WeChat bans XiaoIce, Microsoft's mobile Internet surprise fails

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On May 29, Microsoft launched its product XiaoIce. During the public beta phase, it was only used on the WeChat platform. After adding friends, users can drag them into WeChat groups and communicate with them. XiaoIce is a chatbot based on data mining and intelligent search. According to Microsoft, XiaoIce has collected all the public chat records accumulated by China's 700 million netizens over the years, and has collected 15 million corpora. It realizes human-computer interactive question and answer by understanding the context and semantics of the conversation.

Microsoft opened up 100,000 applications for Microsoft XiaoIce in the first batch, and XiaoIce became popular in WeChat groups in an instant. It became fashionable to tease XiaoIce in the group, either for fun or to satisfy curiosity. Various interesting questions and answers were constantly generated, ranging from daily life, celebrity gossip, heavy tastes, etc., depending on the person. Some groups have one XiaoIce, and some have multiple. Some like it, while others are annoyed. It also varies from person to person.

WeChat banned XiaoIce on June 1. Tencent said in a statement that after investigation, it was found that XiaoIce was involved in simulating user operations, inducing users to form groups, and bulk registering junk accounts, which violated platform rules and user experience. In order to ensure user experience and safety, it was handled in accordance with platform regulations.

Microsoft's reaction was extremely intense. In its statement, it played the user card, such as "it has been welcomed and praised by millions of users"; it played the rule card, such as "the appearance of multiple Xiaobings is due to Tencent's misjudgment and interference with Xiaobing's normal operation in the background"; it also played the emotional card, such as the opening statement "Microsoft Xiaobing is dead, all of them" and "Please help us bury her".

Why did Microsoft react so strongly?

Because this product took a long time to develop, consuming a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources. And when the product was launched, it was carefully planned for marketing and promotion. It was blocked by WeChat after only three or four days of public testing, and from a technical point of view, it met the rules of the WeChat platform. Such "unfairness" will of course make Microsoft feel indignant.

However, these are just the surface, there is a deeper level. Let's imagine, what is the XiaoIce product for Microsoft?

First of all, it is a product collection. It combines Microsoft Search, Bing Translation and Dictionary and other products. Especially, promoting these products in a humanized way in social circles is an innovation that can easily gain recognition and acceptance from users.

Secondly, it is the entry point for accumulating users' life big data and the exit point for personalized recommendations. WeChat is the most frequently used IM software, and WeChat groups are the most active places for users. Xiaoice has entered WeChat groups and formed an entry point for mastering users' life big data through a large number of question-and-answer chats. At the same time, Xiaoice may also become an exit point for personalized recommendations, commercializing the big data it has mastered and realizing personalized recommendations through interactive questions and answers with users.

In general, XiaoIce is an important user portal and an important layout of Microsoft in the field of mobile Internet. In the PC era, Microsoft was the overlord. However, in the mobile Internet era, Microsoft is not in the leading position in terms of hardware or software. If Microsoft does not seize the opportunity, it will become a distant wave. And just when Microsoft made a surprise move in the field of mobile Internet, Tencent blocked its way forward. How could Microsoft not react fiercely?

Why did Microsoft XiaoIce die?

Xiaobing's death may be inevitable, it is just a matter of time. The analysis is as follows:

***, Xiaobing was born at the wrong time. The regulatory authorities and Tencent itself strengthened the control of the WeChat platform. As WeChat grew, the regulatory authorities have not relaxed their management. In March, WeChat banned a large number of public accounts that were suspected of illegal and illegal information. Recently, Tencent itself has also issued policies to restrict WeChat-based marketing and some matters that affect user experience and security. In addition, the Prism Gate incident has made people pay more attention to user privacy. Against this background, Xiaobing appeared in the WeChat group. Not only Tencent, but also users themselves have many speculations about her. Xiaobing has hidden dangers.

Second, without the advantage of location, it is not easy for XiaoIce to enter the WeChat group and grab meat from Tencent. WeChat is Tencent's strategic product and an important entrance to the mobile terminal. Currently, it has 600 million users. How to make full use of traffic and monetize user resources is the key issue that WeChat needs to consider in the next stage. The WeChat business group has just started to operate independently. When it is gradually exploring the way to profitability, XiaoIce will come to mix in and use WeChat's user traffic to accumulate big data and explore mobile life services. How can Tencent turn a blind eye? What's more, Tencent itself has the development capabilities for both intelligent search and personalized services. How can it be so easy for outsiders to take advantage of it?

Third, there is no one to support it. Users need mobile search based on life services, but perhaps not in social groups. With the flood of information, intelligent search is particularly important. In the era of mobile Internet, humanized mobile search based on life services is a battleground, and Microsoft's general direction is not a problem. The question is, should the entry point be in social groups? From the perspective of product development, social groups can obtain data the fastest and make intelligent search services more accurate. However, what about from the user's perspective? Let me tell you a simple example that happened to me. I have more than 20 WeChat groups, and there are Xiaobing in them (most of them are pulled in by me because of curiosity). At first, everyone had a lot of questions and answers, but later someone couldn't bear the pain of useless information on the screen and asked me to remove Xiaobing. Within two days, more than half of the groups had no trace of Xiaobing. This made me think, we need mobile life services, but why do we express them in front of so many people? To show off? Why isn't Xiaobing my personal assistant? Wouldn't this serve me better? Therefore, even if WeChat does not ban Xiaobing, I am not optimistic about this kind of service in social groups.

XiaoIce 2nd generation, where is the future?
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Microsoft mentioned in the statement that they will revive XiaoIce, and the development of the second generation of XiaoIce is nearing completion. How will XiaoIce's second generation go? We can make some basic judgments. For example, XiaoIce's code name in the early stage of development was social assistant. In the short term, its positioning should not change and it will still rely on IM. You can choose Fetion, Momo, Yixin, etc., but when it comes to user privacy issues and cooperative interests, Fetion and Yixin related to state-owned enterprises will be more cautious.

What if we don’t consider social networking as an entry point? Or we will face off against Baidu. Smart mobile search based on life services is about to start.