In the context of the 2022 U.S. social market, can you recall any noteworthy products? Locket Widget, BeReal, NGL, Gas... Some of them gained popularity through a combination of "desktop widgets and photo sharing," while others relied on anonymous interactions to hear their friends' true thoughts or "creative compliments."

If we were to consider what these diverse lightweight products have in common, I believe they all point to a shared domain - social interaction among acquaintances, or perhaps even a closer circle, such as "close friend social networks." The trend of close friend social networks that emerged in 2022 even influenced the decisions of major companies, such as ByteDance's TikTok Now and Momo's "TieTie."

In 2023, people's desire to share is no longer limited to a single medium like photos. For example, in our previous observations, we saw many users hoping that BeReal would introduce a video format for sharing content. TikTok Now also experimented with video formats and used the power of TikTok to expand its presence beyond the U.S. market into more regions such as Southeast Asia and Europe.

Now, using "video" as a medium, and in conjunction with the trend of Vlog recording that began a few years ago, a company called "OverLap Studio" has positioned its lightweight Vlog app "Camcord - Vlog Your Life" on the Top 50 social charts in the United States, designed for sharing among friends.

The rising Vlog trend, I want both friends and strangers

Speaking of Vlog, its full name is Video Blog, which literally means "a blog recorded in video format." It emerged in 2012 on overseas streaming platforms like YouTube and was later introduced to China by international students after many years. For a time, videos on various major short and long video platforms were labeled with the "Vlog" tag, and everyone, from celebrity bloggers to individual users, fell in love with this way of recording through videos.

How popular is Vlog? Overseas, early adopter Casey Neistat became the first North American Vlog influencer. In China, cellist Nana Ouyang became the girl-next-door in the hearts of countless young girls through her lifestyle Vlog. Vlog even appeared as a term in the college entrance exam question I took back then.

Of course, let's get back to the overseas market. Until today, there is still a plethora of Vlog content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. With the growing popularity of mobile recording devices, anyone can now easily document their experiences anytime, anywhere. Compared to text and photos, video format provides a more genuine and vivid way to capture what the creator sees and hears, sharing it with viewers. This allows people, even those oceans apart, to truly empathize and integrate niche cultures into the daily lives of overseas users.

Vlog itself is a format that's well-suited for sharing with friends. Compared to the globally popular "short videos" that users are accustomed to these days, Vlogs can be longer, typically ranging from 4 to 10 minutes. The documentary nature of Vlogs also adds a stronger sense of ceremony.

Choosing Vlogs as the sharing format rather than simple short videos was the first successful step for Camcord. On top of this, Camcord's overall functionality isn't overly complex, but it strives to be user-friendly.

Firstly, Camcord lowers the barrier to entry for creating Vlogs. In Camcord's recording interface, users can easily record short video clips and store them on the platform – this could include capturing items they're holding, scenes they encounter, or the people around them. Once all the clips are recorded, Camcord provides a straightforward "editing" feature to seamlessly merge multiple video clips into a single Vlog, allowing all users to experience this content.

In an era where video content production can be overwhelming, these pieced-together fragments may not seem sufficient to create a polished Vlog. However, their advantage lies in enabling beginners without video editing skills to produce content.

Secondly, Camcord caters to both the needs of "friends" and interactions with "strangers" by optimizing the way videos are interacted with. You can browse your friends' videos on Camcord and also discover Vlogs created by other users under the "Global" section. Interaction on the platform is simplified, primarily consisting of conventional text comments and BeReal-style "emoji reactions."

Twice thwarted, finally "ashore" – Is TikTok's "wealth and prosperity" hard to sustain?

From Overlap Studio's products in the app store, you can see that this company has long joined the ranks of "innovative social." The founder of this startup, Dennis Gecaj, once shared information on LinkedIn about Camcord surpassing 500,000 users.

Before creating Camcord, Overlap Studio had already launched two social products: Zebra, which allowed users to attach audio messages to photos, and Float, which offered a "floating message" gameplay. These products featured lightweight yet innovative social interactions. However, it seems that users voted with their feet, and these products didn't quite meet their satisfaction. Time and market feedback indicated that Camcord was the one that ultimately stood out from the crowd.

Looking at the rise in Camcord's ranking and the corresponding promotional actions by the official team, it's clear that the familiar old friend, TikTok, remains the best platform for achieving virality in lightweight social apps. According to data.ai, Camcord's ranking started to show a noticeable upward trend from September 9th, and it made significant efforts to climb to the Top 100, and even the Top 50, in the U.S. social category ranking between September 18th and September 20th.

Searching for information related to Camcord on various platforms, it's evident that Camcord's rise can be attributed to the help of its old friend, TikTok. Searching at the critical time point of September 18th, I found several bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers who had created promotional videos for Camcord. These videos were labeled as "collaborative sponsored content." With a significant number of influencers endorsing Camcord, the app experienced a brief period of increased ranking and exposure.

However, if we look at Camcord's ranking and download history over the past year, it's not the first time the app has leveraged TikTok to achieve growth KPIs. Camcord's rankings in April and July both correlated with collaborations with TikTok influencers. For example, the blogger Katie, shown in the above image, had collaborated for product promotion in April. Still, the heat generated from these promotions only lasted for a while before declining.

When it comes to the reasons behind this, it's somewhat related to Camcord itself not being fully functional before rushing into promotional activities. In the recent 90-day evaluation, Camcord has an average rating of 2.9, with most users providing feedback about issues with Vlog video editing and account registration. It seems that Camcord was not adequately prepared.

Pure Friend-to-Friend Social Networking vs. Friend + Stranger Social Networking

Additionally, although Camcord includes content for use with friends, it bears some resemblance to a product we reported on last year called LiveIn. Both allow sharing content with friends and viewing strangers' updates in the feed. Let's revisit this: LiveIn and Locket Widget have similar gameplay patterns, both using widgets and photo sharing as their main features.

However, in prior discussions with industry professionals, we found that Locket Widget has significantly higher user engagement than LiveIn. After half a year, LiveIn seems to have disappeared quietly, whereas Locket Widget has not experienced a significant decline and still maintains millions of monthly active users.

Regarding the reasons behind this data trend, we speculate it might be due to Locket Widget's "strong friend relationships" setup. Comparing the two gameplay modes and considering the growing dominance of Facebook and Instagram in the friend and acquaintance social networking space, Locket Widget has maintained a "high threshold" for close friends since its launch. For example, it requires having at least one friend to experience the functionality. If users don't add friends after joining, they can't enjoy the fun of sharing (after all, without friends, where is the sharing?). This setup allows Locket Widget to gain at least two users each time it reaches a new user.

In subsequent feature updates, Locket Widget has strengthened the functionality related to close friends and introduced the "Top 20 Closest Friends" feature to emphasize the importance of intimate friendships.

Looking back at Locket Widget, it successfully completed a $10 million Series B funding round in April 2022, with one of the lead investors being the currently prominent Open AI founder, Sam Altman. Besides his focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI) research, Altman is an investor who takes an interest in early-stage projects. In one of Altman's blog posts, he shared insights into how he evaluates project value.

In the section about assessing project value, Altman shared his perspective on distinguishing real trends from fads: "For real trends, even if there aren't many users initially, they will frequently use the product and express their liking for it. For example, even though the iPhone was ridiculed in its first couple of years due to its lack of users, most iPhone owners raved about it, a situation that didn't happen with previous smartphones."

Perhaps this is why Altman chose to invest in Locket Widget. A year later, we can see that Locket Widget's popularity is still holding up well. Over the course of a year, Locket Widget has continued to introduce various updates to its existing features, including adding audio to photos and enabling users to send weather, location, and time information to friends.

However, whether it's Locket Widget, LiveIn, or Camcord, none of them have successfully implemented their monetization plans. As monthly active users slowly decline, finding a harmonious and effective monetization strategy that aligns with user preferences remains a challenge for these types of friend-based social networking products.

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