Tencent does not need to make the next Douyin-instead, it has copied countless “Douyin” in various business lines, and “Douyin” cannot be made into “WeChat”, let alone “Tencent”.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Investment Network” (ID: China-Venture) author: Lin orange, edit Dongli Han.
Tencent puts the highest level of traffic all in WeChat video account
WeChat’s video account is being tested live in grayscale, and Pan Luan is excited about it. The author, who wrote “Tencent No Dream” two years ago, did a live broadcast on the video account for two consecutive nights. After finishing the live broadcast, he wrote on the WeChat official account, “The live broadcast of the video account is more exciting than the short video of the video account.” Then, he quoted another well-known public account “10 o’clock reading” founder Lin Shao commented-“Finally there is a live broadcast suitable for us. “
The implication is that they have found a live broadcast platform that fits their circle in addition to the entertainment and sales-oriented “shaking fast Tao”. Pan Luan described his first live broadcast as “like a small circle of science and technology Spring Festival Gala.”
Uncoded Technology founder Feng Dahui recently opened I was surprised when the video account was broadcast live. It was originally in order to experience the product interaction of the small store bound to the video account, but after opening the live broadcast, “a bunch of people came in instantly”, I planned to turn it off after testing the effect, and had to postpone it. “The number of users of the video account may be much higher than I expected,” he told China Investment.com that he had conducted several live broadcasts recently, “experience exceeded expectations”, and pointed out in his article, “(Video account has) Huge room for imagination”.
The first fire of the live broadcast of the video number first set the enthusiasm of the content author on fire.
The video number is another new work of Tencent’s “groping” short video. Unlike short video products such as Weishi and Yoo, the video number is embedded in the WeChat ecosystem, and the resources carried when entering the venue far exceed other product lines. The next three steps show that Tencent is ready to all in the highest level of traffic resources.
WeChat found page changes over the years
The first step is to find the page. The video number was just launched in April this year, instead of “scanning”, it was placed in the second column of the discovery page, below the circle of friends. Found that the page is a huge traffic portal for WeChat. Liu Qiangdong said three years ago that more than 24% of JD’s new active users came from mobile QQ and WeChat.
The second step is to open up public domain traffic. It seems that the video account of the private domain is connected with the WeChat official account, and then directly listed through the “Circle of Friends” expansion. This is a treatment that Tencent’s other short video products have never enjoyed. In the past, the product required the user’s consent to obtain a friend relationship on WeChat or QQ-a weak social relationship at the second level of entry. The video account is also upbeat, surpassing Tencent’s other short video results in less than three months. It is said that in July, the daily active life of the video account has reached 200 million, which is approaching Kaishou’s 300 million daily activity is also 600 million 1/3 of daily vibrato.
The third step is to activate the live broadcast function. Especially in recent days, users have successively conducted grayscale tests to carry out live broadcasts-that is, the purchase link function of the mini program can be opened-from content, traffic to monetization, Tencent’s short video has begun to close the loop.
Before the video number, Touzhong.com does not complete statistics. Tencent has produced at least 17 applications on short videos. But each one did not make it to TOP1-in the data report of multiple short videos, Weishi ranked fourth.
More importantly, none of these can represent Tencent’s short video positioning, or that Tencent’s short video business simply cannotPositioning. These more than a dozen short videos are mainly for teenagers, some are for crowds, some are social, and some are long-term. They have different positioning and multiple tags, and they look “scattered and chaotic.”
In the era when traffic is business, social hegemony Tencent also has traffic anxiety. Short videos are today’s largest traffic portal, and the 2020 epidemic will catalyze the outbreak even more. Quest Mobile’s previous data pointed out that in June this year, the average time users spend on short videos per day has grown to 110 minutes, surpassing the time spent on instant messaging applications and is almost the largest network application field.
Among the short videos, Douyin, Kuaishou and Taobao live broadcasts are currently the main ones. Since at least 2018, they have taken up most people’s time and attention. In 2018, the demographic dividend is fading away. The anxiety of traffic has also become the number one worry of Internet people since then.
Bytedance, in 2018, merged Musically, which was acquired a year ago, into Douyin. From then on, Douyin is what we now see It has become the largest platform in the short video field, and even in the world, it is also the fastest growing platform. Another social giant Facebook also had to regard it as a “nail in the eye.”
Followingly, we also saw the continuous expansion of the Bytedance business with Douyin as the basic disk. It is not an exaggeration to summarize the current stage as the peak period of short videos. But in this process, Tencent, which has produced more than a dozen short videos, rarely appears in the first echelon. Some media occasionally joked that “Tencent may not have the genes for making short videos.”
After the live broadcast of the video account and the live broadcast of the goods, Tencent finally made a closed-loop product that is “closest to Douyin” in terms of function, business logic and magnitude. Give it a go”? Can Tencent replicate the next Douyin? Does Tencent need to replicate the next Douyin?
Tencent does not need to copy the next Douyin, but you may be able to meet Tencent at every traffic entry
Open the [Hot Spot] of Tencent Video, open WeChat to take a look at the [Hot Video], open the mini program [Take a Look+], open Weishi, open Douyin, open Kuaishou, open Weibo video… open any short video, they are all similar: an endless stream of information.
Now, behind every short video product has their so-called “algorithm”, which pushes you/potentially interested. Once opened, it will be difficult for you to exit.
This is the biggest feature of current short videos. Although Tencent has more than a dozen short videos on the market, in terms of product form and content, each of them resembles “Tik Tok”.
Tencent is famous for its intense internal PK. It is rumored that before the birth of WeChat, there were three internal teams working on it at the same time, and the product names were all called WeChat, whoever won was used. Even the search algorithm team is divided into several. Now, the same is true on short videos.
Under the horse racing mechanism, the respective teams within Tencent are making their own short videos, and they are not connected to each other, and they work independently. So you will see, QQ short video, QQ live, Weishi, short video of WeChat applet, and live broadcast of WeChat applet, as well as the current video number and its live broadcast.
Tencent’s logic for making short videos is different from that of Douyin and Kuaishou. The first-level entry of Douyin and Kuaishou is short video. On the basis of short video, functions are added, +social, +e-commerce, etc. Tencent, whether it is QQ or WeChat to make short videos, the first-level entrance is social, so it is more through short videos than short videos.Video retention and stimulation of these original users. As for Weishi, which was established in 2013, why it lags behind Douyin and Kuaishou, there have been many articles analyzing: positioning, adjusting the business team back and forth, and missing time windows.
An early investor in Kuaishou, Lin Xinhe, a managing partner of DCM in China, discussed the product logic of Kuaishou at a sharing meeting last year. Su Hua told him that the initial fast hand is only 8 seconds, and the threshold for content production beyond 8 seconds will increase, and the 8-second time limit makes it difficult for professional producers to play. Just like the 140 characters of Weibo. What Kuaishou has to do is also a platform for ordinary people.
Lin Xinhe asked Su Hua again why his driver posted a video in Kuaishou and no one liked him at all. Su Hua’s answer is that because he is too old (more than 40 years old), not Kuaishou and the core customer group, Kuaishou will not allocate traffic to him. At that time, the core customer groups were all teenagers, and users of the same age group gave them a stronger sense of community identity.
The same logic works on Douyin. That is, they make a short video product from 0 to 1. With a certain user group, expand to other groups, and then continue to overlay tags and functions to create different circles and communities.
Tencent is not the case. Whether it is QQ or WeChat, these social products are already the largest platforms for Chinese Internet users. 1.2 billion people are on it, and there are already countless “circles of friends” on it. It’s hard to adjust, and it’s not just a product. This is why there are so many short video products from Tencent that we see now, so “scattered” and so “chaotic”. It is difficult for you to give “Tencent short videos” a clear positioning, and you may encounter Tencent products at the entrance of each traffic, whether it is produced by itself or invested by it.
For example, the “Kaikan” Happy Channel applet (later renamed “Kaikan+”), which was launched last year, focuses on the silver-haired user group. In the Mobilequest applet report in August this year, it was the top 5 in user increments, increasing from tens of millions of monthly active users to 220 million this year. The live broadcast of the mini program will be available after the WeChat public class at the beginning of the year, but it is mainly a non-entertainment live broadcast that provides value-added services for businesses. And now, the WeChat video account is launched, with what “Pan Luans” said-“Finally, there is a live broadcast suitable for us.”
Take a look + is one of the top 5 mini programs with the fastest increase in monthly active users this year
WeChat video number can be the next “Tik Tok”, but “Tik Tok” cannot be made into “WeChat”
The WeChat video account appeared at this moment. It is already a “integrated master” and has improved a lot. For example, when watching a live broadcast, you can use a small screen floating window for the live broadcast of the video account to continue chatting on WeChat, browsing the Moments of Friends, and watching the official account-everything is still in the WeChat ecosystem.
While watching the live broadcast of the video account, you can continue to browse Moments, watch videos, and take a look on WeChat
On the other hand, WeChat also gives a lot of priority diversion. “Take a look” on WeChat Discovery opens, and the [Featured] column opens, and the first screen position gives a short video—hot video, which is actually the video number. Moments of friends recently added the function of tags. Click into the public topical tags, and the video number appears on the first screen (personal tags are Moments, then information).
WeChat in 2020 can no longer talk about “restraint”. It has long become the largest diversion station for Tencent’s internal multi-business. In the era of traffic anxiety, the original stock has been increased. For details, please refer to the two analysis articles on WeChat ecological changes made by Touzhong.com last December and January this year. (“Wechat needs traffic, Tencent needs to transform “And “
As early as April of this year, Bai Zhenjie, Director of External Industry Operations of WeChat Pay, told China Investment Network that the live broadcast of WeChat will be standardized in the background. Merchants, private domains, official account traffic, and even offline code scanning can complete the ability to transfer from traffic to the platform.
“Connect with payment, how to quickly place an order and how to issue coupons, and how to help you make live broadcast traffic, the conversion of public domain traffic through WeChat terminal to merchant live traffic, and “Sou Yi Sou”, etc. It can match our abilities.” Bai Zhenjie said.
Tencent’s road becomes Tencent’s road after taking the road that others have traveled. But the road to becoming a “Tencent” is not easy.
Short videos are now the largest portal of traffic, but the commercial capabilities that have been deposited are now mainly two: advertising monetization and e-commerce. Ads have declined since last year, Baidu’s core business online advertising revenue as a percentage of total revenue is declining Direct result. Although ByteDance has lost the bulk of the Internet advertising business, this year it is also accelerating its other hematopoietic businesses: e-commerce, games and education. These three are now steadily rising businesses in Tencent.
Take the e-commerce of WeChat Mini Program as an example. On January 9, 2020, WeChat announced the transaction data of mini program e-commerce for the first time. In 2019, the WeChat mini program e-commerce transaction volume exceeded 800 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of over 160%.
The turnover of 800 billion yuan is almost oneA concept of Pinduoduo-for the 12 months ended September 30, 2019, Pinduoduo’s platform turnover was 840.2 billion yuan-that is to say, in addition to Tmall Taobao and JD Large e-commerce platforms may be difficult to determine.
Bytedance, or Kuaishou, are indeed constantly improving their business capabilities. But WeChat continues to work as a “commercial operating system” in the originally established ecosystem (although this concept was proposed by Ali). The WeChat video account is one of the links. In the end, they can be connected to each other no matter which entrance is diversion.
Now, you enter any keyword from the search field of WeChat, click from the tag in the circle of friends, as long as the keyword, this tag, there is a mini program, an official account, and a video account, you can always find Everything about it: news, video numbers, and transactions. These are unmatched by the commercial capabilities of other short video platforms.
