Why do we say that the seemingly powerful WeChat ecosystem has begun to wither?

Friends who are interested, please think back, in recent times, when you picked up your phone, which app did you open first?

When there are no unread messages on WeChat, will you still actively click on WeChat or browse the Moments?

When you use WeChat, after sending and receiving necessary messages with friends, do you immediately exit WeChat and browse other software? For example, Taobao, Douyin, Toutiao, or even Baidu or UC?

When you use WeChat, do you still pay attention to the public pictures and texts pushed to you? Why are you unwilling to read the content you subscribe to?

What is the status of your Moments now? Is it completely open? Or is it limited to three days? Or have you already closed the Moments function?

In fact, WeChat is not just a social software. It is the most important traffic entry point for Tencent, so it also has multiple functions such as payment, online shopping, health, even lending, insurance, charity and medical care. However, Tencent has prepared so many functions for you. Do you use them frequently in your daily life?

The answer is not much!

Yes, the number of times you use WeChat in a day gradually decreases, and this is also the most anxious problem node for Tencent.

In fact, ever since users began to close the Moments function, WeChat's overall ecosystem began to wither, and Tencent has been unable to save itself so far.

Although the number of WeChat users is increasing, the stickiness of users is decreasing. In addition to sending and receiving necessary messages, people use WeChat to pay for shopping in daily life. Once these two tasks are completed, people basically no longer stay on the WeChat interface, which is actually dangerous for WeChat.

Of course, WeChat's social attributes are the fundamental reason for its survival, but other traffic diversion functions that it is most proud of, such as mini-programs, official accounts, shopping, etc., are all declining. Take the well-known official account as an example. At the 2020 WeChat Open Class, Zhang Xiaolong revealed two major mistakes of the official account: one is that the public platform has only had a PC web version for a long time, which limits the scope of creators; the other is that the official account was originally created for short content, but was accidentally made into a long text carrier.

In fact, the current opening rate of public accounts is already very low. According to relevant statistics, it should be less than 3%. Please note that the opening rate is not the reading rate. The real reading rate has long been less than one thousandth or even one ten-thousandth. People who run public accounts know that when the number of WeChat software installations was booming, it was almost a matter of minutes for public accounts to gain fans. No matter what you posted, people would pay attention to it. But now, there is almost no increase in fans. No matter how good the article content is, few fans are willing to read it seriously, forward it or communicate with it. The public account has fallen into a dead end! Whether Tencent is willing to admit it or not, the public account can no longer be saved, so they launched the so-called video account.

The main reasons why public accounts became popular in the early days were that they were embedded in WeChat and that they attracted readers and forwarded content with titles. There were many pieces of content that were pieced together, and many readers lost interest in the moment after opening them. The public accounts really deserve credit for the perfection of the "title party". They had all kinds of messy gossips and repeatedly played with eye-catching titles, which eventually led to users becoming immune to or even disgusted with them, which led to the gradual decline of public accounts. Moreover, the content pushed by public accounts was "cramming", which might not be the topic you care about, while the content pushed to you by other news and information platforms was exactly what you needed. In terms of smart push, public accounts were completely defeated with an absolute disadvantage, which is why I said that public accounts cannot be saved at all.

In addition, WeChat’s most basic social functions are also facing unprecedented challenges. After the outbreak of the epidemic, Tencent focused on making money from games, trying to "catch all" people who stayed at home with games. Tencent did it, and game revenue in early 2020 did increase significantly.

However, Alibaba and ByteDance directly copied WeChat's base camp - taking advantage of the trend of working from home, they quickly strengthened DingTalk and Feishu, using office as a starting point to enter the social circle. In fact, as long as Alibaba and Feishu can continue to advance, WeChat's dominant position in the social field will evolve from a single dominant company to a three-legged tripod.

In fact, by February 2020, DingTalk's downloads had surpassed WeChat. As long as Alibaba continued to promote it and connected it with other multi-functional portals, DingTalk would be the best alternative to WeChat, and there would be no technical difficulties for Alibaba. Therefore, Tencent, awakened, urgently took controversial measures to block it.

In addition, the emerging ByteDance, relying on Toutiao and Douyin, performed an external surgical extraction on Tencent, and grabbed the two major fields of news information and entertainment video, and achieved great development and breakthroughs. In 2019, the monthly active users of ByteDance's entire product line totaled 1.6 billion, with revenue exceeding 140 billion yuan, and it plans to achieve a revenue target of 200 billion yuan in 2020. And what about Tencent? The revenue in 2018 was 310 billion yuan, and ByteDance can be said to be chasing closely. If Tencent is compared to a Tomahawk cruising at subsonic speed, then the constantly accelerating ByteDance is actually flying at supersonic speed, and Tencent's embarrassment has already emerged.

Judging from the current situation, ByteDance has already laid out Feishu in the social field. Its future goal is likely to get a share of the payment field through acquisition. In this way, ByteDance also has the ability to encircle WeChat, but Tencent has no better counterattack tactics except the so-called "block, block, block". Therefore, some time ago, Tencent did not hesitate to violate the anti-monopoly law and forcibly blocked Feishu and Douyin under ByteDance. This behavior is not only illegal, but also makes users feel disgusted. No one can force others to choose something, not even WeChat!

In addition to its strong capital investment, Tencent's revenue comes from games and social networking, which are its two major cornerstones. WeChat and QQ bring massive traffic to its gaming business. If the WeChat ecosystem withers, its gaming business will inevitably be affected.

Referring to the drying up process of QQ, if WeChat cannot win the favor of future post-00s users, then it may be replaced overnight!