WeChat has continued its tradition since its inception and “does not disclose any data related to user duration.”
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “ Internet and Entertainment Strange Teams “(ID: TMTphantom), author: Pei Pei.
The annual WeChat public class is over again. This time, Zhang Xiaolong did not attend, but did not affect the high interest of the audience. For a whole week, research reports and analysis articles on WeChat’s development in 2019 and 2020 initiatives drowned social networks. Of course, how much of this is a valuable analysis is another matter (perhaps 1%).
The head of the strange robber group did not go to the scene to listen to the public class; however, after studying the official minutes organized by Tencent and the notes sent by friends from the scene, the head of the group found an interesting problem: WeChat continued to be established Since the tradition, “do not disclose any data related to the length of the user.”
Let ’s take a look at the “WeChat 2019 Data Report”, which is officially endorsed. It mentioned MAU-1.15 billion, an increase of 6% year-on-year; mentioned the small program MAU-not less than 300 million; referred to the most active time of WeChat overall, WeChat public account, mini-program and mini-game; even mentioned men and women Differences between users and regional users when using various functions of WeChat. However, there is no user duration data.
As a Hong Kong-listed company, Tencent regularly discloses financial reports and discloses some important business data in accordance with regulatory requirements. It has disclosed the number of WeChat payment transactions and the proportion of commercial payments; it has disclosed WeChat’s DAU-its peak value exceeds 1 billion; it has disclosed the user penetration rate of small programs; it has also vaguely disclosed that, friends Inventory and exposure increased in the circle (two to three per day). However, there is still no user duration data. In the “Investor Relations” section of Tencent’s official website, you can find an Excel toolkit, which has sub-disclosures of many important businesses (which is not very useful)-yes, you guessed it, there are still no WeChat users Duration data.
(Tencent official investor toolkit, the data is very simple and not very useful)
It can be confirmed that Tencent’s official (including financial reports, press releases, executive public speeches, official social media and all other information exports) has never beenData on user duration of WeChat has been disclosed. In my impression, in the WeChat public class in 2019, Zhang Xiaolong seems to have said that “the duration of the WeChat circle of friends is basically stable”. Then the question comes: In the stereotype of the outside world (especially investors), “WeChat user duration has fallen due to the impact of short videos” is almost a firm conclusion; how did this stereotype come from?
In 2019, whenever I chat with investors about WeChat, they will say “WeChat user time is declining” … However, what is the source of the data? Since Tencent officials never disclose relevant data, we can only find arguments from third-party data sources such as QuestMoible, Trustdata, TalkingData. However, none of the above third-party data sources claimed that “WeChat user time has fallen”; the total user time of WeChat has increased steadily, but the proportion of the overall market has declined slightly.
In fact, investors and onlookers have mistaken a basic concept: Since Tencent has not won the short video war and the development of information streaming media is not good, the proportion of user time occupied by the “Tencent Department” as a whole must be Down. However, the responsibility lies mainly on WeChat, Tencent Video, Tencent News, Daily Express, not WeChat. WeChat should not have taken on the heavy responsibility in the short video war. In September 2018, WeChat started direct diversion for Weishi in the circle of friends function; in January 2019, it launched the moment video function. This is the biggest contribution WeChat can make to the short video war situation, not too demanding.
Of course, if WeChat is radical enough and not left behind, it can theoretically defeat Douyin and fast players and occupy the commanding heights of short videos: remove the short video time limit of friends (now 15 seconds); see Watch the short video in the information stream strongly; set up a special short video information flow interface, and even add a first-level entry for stranger short videos … In this way, WeChat will definitely become the short video application with the most users and the longest duration in China ( Nonsense), but that would be a disaster. WeChat’s acquaintances will lose all their social functions and degenerate into a media content platform; by that time, all competitors will flex their muscles to enter the social base of WeChat. This price is not worth it, this risk cannot be taken.
To answer “Why WeChat does not disclose user time”, we might as well ask another question: Does WeChat really care about user time? WeChat is really just like short video applications, long video applications, and information streaming applications. They are hungry for users and want to block them.