Major Product Upgrades, New Organizational Structure, and a Refined Business Model
BEIJING, Aug. 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Meitu Inc., a leading photo / video editing and sharing company, announced the company's "beauty and social media" strategic pathways for its second decade. As Meitu embarks on the next 10 years, it is poised to enter the social media space, going beyond the beautification products that have shaped the way 1.5 billion users around the world create and share their beauty.
Three Evolutionary Stages of the Meitu App and Biggest Upgrade in Decade
Meitu is evolving into a social platform. The evolution takes three stages: from tool, to community, to social media. In the first "tool" stage, Meitu successfully dominated photo-related internet traffic by meeting users' needs for photo editing and image enhancement. Meitu is currently in its second "community" stage, focusing on helping users create and share engaging content within the community. In the third "social media" stage, the focus will be on building relational connections among users.
As an effort to test out the market, Meitu soft launched the community feature "Social Circle" in May. Feedback has been encouraging: each day, core users spend an average of 25 minutes on Social Circle, launch the app 8 times, and view over 75 pages. Linking tools aimed at creating an interconnected community have also proven to be effective. For example, the "Collage of Hearts" feature drove a 29% increase in DAU and created dynamic interactions between users. 41% of new users posted their collage of hearts creation as their first action in the community.
Given such positive feedback, the Meitu App is poised for its biggest upgrade in a decade. Beginning September 21, Social Circle will be featured prominently in the Meitu app's homepage, right underneath the tool section. The new version will also allow users to scroll down for more community feeds.
"While image-based social media has a massive overseas market, there has been no such counterpart in China. Meitu is set to become a one-stop solution: after processing their photos, users can share right here on the Meitu app," said Wu Xinhong, CEO and Founder of Meitu.
Along with the Meitu app's social media development comes a new slogan that highlights individuality and an ideal way of life: "My Life, My Style". "My" refers to the individual: younger generations have a strong desire to project their internal self on the world and express their own personality and views. In doing so, they discover and attract people who share their interests, their community. "Life & Style" refers to an ideal way of life – users can share their own ideal way of life, while understanding that of others. The slogan is inspired by the revelation that everyone is looking for their vision of beauty and an ideal lifestyle, a need that is far from being met in today's social media landscape.
Evolving from community to social media involves three key aspects: making every user feel present, building relational connections, and facilitating interactions among users. "Meitu aims to deliver the best lifestyle community in 2018, and further explore the possibilities of social media in 2019," added Wu Xinghong.
Meipai: "Pan-Knowledge" Repositioning and New Social Features
Meipai will be repositioned to a "pan-knowledge" short video sharing platform. Differentiating itself from other "pan-entertainment" focused products, Meipai aims to add value for users by focusing on the sharing of people's talent, skills and experiences, i.e. "pan knowledge". With the new slogan, "Talent worth sharing", Meipai enables its users to share and learn new dance moves, perform magic tricks or skateboard, apply makeup, do yoga and make dessert, play the Rubik's cube, do crafts, etc. Meipai has a solid foundation for further development: Meipai's content library now includes over 300 sub-genres and more than 30,000 key opinion leaders. Meipai has also partnered with more than 50 top short video MCN organizations.
Meipai will continue to evolve under the new positioning. The homepage is currently being revamped to be more discovery-oriented, which is better suited toward pan-knowledge content: this is because pan-knowledge seekers are more self-motivated and interested in actively exploring things. Meipai will also release new features to encourage social interactions. A "homework" feature will be released in the following month. The feature will allow users to, for example, upload their own video as a comment beneath the original dance tutorial video.
"2017 has been a year of both excitement and reflection for the short video industry. We reposition Meipai under the guiding philosophy of developing in a sustainable and healthy manner," said Wu Xinghong.
Reorganize into Three Business Units, including A Dedicated Social Product Business Unit
In conjunction with the strategic direction, Meitu will reform its corporate structure toward becoming a product-driven company. Effective August 8th, Meitu will be divided into three major business units: the Social Product Business Unit, the Beauty Product Business Unit and the Smart Hardware Product Business Unit. The establishment of a dedicated social product unit will consist of both the Meitu and Meipai brands.
Each business unit is encouraged to innovate independently in every aspect of the business to maximize the value of capital and human resources.
Refine the Relationship between Infrastructure and Commercial Products
Meitu's new strategic direction also calls for refining the relationship between infrastructure and commercial products.
Photo editing has been Meitu's key entry point to the online world and essential to Meitu's success in the past decade. It has been instrumental in helping the company grow its user base and will drive traffic to the social platform in the future. In addition, social media products will increase Meitu's stickiness and traffic value. They will generate data on additional dimensions that helps Meitu further understand user behavior. This serves as Meitu's infrastructure.
The advertising platform serves as a traffic distribution mechanism, a business product that matches users with advertisements. The outer layer is Meitu's "beauty ecosystem" of commercial products, including smart hardware, an e-commerce platform, and value-added services, with more to come. "Beauty and social media are our strategic focus for Meitu's second decade and a long-term goal. There are bound to be bumps on the road ahead, with some things going smoother than others, but that will not shake our conviction," said Wu Xinhong.
About Meitu
Established in October 2008, Meitu is a leading AI-driven photo/video editing and sharing company headquartered in China. With a mission to inspire more people to express their beauty, the company has developed a rich portfolio of software and smart hardware products designed based on the concept of beauty, including Meitu, BeautyCam, Meipai (a short-form video community app) and Meitu Smartphones. Meitu has amassed over 1.5 billion unique users worldwide, with over one third coming from outside China, including the United States, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. As of February 2018, Meitu engages 454.7 million MAUs. With the largest database of human portraits on the planet, Meitu leverages AI in the pursuit of beauty. MTlab, Meitu's research and development hub, is dedicated to AI and imaging innovations such as Computer Vision, Deep Learning, and Computer Graphics.
According to App Annie, Meitu has repeatedly ranked as one of the top eight iOS non-game app developers globally between June, 2014 and January, 2017. More information about Meitu, Inc. may be found at http://corp.meitu.com/en/
Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180808/2207131-1-a
Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180808/2207131-1-b
Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180808/2207131-1-c
