Changing logos and slogans is something that brands often do. After all, there is a need for upgrades.

Recently, the 10-year-old social platform Momo not only changed its logo, but also changed its company name to "Hello". At the same time, its corporate values ??were also updated to "kindness, honesty and enterprising".

Why the sudden name change?

The official statement is that the word Momo cannot cover the current business of Momo, Tantan, Momo Pictures Coolbot (music, variety shows), etc., and a new name is needed for coordination.

Many people in the industry believe that Momo’s name change is more to remove the “hook-up” soft porn label and reshape its brand image. So can Momo turn around?

01

The pioneer of socializing with strangers

Harvesting traffic dividends

Momo is the pioneer in the field of socializing with strangers.

In March 2011, Momo was “born” with its core selling point of socializing with strangers. At that time, China Mobile's FeiLiao had just been "born", WeChat was still in its infancy, and the market space was huge.

On Momo, users can discover nearby people based on their geographical location, present themselves through video, text, voice, and pictures, and establish real, effective, and healthy social relationships.

In modern society, more and more people tend to find intimate relationships through the Internet. The positioning of Momo seems to be more free and casual than a marriage website, more exploring and fresh than instant messaging friends, and more instant and private than Tieba Weibo.

The strong market demand has given Momo the soil for explosive growth, allowing Momo to reap a large wave of social traffic dividends.

Data shows that three months after its establishment, the number of Momo iOS users exceeded 300,000. In less than three years, it reached 70 million daily monthly active users, and successfully logged into the US stock market Nasdaq in 2014. In the same year, Dak and Momo announced that the number of users exceeded 100 million.

However, traffic sometimes does not mean profit, which is a common problem among Internet companies.

After trying membership payment, advertising conversion and other models to no avail, Momo seized the live broadcast trend in 2015 and found a differentiated live broadcast business. That is to say, the show focuses on sexy beauties, relying on beauties to attract attention and gain traffic, and making money through audience rewards. This model is also called "blood licking by the blade".

Momo, which lives in a gray area, makes real money from live broadcasts, with the live broadcast section accounting for more than 50% of the overall business.

In 2015, the first year after Momo transitioned to live broadcasting, the company’s profit was 13.7 million yuan. In 2019, the profit actually reached nearly 3 billion yuan (in the same year, Momo’s market value exceeded the 10 billion U.S. dollar mark). In the past five fiscal years, the annual growth rate has reached 300%.

Momo, who was in its prime, also killed other competitors on the track and finally acquired Tantan.

02

Being labeled as a "hookup"

Image collapsed and in a dilemma

In terms of harvesting traffic and realizing profits At the same time, the label of "Hookup Magic" has been attached to Momo for a long time.

It is more appropriate to describe Momo with a mixture of praise and blame.

"When looking for a lady, add the letters in the upper left corner", "When looking for a lady, add the pinyin in the upper left corner", "When you are looking for a lady, add the pinyin in the upper left corner", "When you are looking for a brother nearby, add WeChat to let you feel the pleasure of heaven"... these are all still existing in some Momo live broadcasts. text on space background.

These negative labels such as soft porn and hook-ups should not be Momo’s original intention, but there are some roads that are out of control as you walk.

That’s not all.

Momo has also frequently been involved in sexual assault criminal cases.

From 2015 to 2020, Momo was in a negative battle with pornography almost every year. In the first half of 2020 alone, Momo was exposed to be related to 12 sexual assault cases, including Several cases involved young girls under the age of 14.

"Gray area" and "soft pornography" have caused the collapse of Momo's brand image and the rapid loss of users.

Female users in particular fled: Momo’s user ratio began to become imbalanced, with the ratio of men to women reaching four to one.

Negative news has caused its reputation to continue to decline, seriously affecting its customer market development. Momo's stock price has plummeted by 70% from its highest point, and now it has even fallen below the issue price.

Momo explicitly prohibits "soft pornography". In the "Momo Platform Code of Conduct" that users can see after successful registration, it is mentioned that vulgar content with distorted values ??and low aesthetics must not be spread. . There are even certain requirements for live broadcast attire.

But in fact, it is difficult to resist the temptation of harvesting traffic dividends. After all, Momo is in the hormone business. If stricter control is tightened, it may affect the user experience of making friends with strangers.

And if strict control is not tightened, it will be difficult to remove the indecent labels, which seems to be a dilemma.

In addition, Momo’s own user growth has also encountered bottlenecks. As of the end of March, the monthly active users of Momo APP were 115 million, a record high; but compared with 108 million in the first quarter of 2020, only It increased by 0.09%, and the growth rate was slow.

It can be said that Momo is in urgent need of finding a new breakthrough to drive new revenue business growth, but obviously the name "Momo" can easily give people a bad impression.

03

Renamed Hello Group

Can rebranding be reborn?

With the strengthening of supervision and the rise of short videos, social apps have significantly “cooled down” in recent years. The era of Momo has passed.

Momo’s brand image has been negatively affected by pornography, and life is getting harder and harder. The traditional live broadcast business is slowing down, and even adding "new blood" Tantan has not alleviated the dilemma.

This is also reflected in the recent financial report.

Momo’s first quarterly report for 2021 shows that the company’s revenue in the first quarter was 3.4706 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.4% compared with last year, and its net profit in the first quarter was 461.7 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease compared with last year. 15%.

Faced with the predicament, Momo didn’t think about changing.

In the past few years, we have constantly tried to replace users' inherent image of Momo by building new brands, such as the video social tools "Dianyan" and "Duidui"; the beauty social software " "Mangxi"; the geo-location dating app "Moduoduo", the beauty social app "Wowou", and the recent "Kaka".

But obviously these products are still circulating in the social scene, and Momo Social’s brand image has always been linked to the hormone business. The “hookup” label itself has been deeply ingrained in the minds of users, and it is difficult to break away from it. Come on.

Therefore, this time, Momo simply changed the name of the group.

Changing the name and attitude is a good thing, but its new image has not yet spread to the market, and there have been no changes in its business. Simply changing the name will not help Hello Group get rid of the burden of "pornographic fraud".

Furthermore, in the era of mobile Internet with rapid iteration, ten-year-old APP seems to be old. The rising Generation Z no longer favors Momo. They prefer short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou.

Obviously, Momo, which suffers from "beauty live broadcast dependence" in terms of revenue, needs to find new growth points to attract new users. If this core brand problem cannot be solved, it will be difficult for Momo to separate from Momo App and regain a new life.

Wang Li, Momo’s successor, positions himself as Momo’s “wall-breaker.” He said that what Momo is doing now may be seeking opportunities to break through new businesses, and mentioned Human-computer interaction and hardware. And in what form will we “break the wall” in the future? The industry is waiting for answers.