The Internet in 2016: Where has all the traffic gone?

The trouble with public accounts: disappearing readership

The opening rate of WeChat public accounts has declined, which is a recognized fact in the self-media circle. What’s even more terrifying is that while the number of fans of some public accounts continues to grow, the absolute number of readers is continuing to decline.

The decline in reading volume has brought about a series of reactions. First, the advertising quotations of self-media are no longer as changing with each passing day as they were a few years ago. Second, the sales volume of self-media e-commerce has shown a state of stagnant growth. Among the three major monetization methods of public accounts (paid communities , advertising, and e-commerce), the latter two face huge challenges. As for the operation of paid communities, it is not much better.

Is the good old days that just appeared going to end so soon?

In fact, it is not just WeChat official accounts. The traffic of almost all e-commerce companies, video websites, news media, and various mobile application apps have seen a frightening decline. Why are almost all applications that rely on traffic experiencing a decline in traffic? Where does the traffic go? In fact, the traffic has not disappeared, and the total traffic of mobile Internet is still growing.

The essence of traffic is user time

We should first understand that the essence of traffic is the time of Internet users. So traffic is actually equal to the product of the number of users and the user usage time. Theoretically, as long as the number of Internet users continues to grow, or the time users spend on the Internet per day increases, the total traffic will continue to grow. In a stage where traffic continues to grow, life is easy. The cost for each application to obtain traffic is low, and it seems so good.

China was allowed to join the Internet in 1994. Since Zhang Shuxin founded the first Internet service provider, Yinghaiwei, in 1995, China's Internet users have been in a stage of rapid growth. After 2010, the growth of traditional Internet showed a slowing trend, but the advent of the mobile Internet era allowed everyone to have another five years of good times.

In fact, you will find that the growth rate of China's mobile Internet users is also continuing to decline. However, due to the gradual popularization of 4G networks and WiFi in the past few years, the continuous reduction of mobile network charges, and the continuous increase in personal daily usage time, it seems that the growth of this multiplier is still good.

Today, the growth rate of Internet users has slowed down, and the time users spend online has been basically exhausted. Since it is impossible for a user to be online all day long, the total traffic pool will no longer increase.

The flow is like a pond, but the valve that lets in water is now closed.

We compare the flow rate to a pond. There is already some water in the pond, but there is also a valve that continuously releases water into the pond. Therefore, some new public accounts or apps, even if they cannot grab the water in the original pool, can still run to the valve to get some new ones. Now that the valve is about to close, the fish inside have to compete with each other for water. More and more fish are coming in, but the water remains the same, so the living environment will become worse and worse.

In 2015, the number of registered WeChat public accounts exceeded 10 million. In the first half of this year, hundreds of live broadcasts suddenly emerged. Live broadcasting is a huge time-consuming machine. A otaku can watch a bunch of cone-faced internet celebrities showing off their charms, and several hours will pass by unknowingly. And there are a large number of newly launched games , which are time killers for users. In other words, they are traffic killers. With so many killers competing for traffic, everyone feels that life is difficult.

Two major camps competing for users’ time

The Internet has indeed broken the boundaries of space and made information extremely massive. Its capacity is unlimited, but the user's time is limited. A person has only 24 hours a day, and there is an upper limit to the time that can be spent online.

Fundamentally speaking, Internet entrepreneurship is a war for user time. In this war for user time, there are two major camps.

The first camp is used to consume user time. For example, video applications, live broadcasts, games, music, and online literature, just like traditional books, magazines, and television, users use them to kill time. The jokes, beauties, and odd stories in the public accounts are actually also in this camp.

The second largest camp is used to save user time. Tools and services such as online food ordering, ticketing, work collaboration, and online courses save time. There is also a category like "Get" and various selected information, whose original intention is to save users' time. There are two ways to save time. One is to save time in terms of content, such as the storytelling you get, which can let you know the main content of a book in 30 minutes. The other is to save time in terms of form, such as video is not as time-saving as audio, because you can hardly do anything while watching video, but you can drive, take a shower, eat, and go to the toilet while listening to audio. For example, online food ordering can save users time on the way to eat.

Rethinking the logic of the Internet

The growth of Internet users as a whole is slowing down, and we will shift from an incremental market to a stock market, and this transition will be even faster than everyone expected. After this transformation, the fighting among the time-consuming camps will become more intense, because traffic is life for them. The time-saving camp may have a great opportunity.

However, there will not be much change in tools, such as ordering meals and tickets. There is a greater chance that the content can save users time. In an age when user attention is scarce, helping users save time is in line with a major trend.

But when it comes to saving users’ time, the Internet’s traditional advantages will disappear.

The first is massive information. In order to save time, you cannot provide massive information. Either it provides high-quality information like Duoduo, or provides accurate and specific answers like Zhihu and Fenda , or it provides a precise information screening mechanism like Toutiao. But Toutiao is not about saving time exactly, but about saving your time in searching for information. However, whether the information is meaningful to users depends on their attitude. For example, users like to read gossip and celebrity gossip, which is essentially a waste of time.

So we can't uniformly say that one person is saving time. For example, I listen to Wu Xiaobo's channel and Fan Deng's readings on Himalaya , which are high-quality content and can be considered time-saving. But I listen to Guo Degang's crosstalk, which is just wasting time.

The second is that the free logic has been subverted. The logic behind free services is to obtain traffic for free and then monetize it through other means. If your content essentially helps users save time, charging is the best way, as users are spending money to buy time. In fact, as Teacher Keso said, direct business is the best business. So don’t be so awkward and insist on saying that this is good content, but it’s free and you come to watch it. If more people come, I will sell advertisements and things to make money. Good content will definitely not attract the largest traffic. Mass entertainment and vulgar content are the ones who control the traffic. If they want it to be free, let them be free.

In the first half of the year, it seemed like nothing happened

I was chatting with a friend recently and we talked about a topic. What happened on the Internet in the first half of this year, you seem to feel that nothing happened. Live streaming may be the only hot topic, but it has been around for many years.

The endless public account miracles, the flourishing Internet restaurants, the entrepreneurial legends of the post-90s generation, and the various blinding subsidy wars all seemed to have suddenly disappeared like the traffic. This is a very interesting phenomenon.

I used to have a colleague from Taiwan who always told me that “great effort brings about miracles”. In fact, the same is true for the Internet, which is called “large quantities bring about miracles”. When there is a huge increase in the pond, miracles can easily happen. Now everyone is jumping around in the pond, and the pond may be full of mud. Even if there is a mermaid, it will not look very good.