I overturned!
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ 刘 言 飞 语 ” ( ID: liufeinotes), author Liu Yanfei.
WeChat officially announced the form of short content a few days ago. It was really unexpected. It was a short video.
According to the description of Teacher Achan who is closer to the WeChat team ( What do you want for a WeChat video number (short content)? ), here are some key points:
Yes, my previous predictions were almost all rollovers ( Predict the” short content “of WeChat (the fourth part in it). Really slap.
This short content completely abandons the “text” carrier, and instead chooses a way to compete with Douyin / Fasthand, which is puzzling. Don’t rush to refute, I will say next.
Lack of short content on WeChat is consistent recognition
In Achan’s article ( What do you want in WeChat video number (short content)? There are some shortcomings in the WeChat public account ecology, including:
- Short content producers are missing (there is no producer without short content)
- Lack of mobile authoring method (authoring tools are only caused on PC, Long Shu mentioned)
- Lack of sinking method (essentially has nothing to do with short content, it is caused by time order)
- Lack of middle-distance broadcast capability (can be understood as private-speaking group broadcasts, knowledge planet)
- Lack of low creative threshold (Changwen obviously has higher creative cost)
- Lack of passive acquisition capabilities (subscribe to follow, forward, and take a look at acquisitions, all relatively active)
- Lack of long tail content (many niche content, it is difficult to find users with demand)
Compared to what I mentioned in the article, the core problems solved by short content are actually the same: the personal public domain social media that breaks through the circle of friends is essentially Middle-distance broadcast capability: 
Threshold of creative cost , Also mentioned: 
The matching value of long tail content , Also mentioned: 
Middle distance broadcast capability is missing: 
After reading, I am very confused.
The new creator’s needs are met. It should be short text, pictures, and short videos. Why is it a video carrier?
The creation, publishing, and reading of video numbers are all performed on the mobile terminal … as well as text and pictures. And the cost of video creation is much higher than text.
With the recommendation mechanism, the text is more useful for obtaining the content characteristics, and the feature abstraction of the video will be more difficult.
As a content dissemination carrier, the transmission efficiency of text is also much higher than that of video, which is irreplaceable.
From these logics, it is difficult to deduce why WeChat chose to be a video number.
Furthermore, there are still some problems:
① As I just said, to significantly reduce the cost of creators and provide a platform for valuable content, first of all, most large V content is not suitable for video. For example, I often watch a lot of business analysis and fragmentation thinking. Achan ’s own content carrier is inappropriate:
Let everyone talk about these contents, what should the screen be? It’s hard to tell. For creators, medium-distance, personal public domain communication does not need to appear in the picture. And to appear,Image, light, talking, and various post-production editing are all issues.
If you really need to fill in more valuable picture information, then the creation cost will increase in vain, which is much higher than that of Changwen.
② Problems will also be encountered in terms of communication. From a user perspective, what is the old experience of most people with short videos? Of course, vibrato fast hand-based.
People are lazy. When fragmented time can be stimulated by a few seconds of short videos, users will not want to watch short videos with more information. I have doubts about the amount of information provided). What’s more, WeChat does not yet provide information flow recommended by pure algorithms, which is even more attractive to users.
The advantage of WeChat is the social ecology, but it must be said that video is conducive to the spread among users, and users must also spread interesting content. Downloading Douyin video content and sending it to WeChat chat or group chat is a common operation. Otherwise, the video number is only easy to forward, and users will not actively propagate it.
Why the video number?
Returning to this question, I irresponsibly guess that it is still the pressure of byte beating. If this was the time to promote small videos and video dynamics in the past, we can also say that this is WeChat’s own thinking and has nothing to do with the headlines; today the heart of the video is still immortal, and it seems to be nailed to the head.
As just said, from the current problems encountered in the content ecology, after reasonable derivation, the threshold for short text creation should be lower, more communicative, and more differentiated. However, when choosing a video, more external factors must be considered.
On this, I can only say that there is some regret.
What happens next? I said in the previous article: 
As long as the video carrier is provided, it will directly become a competitor of Douyin. What’s more, the new battlefield with its own entrance is now opened independently.
Regardless of how WeChat explains this is a supplement based on its own ecological thinking, no matter how much the information distribution logic of WeChat is different, the user’s demand for short video content has been verified by Douyin Quick.
Most of the valuable information we can obtain in WeChat long articles, knowledge planets / instant short articles is not suitable for video carriers. After all, when the vibrato flow bonus is paid, everyone wants a share of it, but there is a bigUnsuitable subjects.
With the limitation of short videos, if you do not get users to resonate within 15s (later 60s), it will be very difficult to focus on retention. This is destined that the video content is either exciting or funny, or it is a life skill that allows users to “think” that it is helpful. The business analysis and fragmentation thinking I mentioned earlier are difficult to carry.
In addition, I originally thought that a lot of short content in the circle of friends would be a good source for cold start. Unfortunately, according to the current short video quality expectation of high vibrato, General users The content created by the mobile phone and the professional team on Douyin have not been played at all .
For short videos, the only advantage of WeChat is the user chassis.
For most consumers and creators, the value of video number creation is limited. It is a defensive fortification of WeChat, which mainly transfers the existing external stock content to WeChat. It is essentially difficult to create new social values. This is another aspect of my regret.
Will video numbers develop? I’m optimistic about this. The foundation of WeChat’s traffic lies in WeChat’s user content consumption habits, and naturally a large number of short video creators will settle in. The creators of these short videos are estimated to have been carried from Douyin, Kuaishou, and even Station B.
After all, the traffic is enough to eat, and the animals are fierce. Hope to help you.
Compared to what I mentioned in the article, the core problems solved by short content are actually the same: the personal public domain social media that breaks through the circle of friends is essentially Middle-distance broadcast capability:
Threshold of creative cost , Also mentioned: The matching value of long tail content , Also mentioned:
After reading, I am very confused.
The new creator’s needs are met. It should be short text, pictures, and short videos. Why is it a video carrier?
The creation, publishing, and reading of video numbers are all performed on the mobile terminal … as well as text and pictures. And the cost of video creation is much higher than text.
With the recommendation mechanism, the text is more useful for obtaining the content characteristics, and the feature abstraction of the video will be more difficult.
As a content dissemination carrier, the transmission efficiency of text is also much higher than that of video, which is irreplaceable.
From these logics, it is difficult to deduce why WeChat chose to be a video number.
Furthermore, there are still some problems:
① As I just said, to significantly reduce the cost of creators and provide a platform for valuable content, first of all, most large V content is not suitable for video. For example, I often watch a lot of business analysis and fragmentation thinking. Achan ’s own content carrier is inappropriate:
Let everyone talk about these contents, what should the screen be? It’s hard to tell. For creators, medium-distance, personal public domain communication does not need to appear in the picture. And to appear,Image, light, talking, and various post-production editing are all issues.
If you really need to fill in more valuable picture information, then the creation cost will increase in vain, which is much higher than that of Changwen.
② Problems will also be encountered in terms of communication. From a user perspective, what is the old experience of most people with short videos? Of course, vibrato fast hand-based.
People are lazy. When fragmented time can be stimulated by a few seconds of short videos, users will not want to watch short videos with more information. I have doubts about the amount of information provided). What’s more, WeChat does not yet provide information flow recommended by pure algorithms, which is even more attractive to users.
The advantage of WeChat is the social ecology, but it must be said that video is conducive to the spread among users, and users must also spread interesting content. Downloading Douyin video content and sending it to WeChat chat or group chat is a common operation. Otherwise, the video number is only easy to forward, and users will not actively propagate it.
Why the video number?
Returning to this question, I irresponsibly guess that it is still the pressure of byte beating. If this was the time to promote small videos and video dynamics in the past, we can also say that this is WeChat’s own thinking and has nothing to do with the headlines; today the heart of the video is still immortal, and it seems to be nailed to the head.
As just said, from the current problems encountered in the content ecology, after reasonable derivation, the threshold for short text creation should be lower, more communicative, and more differentiated. However, when choosing a video, more external factors must be considered.
On this, I can only say that there is some regret.
What happens next? I said in the previous article: As long as the video carrier is provided, it will directly become a competitor of Douyin. What’s more, the new battlefield with its own entrance is now opened independently.
Regardless of how WeChat explains this is a supplement based on its own ecological thinking, no matter how much the information distribution logic of WeChat is different, the user’s demand for short video content has been verified by Douyin Quick.
Most of the valuable information we can obtain in WeChat long articles, knowledge planets / instant short articles is not suitable for video carriers. After all, when the vibrato flow bonus is paid, everyone wants a share of it, but there is a bigUnsuitable subjects.
With the limitation of short videos, if you do not get users to resonate within 15s (later 60s), it will be very difficult to focus on retention. This is destined that the video content is either exciting or funny, or it is a life skill that allows users to “think” that it is helpful. The business analysis and fragmentation thinking I mentioned earlier are difficult to carry.
In addition, I originally thought that a lot of short content in the circle of friends would be a good source for cold start. Unfortunately, according to the current short video quality expectation of high vibrato, General users The content created by the mobile phone and the professional team on Douyin have not been played at all .
For short videos, the only advantage of WeChat is the user chassis.
For most consumers and creators, the value of video number creation is limited. It is a defensive fortification of WeChat, which mainly transfers the existing external stock content to WeChat. It is essentially difficult to create new social values. This is another aspect of my regret.
Will video numbers develop? I’m optimistic about this. The foundation of WeChat’s traffic lies in WeChat’s user content consumption habits, and naturally a large number of short video creators will settle in. The creators of these short videos are estimated to have been carried from Douyin, Kuaishou, and even Station B.
After all, the traffic is enough to eat, and the animals are fierce. Hope to help you.
As long as the video carrier is provided, it will directly become a competitor of Douyin. What’s more, the new battlefield with its own entrance is now opened independently.
Regardless of how WeChat explains this is a supplement based on its own ecological thinking, no matter how much the information distribution logic of WeChat is different, the user’s demand for short video content has been verified by Douyin Quick.
Most of the valuable information we can obtain in WeChat long articles, knowledge planets / instant short articles is not suitable for video carriers. After all, when the vibrato flow bonus is paid, everyone wants a share of it, but there is a bigUnsuitable subjects.
With the limitation of short videos, if you do not get users to resonate within 15s (later 60s), it will be very difficult to focus on retention. This is destined that the video content is either exciting or funny, or it is a life skill that allows users to “think” that it is helpful. The business analysis and fragmentation thinking I mentioned earlier are difficult to carry.
In addition, I originally thought that a lot of short content in the circle of friends would be a good source for cold start. Unfortunately, according to the current short video quality expectation of high vibrato, General users The content created by the mobile phone and the professional team on Douyin have not been played at all .
For short videos, the only advantage of WeChat is the user chassis.
For most consumers and creators, the value of video number creation is limited. It is a defensive fortification of WeChat, which mainly transfers the existing external stock content to WeChat. It is essentially difficult to create new social values. This is another aspect of my regret.
Will video numbers develop? I’m optimistic about this. The foundation of WeChat’s traffic lies in WeChat’s user content consumption habits, and naturally a large number of short video creators will settle in. The creators of these short videos are estimated to have been carried from Douyin, Kuaishou, and even Station B.
After all, the traffic is enough to eat, and the animals are fierce. Hope to help you.