After Baidu, Alibaba also talked about mini-programs as an “operating system”, but openness cannot be just talk.

The "open" competition trend of mini programs is becoming increasingly apparent.

On April 2, Alibaba CTO Zhang Jianfeng said in an exclusive interview with the media that Alibaba will continue to increase its investment in mini programs, and claimed that the "biggest difference" between its mini programs and other mini programs lies in the so-called "one cloud, multiple terminals" and "like Android, develop once and run everywhere."

The "everywhere" mentioned by Zhang Jianfeng mainly includes Alipay, Taobao, AutoNavi and other mainstream Alibaba applications. Admittedly, the one-time development and multiple product launches within Alibaba are obviously valuable for mini programs, but judging from the practices of other players, Zhang Jianfeng's "big difference" may not be tenable.

Baidu, another mini-program player of BAT, emphasized its "open" and differentiated gameplay when it first launched its "smart mini-program".

So far, Baidu apps and platforms, including Baidu Tieba, Baidu Maps, Baidu Netdisk, etc., have been fully integrated into the mini program, and the "Baidu Smart Mini Program Open Source Alliance" has more external ecological players, including iQiyi, 58.com, wifi***key, etc., which have been connected or are being connected to the Baidu Smart Mini Program.

In contrast, Alibaba’s mini-programs are still only available within Alibaba, but have changed from “Alipay’s mini-programs” to “Ali’s mini-programs”, which can only be considered semi-open (internally open). Neither the timing nor the degree of openness can support the claim of “*** difference”.

However, regardless of whether Alibaba's "openness" is tenable, its announcement of open operations after Baidu can be seen as a follow-up move. The more important reason should be that this approach will have many-faceted values ​​for the development of mini programs.

Multi-platform operation has obvious competitive value for mini programs

Whether fully open or semi-open, the multi-platform operation of mini programs can bring at least three levels of competitive value.

1. Many hands make light work - using traffic aggregation to "save the country in a roundabout way"

If we only look at individual apps, WeChat with over 1 billion users is undoubtedly the leader among super apps. No matter how much we talk about the mini-program gene theory, abundant traffic is always WeChat's killer feature.

However, this does not mean that there is no solution for "BA" to compete with "T" in terms of traffic.

Last November, Baidu announced the establishment of the "Smart Mini Program Open Source Alliance" mentioned above at its World Conference. The first batch of members included well-known products or platforms such as iQiyi, bilibili, Kuaishou, Moji Weather, Ctrip, Perpetual Calendar, 58.com, Baidu Maps, Haokan Video, DuerOS, and Apollo.

In addition to its industry reputation as "the industry's largest open source mini-program platform", the alliance members have accumulated more than 3 billion monthly active users (without deduplication). Suppressing WeChat in terms of scale should be a more realistic consideration for Baidu. After all, the fundamental premise for mini-programs to become the next stage of mobile Internet is that the traffic pool behind them must be large enough to cover all mobile Internet users.

At present, Baidu's apps such as Baidu Tieba, Baidu Maps, and Baidu Netdisk, which have relatively mature mini-program operations, have over 100 million monthly active users, providing Baidu Smart Mini-Programs with more sufficient competitive confidence.

Correspondingly, "Alipay's Mini Program" became "Ali's Mini Program". Although it did not change the essence of the Mini Program being clamped within the Ali system, this follow-up action was obviously aimed at traffic aggregation. Alipay, which has a strong commercial scene imprint, has great difficulty in directly competing with WeChat in terms of traffic, but the situation is very different when it comes to its own products Taobao and AutoNavi, so it will not always be inferior to WeChat.

2. “Exposure” leads to “possibility” – another way to promote the developer ecosystem

The value of mini programs to developers is self-evident. However, on a macro level, mini program platforms need traffic as their foundation, but on a micro level, developers need more than just traffic. They need exposure. Otherwise, your excitement has nothing to do with me, and no matter how much traffic there is, it will be difficult to attract people.

WeChat can use social networking to promote mini-programs such as games and e-commerce, but the world of mini-program developers is huge. They have various exposure needs and are looking for various exposure possibilities.

On the Baidu Tieba APP, when a user opens [Sing Bar], a "Love Rap Smart Mini Program" will automatically appear on the right side of the navigation bar, realizing the natural exposure of the mini program; and on Baidu Maps, Baidu has integrated partner mini programs related to geographic locations. For example, when searching for Suning and Suning.com, you can call up the "Suning.com Smart Mini Program". At the same time, Suning.com's mini program is also mounted on the Baidu APP, which means that if its mini program does not find users here, it will be there for users and there will always be a chance to "appear".

For developers, this is somewhat similar to the carpet-style advertising campaign used in the past.

The same is true for developers of Alipay Mini Programs. Although Ali's Mini Programs are not fundamentally open to the public, it is better to have more internal platforms than just Alipay. Users may not stay on the "tool product" Alipay for too long, but they may stay on the Taobao app more, and have more opportunities to access the Mini Programs. The same is true for Amap, which can also be regarded as bringing more value to developers within the closed system of Ali.

3. There is always one suitable for you - repeated memorization increases user retention

Like apps, mini programs attach great importance to user "retention" in the early stages.

For a single APP, user retention is nothing more than calculating the relationship between "the number of logged-in users among new users" and "the number of new users". However, for mini programs, if they are operated as a platform, user "retention" of mini programs becomes a multi-dimensional calculation process.

For example, Suning.com has developed a mini program that can have users on Baidu APP and Baidu Maps. Even if it is associated with iQiyi TV series (such as transferring star products in the series), the same mini program can actually run on the video platform and have its own users.

This is consistent with the increased exposure mentioned above, but from the user's perspective, more convenient and personalized service experiences are everywhere, and their relationship with developers deepens through constant repeated contact. The so-called user stickiness is more easily formed through habits.

If the related user needs in various scenarios can be achieved smoothly and naturally, developers will not have to deliberately create user stickiness for the mini program.

Baidu is "completely" ahead, Alipay is "half" behind, will WeChat catch up?

Baidu's mini programs adopt an open approach. In addition to the many values ​​that openness can bring, it is also closely related to Baidu's consistent open attitude.

Baidu, which started out as a search engine, naturally has an open gene. Whether it is developing mini programs or AI, it always expresses its open attitude, and entering the mini program competition is no exception.

It’s just that, “coincidentally”, this natural practice based on the company’s genes happens to coincide with the opening up of the value of mini programs and the establishment of differentiated competitive advantages in the industry.

It is not difficult to understand why Baidu took the lead in launching the "operating system" approach in the mini-program field.

However, Alibaba, which places great emphasis on "power control", has gone against its norm and followed Baidu in developing an "operating system" for mini-programs. The reasons may be more complicated.

As competition in Internet technology has deepened, Alibaba's strong stance has loosened. It no longer emphasizes going all the way, nor does it want to try to do all the models on its own. Its attitude toward cooperation has also softened.

For example, some time ago, Alibaba Cloud announced that it would become an "integrated" SaaS company, abandoning SaaS businesses outside of finance, government affairs and other sectors, and instead "taking a step back" to focus only on the IaaS and PaaS layers. It has begun to give in in order to seek growth.

Alibaba opened up its mini-programs to other products on Alipay, obviously with the same growth considerations. However, from Alibaba's genes, this kind of "openness" is always limited. As mentioned above, it may just be another way of saying internal resource integration. Just like the Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty, it is still essentially closed.

In comparison, the openness of Baidu Smart Mini Programs has two levels: the "inner layer" of Baidu apps, including Baidu Tieba, Baidu Maps, and even iQiyi, can all be regarded as related products; the "outer layer" of ecological apps, this level is "unconstrained", Kuaishou, 58.com, WiFi***Key, etc., which include as many high-quality apps as possible, which is very similar to Android's huge open ecosystem.

Alibaba's mini-program operating system is still "superimposed" on Alibaba's own ecosystem (that is, it only has an inner layer, no outer layer). Taobao, Amap and even the expected Weibo are closely related to Alibaba. This shows that Alibaba's mini-program operating system may be more like iOS, which can only be played on its own hardware, and is not a fully open "operating system".

The question now is, will WeChat catch up?

Objectively speaking, although WeChat is the only dominant product in the Tencent system, QQ, Tencent News, Tencent Maps, etc. are not small-scale products. If they are combined together, the power of integration may be even more formidable. When it comes to making mini-program operating systems, Tencent has no shortage of collaborative products.

However, so far, there is no sign that WeChat Mini Programs will be open, even within Tencent. Last November, QQ launched its own Mini Program "Light Application" (similar to Toutiao's Mini Programs, which currently have little popularity), and WeChat has its own business, which further confirms the expectation that Tencent's Mini Programs will not have an "operating system".

The reason is unknown. Perhaps it is due to the horse racing mechanism within Tencent, or perhaps it is related to the high degree of independence of Tencent's various business units.

How to operate the open operation of mini programs?

Although Alibaba's openness cannot be considered true openness, it is undoubted that the openness of mini programs has increased from Tencent to Alibaba to Baidu.

The value brought by openness is obvious, but the openness of mini programs is not as simple as a gesture. It also has its own requirements in practical implementation.

First of all, the native APP experience that all mini programs are pursuing needs to be polished in an open environment.

Even if WeChat only sticks to its own products, it is still difficult to say how similar the mini-programs are to the native APP experience when using them. This is a direct problem that restricts the development of mini-programs.

The integrated cloud-based service enables Baidu Smart Mini Programs to achieve a native experience similar to search and feed. This is still easy within the Baidu system, but when it comes to a larger open alliance and integration with various apps, how to ensure that the Mini Programs have a similar user experience on different products becomes a more complex technical issue.

This may not be a problem for Baidu, which has always been known for its technological strengths, but this process must be carried out simultaneously with the opening of mini programs.

Secondly, the mini programs operate on different apps, which requires more precise matching.

In Baidu's case, forums with different themes were matched with mini-programs that provide different services, maps were matched with shopping, and during the 2019 Spring Festival, the mini-programs of Baidu APP (New Year's goods, ticket grabbing, etc.) were also matched with the Spring Festival theme.

The remaining question is, as this ecosystem continues to expand, what kind of mini program should be "paired" with what kind of supporting APP and formulating corresponding promotion strategies will become a matter that tests traffic and product operations.

Because this involves all aspects of the entire mobile Internet. You have to understand everything and have strategies for every segmented scenario. You have to be a jack of all trades and an all-rounder.

From the perspective of platforms and developers, the more users they can get, the better. If they only consider growth, they would like to cram in more mini programs and set more buttons in scenarios with high traffic. However, this is tantamount to turning "users" into numbers to be harvested in mini programs, which is obviously unsustainable. Users' hope for mini programs is not to be reached and retained, but to bring real convenience.

It is foreseeable that Baidu needs more operational cases like "Search for Suning - bring up Suning.com Mini Program" to enrich the Mini Program open ecosystem, rather than just opening up Mini Programs. Alibaba, which follows in its footsteps, needs to think more about how to better integrate Mini Programs with strong commercial and payment attributes with its own map, social and other products under the "semi-open" approach.