11个人的小公司如何做到25亿用户 表情符是座创业金矿

Like any college kid, Evan Wray loved using the tiny pictograms known as emoji. But he hated that there was no emoji to express his Fighting Irish pride with fellow University of Notre Dame students. So, alongside co-founder Sean O’Brien, he built a modest business on that disconnect. TextPride, as it was called, licensed images from brands in the sports and entertainment world and sold them as sticker packs. Within a messaging app like Kik, users could buy a packet of stickers for Disney’s Frozen for $1.99, for example.

和所有大学生一样，埃文o雷喜欢使用表情符号。但让他恼火的是，没有什么表情符号能够让他向圣母大学的同学表达自己对该校橄榄球队战斗的爱尔兰人的自豪感。于是，他和肖恩o欧布莱恩一起创办了一桩小生意，以弥补这一空白。这款名为TextPride的产品从体育和娱乐世界中获得图像授权，然后将其打包成贴纸出售。比如，在Kik这样的短信应用中，用户可以花1.99美元买一包迪斯尼电影《冰雪奇缘》的贴纸。

TextPride was a fine business, but a tiny one. Meanwhile, the market for messaging apps was exploding. Facebook FB 0.61% bought WhatsApp for $19 billion; that service now has 700 million monthly active users. Tango, an app with 250 million registered users, is worth $1.5 billion. Kik has 200 million registered users. Snapchat, worth $10 billion, has 100 million users. A new study, commissioned by Kik, shows that U.S. users now spend more time on average in messaging apps than they do on social networking apps. The only problem? These messaging apps need ways to make money, and there’s no reasonable way for advertisers to wedge themselves into conversations between friends.

TextPride是一门不错的生意，就是规模太小。与此同时，短信应用市场正在爆炸式增长。Facebook公司斥资190亿美元并购了WhatsApp，这款产品的每月活跃用户现已达到7亿人。拥有2.5亿注册用户的应用Tango目前市值15亿美元。Kik拥有2亿注册用户。Snapchat价值100亿美元，拥有一亿用户。Kik赞助的一项新研究表明，美国用户现在花在短信应用上的平均时间要多于社交网络应用。不过唯一的问题是，这些短信应用需要找到赚钱的手段，目前广告主还没找到靠谱的方式插入朋友间的聊天之中。

This is a thorny issue that’s unique to messaging apps. We expect ads to live alongside content we consume. We don’t expect them to crop up in our one-on-one communications. “The last thing you want in a personal conversation is a banner ad or pop-up that interrupts that,” Wray says. “It might work with more impersonal networks, but specifically within messaging, people hate traditional ads.”

这也是短信应用独有的棘手问题。在消费内容时，我们希望广告乖乖待在一边。没人想在聊天时突然有条广告蹦出来。雷表示：“人们在聊天时最不想看到的就是打断对话的广告条或弹出式广告。可能这在非个人的网络上还管用，但在短信中，人们最恼火的就是看到传统广告。”

WhatsApp had been particularly ad-averse before its sale to Facebook. CEO Jan Koum kept a note from co-founder Brian Acton taped to his desk to remind him of the company’s core values. It read: “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!”

在出售给Facebook前，WhatsApp一直特别反对植入广告。该公司首席执行官让o库姆在自己桌上一直贴着联合创始人布莱恩o阿克顿留下的一张便条，随时提醒自己牢记公司的核心价值观：“不要广告！不要游戏！不要宣传噱头！”这样一来，短信应用只好想出别的创意。比如Tango就在用户的短信“收件箱”里插入广告。中国互联网巨头腾讯公司旗下的短信应用——微信，则通过游戏、贴纸（类似于表情符号）和移动购物等方式谋取赚钱之道。Kik则提供一种被一些人称为“聊天广告”的功能，用户通过它能和幽默网站Funny or Die及电影信息网站Moviefone这类品牌运营的聊天程序进行交谈。

So the messaging apps have gotten creative. Tango, for example, inserts ads within a user’s messaging “inbox.” WeChat, a popular Chinese app that is owned by Tencent, makes money through games, stickers (which are similar to emojis), and mobile commerce. Kik offers a feature that some are calling “chatvertising,” where users hold conversations with chat-bots powered by brands like Funny or Die and Moviefone.

上周二，Snapchat推出了一种名为Discover的服务，Vice、CNN和《人物》杂志等媒体可通过它在Snapchat发布视频内容。已经有几个频道推出广告服务，要价可不便宜。据《广告周刊》报道，Snapchat的广告标价是每天75万美元。

Snapchat on Tuesday launched Discover, a section of its app where media outlets including Vice, CNN andPeople magazine can publish video content within Snapchat. Already several of the channels feature ads, which aren’t cheap. According to Adweek, Snapchat ads cost $750,000 per day.

还是说回TextPride吧。雷和欧布莱恩发现，用户很喜欢各种品牌授权的表情符号，他们相信广告主肯定希望非常便捷地通过一家供应商来进入多种短信应用。但他们也明白，这充其量只能占到这项业务的一半份额。对运动队这类大名鼎鼎的品牌来说，用户是愿意为这些贴纸埋单的。但那些不知名的品牌就需要自己掏钱来挤进这个圈子了。

But back to TextPride. Wray and O’Brien saw the way users eagerly engaged with their branded emojis, and believed advertisers appreciated the convenience of using one vendor to get many different messaging apps. But they realized that that was only half of the business. For certain established brands like sports teams, people will pay for stickers. But other, unknown brands would pay just to be included.

TextPride已经改名为Swyft Media，并推出了一个能将新品牌表情符号和贴纸推送到短信应用中的新平台。各大品牌需要为此付费，一如传统的广告推广活动。

TextPride changed its name to Swyft Media and launched a platform that pushes emojis and stickers from new brands into messaging apps. Brands pay for the privilege, as they would with a regular ad campaign.

最近的一个例子是：当格温o史蒂芬尼发布新专辑《 Spark the Fire》时，Swyft公司即时设计了一个免费贴纸包，在自己的几个短信应用中推出。它被下载了近一百万次，并在用户中传送了七百万次，最后在10天内被观看了4100万次。雷表示，对任何品牌来说，要在其他渠道达到这样的广告效果，需要花上5万到25万美元。

A recent example: When Gwen Stefani launched her new album Spark the Fire, Swyft created a free sticker pack and distributed it on several of its messaging apps. It was downloaded almost a million times and sent between users seven million times, resulting in 41 million impressions in 10 days. Such campaigns cost anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000 for brands, Wray says.

格温o史蒂芬尼的广告在好几个应用上同时推出，其中就有总部位于硅谷的短信应用Tango。Tango主要通过用户收件箱里的广告赚钱，但它已采用了Swyft的平台，该公司广告和平台副总裁理查德o拉百特表示，这类广告非常契合人们使用Tango的方式。一年前，Tango决定不再卖贴纸了，因为向用户要钱总会带来很多摩擦。拉百特称：“在人们沟通过程中放上一道‘留下买路钱’的大门绝不是我们希望带给用户的体验。”所以，就由Swyft来提供这种广告吧。

The Gwen Stefani campaign ran on several apps, including Tango, the Silicon Valley-based messaging app. Tango earns money on ads within a user’s inbox, but it has adopted Swyft’s platform because the ads are in line with the way people already use Tango, says Richard Rabbat, vice president of Advertising and Platform at Tango. A year ago, Tango decided not to sell stickers, because asking users for money creates too much friction, he says. “Putting a payment gate in the way of communication is not the right experience we want to give to our users,” Rabbat says. Ergo, ad campaigns from Swyft.

现在，Swyft一半的收入都来自于为格温o史蒂芬尼制作的这类广告。雷表示，Swyft每月收入的增长幅度在50% 到100%之间。另一半就来自销售贴纸——主要是靠知名运动队和《怪物史莱克》这样的娱乐品牌授权。

Swyft now makes half of its money from ad campaigns like the one for Gwen Stefani. Swyft’s revenue has increased between 50% and 100% each month, Wray says. The other half comes from selling stickers—typically licensed from sports teams and entertainment brands like Shrek.

Swyft有50家短信应用合作伙伴，包括Kakao Talk, Facebook Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger和 Line。这种合作让这家只有11个人的小公司能接触到25亿注册用户。随着利用短信应用赚钱的办法不断演化，这家年轻的创业公司已探索出一条可让各大品牌挤进人们聊天领域的生财之道。（财富中文网）

Swyft works with 50 different messaging partners, including Kakao Talk, Facebook Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger, and Line. The partnerships give the 11-person company access to 2.5 billion registered users. As the strategies for monetizing messaging apps evolve, the young startup has carved out a way for brands to inject themselves into the conversation.

译者：清远