For Tencent, there is no better option than subverting its own social products.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Time Finance App ” (ID: tf-app), author Zhu Yujun.
In the past two years, Liu Chiping, the president of Tencent, proposed that the QQ team can develop some new social products so that the QQ team can get the real social needs of young people. For Tencent, there is no better option than subverting its own social products.
Image source: Tencent official
Tencent, which has more than half of the empire in the social field, still hasn’t stopped exploring.
On December 9th, Tencent began beta testing of a new social product called “Friends”. The product is similar to the school intranet and is mainly aimed at social interactions among acquaintances. It is understood that “friends” is a dating software that requires identity verification to implement a real-name system, and adding friends requires an invitation code. There are 4 functional zones in the app: “Meet”, “Circle”, status, and “chat”. It also supports users to synchronize the platform status to Weibo, WeChat circle of friends, and WeChat friends.
This is the fifth social product launched by Tencent since November. Most of these five products focus on the social area of strangers, and most of them can find a corresponding product in the market.
At the beginning of November this year, Tencent launched a video beauty social app “Maohu”, which focuses on strangers socializing.
In mid-November, Tencent launched the app “Light Chat”, which is positioned as a “high-quality social network”. The target group includes Internet companies and students in schools, similar to exploring. At the same time, Tencent also launched the voice social software “Echo”, which has a high similarity with the byte-beating “Yinyu”.
On November 28th, Tencent launched the social application “You Ji”, with the slogan: “Record your serious life.” The gameplay is similar to Sina’s social circle product “Oasis”, which is considered to be a social product born to benchmark oasis.
An earlier product, “Kazuo”, was also launched in early September this year. This is also the first 3D virtual image social product launched by QQ.
Tencent Empire coexists with worries and ambitions
QQ and WeChat have been in China’s social field for 21 yearsSince the 8-year journey, the social field of acquaintances has been almost “indifferent.”
But the calm social track was really stirred up after Luo Yonghao launched the bullet SMS in August 2018. Regardless of the success of the bullet message, Luo Yonghao’s “short-lived” in the social field reveals other “possibilities” that still exist in the social field.
2018 and 2019 are two of the most lively in the social field so far. According to the “2019 Social App Data Report” launched by Qimai Data, research on the Social App Top500 shows that (iOS, the access cycle is nearly one year): from 2008 to 2015, a total of 153 products were launched on social apps. In 2018, 159 social apps were born. In the first two months of 2019, the App Store has launched 53 new social apps.
In this context, Xiaohongshu has become a hit, and the headline products have also been quite eye-catching in the past two years. The download volume of social apps for 2019 released by Qimai Tune is ranked in the Top 30 (iOS). Xiaohongshu dropped WeChat and QQ and ranked first. Byte beatings and flashes have been online for less than a year, and iOS downloads have exceeded 10 million.
In early 2019, strange social groups will start a collective competition. In the field of love and dating, Ali launched Ru Me, Jingdong launched Pear Oh, Byte Beat also bought Biu Campus, and Internet giants are constantly enriching social products. In the context of “easy to defend and difficult to attack”, Tencent also launched a light chat, raised the threshold for identity tag authentication, and paired for dating and dating.
Later, in the area of voice and social networking, Alibaba released Duck Singing, Byte Beats and shares of audio experience. Netease also launched Sonic, unwilling to lag behind Tencent, so it launched an echo to complement Tencent’s voice social Gap.
Tencent’s ambitions for a comprehensive social layout are beginning to emerge. At the beginning of March this year, QQ opened a new social portal in a conspicuous location, named “Expanding”. This time, the social portal for strangers is properly a gathering place for post-00 users. Users who enter the portal can expand according to their personal needs. Social relationships.
In recent years, QQ has developed from interested tribes to QQ animation, live broadcast, etc. The target group is getting closer and closer to Gen Z. According to Tencent’s financial report, the proportion of QQ’s Gen Z users is much higher than WeChat, and the social needs of Gen Z are more inclined to pursue social circles in social interaction with strangers.
QuestMobile’s “China Mobile Internet Annual Report 2018” shows that Gen Z prefers to experiment with all kinds of niche social trends, and the appeal on unfamiliar society is more to resolve loneliness and match common interests. Tencent, who wants to meet the social needs of Gen Z, will inevitably try again and again in the social field of strangers.
The most important thing is that the stranger’s social market has been tested. Explore the target foreign stranger’s social “Tinder” and successfully win the first quarter of 2019.