How did “Bullet SMS”, a social software that was once ten times more popular than WeChat, collapse?

Chatbaobao, formerly known as Bullet SMS, was born with heavy investment in attracting new users and died in retention. In 7 months, Lao Luo seemed to have once again proved that the margin of Internet company entrepreneurship is the domain of BAT.

In 2018, Lao Luo entered the social field with a high profile. When Bullet SMS was first launched, it received a large amount of traffic and was booming. By the beginning of 2019, it was transformed into Chatbao, which set off a climax in the entrepreneurial field. As a result, he suddenly collapsed three months later, which caught people off guard.

There was once a saying in the market that starting a business must avoid the fields of large companies such as BAT, otherwise it will be self-destruction. When Lao Luo entered the social field, he wanted to challenge Tencent's foundation, which obviously violated this principle. So is this really the cause of death of Bullet Text?

I don’t think that is entirely true. As the new generation of Internet users born in the 2000s and 10s have gradually grown up, there has also been a gap in the growth of new users on Tencent’s WeChat and QQ platforms. The two major platforms WeChat and QQ are also trying to constantly update and trial and error to keep the platforms fresh and vital. It can be seen that entering the social field and competing with Tencent on the same stage is not without chance.

Lao Luo took advantage of Tencent’s lull in social networking and founded Bullet SMS. Lao Luo has made great achievements over a long period of time, from operating Bullet SMS to Chatbao. Bullet SMS reached one million users within 7 days of its launch, which was far shorter than the time it took WeChat to reach one million users. Even in the process of continuous iteration and trial and error of Bullet SMS, it also cooperated with Ant to launch the Alipay scan code payment function. This shows that giants such as Alibaba also have some expectations for Bullet SMS. So what is the final reason that Bullet SMS (Chatbao) cannot sustain?

We may be able to get the answer from the history of WeChat’s rise in the social field. At the beginning of its operation, WeChat never received internal support from Tencent. It relied entirely on its own natural growth and retention, and the financial support it received was very ordinary (see "Tencent Biography" for details). Tencent believes that if you cannot achieve natural growth and retention, and cannot reach a certain number of users, and just throw money blindly, it will easily go in the wrong direction. Instead, Lao Luo's Bullet SMS transformed into a chat app in early 2019 and spent money to attract new users like crazy. During the Spring Festival of 2019, a large number of welfare benefits were launched to subsidize users, which caused the product's original vitality to be burned away too quickly. The final results in attracting new users were not very satisfactory. The users who survived the bullet messaging era were also lost because they were not adaptable to product iterations. Perhaps the product was already dead the moment it transformed from Bullet SMS to chat app? For start-up companies, the five elements are short of money. Once the money is burned out and they cannot get financing, they have to accept their fate.

A big boss once said that start-up companies should choose areas that BAT has not yet touched, do it without financing or publicity, just like Meituan. If you wait for a while before standing up, the giant will find that he can't understand you. When an entrepreneurial platform can survive through natural growth, it proves its success. There are many successful examples on the market, such as "Jiji", "Kuaishou", "Douyin", etc., these are all rising stars in the Internet industry.

In addition, products in any field have a life cycle. During a period when old users of giant platforms are leaving and new user growth is sluggish, other startups have the opportunity to compete on the same stage. In a field where talent is saturated and gameplay is transparent, startups may not be weaker than giants. If you do it well, you don’t need to worry about financing. Bullet SMS may be the first to enter the BAT field, but it will never be the last. Of course, not everyone is qualified to initiate a challenge, and not everyone can withstand failure after a challenge.

Come on, let me know. Have you ever used Bullet SMS (Chatbox)?