[Original #2] The Road to a Worldwide Success

We are likely to think that any organization would only consider opening their international business after they have conquered the domestic market, because their resource is not sufficient for multiple battles, or that their unfamiliarity with foreign markets does not allow them to take any bold action. However, it is usually a different story in the realm of social media and mobile apps. In April 2008 Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, but Facebook was still the second largest social network in the U.S. – most of Facebook’s user growth at that time has been in international markets, and MySpace remained sitting on the U.S. throne with 72 million monthly uniques.

It’s not easy to succeed in a global range. Even today many social networks are undergoing rapid growth, few have the confidence to say that they are really “king of the world”. And most of them are US-based companies that own substantial resources and years of experience in mass media. It might why a worldwide success has another meaning for those app developers in developing countries – a chance to change the landscape of social network that has loon been ruled by the U.S.   

In China, the battle in social networking is also severe, with over a hundred apps come out every month on iOS and Android, and hundreds of apps fall at the same time. Luckily, some apps made their way to foreign markets.

Musical.ly is a video social network app that allows users to create and share short, music-based videos. It is probably the first Chinese (which is headquartered in Shanghai) app that gains much popularity in countries including US, Canada, UK, and Japan. What is interesting is that Musical.ly is an app designed for Western markets in the first place, so much of the investment goes to the marketing campaign in foreign markets. According to a report from Forbes, in July 2015, less than one year after its official release, Musical.ly climbed to the #1 in the U.S. iOS App Store, and most-downloaded free app in other 18 countries including Canada, UK, Germany, and Brazil. In July 2016, Musical.ly reached 90 million downloads in the U.S., and today it is still the top 10 photo and video app in iOS App Store (see the graph below). 

Musical.ly, download ranks in the past 90 days

Source: appannie.com

We might have a close investigation on why Musical.ly could success in foreign markets. Firstly, its user-friendly interface and cool visual effect presets allow users to create fascinating 15-second  music video without expertise on video editing or any other technological know-how. You just need to pick up several clips to match together, and choose the filter, the transition and the background music you want, and wait for your visually and auditorily intriguing video receiving thousands of ♥ in a day. Secondly, the development team of Musical.ly knows how to do business and social marketing in a Western context. For many, Musical.ly is not just a video editing tool, but also a community where everyone shares video, gain fame, and create the culture. The community would trend popular video in past few days on its main page, which is probably the first thing any user would see after login to the app. Several campaigns have been launched inside the community, including the one with hashtag #dontjudgechallenge that attract millions of teenagers around the world. With the help of the community, many active users with high popularity gained great traction and huge following not only within the community but also outside of it as well, such as Baby Ariel who now has over 19 million followers on Musical.ly and has drawn much attention from some major media. 

An example video of #dontjudgechallenge

Actually, not all Chinese apps had a good time in foreign markets. Meitu is a China-based selfie app with photo-editing and sharing functions. It has gained a huge success in China and has managed to raise considerable attention in some social networks including Facebook and Twitter since last year. However, it did not trigger a larger earthquake on social media until it was accused of being racist, because of one of its functions that allow people to give themselves a “virtual facelift”, changing their skin color to white (see the picture below).

Another controversy is about privacy. Some security experts recently pointed out that Meitu requires way more data from user’s phones than is necessary for a simple photo app and contains some allegedly sketchy code. Then there comes a more terrible rumor that those data would send back to Meitu's servers in China for some nasty use. No matter what the truth is, the controversy and rumors gave Meitu a severe strike, and it seems Meitu's worldwide success is still up in the air.