BAT is focusing on mini-apps. What should developers do when they are at the crossroads?

This is the best era, but also the worst era. This is probably true for the current Internet and the application developers behind it.

The demographic dividend has peaked, traffic is becoming more and more concentrated, user acquisition costs are high, and many APP users have low activation frequency and retention time, which have become significant challenges for the Internet, which has entered the second half. But on the other hand, we also see that there are always new ideas, technological developments, and solutions to break through the current difficulties. For example, the full outbreak of mini programs in 2018 can be regarded as a significant example of giants sharing their own traffic to empower the growth of small and medium-sized applications. Of course, the giants are also using their own traffic, technology, and services to grab market share.

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1. Giants enter the mini-app market, and developers are at a crossroads

As we can see, in 2018, the giant players that control the core needs of Chinese Internet users such as social networking, shopping, search, and information have all entered the mini-programs market and started to seize the development opportunities in the new mobile era.

The competition for developers is becoming the key to the competition among the giants. This is not difficult to understand. Whichever platform they choose as the core platform, the future ecological environment of this platform will naturally become stronger. This logic is exactly the same as the competition between Android and iOS for developers.

Because of this, all the major platforms have brought out their advantages and solutions to win the favor of developers. It can be said that the current mini-program developers are in a long-lost sense of happiness - they have the support they want and the traffic they want. But at the same time, we can also find that many developers are quite hesitant about which platform to choose as their top platform, and they are in a dilemma of choice.

Some of my friends are often caught up in this.

Indeed, in a sense, this is also beyond their control - they seem to have many choices, but often seem to have no choice - after all, most of them are small companies with no resources and limited capabilities, and cannot afford to be tossed around. They do not have the multiple rounds of trial and error opportunities of large companies, and most of them plan to first make a certain platform bigger and stronger, and then achieve multi-platform coverage. So in a sense, the choice of mini program development platform is actually a matter of life and death for its future.

This puts them at a crossroads again, hesitating and looking around when faced with various mini-program platforms.

2. Choosing a core platform requires weighing multiple factors

So for mini-program developers, especially the many small and medium-sized developers who do not yet have the ability to cast a wide net, facing the mini-program platforms launched by WeChat, Baidu, Alipay, Toutiao, etc., which platform should they choose as the core focus so that they can better and faster fire the first shot? In fact, it is necessary to weigh the intensity of platform competition, support policies, traffic scale, quality and other aspects.

(1) Competition intensity among mini-program platforms: WeChat > ​​Baidu = Alipay > Toutiao

Judging from the current competitive reality of the four major mini-program platforms, the competition on the WeChat mini-program platform is undoubtedly the most intense.

Thanks to WeChat's first-mover advantage in mini-programs, the number of mini-programs on its platform can be said to be in an absolute leading position at present. According to reports, data released at a closed-door communication meeting of the WeChat mini-program team on December 6 showed that there are more than 1 million WeChat mini-programs currently online. In comparison, when Alipay officially launched its mini-programs in September, it announced that the number of mini-programs on the Alipay mini-program platform exceeded 20,000 due to natural growth. This quantitative gap is obvious.

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For developers who are preparing to enter the mini program market, the competition will inevitably become extremely fierce on the WeChat platform, which already has a huge number of mini programs. This has made the WeChat mini program ecosystem a very obvious jungle law - the first comers have already taken the lead on the WeChat platform, and it is highly likely that latecomers will not be allowed to emerge. This is just like the current App Store. Although there are millions of apps, there are few latecomers, and most of them are dead apps.

So from this perspective, for developers who are preparing to enter the mini program market, choosing the WeChat platform is not necessarily a wise decision. Instead, choosing platforms such as Baidu, Alipay, and Toutiao may be more profitable. After all, the competition for mini programs on these platforms is not particularly fierce at the moment, which allows developers to have a much greater chance of success on these platforms, even in terms of probability.

On the other hand, platforms such as Baidu, Alipay, and Toutiao also have over 100 million monthly active users, providing developers with guaranteed traffic. For example, at the Baidu World Conference held in early November, Baidu announced that "in the past 120 days, Baidu Smart Mini Programs have had more than 150 million monthly active users, successfully covering 262 niche areas." Prior to this, Alipay also claimed that its Mini Programs had 120 million daily active users.

(2) Mini Program platform support: Baidu > WeChat Alipay > Toutiao

In reality, for the strategic product of mini programs, except for Toutiao, the three major BAT platforms have actually come up with their own developer support plans.

WeChat Mini Programs has launched a one-stop Mini Program Cloud Plan, announcing that it will provide a 100 million yuan cloud fund for WeChat Mini Programs; it will provide development, compilation, one-stop deployment and other support at the technical level, and hold developer competitions in terms of investment.

Alipay Mini Program has launched the STS support plan, announcing that it will provide 1 billion yuan in support funds within three years to incentivize and incubate entrepreneurs in the Alipay Mini Program ecosystem; in terms of technical support, it stated that it will provide developers with platform operation capabilities, in-depth training guidance and other business resource support; in terms of investment, it has launched investment support in special areas such as technological innovation, new rental economy, and local life.

Baidu Smart Mini Programs has launched a developer co-construction plan, announcing that it will open up hundreds of billions of user traffic across the entire region to Smart Mini Programs; provide advertising revenue sharing for the 10 billion alliance; and establish a 1 billion innovation fund to provide special support and promotion for Smart Mini Programs, as well as one-on-one personal services, online and offline open classes, etc.

In a comprehensive comparison, among the three BAT mini-program platforms, Baidu is relatively the most dedicated in supporting developers - providing sufficient traffic, funds and service support to mini-program developers, especially one-to-one professional services, which may be quite attractive to many small developers. In fact, in addition to traffic and funds, for developers, Baidu announced at the beginning of the launch of smart mini-programs that the AI ​​capabilities of Baidu Brain 3.0 - including voice, vision, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, augmented reality and situational perception, etc., will be fully opened to smart mini-program developers. AI empowerment is also not to be ignored. It allows developers to directly access and realize rich AI functions without developing them themselves. This actually greatly reduces the development difficulty of developers and saves valuable time.

(3) Traffic scale and quality comparison: Baidu, WeChat > ​​Alipay > Toutiao

In reality, developers have flocked to the mini-program platforms of giants, with the core aim of using the traffic of giants to activate their own user growth potential and provide user services. After all, in reality, it is becoming increasingly obvious that users are increasingly flocking to super apps, and the time they spend on super apps is far greater than before. The Matthew effect in the industry is prominent, and there is even a report that users only need to install 35 apps on their phones to meet their needs in social, entertainment, e-commerce, news, etc.

Therefore, for developers, the amount of platform traffic and the quality of traffic are extremely important for initial potential activation and subsequent sustainable development expectations. So from the perspective of traffic, who is more worthy of developers' choice?

In terms of user base, WeChat and WeChat currently have more than 1 billion users. Alipay's current data shows that its global user base exceeds 900 million, and Baidu App's user base has exceeded 700 million. So from the user data of its own super APP, WeChat takes the lead, while Baidu APP is relatively a little behind. However, Baidu has taken a different path and established an open source alliance including iQiyi, Kuaishou, WiFi***Key, 58.com, as well as Baidu Maps, Baidu Tieba and other internal and external Baidu products. This allows Baidu Smart Mini Programs to have more than 40 App traffic entrances.

However, it should be noted that Baidu has not limited itself to its own strategic product, Smart Mini Program, but has adopted a completely open strategy and established the "Smart Mini Program Open Source Alliance" with industry partners. In theory, Baidu Smart Mini Program, which pursues an open source strategy for mini programs, can run not only on Baidu apps, but also on external third-party apps, and even on IoT devices such as wearable devices, smart homes and car systems, allowing developers to have the ability to "develop once and serve the world."

The accumulated traffic of this alliance is much larger than that of closed WeChat and Alipay mini programs, and Toutiao mini programs that only support Android systems. As Baidu Vice President Shen Dou said before: "Maybe the traffic of Baidu's mini programs is not as large as WeChat, but if the traffic of all partners is counted, it is huge."

In terms of traffic accuracy, I personally think that the traffic accuracy of Baidu and Alipay is much greater than that of WeChat mini-programs. The reason is that search and tool traffic actually have clear purposes, which makes mini-programs more likely to be activated. For example, if we search for travel, then the purpose is that we have travel demands, but social traffic often does not have such characteristics.

3. Choice is more important than ability

In his 2018 New Year's Eve speech "Friends of Time", Luo Zhenyu gave the following multiple-choice question: "Now there are two buttons in front of you, red and green. If you press the red button, you can directly take away 1 million yuan. If you press the green button, there is a 50% chance of getting 100 million yuan. Which button will you choose?"

In fact, this choice is also facing many developers who are preparing to enter the mini program market. Should they choose WeChat mini program, which has a prosperous ecosystem, or choose Baidu smart mini program and other platforms that are slightly behind in the ecosystem, and work together with them to catch up with WeChat mini program?

After all, in fact, based on the first-mover advantage, the current WeChat mini program is clearly superior to the Alipay mini program and Baidu Smart mini program.

But for developers, they also need to see that under the prosperity of the WeChat Mini Program ecosystem, there is also more fierce competition, and relatively speaking, WeChat Mini Programs lags behind platforms such as Baidu Smart Mini Programs in terms of support for developers, overall traffic scale and quality.

Therefore, for developers who are ready to enter the mini program market, I believe that they have already made it clear which platform to choose as the core platform. In my opinion, choosing Baidu Smart Mini Programs and Alipay Mini Programs may give new mini program developers a better chance of success.