Where will WeChat go in the second half?

In the first half of this year, I talked about some changes and measures of WeChat many times, and wrote several articles, which triggered a lot of dissemination and discussion. But if we extend the timeline a little bit, in fact, starting from 2018, WeChat may have entered its own "second half".

Today, I would like to talk about my observations and judgments on the subsequent trends of WeChat from the perspective of the "second half".

one

• In January 2011, WeChat APP was launched.
• In August 2012, the WeChat public platform was launched.
• In June 2013, WeChat groups were born.
• In August 2013, WeChat Pay was launched.
• In January 2014, WeChat red envelopes were launched.
• In January 2017, WeChat Mini Programs were officially launched.

There is no doubt that in the past seven years, it is WeChat and the above-mentioned important functions it provides that have completely changed the lives of countless Chinese Internet users and completely reshaped the industry landscape in the mobile Internet era.

At the beginning of 2018, WeChat's monthly active users exceeded 1 billion, making it the product with the largest number of users and the highest user activity in the history of China's Internet. Even on a global scale, there are probably only a handful of products that can surpass WeChat in terms of user base and activity.

It stands to reason that WeChat at the beginning of 2018 had already fully entered the mature stage of its development. The most important thing for a mature product to maintain is stability, because every change in it may affect hundreds of millions of users.

However, the frequency and intensity of WeChat updates since 2018 have been incredible. According to statistics, from March 1 to May 25, 2018, WeChat completed 22 updates, involving 37 changes, an average of less than one update every three days - such an update frequency is generally only seen in early products with imperfect functional experience and product logic.

It seems that WeChat in 2018 is either extremely anxious and at a loss as to what to do, or is deliberately planning another big game.

two

The history of WeChat’s growth can perhaps be summarized in a sentence that we have repeatedly quoted in our analysis and comments in the previous three lessons:

"WeChat has gone through three stages in its development: IM stage, browser stage and OS stage. The representative functions of the three stages are voice calls + people nearby + shake + drifting bottles, WeChat official accounts, WeChat payment + mini programs."

Today, WeChat has gradually become one of the largest traffic gathering places in China and even in the entire Internet world, and is rushing on the road to becoming a super ecosystem - just look at the fact that even IOS has to be wary of WeChat, and you will know how huge the possibilities are in front of WeChat.

However, the rapid development of WeChat may not be without potential worries and practical challenges. At present, WeChat, which has become a super traffic behemoth, faces at least two huge tests. The first is whether its ideal "super ecosystem" can be truly formed, and the second is that the commercial realization demands it carries must be fulfilled as soon as possible.

If the process of WeChat starting from scratch and becoming a traffic giant can be regarded as WeChat’s “first half”, then the subsequent “super ecosystem creation” and “comprehensive commercialization attempts” can be regarded as WeChat’s “second half”.

It seems that the "first half" of WeChat has ended, and the "second half" has just begun. So, where will WeChat's "second half" go?

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To understand what will happen in the "second half" of WeChat, we may need to first figure out what WeChat cares most about at the moment.

From my perspective, there are probably two things that WeChat cares about most in 2018.

First, we must seriously guard against the "Toutiao system", or to be more specific, we must guard against "Tik Tok".

WeChat, or to put it more broadly, what is the core asset of the entire Tencent system?

The answer is “relationship chain”.

But how is the relationship chain formed?

Here I might share a cognition. I think that in the Internet world, content, interaction, social interaction, and relationships are often a progressive relationship. A typical scenario is that people interact with each other based on content, social behavior is born after interaction, and a stable relationship chain is gradually established based on social behavior.

For example, I followed a book on Douban, and then found a book review that resonated with me, so I left a message on the review. The original author saw it and continued to reply to me, and over time, we became friends. This is the most typical "forming a relationship chain around content and interaction."

In 2018, to be honest, the rise of TikTok may have exceeded everyone's expectations, including Tencent.

Behind the rise of TikTok is a new content form - the opportunities brought by short videos. This content form happens to be the one that Tencent was not so good at and had not invested heavily in before.

In other words, Tencent is also a primary school student in this content form. This is perfect for a product like Douyin - it naturally has an independent development space that can avoid the sharp edge of the Tencent empire.

By August 2018, Douyin’s global monthly active users had reached 500 million, nearly half of WeChat’s. However, it took WeChat 7 years to grow from 0 to 1 billion monthly active users, while Douyin only took 2 years.

However, this is not the most terrifying thing for WeChat.

The most terrifying thing is that TikTok, which everyone looks down upon, has slowly begun to show the potential to become a "relationship chain."

Judging from the evolutionary relationship between "content, interaction, social, and relationship" mentioned above, it is normal for users on the Douyin site to like or write a comment to interact after watching a short video. Therefore, as the traffic of Douyin becomes huge, this product is particularly easy to evolve to the next state: through short video content, people can have deeper interactions with each other, thus establishing a relationship chain, and this relationship chain has a great chance of becoming a long-term strong relationship.

Once this happens, it will shake the foundation of WeChat, and WeChat will never let this happen.

To further the analogy, let’s look at another example – Weibo.

In 2013, Weibo actually had the opportunity to form a powerful chain of relationships.

If you are an old Internet user and still have an impression, you may remember that in 2011 and 2012, private messages on Weibo were very popular, and many users used it to chat, record, contact and cooperate. Even many users began to communicate with their familiar friends in WeChat private messages on a daily basis - this undoubtedly shook the acquaintance relationship chain of QQ at that time.

Therefore, Tencent was ready to fight against Weibo with all its strength, and created Tencent Weibo. However, as you know, after three years of fighting, the newcomer Tencent Weibo did not win, but was shut down. In the end, it was WeChat that defeated Weibo, and it was precisely because of WeChat that Tencent regained its foothold in the "user relationship chain".

Looking back, Weibo may have made a mistake when facing the challenge of the rise of WeChat - it was too indulgent to a large number of big Vs and KOLs on the site.

At that time, Weibo had already begun to take shape, and the weight of information distribution within the site was too tilted towards these top Vs. The content distribution rules were basically designed to protect the interests of big Vs and KOLs, so that they could achieve better growth, influence, and monetization. This orientation eventually led to the proliferation of a large number of marketing accounts and the dilution of content on Weibo in 2014, and ultimately a large number of users fled.

At that time, many users on Weibo who were fed up with being disturbed by various marketing accounts and advertisements felt that they needed a relatively quiet space and it would be nice to have some daily interactions with their close friends. Just at this time, WeChat appeared, and they all came to the circle of friends.

WeChat certainly doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes that Weibo made.

As for the situation in the first half of 2018, the prevalence of some marketing accounts or marketing behaviors on WeChat has begun to disturb users. Some public accounts or commercial organizations have seriously interfered with users' experience of content for their own selfish interests. For example, in WeChat groups or Moments, you can always see some sensational clickbait content, and various marketing behaviors such as fission, distribution, and micro-business are often emerging. In this case, WeChat may be very worried about repeating the mistakes of Weibo.

However, if WeChat wants to guard against TikTok and ensure that its "relationship chain" position remains unbreakable, it will inevitably need to take a lot of actions to please users starting from the second half of 2018.

Secondly, as mentioned above, the ambitions and demands of WeChat in terms of "realizing commercial value" must begin to be fulfilled at an accelerated pace.

WeChat’s biggest business ambition must be to truly connect everything in the mobile Internet era, thereby distributing traffic across all platforms and categories.

Generally speaking, social networking, content, and transactions based on goods and services are the three most common business opportunities in the Internet world.

Among the three giants of BAT, Baidu relied on "content distribution" to build its core business. Alibaba started out by relying on "commodity transactions" and then gradually extended to "service transactions", thus building an e-commerce empire.

The core of Tencent is "people", or the chain of relationships between people.

But the problem is that if your e-commerce business is strong enough, or your content distribution capabilities are strong enough, it may be extremely difficult to turn around and do social networking and relationships - at least there has been no successful precedent in the Internet world so far.

But if on the contrary, your social and relationship chains are stable and reliable enough, then it is possible to extend them to do content distribution and commodity trading. However, this requires a prerequisite: at least, the number and stability of your relationship chains must reach an indestructible level before you dare to think about it.

For WeChat in 2018, it is time to put this ambition into concrete action.

Therefore, around this ambition, WeChat will pay special attention to several issues from now on:

• Make the commercial products in the WeChat ecosystem more diverse, so as to generate more commercial revenue;
• Make the traffic distribution forms in the WeChat ecosystem more diverse and the rules fairer, so as to avoid the situation where a small number of leading players monopolize the ecological traffic;
• Access more services, products, content, etc. that can generate cash flow, thereby continuously expanding your business monetization possibilities.

The above may be the things that WeChat cares about most in the “second half”.

So, based on the above basic cognition and assumptions, what core changes might WeChat undergo in the "second half"? And how should other practitioners in the industry understand these changes?

I have a few guesses and some additional opinions and suggestions.

Four

Overall, I think in the next 1-2 years, WeChat will definitely take the following measures:

First , WeChat’s ability to distribute traffic for “Take a look” and “Search” and its weight within the WeChat ecosystem will continue to increase.

Otherwise, WeChat’s traffic distribution form will be extremely single, resulting in latecomers having no chance to rise up, which will be extremely unfavorable to the construction of the entire large ecosystem and will not be able to support WeChat’s huge business ambitions.

Second , WeChat may greatly increase its support and empowerment for "individuals" in addition to "official accounts" and build a bridge between "individuals" and "official accounts."

In any case, "WeChat Official Accounts" are still an important part of the WeChat ecosystem for receiving traffic and pursuing monetization. It is an indisputable fact that the "head monopoly" under WeChat Official Accounts has been initially formed. Even if WeChat officials try hard to adjust the rules and forms of traffic distribution, it is difficult to see the phenomenon of new large-scale mass blowouts.

However, although supporting "public accounts" is no longer so easy, WeChat can also support "individuals" - if I am an individual with writing skills or high-quality product supply, but do not have a "big account" of my own, can WeChat help me cooperate with some existing top big accounts, I will provide them with articles or supplies, they will be responsible for dissemination and sales, and finally we will share the profits equally, so that everyone is happy.

And now, it seems that WeChat has begun to lay some groundwork for this situation - just look at the screenshot below and you will know that under the new "appreciate the author" logic, multiple authors' appreciation accounts can be bound to the same public account, and through the appreciation account, we can also see all the historical articles of a single author. This is clearly beginning to empower individuals.

I believe that there will be more initiatives in this direction in the future.

Third , in the next 1-2 years, large-scale marketing activities based on Moments or WeChat groups that damage the general user experience, including many fission marketing methods, will continue to be cracked down by WeChat. The reason is just as mentioned above. WeChat must do a lot of actions to please users at this stage and do its utmost to prevent users from migrating to other platforms.

Therefore, in the next 1-2 years, the only things that can be safely spread on a large scale in the circle of friends will probably be based on creativity and emotional communication.

But on the other hand, we must also believe that "fission marketing" will never disappear. On the contrary, based on certain characteristics and current situations of China's Internet industry, new "fission marketing" methods may emerge in endlessly, presenting a situation where "WeChat continues to ban old fission marketing methods, but new fission marketing methods continue to emerge and continue to be banned after a period of time."

Fourth , mini programs will undoubtedly receive full support from WeChat, and will continue to be integrated into various light services and transaction scenarios, and there is a high probability that a wave of dividends will emerge - in fact, the dividends are already emerging. In the near term, more and more projects have gained dividends and explosive growth due to mini programs.

Fifth , more diverse commercial products will definitely appear in the WeChat ecosystem.

I would like to take a break here and tell a story about Weibo. After Weibo went online in 2009, it supported a large number of big accounts with over 10 million fans in the four or five years. Around 2013, these big accounts were able to generate at least tens of billions of advertising revenue each year, and the revenue is still increasing year by year. It can be said that Weibo played a vital role in empowering these big accounts.

However, the interesting thing is that the advertising revenue generated by these big accounts has nothing to do with Weibo. The usual logic is that advertisers directly find the person in charge of the big account, the two sides reach an agreement, and the advertisers directly pay the big account. So Weibo found out sadly that it had built a very good business ecosystem, but it could not get a penny from it.

So, in 2014, I had a private exchange with some of my colleagues at Sina at the time. We all felt that Weibo at the time should have developed a set of commercial products similar to Baidu Fengchao, connecting advertisers on one end and various large accounts on the other end, and providing advertisers with more detailed and valuable references based on Weibo's data, so that they can get a share of the profits from various advertising transactions on the entire Weibo platform.

For example, if the three classes we founded have advertising needs on Weibo, Weibo can, based on the data, recommend to me some Weibo accounts with a large base of Internet practitioners and a high marketing advertising conversion rate, without me having to contact and judge them one by one. If it can give me more detailed data analysis reports after I place the ads, I think this will be of significant value.

In fact, Weibo did launch a similar commercial product later, but it was several years later than expected. Looking back now, it actually missed a lot of time.

Therefore, WeChat probably does not want to repeat the mistakes that Weibo made. If nothing unexpected happens, from now on, WeChat may start to build a comprehensive commercial product system that can meet all kinds of advertising and marketing needs.

In fact, some things have already begun to show signs of happening. For example, we have seen that WeChat official accounts have begun to distribute "commission-rebated products" online, and CPS commission-rebated product advertisements and mini-program advertisements such as movies, TV shows, and books can be inserted into official accounts. The official account operators will receive a share of the sales revenue.

It can be predicted that this huge commercial product related to "WeChat Official Account" will become more and more perfect and rich, and new and imaginative advertising forms will continue to emerge under the WeChat ecosystem, such as: recommended advertising based on search.

five

Next, perhaps it is time to give some suggestions based on the above conjectures.

Suggestion 1: Be more agile in responding to and welcoming the “fission dividend”.

As mentioned above, in a high-traffic platform like WeChat based on the "relationship chain", how to leverage the power of the relationship chain for communication and marketing will always be an area that countless operations and marketing people will pay attention to and ponder for a long time, and even constantly break through some bottom lines to test. As long as it can bring benefits, whether it will damage the experience of platform users is not something that operations and marketing people will pay attention to at all.

But at the same time, based on the current situation and its own interests, WeChat will continue to ban those marketing methods that damage the user experience.

This will inevitably lead to: new fission fans, fission marketing and other gameplays may continue to appear for a long time, but at the same time WeChat will continue to suppress and ban them. According to experience, when a new gameplay appears, there may be at least a 2-3 month survival bonus period. During this period, if you are sensitive enough and can quickly follow up the new gameplay, you may get some bonuses brought by the new gameplay.

Suggestion 2: If you are creating content, strong content production capabilities related to "hot topics" are the most stable "traffic barrier".

In the WeChat ecosystem, content is the most fundamental long-term source of traffic.

The acquisition of content traffic in the WeChat ecosystem basically follows the following formula: Content traffic = content type * distribution channel

Historically, the content that can obtain a large amount of traffic in the WeChat ecosystem is often nothing more than a few types of content centered around hot events, social emotions, entertainment gossip, emotional chicken soup, in-depth analysis, and sharp opinions.

In the past, the channels for content dissemination and distribution were Moments and WeChat groups, but now, “Search” and “Take a look” have been added.

Since 2018, due to the overall tightening of the industry's supervision and control of content, content or organizations similar to those focusing on social emotions, entertainment gossip, etc. have been banned one after another. Generally speaking, in the context of tightening content control, rational analysis and comments on social hot topics released by some industries or officials may become a relatively safe content that can both continuously obtain traffic and gain relatively safe traffic.

In addition, if we study SouYisou and KanYi in detail, we will also find that its traffic distribution logic is still highly "topic" oriented.

For example, we can see that in the internal beta version of "Take a Look" released by WeChat on April 28, a display entrance for "hot topics" appeared at the bottom of the pictures and texts of "Take a Look" and related public accounts.

Not to mention "Search". Search is a highly topic-oriented thing. The hotter the topic is recently, the more times it is searched, and the greater the chance of gaining traffic in the search results page.

Therefore, for students who are creating content, if you can continuously produce relatively rational thoughts, comments, analysis or moderate ridicule around some industry or national "hot topics", this may become your most stable and reliable "traffic barrier".

Suggestion 3: It will be too late if you don’t develop a mini program now.

Mini programs will definitely form a stronger linkage with official accounts. Whether it is selling courses or selling courses, it will definitely be done through mini programs. There will definitely be many new ways to play. Those who have not started exploring mini programs must step up.

Here I would like to quote some of my interpretations in the article "WeChat Search Transforms! Tencent and WeChat's Ambition Finally Revealed" -

• "It is not difficult to see that WeChat is trying to use a longer period of time to "cultivate" mini programs, and mini programs may carry WeChat's official expectations in many fields such as e-commerce, games, and O2O service access."

Past historical experience tells us that whenever a giant company decides to make a big move quickly and aggressively, it often ends up in a mess, such as Ali Laiwang, Tencent Weibo, Baidu O2O, etc. However, when a giant company decides to calm down and use its own advantages to do a good job in a longer period of time, it rarely fails.

From this perspective, mini programs, which have already passed the peak of public expectations and attention, may be increasingly worthy of optimism in 2018.”

In 2018, the recent popularity of mini programs including Xianwushuo, Xiaodaka, and Liable Parents, as well as the massive pursuit of mini program projects at the capital level, have confirmed the arrival of the bonus period for the "mini program" ecosystem.

Therefore, for the majority of practitioners, it may really be time to pay close attention to mini programs.

Suggestion 4: For selling courses or goods in the WeChat ecosystem, content + mini-programs + communities will become a long-term combination. The combination of personal accounts + official public accounts will also become a more extensive configuration.

In the WeChat ecosystem, once traffic is acquired, everyone must consider monetization, and the most common ways of monetization are nothing more than "selling courses" and "selling goods".

In the past, there were several common patterns in terms of “monetization conversion”:

• Purely rely on public accounts to sell directly;
• Community sales;
• Single-point conversion and sales of personal accounts.

As mentioned above, WeChat, which has entered the second half, may continue to adjust its traffic distribution mechanism and logic. The revision of the "public account display information flow" that appeared some time ago is a typical example.

These policy adjustments may cause the traffic of many public accounts to be affected to varying degrees, and will inevitably give rise to more insecurity.

In an insecure psychological state, making your marketing conversion channels more three-dimensional and diverse becomes the most ideal choice.

Therefore, the combination of public account + mini program + community, or personal account + official public account, may become more and more common among many WeChat operators.

Suggestion 5: Individual authors or self-employed individuals who do not yet have influence can be more proactive in trying to cooperate with other big accounts.

As mentioned above, if you have strong content production and marketing capabilities at present, but are trapped by traffic problems, you don’t have to be too anxious. Because in the future you can produce high-quality content and undertake a large number of marketing needs. Not only can you get marketing share of content on big accounts, but you can also get advertising income. Therefore, it will become easier to gain fans through large traffic channels.

Tip 6: The benefits of searching may come faster than those of looking, so it is worth serious study.

There is no doubt that Search and View are two new entrances that WeChat has high hopes for in terms of content distribution.

But if we compare the two, in fact, within WeChat, the probability of success of "Search" is much greater than that of "Look".

There are several reasons -

1. "Search" is a rigid need when people need to screen and filter massive amounts of information, while "information flow" is a product mechanism used to maximize user time when there is massive content and information.

Judging from the user habits within WeChat, "searching" among a large number of articles, public accounts, and chat records is already a habit that many WeChat users currently have, while browsing and reading content through the "information flow" on WeChat is still a very unfamiliar behavior for most users.

2. If WeChat's commercial layout requires the access to more services and products as soon as possible, this will definitely lead to WeChat's official demand for "search" and "index" being significantly more urgent than "information flow". After all, after a large number of services and products are connected, the user usage scenario that is easiest to connect with them is still "search".

3. Judging from past accumulation, "search" is at least something that Tencent and WeChat have accumulated experience in, while the machine distribution algorithm of "information flow" is more like a brand new thing.

Therefore, if you want to gain new traffic dividends from WeChat, you might as well make some advance arrangements around "Search". Here are a few clues:

• Make your products or services appear on JD.com and Meituan as soon as possible;
• Establish your own brand of encyclopedia, Q&A optimization, etc. on Zhihu and Sogou as soon as possible;
• Strengthen your SEO on the Sogou platform as soon as possible;
• With the goal of SEO in the WeChat ecosystem, quickly develop a few small programs to occupy the top spot.

As for why there are so many suggestions, just look at the screenshots below.

The above is almost all my views on the “second half of WeChat”.

By the way, I would like to reiterate that all opinions are purely speculation and any similarities may be coincidental.