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Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat, once said that WeChat is a “use and go” product, but after the launch of the video account, WeChat seems to have changed its appearance. As the positions of Douyin and Kuaishou in the field of short video and live broadcasting become more stable, WeChat can’t sit still. The video number frequently opens up various links and collects three thousand favorites. Can it really become popular?

Go directly to the topic and talk about my personal thoughts on the video number recently.

This article mainly discusses the following issues:

  1. Think about why WeChat needs a video account?

  2. Think about the difference between the video account and the official account, Moments, moment video and story

  3. What are the opportunities and advantages of the video number? Possible play? Phase planning

  4. The difference between the video number, Douyin and Kuaishou, and why choose 6:7 size instead of Douyin’s single-column full-screen design?

  5. The past action of disassembling the video number

  6. Current problems with the video number

  7. Possible solutions to the video number

Why does WeChat use the video account?

As for why WeChat is a video account, I have read many articles and communicated with friends before.

Some people say that because the short video of Shake fast takes a lot of time from users, the duration of WeChat has been robbed, and it is hoped that the video account will grab the time and fight Shake fast; some people say that WeChat focused on graphic content in the early days, short videos What is lacking, now I want to fill in the short video section; there are othersIt is said that the “Moment Video” that Zhang Xiaolong placed high hopes completely failed, and he had to seek new portals and platforms to host short videos; some even said that Tencent’s microvision, which has invested a lot of resources, did not see any signs of catching up with Shake Kuai. Can rely on WeChat to continue to seize the market on the short video track.

I personally think these are correct phenomena, but they are not the most essential reason.

The WeChat team has always been very restrained. It is the starting point for all WeChat to solve the needs of users themselves and what value they provide to users.

Thinking: What is WeChat? What problem is WeChat solving, and what problem has WeChat been helping people solve in the past 9 years? Does WeChat use the video account to better help WeChat at this stage?

Tencent’s two core capabilities in the early days: traffic and capital; traffic refers to “social traffic”, with a steady flow of traffic pools, rather than requiring external purchase traffic like other companies.

In the Internet age, social networking has become the “moat” for user retention, and having users means traffic. In the future, the private domain traffic of the entire Chinese Internet may be in the hands of Tencent. For Tencent, whether microvision can be made is secondary. Short videos are very wide tracks with high ceilings, which have important strategic significance and good business prospects.

If short videos can be combined with social interaction, social advantages are the absolute core; if Douyin and Kuaishou have the slightest tendency to socialize with acquaintances, Tencent is definitely more than the billions now. Only in the micro-vision.

Although Douyin and Kuaishou have been experimenting with a series of social functions such as Snapshot, Diary, Story, and Friends, they are crazy to recommend friends to you every day. I would rather try and make mistakes than miss them.

Tencent’s life is the social relationship chain. WeChat was first said to be a communication tool, but it is actually “building a social relationship chain based on QQ and address books.”

Recall several things that WeChat has done from its birth to now:

  1. Establish a friend relationship in the address book;

  2. Establish organizational relationships;

  3. Establish following relationships;

The corresponding representative products areIt is a friend (circle of friends), group, and official account; currently the video account is the fourth one to build a WeChat account system.

Although the official account enables creators and users to establish a subscription relationship to some extent, creators only need to resolve the two-way match between content and users, but the relationship between creators and users is relatively weak.

The connection between users and creators that the video account needs to solve, and how to build an ecological cycle around “creator-content-user” and make it run healthy.

One is a weak relationship and the other is a strong relationship. Now that WeChat is a video account, the most original goal is to inherit what WeChat has been doing for the past 9 years. What is the value of a video account based on this starting point?

In my opinion, there are mainly three aspects:

  1. Value to producers: The video account is a platform where everyone can record and create. Compared with the closed social circle of the circle of friends, the video account can expand the circle, with high communication efficiency, and better exposure in the WeChat ecosystem. Form a personal “social business card” that expands the social circle;

  2. Value to consumers: Based on the social relationship chain, compared to the past thousands of people’s algorithmic recommendations, based on the WeChat social relationship chain recommendation distribution method, the selection of short video content is expanded through mutual recommendations between friends. What it brings is a new “consumer experience”;

  3. The value of video accounts to WeChat: a large user base, a strong social relationship chain, connecting more than 1.2 billion WeChat monthly active users, continuing to interact with users, maintaining and continuously active existing relationship chains, and helping users establish, Expand new relationship chains.

As the video account team said:

“With a video account, the official account and Moments are no longer tools, but ecology, like water, electricity, and gas in life. Short video + live broadcast = the most natural expression Way.”

Conclusion: The value of the video account to WeChat is-Continue to be active in the WeChat relationship chain and make due contributions of different latitudes.

The difference between video number and official account, Moments, Moments video and story

1. The difference between the video number and the official account

I personally think that the main reason is the difference between “production threshold” and “content”.

The video account is a platform where everyone can record and create, and the threshold of the official account is higher-it is almost impossible for everyone to write articles every day.

I also communicated with Kuaishou PM before. He believes that it takes a long time for humans to learn to speak, write, and draw. It also requires training to restore 3D information from 2D images. People’s perception of video is more natural, and it’s easier to click the capture button.

And for one billion people, it’s not easy for everyone to post text, but posting photos is something everyone can do—video production and cost are lower than graphics.

In addition, the official account used to focus mainly on graphic content, while the video account focused more on the field of short video content.

2. The difference between video number and Moments

I have been thinking about it for a long time before. It is also a vehicle that everyone can create. They are all individuals who create independently. What is the difference? What kind of content will be posted on the video account, and what kind of content will be posted on Moments?

From the relationship chain: Moments of friends corresponds to the friendship chain, which belongs to closed social; the video number corresponds to the fully open relationship chain. I personally think that this is the difference in the dimension of the relationship chain between the video number and Moments(The relationship between Qzone and Small World is similar).

From the perspective of the producer: Moments of friends should be able to be posted without quality and good or bad, and the video number should have a certain threshold; a strong relationship and a weak relationship. Moments itself cannot carry entertainment, or entertainment is not strong because it is a strong relationship. We see Moments not because of content, but because of social relationships and people themselves. For example, the difference between a video account and Moments is similar to the difference between Douyin/Kaishou and Moments. For KOLs on Douyin, they have both their own Moments and their own fan accounts.

From the consumer’s perspective: video number consumer videoThe video content is not limited to the daily record of the circle of friends, and the selection of short video content is expanded through mutual recommendation between friends.

3. The video failed at the moment of 2018

Personally, I think that you can see your video to a large extent as your friend. After verification, I don’t give more help to the continued activity of the relationship chain.

Moment video is more social, but it doesn’t expand the circle or expand the social relationship outside of your friends. In essence, it still consumes existing social relationships.

The biggest difference between the video number and the moment video is that it can expand the circle, break through the restrictions of the circle of friends, and realize public dissemination.

In addition, all “story” models in China face common problems. The content produced by ordinary users is not very interesting, the content lacks viewability, and it is difficult to obtain positive feedback from non-close users.

What are the opportunities and advantages of the video number? Possible play? In general, what steps can be divided into phase planning?

What are the opportunities and advantages of video numbers?

From the perspective of user volume and duration alone, Douyin and Kuaishou have an absolute advantage in the field of short video content platforms.

Low threshold authoring tools, fast machine review efficiency, and accurate recommendation algorithms are behind a complete set of industrialized production system, which makes Shaoxing established a strong scale advantage and algorithm advantage on the supply side, operation side, and user side.

In the short term, it is difficult for the third short video application to compete with Shake fast in China. If other competitors want to squeeze into the short video track, they must attack from the bottom up, or they must have a strong combat power or have invested huge resources, otherwise it will be difficult to break through the short video track.

In the second half of the Internet, it is not relying on a strange trick or an idea to control the enemy. It is more efficient than the battle of the industrial system. This is often ignored by most people. But Douyin and Kuaishou are dealing with WeChat, which has 1.2 billion monthly livelihoods, and is based on social relationships. That is another topic.

That thought:

What are the opportunities for WeChat to be a video account?

In general, what are the steps of phased planning?

What is the difference between the video number and Moments?

1. There is an opportunity for WeChat to be a video account

1) Internal opportunity

  • Social relationship chain: Unique social advantage, stronger acquaintance social relationship chain than Douyin and Kuaishou, is expected to form a “full public social network” from acquaintances to semi-acquaintances to strangers, and to build a “full relationship” Chain content community”;

  • Unique recommendation distribution mechanism: “recommendation in social circles” and “personalized recommendation” are both emphasized, and a new distribution model based on acquaintances’ social + algorithm recommendation;

  • Official account bonus: The official account provides the underlying data support for the video account recommendation algorithm and provides early content supply issues.

Summary: Social gene + social circle recommendation & personalized recommendation + fully public social network.

For the specific development, this article will not focus on social relations, but will focus on the recommended distribution mechanism and official account.

Recommended distribution mechanism:

As the amount of content increases and technology upgrades continue to change, content distribution methods and information distribution methods are also constantly changing.

From the earliest information portal represented by Sina, to the search engine represented by Baidu, to the distribution based on social media represented by Weibo, to the personalized algorithm recommendation represented by Shake Kuai, it was fully utilized.

The advantage of algorithm recommendation lies in the diversity and personalization of recommendation, which increases the user’s online time. If used well, it can greatly increase the user’s stickiness.

But the drawbacks of algorithm recommendation are also obvious, limiting users’ choices. For users, there may be two kinds of impact: the first is addiction and time is empty; the second is the “information cocoon room” that everyone often calls.

In the short video content ecology, the information cocoon effect created by the recommendation algorithm for users will aggravate the vertical differentiation of short video content, and ultimately the entire short video platform will form a highly homogeneous value orientation.

So in the early days of Douyin, the most popular ones were the face-like little brothers and sisters. Any topic that appeared in Douyin was easy to be popular. Everyone rushed to imitate similar videos, which caused aesthetic fatigue in the long term.

Zhang Xiaolong has always firmly believed in the value of social recommendations for content distribution. He believes that obtaining information through social recommendations is the most humane, because in reality, most situations are obtained by hearing the recommendations of people around him.

If the essence of “Take a Look” is based on social recommendation, it expands the range of people’s choices through mutual recommendation between friends; then the nature of the video number is actually based on social recommendation, and the content of short videos is expanded through mutual recommendation by friends Choose the scope and further strengthen the value of social recommendation.

Compared with passively receiving content in the past and relying on algorithmic feeding, the video account uses algorithms to achieve personalized recommendations to improve content circulation efficiency. At the same time, it uses social recommendations to ensure the consistency of specific circle tastes, and uses social recommendations to make up for it. The algorithm recommendation is insufficient.

WeChat Official Account:

In addition to being an instant messaging tool, WeChat is also a media information publishing platform. In 2012, the WeChat official account was officially launched. According to statistics, as of Q1 of 2019, the number of WeChat official accounts has exceeded 30 million.

In the early days of the video account, when solving the content supply problem, it benefited from the attempts of many official account creators to change to the video account, making most of the early producers of the video account the main body of the WeChat official account, allowing it to survive the early content production bottleneck.

In addition, the official account provides the underlying data for the video number recommendation algorithm. After 8 years of development, the official account platform has gathered a wealth of content categories, including information, entertainment, emotion, funny anecdotes, education, technology, finance, and fashion. Behind the subdivided content categories are the user circles. Interest preferences.

2) External opportunities

Shake fast-content vertical development differentiation

Tik Tok: Top quality content occupies most of the traffic, leading to a large gap between rich and poor in content ecology;

Kaishou: The underlying values ​​and decentralized distribution system have strengthened the social attributes of Kuaishou, leading to higher personal settings than content, forming a content community with higher barriers, which is not conducive to the further expansion of user content.

According to the data of Zhikrypton Research Institute, users of Kuaishou and Douyin in May 2019The agreement reached 47%.

At present, both Douyin and Kuaishou are very entertaining communities. Take Douyin as an example. Funny, handsome, celebrities, and beauties are popular among its platform users, while photography teaching, workplace education, office software, and knowledge information have developed slowly.

Almost all MCN organizations sign KOLs for commercialization purposes. If the traffic obtained by KOLs cannot cover the invested operating costs and the ROI is negative, the corresponding KOLs will be eliminated and the organization will be eliminated.

Therefore, MCN organizations tend to sign strong KOLs to increase the probability of getting popular and obtain more efficient traffic, ultimately for monetization.

This is why most of TikTok’s popular recommendations are popular verticals such as funny, online celebrities, celebrities, handsome guys, beauties, and cars. Other verticals have not developed well enough.

The content category that cannot be covered by Doukuai also has the value of content consumption.

UGC has not really risen yet

About the value of short videos and the inclusiveness of information, Su Hua and Zhang Nan have both publicly expressed their views before:

Compared with text and pictures, short video format is more inclusive and lowers the threshold of information exchange and sharing. It does not require literacy and does not need to form opinions. You can take photos with smartphones, which truly realizes the possibility of participation by all people. ——Su Hua

Vibrato is actually a tool, it is a tool to help users pass information. What short videos and Douyin bring is a significant reduction in the threshold for video creation and distribution, a faster flow and connection of information, and a value of inclusive information. ——Zhang Nan

From the speeches of Su Hua and Zhang Nan, we can see that the ambitions of Douyin and Kuaishou are not only to be content consumption platforms, but to replace the hardware on mobile phones., To become a basic tool for information recording, storage, and transmission, which is a more low-level and universal rigid demand.

Instant messaging and social networking are more universal and low-level rigid needs than content consumption. If instant messaging + social networking + information recording, storage, and delivery are combined, it will have a super network effect and scale effect.

Douyin 600 million DAU, but not many producers are willing to continue to publish videos. WeChat’s value is to let “every individual has its own brand”, and low-threshold video accounts are suitable for everyone.

Imagine if there are 1 billion WeChat users who are willing to share and record their creations publicly, with 1 billion creators, what would it be like?

It’s only four or five years for short videos to date, and there will be great potential for development in the future.

2. In general, what are the stages of video number planning?

Returning to the business itself, different businesses have different ways of playing at different stages. That person thinks that the current video number planning mainly includes two pieces:

The first stage: solve the consumption problem and increase users’ willingness to consume;

The second stage: On the basis of solving users’ willingness to consume, increase the willingness of ordinary users to produce and form a positive cycle of production and consumption.

The difference between the video number, Douyin and Kuaishou, and why the 6:7 size is chosen for the video number?

Product positioning & value differences

Recording life VS recording the good life VS recording the real life; high-quality content VS emphasizes fairness and inclusiveness VS allows each individual to have his own brand.

Slogan is often the embodiment of the company’s product value orientation. First, I will briefly introduce Douyin and Kuaishou slogan:

Kaishou’s slogan has experienced evolution from “recording the world and recording you” to “seeing every life” and then “embrace every life”; Douyin’s slogan has experienced “letting worship start from here” to “recording beautiful “Life” changes; the slogan of the video number is “Record real life”.

(The evolution of Douyin, Kuaishou, and video number slogan)

The core difference between the two products is mainly due to the different underlying values ​​and product positioning.

Su Hua once said that he believes that the most important thing for Kuaishou is to record. Through the perspective of ordinary people, to record all aspects of life; the second is Puhui, which is to let everyone have the same ability to keep their own records. . He will not be judged because of his tall, short, fat, thin, poor, rich, beautiful and ugly, hoping to give users equal treatment.

Due to different values ​​and product positioning, the top-level design of the product is determined:

The value of the product(what needs to serve the user), and the value of (Product design, content distribution strategy, operation strategy), functional design (the starting point of all design is the underlying values ​​of the product), content Distribution models and commercialization models present different development paths and differences.

One emphasizes “beautifulness” and the other emphasizes “realness”, resulting in the differences in content distribution algorithm logic, product forms, and community operation concepts between the two;

One emphasizes content quality, one emphasizes inclusiveness and fairness; one emphasizes operation, another ignores operation, one chooses single-column up and down immersion, and the other chooses double-column waterfall.

These differences have created different community content ecology for Douyin and Kuaishou, different creator ecology, different user minds and sense of belonging, and different live broadcast ecology.

Summary: Douyin focuses on “beautiful”, compared with Kuaishou’s emphasis on people, DouyinPay more attention to content.

Tik Tok screens out and continues to amplify high-quality content. The adapted product form is a single-column full-screen immersion, which optimizes user content consumption experience and leads to high growth in users and duration.

The content distribution mechanism is beneficial to high-quality content and capable head content creators, and the distribution of community traffic is relatively centralized. It has low fault tolerance and is more consumer-friendly. Douyin focuses more on the connection between content and people, and its social attributes are relatively weak, and its attributes are biased towards platforms with controllable traffic in the public domain.

Kaishou emphasizes authenticity and inclusiveness, is decentralized, and the purpose of content distribution is to allow everyone to be seen, which reduces the psychological threshold of users’ creation and is more friendly to producers; the adapted product form is a two-row selection , Semi-active acquisition, high fault tolerance, and the introduction of the “Gini coefficient” concept to regulate traffic distribution, suitable for long tail content.

Kaishou pays more attention to the connection between people and has stronger social attributes. However, the public domain traffic controlled by the platform is not much, and it is more suitable for private domain traffic precipitation. The slogan that looked at the video number back then was “recording real life”, more inclined to “life precipitation”, using pictures or videos to record their own lives, a bit biased towards the earliest slogan of Kuaishou.

WeChat has always adhered to the value of “Let every individual have their own brand”. Video accounts will pay more attention to original, personalized, and individual value content, which is decentralized and has a lower threshold.

Compared with the advantages of Douyin and Kuaishou algorithms, the core advantage of video accounts is a recommendation mechanism based on acquaintances’ social + algorithm. Social recommendation is used to make up for the lack of algorithm recommendation and build a new content ecology.

About the differences between Douyin, Kuaishou, and video numbers, I used a table to summarize:

(Part of the data comes from Orient Securities)

2. Douyin fastAll hands choose 9:16 size, why choose 6:7 size for video number?

The above-mentioned differences in the values ​​of Shake Kuai video accounts, how do these differences reflect in the product form?

Tiktok and Kuaishou vertical screen videos are designed with an aspect ratio of 9:16. Such videos are full screen, no black borders, good compatibility, and the best consumer experience.

The vertical screen size of the video number is 6:7. The consequence of this design is that if the video is smaller than 6:7, the top and bottom are filled with black background, and the top and bottom will be cut if the video is larger than this ratio.

For KOLs of Shake Kuai, if they want to publish a video on the video account, the video must be cut or re-edited, but it will increase the publishing threshold. Why is the video account designed to interact with the current big card?

Try to disassemble the logic involved: back to the beginning of the article, the reason for the purpose of WeChat as a video account is to think about the social relationship chain.

Then I think there are two main reasons:

1) Help users consume videos while enhancing the relationship chain and establishing user mindsets for social relationships

The size of the video number is 6:7. Compared with the fast shaking, the video screen is smaller, and the upper and lower blank interface of the video is more compatible with the video and text.

At first sight, the focus of users may not only be on the video, but may be a certain friend under the comment, which weakens the content itself, wants to see what the friend likes, and cultivates the user’s mind is to see friends What is the like content.

2) Increase the interactive connection between users and creators

If you carefully observe the video number, Douyin, and Kuaishou, the most intuitive feeling is that in addition to the video content, the video number more prominently highlights the video’s title, geographic location, and video tags, and the video has more information.

Moreover, in some videos, the title and related information of the video occupy 1/3 of the screen. The purpose of this design is to try to help users and creators establish a relationship and form a connection.

3. Why choose single-column semi-immersive video number instead of Douyin single-column full-screen design?

(Interaction differences between Kuaishou, Douyin, and video numbers)

The Douyin is a single row, full-screen immersive up-and-down brainless interaction, which is conducive to killing time and increasing user time; the purpose of the design is to achieve the ultimate consumer experience, focusing on creating “immersion.”

I don’t need you to take the initiative to find the content. I will help you screen and select high-quality works, so you can just look at it.

Kaishou is a two-column design. In terms of interaction, users need to guide users to click, follow, comment, form fan accumulation, and then go back to content creators. In addition to watching content, “guided comments” is the core of Kuaishou. Interactive behavior.

If you don’t like the video, you can choose another one you like.

The video number currently has a single-column design, unlike the full-screen vibrato design, and did not choose a fast-handed dual-column design with high fault tolerance. Instead, choose the semi-immersive style that does not look very beautiful at the moment? what is the reason?

First of all, the video account will not use Douyin content to defeat Douyin, nor will it surpass Kuaishou in a fast-handed way. The video account is not meant to kill time from the moment it is launched, but is based on the social relationship chain.

Although Kuaishou Shuanglin Waterfall Stream is highly fault-tolerant, the video number is currently mainly social recommendation. Users may not have the willingness to consume after consuming the content liked by friends. This problem will be more obvious if the dual-line design is more consumer-oriented. weaker.

In addition, high fault tolerance is not only the fast hand double row oneIn this form, the core of the video account is social recommendation. Even if the content liked by a friend does not like it, but because it is recommended by a friend, it can only be said to have a different interest from a friend. Because of the existence of social relationships, the fault tolerance is also high.

The past action of disassembling the video number

The core users of video accounts are divided into two categories: content producers + content consumers. Of course, users may switch at any time, and they may be producers and consumers. Regardless of whether it is Shake Kuai or the video number, the main things to be solved when disassembling content community products are the following three things:

  1. Producer: Continue to help content producers produce high-quality content;

  2. Consumers: Continue to help content consumers to obtain content that suits them more efficiently;

  3. Platform: Connect production and consumption: Help content producers and content consumers to form an effective interaction, form a better sense of accomplishment, and form a connection.

Focusing on the above three points, what we did in the past to dismantle the video number:

production

Production mainly solves the problems of production tools and production willingness; how to lower the threshold for users to release requires low-threshold creative tools.

Look back and look at WeChat’s series of actions on the production side: acquiring vue and launching the second clip (guess: maybe internal production tools have been built for a period of time, However, there is a gap with Dou Kuai (Cut Ying, Kuai Ying), and the gap cannot be caught in one or two months. The acquisition of Vue is more profitable than internally).

Consumption

The essence of consumption is “open source.” Without disturbing users, try to let users get access to the video account.

The situation that Kuaishou faced when making “story” was very similar to the situation encountered by Facebook, including WeChat “dynamic video”. The main reason was that it encountered big consumption problems, which in turn hit production. The solution is stillLet more users consume.

The prerequisite for the video to be consumed must be able to be seen. There must be an entrance. The video number is in the second position of the discovery page, second only to Moments.

Recently, several version iterations have been made, which can be shared to Moments of Friends, Official Accounts, and chat scenes, so that the video account can be seen, gaining better exposure in the WeChat ecosystem, and expanding the communication efficiency.

Including the recent addition of a series of actions that help to open up public domain traffic: public account graphics and text can be inserted into the video number dynamic card, the circle of friends has added topic tags, and the video number can be searched during search, all for enhancement consumption.

Interaction

Content consumers are also secondary disseminators. They integrate friends’ likes into the dissemination page, and you can see the content your friends like, and the content you like will be seen by your friends. In addition, the video content also supports one-click follow, like and favorites.

Summarize what the video account has done in the past: producing content, consuming content, allowing producers and consumers to interact effectively, and adding secondary dissemination.

Current problems with video numbers

If you only look at the status quo of video numbers, there are various problems in every link from production, consumption, to interaction. But I think the most essential problem is that the video number has not helped users to form a perception of the use scene. The biggest problem encountered is the consumption problem.

The following is a detailed description of some issues of consumption:

1. The video number has not yet helped users to form a scene awareness of use

Unlike Doukuai, which are all independent apps, the video account is currently an “entry” in the WeChat “discover tab”, although its status is second only to Moments.

In order to solve the problem of user consumption, WeChat also gave up the previous restraint. The small red dot and the strong reminder of various interactive designs that enhance clicks are more and more obvious on the video number. However, if the user’s consumption problem can be solved, It does not matter during a cold start.

Before the video account has formed its own value and mind, the direct source of traffic and the circle of friends, in order to better allow users to contact the video number, the style of the video number entrance, and the strong reminder of the small red dot and the design of the circle of friends. Almost touch onekind.

Behind this design, the guess is that the video account team uses the social consumption scene and mind of the Moments portal to pass it on to the video account.

Moments of friends are when friends post new news, and there will be strong reminders at the entrance; while friends on the video account who have liked new content, there will also be strong reminders at the entrance. From time to time, you open the circle of friends to see which friends have posted updates, to the video number, to see what video my friend just saw, and I also went to see the mental building.

If there is no “video number”, most people can’t see any difference between the two, and it will be even more interesting one day to switch the positions of “video number” and “Circle of Friends”.

Although it seems that the video account team has designed very cleverly, it is far from enough to migrate the mind and use of Moments users to the video account if it is guided by the entrance and style alone.

Regarding the thinking about WeChat entrance, WeChat PM gnawed the cake once said:

There are two types of entrances in WeChat: one is centralized and the other is decentralized. The centralized entrance mainly refers to those fixed entrances in the tab, and the decentralized entrance mainly refers to the messages flowing in the chat and the circle of friends and the public account articles.

For a deeper understanding, entrances can be divided into two categories: one is called a place, and the other is a scene. A place is a location, and a scene is a place where people have scenes. Adding a fixed entrance to the discovery is just a place and cannot be used by users, so it is not a scene yet.

To turn a place into a scene, you need to do a lot of things, be attractive, and let users come back, otherwise, it’s just a place that comes and goes, and it’s not even as good as a toilet.

There are already some mature scenes in WeChat, such as official accounts, chat, and Moments. Taking a place to build a scene will not be more advantageous than using mature scenes.

The video numberIt seems that it is still an entrance place, and there is no scene where users continue to use it.

2. The content liked by a friend has a certain “social value”, but the content liked by a friend does not necessarily have “consumption value”, or the consumption value is very high. Weak

Currently, the video number does not help users to form a recognition of the use scene is the result. What is causing it?

The essence is that the current recommended content based on social recommendations does not meet user expectations; content liked by friends has certain social value, but content liked by friends does not necessarily have consumption value, resulting in poor consumption and poor retention, especially The retention of new users is very low.

Be bolder. I personally feel that short video social networking is not actually social networking with acquaintances. It is not because I have a good relationship with you that I look at your stuff and are more interested. In this dimension, based on the knowledge graph and the content itself, there are few things users are interested in doing.

The video number is based on content exploration and interest distribution. After the content is enriched, users don’t like the media platform’s head as the king, the content is scattered, and the user’s interest is wide. Can it attract users’ attention? Recommendations are needed. The connection of the whole ecological construction.

Before thinking about the social distribution of the video number based on acquaintances and the recommendation of the Thousand Faces algorithm, you can try to answer the following 9 questions in your mind:

  1. Do you think it is important for friends to like it?

  2. Will you enter the video account to watch content because your friends like it?

  3. If yes, does the content liked by friends in the video account meet expectations?

  4. Is it generally your favorite to recommend videos that your friends like?

  5. Do you really care what videos your friends like?

  6. How much are you willing to follow the videos liked by friends?

  7. How many people entered the video account because they saw a red dot liked by a friend, and left the video account because they didn’t like the content?

  8. You see the video number is mainly throughHave you ever shared it with Moments or did you take the initiative to click the video number entrance to browse?

  9. Do you have privacy pressure? Worried about your likes being seen by friends?

Although the video account is a dual recommendation method of social recommendation + personalized algorithm recommendation, the current focus is still on social recommendation. Recommending content that friends like is the most effective. Is recommendation the most suitable content for users?

Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary; WeChat is not strictly a social acquaintance, and it has a lot of weak and moderate relationships.(The number of ordinary friends may exceed five or six hundred) On the one hand, the expansion of WeChat social relations, on the other hand, is the complexity of social relations behind the expansion, and the complexity of social relations brings the difficulty of social recommendation.

This year’s WeChat Open Class, Zhang Xiaolong mentioned that there are more than 1 million WeChat friends with 5000 friends. Imagine that the recommendation based on 100 friends is completely different from the social recommendation based on 5000 people.

Take myself as an example. Every time I use a video account, my consumption experience is very poor, and it is difficult to insist on viewing more than 3 videos.

I drop down 5~6 videos at will. There are music, micro-business lectures, movies, funny moving videos, life tips, and learning tips. Although the types of videos are very rich, But showing it all at once, really not interested.

I feel like recommending content that my friends like at will. I feel that it’s messy, and various video sizes are blocked, resulting in a poor consumer experience( In addition, you can take a closer look at the video number, how many videos are blocked by black screens).

It is not yet known whether the video account social recommendation logic will adopt different recommendation strategies based on the number of friends, I guess it will be different. At the same time, with the complexity of social relations, the interests of each friend are relatively scattered, which makes recommendation much more difficult than algorithmic recommendation.

The first video recommended by friends is very important. Shake Kuai has done a lot of A/B experiments on cold-start recommended videos, which directly affects user retention. Currently the video number is not resolved.

There is no denying the value of social recommendations to video numbers. Video numbers are based on social recommendations, ranging from 0 to 200 million, which is enough to prove the value of social recommendations. However, if the video number wants to grow from 200 million daily activities to 400 million, it depends on the current SocietyI personally feel that there is still a big challenge to submit the recommendation algorithm.

(Zhang Xiaolong Moments announces video number data at the end of June)

Due to the lack of specific data, the analysis that should be quantitative has been simplified to qualitative judgment.

3. The single-row semi-immersive consumer experience is weaker than Shake Kuai

The Douyin 600 million DAU, the immersive ups and downs of the product form has subtly affected the user’s operating habits, and once users are used to it, it is very difficult to change.

The fast version, in addition to relying on online earning mode, relying on single-row immersive interaction, DAU quickly exceeded 100 million, proving that single-row consumption is more efficient.

It is necessary to take care of the habits of old users of Kuaishou, but also to consider the experience of new users. Kuaishou 8.0 is the biggest revision in recent years. It has innovatively increased the selection of Tabs, which is to expand new ones without destroying the browsing habits of old users. The user’s browsing habits.

When talking about how Douyin pursues the ultimate in product experience, Douyin Zhang Nan previously shared 4 key elements: full-screen HD, music, special effects filters, and personalized recommendations. Pursuing the ultimate in these four directions To the best, it gives users a better experience.

And design around full screen, The Douyin team puts the exact same short videos in different sizes to watch. The full-screen effect is great whether it is visual impact, or the experience of pulling users in and making users immersive.

At that time, the Douyin team did a lot of blind tests and got this conclusion.

About the form of the single column of video numbers, I have communicated with the person in charge of the video number product before. The video number is selected as a semi-immersive type, sacrificing the user’s full immersive experience, highlighting the cover title, and leaving space to highlight creators and comments.

Whether it is through information and relationship chains that pay more attention to people than content than Douyin’s immersive style, and is conducive to the formation of a community atmosphere, the other party said that this is indeed the reason.

From the perspective of consumer experience, in addition to the lack of immersion, the basic sense of consumption also falls on Kuaishou, and from the perspective of duration, from my own observation, the content duration of the video account is generally higher than that of ordinary 15s videos on Shake Kuai. ; Coupled with the video support pause function, the entire consumer experience is not smooth enough.

I think the most embarrassing problem of the video account now is that it does not have the invigoration brought by the full-screen immersion of Douyin single column, nor the high fault tolerance of Kuaishou two columns. Kuaishou can at least actively choose the content of interest.

Every time the user enters the video account, there are too few videos currently available for consumption. Even with the size of 6:7, one screen can carry 1.5~2 video content, but single and fast dual columns display 4 videos on one screen, and the fault tolerance is lower than that of fast dual columns.

4. Based on social recommendations, the pressure of personal likes may lead to biased user feedback and low interactive behaviors

On the one hand, because likes can be seen by friends, there are many who operate in the circle of friends, play different social roles, establish their own personal settings, and convey their tastes to the outside world;

On the other hand, I am worried about the pressure of privacy exposure. I originally liked to watch the video, but I am worried that my friends will see it and my family will not dare to like it, which leads to inaccurate recommendation quality.

People don’t like to passively expose privacy by nature. Personal guess is that due to the exposure of the relationship chain, the video number interaction rate is (comment, like)< /span> should be significantly lower than Douyin and Kuaishou; in Kuaishou and Douyin, you can comment and leave messages to beauties and handsome guys without any pressure, but for such content as video accounts, acquaintance comments and interactions are far weaker than Douyin. fast.

For example: There are a lot of beauty videos on Shakuai, but such content is rarely seen on the video account. It is guessed that it is the pressure of friends to like.

(Based on problems caused by friends’ likes)

Personal suggestions for video numbers


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1. Production


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Product side:

  • Production tools: Optimize production links, improve production experience and production performance, and increase the conversion rate of each link (ensure smooth shooting video, clearer picture quality, etc. ) At present, judging from the clarity of the video number, there is still a certain gap between the video number and Douyin Kuaishou;

  • Production willingness: Provide easy-to-operate and exquisitely-made templates to lower the production threshold for ordinary users. Users can directly apply materials to (the reason for the template is that UGC is the largest The pain point is that the user’s own photos are not good-looking).

The effects that can be achieved by production tools are similar. Now it is mainly to satisfy younger users and target older users with the ability to take photos. (For example, auntie loves to shoot , But lack of products).

However, the current focus of video accounts is not on production, but on consumption. The current focus is to retain users through high-quality content and solve the problem of users’ willingness to consume.

2. Consumption

1) Increase the ability of algorithm recommendation and social circle recommendation

The video number has a lot of homework to fill in machine review, video understanding, recommendation system, AB experiment, and data science. How to denoise and how to quickly build a set of underlying iterative infrastructure framework is urgently needed.

In addition, production needs to be coupled with consumption, interaction, likes, and comments can motivate authors to increase their creativity. The process involved in general content community algorithm recommendation includes:

  • Understand the content: abstract the content and extract keywords;

  • Understand users: characterize user behavior-click/like/comment/share/follow/dislike, explore user intent;

  • Match content with users: Fit a function of the degree of match between content and users, set a goal, and match content with users according to the goal.

The core of the video number is social recommendation. In addition to considering traditional algorithmic recommendation, we should also focus on exploring the interest and social circle recommendation based on the social relationship chain, not only the content and user matching, but also the consideration of friends and friends Interest matching.

From the current recommendation ability of video numbers, it is still a relatively crude recommendation algorithm. Videos with different content are recommended to users all at once, which is difficult to digest and has poor consumption. Is it possible to try to mix recommendations from friends’ likes + recommendation page videos to avoid poor consumption of content from friends’ likes, and to compensate for each other by combining recommended content?

In addition, based on short video social recommendations, no other company has tried it except WeChat. It will take some time, but you need to addspeed.

2) Enhance content selection capabilities, explore other categories, and refine operations

From the perspective of the development path and strategy of Douyin and Kuaishou, content operation is the path that all content platforms that pursue user-time growth must choose. Douyin has been re-operating since its establishment, and Kuaishou has experienced no operation(2013-2016)→light operation(2017-2018)→emphasize Operate the stage of (2019-2020).

Both are now in deeper operations, including head content & vertical content operations, celebrity operations, KOL operations, etc.

From the current video number recommendation content, there are problems with operational strategies and logic.

The video account first attracts users through private domain traffic. If it develops towards a social media model, it needs to do content selection and develop into boutique products. First, meet the user’s willingness to consume. There is obviously traffic import now, but The problem of not retaining users.

3) Guide content direction and strengthen operational intervention

A platform based on UGC content has reached a certain base among creators and users, and algorithms alone are not enough.

Most content producers are chasing traffic. At present, individuals often see non-original content on video accounts: movie transfers, celebrity music concert highlights, and various celebrity quotations. These videos are often played very high.

These contents are severely cracked down in Kuaishou, the account of the lighter will be lowered, and the account of the heavy will be blocked.

Although this type of video has certain consumer value, if the platform does not intervene to guide the direction of content creation, a large number of videos that carry traffic and obtain traffic will appear in the entire community, which is not conducive to the healthy development of the community.

4) Weaken the pressure from friends to like, increase the weight of recommendation and attention

Because the current video number is the page that a friend likes, it’s not clear which is higher for the retention of a friend’s likes or a recommendation, but from the current intuitive experience, friends’ likes have social value, but not necessarily consumption value.

The heavy behavior of likes can be weakened. It can be used in a light form, such as “28 friends have watched this video” and “99 friends are following” the account. This light social pressure can ensure social recommendation. At the same time, it can reduce the pressure of likes.

(The video number is currently in grayscale, weakening the design of friends’ likes)

5) Lower the threshold of creation and increase the enthusiasm for content production

The early product operation logic of Douyin:

In the early days, a group of KOLs were invited through Meipai, signed with high-value and big V+ strong marketing, attracting the first wave of users → using the first wave of users as the traffic base + official challenge activities to attract and explore more Those with creative ability come to eat dividends → use the creation of these people as scripts to achieve a large-scale increase in the number of scripts → enough scripts to solve the retention problem caused by content homogeneity → high retention generates more traffic and further strengthens The attractiveness of content creators forms a positive cycle.

In this logic, high-value, big-V, high-quality scripts provide content visibility; scripted gameplay and sufficiently useful filters lower the user’s production threshold, while greatly satisfying the user’s consumption experience .

The slogan of the video account is to record real life, but at present, judging from the content of the video account, there are too few original users who are really willing to release the video account. In the follow-up production work, it is necessary to enhance the operational capabilities and guide the creators to create videos and improve Positivity.

6) Increase attention guide

Personally guess that the retention of the following page is higher than the recommended retention, and the attention should be guided. For example, a follow button is added to the right side of a common feed card account avatar; especially new users guide users to follow high-quality account content.

In addition, on the follow page, the follow tabs are aggregated according to the author’s latitude, and sorted according to the degree of intimacy from high to low, which is expected to allow users to pay attention to the author while also having a stronger impression of the author’s account.

Concentrate on high-value authors, and whether to directly switch to the same author’s automatic playback control.

(Currently, the following accounts have been aggregated and displayed)

7) Search/recommendation optimization

The video number is currently “search” in the “recommendation”, but now it feels like there is only one entry, there is no useful function, and the user’s mind is not cultivated.

Kaishou’s search has undergone a transformation from content consumption to enhanced search cognition; 19 years of online search homepage has provided the capabilities of hot lists, banners and vertical channels, supplementing the product scenarios of Kuaishou’s centralized consumer content and helping users Able to have a good consumer experience in a central square.

In addition, Kuaishou displayed multiple vertical channels on the Discovery page in 19 years, including games, cars, overseas, skits, sports, and vlog, to meet the consumer experience of different users.

Currently, the video number is still in the early stage. Consider the recommendation page and add vertical content to enhance the community content category and increase the ability to quickly expand the category. Meet the needs of different users to consume content and help users have a better consumption experience.

The breadth and quality of information has always been a problem that WeChat has to solve. However, with the complexity of WeChat social relations, how to use social advantages to maximize the value of algorithm recommendation + social recommendation, video accounts still have a long way to go.

The biggest difference between ecological products and tool products is that tool products only need to be deep and thorough. If the user experience is good enough, users will stay on the platform; the biggest problem of ecological products does not directly create value. Integration, creating value indirectly, is a more complex system.

Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, the biggest difference in video numbers is based on social recommendations. Douyin and Kuaishou use algorithms to recommend that short videos can have 600 million DAU. What the video account currently wants to verify is: through social recommendations, can it also bring jitters, even more than 600 million DAU?

Social recommendation and algorithm recommendationGood enough, the video account may become the next WeChat official account, but if it is not used well, it may accelerate the escape of users in the circle of friends.


Part of the data comes from: Orient Securities, Dongxing Securities.

This article is a summary of personal thoughts. Thanks again to: Brother Kaifei, Teacher Kaka, Brother Hj.