The convergence of social platforms and information flow platforms is creating a “flow black hole” that constantly attracts the super-entry of surrounding traffic. Especially when having features owned by other apps, users are more likely to be inhaled by “black holes.”
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Central European Business Review” ( ID: ceibs-cbr), author Mu Sheng, editor Yao Yin.
C-side traffic is where the war smoke is, the main battlefield for the consumer Internet. We have found that the traffic war in the mobile Internet world has not been settled. Even the giants with traffic such as BAT face threats from all sides.
Behind the flow of traffic, the underlying logic of the Internet world is showing step by step, releasing power, and this change is leading the consumer Internet into a new era.
01 Basic pattern of traffic distribution
Overall, the size of Chinese netizens continues to grow, and the proportion of mobile netizens in the overall netizens continues to grow. According to the “Statistical Report on the Development of China’s Internet Network”, the number of Chinese Internet users in 2018 is close to 830 million, of which 98.6% of Internet users have access to the mobile Internet, and their consumption behavior is more on the mobile side. It is not difficult to find that the mobile terminal will be the decisive battle for the consumption of Internet traffic wars.
The continued increase in the number of Internet users does not mean that the traffic dividend in the Internet world still exists. The general feeling of entrepreneurs who consume Internet tracks is that traffic is getting harder to get and more expensive. The following two sets of data may illustrate some issues:
According to QuestMobile research, the monthly active users of mobile Internet continued to rise, reaching 1.138 billion in February 2019. On the other hand, the growth rate of monthly active users has been falling, with a growth of 6.3% in December 2017. And by March 2019, the year-on-year growth rate fell to 3.9%. From the perspective of Internet users’ online time, the monthly growth rate of single-day use per capita has increased. In December 2017, the net increase was 12.5 minutes, and the net increase in December 2018 was 62.9 minutes.
This means mobile internetThe traffic dividend has bottomed out, and “user occupancy time” is the focus of competition. The author once mentioned in the book “Overlay Experience: Designing Business Models with Internet Thinking” published in 2014 that such traffic will exist in some functional terminals and user communities. The former is called “perfect terminal” and the latter is Called the “value community.” At that time, on the one hand, the Internet traffic dividend has not been released, and purely functional terminals such as e-commerce, service, and information ports are still thriving, and there is no fatigue; on the other hand, social platforms and social platform-based communities It has not yet reached a climate and has not moved to the stage of large-scale commercial realisation. As a result, these projects go their own way, do not hesitate in parallel, and occasionally step on each other, they think that they are the protagonists of the future.
As the mobile Internet gradually penetrates into various areas of user life, the mobile phones of C-end users are filled with apps, but the number of commonly used ones is no more than 10, and the state of blossoming is quickly stopped, and the “super App” is formed. So, what “super app” does traffic flow to?
We will subdivide the “perfect terminal” and “value community”. The mainstream apps can be divided into five categories:
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Social App——Implementing communication between people, typically QQ, WeChat, Weibo, etc.
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Information Flow App (Information) – to achieve the exchange of people and information, typically today’s headlines, Baidu and so on.
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E-commerce App–To achieve the exchange of people and goods, Taobao, Tmall, Jingdong and so on.
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Service App – to achieve the exchange of people and services, typical of the United States, 58 cities and so on.
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Game App (Mobile Games) – This is a very special existence, it virtualizes a world, immersing users, online games also have social attributes, the most typical head company is Tencent Games and Netease games.
From the current development trend, the traffic of pure e-commerce and service apps is basically stable, and the changes mainly appear in the social and information flow apps, and the game app as an “X factor” Attached to a social app may cause traffic to change. Of course, e-commerce and service apps load social, information flow and game functions to alleviate “traffic anxiety”, which is also the trend of the times. Several “super apps” penetrate each other, both robbing users and squeezing users, and traffic wars are already an oligarchic battle.
02 Change in traffic distribution
We try to change the traffic of two types of apps, social and information flow.The main line is to describe the entire mobile Internet traffic agitation. Of course, in this description, we will also talk about the other trends mentioned above. In fact, the future “super App” may have several attributes and become a “complex”.
There are three main types of social apps: one is point-to-point IM (Instant Messaging), such as QQ; the other is centralized BBS (Bulletin Board System), such as tiger pounce; third is to go to the center SNS (Social Network Software), including blogs, Weibo, WeChat, etc.
Information flow generally refers to a page that aggregates a myriad of dynamics. The earliest information flow is driven by the RSS protocol, and the two elements of “attention” and “time” are strictly used for sorting. That is to say, only the dynamics of the subject’s active attention will appear, and all dynamics are sorted strictly according to the release time. Then, the information flow enters the era of personalized algorithm-driven, accurate push according to the content that the user is most interested in, “attention” and “time” are only two variables in the algorithm.
The two types of apps are inextricably linked: social app realizes the communication between people, but the carrier of communication must be all kinds of “information”; and the information flow app realizes the communication between people and information. But when someone sends out a message and another person receives the message, there is some degree of “sociality” between people.
The social app and the stream app have two drivers (Figure 1): First, the connection method, that is, the centralized connection, or the decentralized connection? Is it a freely chosen connection or an algorithm push connection? The second is the form of content distribution, that is, articles, pictures, graphics, or small video, live broadcast and other forms of communication? Judging from the laws of history, any one of these two factors is enough to trigger a new round of platform revolution and a new “window”.
The functions of the early stream ports and social ports were independent of each other until the social blogging era entered the microblogging era.The situation began to be broken: Weibo allows all users to freely connect on an open platform, achieving a certain degree of “decentralization”; at the same time reducing the threshold for content production, users can use more than 100 words in front of the public Express yourself in a timely and brisk manner. At this point, individual content producers began to borrow the powerful tension release effects of SNS, and a large group of V quickly rose, even threatening professional content producers. Then, with 2012 as the dividing line, information flow and social apps began to move toward functional integration. Two key events occurred this year:
One is the birth of WeChat, taking care of social and information flow needs. It is creatively based on the strong relationship of IM to do SNS, not only to maximize the tension of social strong relationship, but also to enable users to upgrade the content through the “public number” (relative to the space of more than 100 words on Weibo). At this time, WeChat friends circle became the first position of information flow, and many “100,000+ large” are also highly valued. As a platform, WeChat is invincible regardless of the data (users, daily life, monthly life, occupation time, etc.).
The other is the headline on the line today, leading the era of personalized information to drive information flow. In the PC era, the portal is the primary form of the information flow platform, and the large screen presents extremely subdivided items. Users need to click through layers to reach the desired content. In the era of mobile Internet, the small screen completely changed the form of the information flow platform. The information can only be presented with the user’s brush screen. This arrangement seems to be the “information flow” that is now defined. WeChat’s information flow did not break through the traditional information flow push method, still follow the logic of “concern + time”, and today’s headlines use algorithm to push to break through, and instantly tear a huge space on WeChat’s site. Subsequently, today’s headlines have replaced this gene into the social field, and hatched TOP5 video social networking sites such as vibrato, watermelon, and volcano.
The two hegemons have the same goal: Tencent has entered the information flow from social development. The dominant gene lies in its strong relationship social network. Once the user is embedded, it can’t be separated. The byte jump starts from the information flow and enters the social circle. The dominant gene lies in itself. The personalized algorithm, once used by users, is also addictive. As a result, the head-to-head war, the touch of the moment, the battle between the two armies, has been sparked.
03 Logic behind the flow black hole
Behind the convergence trend of social platforms and information flow platforms is the driving of the two underlying logic of the Internet.Therefore, this trend is not only rapid and irreversible. This kind of integration is creating what the author calls “flow black holes,” meaning a super-port that can strongly absorb the surrounding traffic. To put it simply, when this super portal has the same function as other apps, users are more likely to be sucked into “black holes.”
Connection evolution
It can be said that the underlying logic of the Internet world is “decentralization”. Any kind of product that wants to survive and prosper in the Internet world must follow this law.
As far as social apps are concerned, the elimination of IM products has its own decentralized features, from blogs to Weibo, from Weibo to WeChat, all following this rule. Users of social apps gradually pulled away from the world of Big V and established a social network centered on themselves.
As far as the information flow app is concerned, this trend is equally obvious and it is extremely steep. The original portal was at the most transformative form, with no obvious changes in the way text, graphics, audio, video… However, in 2012, WeChat launched its circle of friends and the public number. In 2013, today’s headlines were on the headlines, and suddenly the third-party content entrepreneurship was pushed to the forefront. The majors have followed suit, Baidu has a hundred, Tencent has a Penguin, Jingdong has added Jingdong Express in the middle of the App, other tools such as ink weather, storm video, have also increased the content provided by third parties Information flow function. As a result, various content producers have emerged rapidly, with UGC (user-generated content), PGC (free professional-generated content), and OGC (for fee-generating professionals) mature. Since then, the production and distribution rights of content are no longer in the hands of traditional media or institutions, but really decentralized.
Of course, in this process, decentralization plus content explosion, user-selectable information explodes in geometric progression, and a large amount of information has formed interference, which has become a problem that all major platforms need to solve.
In fact, Tencent and bytebeat have given answers to future connections. Tencent chose “social trust” to complete the connection. It strengthened the strong relationship between WeChat and firmly defended the circle of friends as the first interface of information flow. In fact, since WeChat has become the underlying tool of social connection, its status is unbreakable, and most people will still find the letter they need through social channels.interest. Byte Beat selects “AI Trust” to complete the connection. It goes to the platform mode, one end attracts the user, one end grabs the endless content, and the algorithm matches precisely. Not only that, but such algorithms will be self-learning as users use them, and more and more accurate.
The relationship between “social trust” and “AI trust” is not distinct, but is mutually infiltrated. Due to the increase in the number of friends, the micro-credit algorithm filters information and presents the circle of friends. Of course, Zhang Xiaolong always emphasizes that “we will only improve reading efficiency, rather than turning into uncontrolled information.” Zhang Yiming also admits that today’s headlines will “create the contingency of information through social relationships,” and push the information that users’ friends like to the user to solve the problem of narrowing the information acquisition by personalized push.
Content Form Evolution
In the world of mobile internet, each type of product is smashing time for users. They are faced with a group of careless people. How to seize users in the first place is the key. Nowadays, “lightweight content” is an indisputable fact, and this kind of lightweighting will also lead to new models with the change of technology, creating a new “flow vent”.
In this context, social platforms or information flow platforms do their best to motivate brisk content. Weibo used to be a representative of lightweight reading, and WeChat was able to stand out from the crowd, in addition to the logic of acquaintances, but also because of its paranoia for brisk content. At the beginning, WeChat did not allow to send only the text circle of friends. Even if the content form was opened later, it would be very deep in operation (users are not easy to reach). Then, this lightweighting was replaced by a short-lived short video.
In addition to the lightness of the content, the current content format also emphasizes “instant interaction”. In fact, one-way publishing and two-way communication have completely different experiences for users. For this reason, the form of live broadcast has become more and more popular. In 2016, the battle of thousands of broadcasts broke out almost overnight.
Traffic black hole formation
Going to the present, the boundaries between the information flow platform and the social platform are blurred. According to the traditional view, the information flow platform is centered on “information” and advocates the efficient provision of valuable information;