Why didn’t QQ die out like MSN under the strong impact of WeChat?

QQ is the social platform with the largest number of young people and the most active one in China. This is the greatest value of QQ now. Perhaps for a product, it is not difficult to capture a generation of young people, but the difficult part is to be able to capture every generation of young people.

I used to think that when a new product comes out, it will inevitably mean the demise of the old generation of products, just like the iPhone to Nokia and 360 to Rising Antivirus; I used to think that if a company has two similar giant products, it will inevitably cause Mars to hit the Earth, or even sink two ships; I used to think that with the current iteration speed of Internet products, it is difficult for century-old stores to appear. Generation after generation of Internet products are like falling meteor showers. Before you can see them clearly, they have disappeared...

However, it seems that all our previous assumptions about QQ were wrong!

In 2010, WeChat came like a thunderclap, giving everyone a new understanding of mobile Internet . Almost everyone was looking at WeChat and regarded it as Tencent's first ticket to mobile Internet . Almost no one remembered QQ, the cute, silent software that was even more well-known than Tencent. At that time, people either intentionally or unintentionally chose to forget about QQ, because no one dared to assert what would happen to QQ after WeChat came out. After all, QQ was once so dominant and popular, with 800 million users.

Until one day, the mobile QQ version was updated and the "online" and "offline" functions were removed. Everyone jumped up and criticized QQ for this "reckless" behavior. As QQ has been used for 15 years, everyone has their own usage habits. Although QQ was changed back to QQ in the end, people only realized at that time that QQ, which had dominated the PC for fifteen years, also needed to transform to the mobile Internet.

Furthermore, people began to think about the questions I mentioned at the beginning of the article: when WeChat came out, would QQ gradually fade into history? When Tencent promoted internal competition between WeChat and QQ, would it lead to excessive internal consumption and eventually turn it into a life-and-death war between QQ and WeChat? QQ had a history of nearly 18 years by the end of 2016, which was already a miracle. How long could it remain active?

The final result proved that both Tencent and QQ made the right bet in the end. QQ did not die and did not have too much friction with WeChat. According to Tencent’s latest financial report, QQ has 899 million monthly active users—estimated to have now exceeded 900 million—and WeChat also has 806 million users. Two platforms with equally amazing data obviously have a lot of overlapping users. You should know that according to the latest data from the China Internet Information Center, the total number of Internet users in China is only 688 million.

Perhaps the only explanation for this result is that when QQ and WeChat became differentiated, users had different purposes and mindsets when using the two platforms. Perhaps there will be overlap in social chains on the two platforms, but even the same relationship chain will appear in completely different states in different scenarios. This also proves the "mosaic" theory to a certain extent. Everyone is a diversified existence. In different scenarios, they will embed their own different states, resulting in a situation that looks the same but is actually different.

Although Tencent's annual Tencent Global Partner Conference was born out of the "3Q War", it has now become the equivalent of Baidu World. At this conference, although "openness" remains its unchanging theme, what is more important is that almost every product of Tencent will announce its development strategy for the next 1-2 years at this conference. Having grown into the platform with the highest market value in Asia, Tencent's product line development strategy has obviously become the bread and butter of many entrepreneurs .

At this year's partner conference, the theme of the QQ venue this year was "More Entertaining, More Social", which mainly explained the entertainment and social strategy to the outside world. QQ CEO Yin Yu explained entertainment and social networking in this way:

On the one hand, QQ has continuously improved its layout of entertainment content by expanding into the fields of film, television, animation, games , and literature, and has served as a "content carrier"; on the other hand, through functions such as groups, interest groups, live broadcasts , QQ highlights, and diaries on QQ, entertainment content can create influence through social interaction and serve as a "social amplifier."

According to my personal understanding, the so-called entertainment social networking is actually a positioning for the social platform. Just as what everyone often said before, "WeChat makes social networking more efficient, and QQ makes social networking more fun", QQ hopes to be able to present real life on the Internet in a mirrored way - such as takeout, travel, etc. - in addition to providing users with a virtual parallel world that carries people's imagination of "another self".

For users, QQ's entertainment and social strategy means providing more interesting products, such as the recently launched Diary, Now Live, QQ Highlights, video special effects, etc., while connecting to more entertainment content, such as connecting to film and television IPs through QQ emoticons, so that users can "play" more; and for those partners on the QQ platform, it means that by providing content, it can be better integrated with the products on QQ, thereby capturing young people and using young people to create secondary content.

For QQ's partners, most of them are content creators. There are two indispensable prerequisites for their development. One is that IP can only be called IP after it has been derived, otherwise it can only be called a well-known work. QQ is equivalent to providing these quasi-IPs with a platform for making virtual derivatives, thereby turning these quasi-IPs into real IPs; another is that any content entrepreneur needs to be able to come into contact with cutting-edge culture, and the young people on QQ are the best platform - more than 60% of QQ users are born after 1990, and those born after 2000 account for about 30%.

In addition to providing a relatively win-win platform for its partners, QQ's entertainment and social strategy has actually also found an opportunity for sustainable development for itself. This is not only an answer to Tencent’s “internal competition”, but also a deeper reflection of the fact that adaptability is more important than change.

So, this solves two questions:

• The first is why QQ did not die like MSN under the strong impact of WeChat;
• The second is why QQ’s entertainment and social networking strategy is actually the best path for QQ.

The answer to the former can be simply summarized as follows: on the one hand, QQ has a stronger safe zone than MSN, has been in operation longer than MSN, and has more bargaining chips; on the other hand, under the impact of emerging forces, QQ, as a behemoth, cannot turn around so quickly, but it has keenly found a "safe haven" that the emerging forces have not yet discovered. That is, having the experience of capturing the attention of generation after generation of young people.

The answer to the latter is that, first of all, QQ has solved the problem of managing its relationship with WeChat. When internal competition is more intense and cruel than external competition, QQ has reasonably avoided the damage that Tencent's "internal competition" may bring; secondly, QQ has grasped the "G-spot" of social networking - using entertainment to capture young people. According to iResearch's "China Online Entertainment Industry Research Report", in 2015, the scale of the online entertainment market exceeded 200 billion yuan, and by 2018 it will reach 377.69 billion yuan, with the average person spending 1 hour a day on online entertainment. Using entertainment to stimulate young people's taste buds and finally achieving the result of "youth is the future" should be the answer that QQ wants; finally, QQ forms a closed loop of "providing content - socializing - secondary content creation - socializing" through the interaction between entertainment content and young people's interests.

The results also prove this point. Many international film and television companies, such as Disney, 20th Century Fox, etc., have chosen QQ when cooperating with Tencent. Disney has collaborated with QQ on nearly ten films, including "Zootopia", "Star Wars 7", etc. 20th Century Fox has gone a step further and carried out strategic cooperation with QQ, even carrying out the first global implantation of QQ in "Independence Day 2".

The cooperation between these film and television companies and QQ also has its own purposes. Film and television companies use the QQ platform, such as emoticons, pendants, wallets and other functions, to develop virtual derivatives. While making profits from virtual derivatives, they also get "free" promotion, saving a lot of advertising and promotion costs. QQ obtains the authorization of these IPs, making these contents an important bargaining chip to capture young people.

QQ is the social platform with the largest number of young people and the most active one in China. This is the greatest value of QQ now. Just as Ye Fu said, "Generations grow up, generations grow old, time takes away the stories of others, and we are left with only ourselves." Perhaps for a product, it is not difficult to capture a generation of young people, but the difficult part is to be able to capture each generation of young people. This requires that the product needs to undergo repeated role changes from "challenged" to "challenger".

At the end of the article, I would like to conclude with a quote from a friend who attended the conference today.

What QQ has experienced is something that most Internet products have never experienced, and I believe it is something that most Internet products will inevitably experience. This is Tencent’s eternal icon, and also an icon in the history of China’s Internet development. Best wishes to QQ.