. Compared with the top 2 WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger: TG is more flexible in openness, more complete in functional infrastructure, and more tightly closed in ecological loop. It can be benchmarked as the platform closest to WeChat ecology overseas.
In addition to developed countries, TG is the "WeChat" of the CIS region with a population of 240 million. Other key markets include populous emerging markets in the third world such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Iran. Telegram has nearly 1 billion users. In fact, the proportion of Crypto users is not that high. In many countries, it is a national IM software rather than a marginal or underground communication software.
Functional construction of TG ecology
Channel (public account), Story (friend circle), etc. have become important infrastructure and growth means for TG ecosystem developers.
A certain one should be the most well-known Chinese project on TON. The early creative short video played a good role in user stickiness and community atmosphere. From more than 100,000 users in March to hundreds of thousands of views of a "magic" circle of friends every day. The live broadcast function is similar to the WeChat group live broadcast, and the event-related projects are being tried and developed. In addition, the founder Durov is the god of the TG world, and his public account channel is of great reference significance to TG ecological entrepreneurs. The wallet function will focus on promoting the decentralized Ton Space in the future. The TG applet ecosystem has developed rapidly, and the types of WeChat applet have basically been fully covered, and new categories that WeChat cannot achieve have emerged. Recently popular applet such as TADA taxi, e-commerce, ticket purchase, short drama, etc.
The TG advertising system has not yet seen an industrialized way to gain volume, so TG has also seen a private advertising system to solve the data layer problem. The TG advertising system is divided into official and private advertising systems. Currently, the TG App Center only has the editor's manual selection and what's new function. In addition, Appbar has personalized recommendations. Currently, the official advertising system only supports the insertion of public accounts in the form of pictures and texts. The delivery effect cannot be accurately delivered without the official collection of user information. This is related to the product concept of the founder of TG, who disagrees with Facebook's behavior of delivering advertisements through mobile phone user information. Therefore, TG has also seen a private advertising system, which is solving the data layer problem through various forms such as on-chain data and group performance.
2. Discussion on Traffic Growth on TG
TG is a huge traffic pool for small games going global
TG is a huge traffic depression for mini games going overseas. In the future, the penetration rate and users may show a Davis double-click. The form of TG mini games is constantly evolving. People think that mini games are very popular now, and the traffic cost is also very expensive. I listed this chart for the development prospects of mini games. In terms of penetration rate, it may be difficult to reach WeChat’s 45%, but I think it can exceed Facebook’s 12%.
The problem with Facebook is the lack of an active gaming ecosystem and closed business loop. Compared with the current penetration rate of TG mini-games (of course my definition of mini-games does not include the most primitive pure tap type), we can predict that the penetration rate of TG mini-games can at least double.
On the user growth side, the platform will have an absolute growth rate of 50% in the future. The penetration rate of mini-games plus the driving force of user growth is equivalent to a Davis double-click. The second point is that the form of mini-games is still evolving, and the current form of TG mini-games is still relatively mild. If you look at the development history of mini-games in WeChat, there are many forms of games that are worth looking forward to, and everyone should still have this confidence. The third point is that TG will continue to iterate its products. The speed of official products is still relatively slow compared to domestic commercial software, which leads to the release of new dividends in each iteration.
How does TG project go to Market?
Project developers on TG must first find out where their users are, figure out which regional market you want to expand into, and whose money you want to make. Positioning can be confirmed from two dimensions: geographical location and Web2/Web3. In the coordinate system of the figure below, the horizontal axis is the region, and the relevant markets listed have hundreds of millions of TG users. A big difference here between TG and WeChat is that WeChat is a unified big market with the same culture and system, while TG’s market is cross-regional. There are significant differences in population and culture between regions, and different regions have different resources and play methods. The vertical axis is the user portrait, that is, Web2 or Web3 users. Currently, in many projects, more than 90% are off-chain users without wallets. They come to play not for airdrops. For a typical portrait, you can refer to WeChat. Parents and elders usually need to use WeChat. As a communication tool, I occasionally play a dozen casual games to earn money, but it is not addictive. This user circle has strong spending power and high user stickiness.
Therefore, when making small games on TG, in addition to the business model of issuing assets, you can realize income by selecting the right market and user groups. For example, some projects have already run through the pure Web2 IAP (In-apps purchase) path, based on the consumption capacity, usage time, and usage habits of the WeChat Time Machine version. However, due to the lack of IAA, the more common model is the mixed realization model of IAP + heavy asset issuance. The customer acquisition path of TG is different from that of traditional TikTok. It cannot be achieved by spending money to buy placements, so it relies heavily on the social fission of the core circle of seed users. This positioning should be relatively clear.
CIS Market
The entire TG ecosystem is based in the CIS region. The market "high ground" of the Russian-speaking region is not only reflected in the number of users, but also in the quality of users, the length of time users use the platform, and the commitment of users. This market is the most worthwhile. Notcoin, Dogs, Hamster and other star TG projects come from the Russian-speaking region, and Catizen has done a good job of integrating into the Russian market. Other regions such as India have the highest MAU, but the user value and penetration rate are not high. In addition, some markets such as Iran are worth paying attention to.
TG's off-site traffic logic: TG has a lot of traffic coming from outside the site, especially the high-traffic platforms in the Russian-speaking area are worth exploring, for example, Hamster found an agency on Tik Tok and YouTube.
Takeaways from Growth:
Compared with the traditional game industry: TG has low development costs, low expectations, but high ROI. There is currently no mature and large-scale customer acquisition method. I hope that some advertising alliances can solve this problem.
There is currently no mature growth path for scale and industrialization. We need to think by elimination. In 2022, a very important wave of mini-games was due to the integration of WeChat and Douyin. 60% of mini-games came from Douyin, and there is also an internal advertising system. It is difficult for TG officials to propose an industrialized way to gain volume due to the Web3 product concept and the founder's decentralized concept. Therefore, we need to think by elimination, and other methods need to be tried and improved continuously.
Products do not require the best, only the most suitable and the best match. Many projects feel that the current product quality is average and relatively rough compared to WeChat, but I think it depends on how you define it, what is "best". Is it a 3A masterpiece? I think there is only the most suitable or the best match, that is, matching the current user's usage habits, monetization methods, and traffic acquisition methodology. Only in this way can you say ok this product is a good product, rather than saying ok you think these game products are also like that, the UI is also simple, the interaction is also simple, and matching is still the most important.
Treat users as traffic ➡ Leverage users and grow together. The fourth point I believe is that we still need to change our perception. Users are not traffic, you still need to leverage them. Many people have already reached a consensus in this regard, treating users as a node and seeing how users can help you grow together. But after you have this cognition or this idea, you still need to make more attempts and actions.
The core of the new hybrid monetization that is gradually becoming clear is around the value feedback link. WeChat applets and mini-games are hybrid monetization of IAA + IAP. However, IAA is more difficult to implement on TG. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that many domestic project parties have adopted the model of IAP + heavy asset issuance monetization. But now some people will ask, users come just for airdrops, as if this user is for wool anyway, or they all have their own agenda. But I personally think that the core is still around your value feedback, what can you bring to users? When you are doing growth and want to monetize, you should think about what value feedback you can bring to users. Maybe airdrops are a kind of feedback, you give him something in the game, for example, you give him some unlocked props, etc. You need to stand from the user's perspective, even if you give him entertainment value. The core is still around what kind of value feedback you can bring to users.
Three-tier theory of social communication. At TG, we believe that there are three tiers of social communication:
The first level is that you need to have a social function on your product. Many products don’t have this function yet, but whether you are sitting in the tunnel or standing anywhere else, I think this function is the first thing you need.
The second is how you design the value chain. Returning to the perspective of value feedback, it is how to leverage the user to help you give feedback, which can also be combined with the fourth point. For example, some small games have copied Pinduoduo's "Kan Yi Dao". In fact, many domestic operations are now being copied.
The third thing that is hard to come by is cultural attributes. You may want to look at how to make this kind of icon, or how to enter different markets. For example, if you are working on Russian, for example, I think you need to do some research on the psychology of this part of users, including the icon there.
Entering Q4, we plan to tour offline communities around the world to share more detailed information about traffic growth for TON developers. We will also invite several outstanding project owners at different stages of development to share practical experience. Everyone is welcome to participate. Thank you.
