Can WeChat help Weishi, a "fool", to rise up?

Tencent is currently testing a feature that allows videos posted on WeChat Moments to be synchronized to Weishi.

On the afternoon of May 21, I got a download link for the beta version of WeChat. After downloading and opening the beta version, I clicked on the video shooting function in Moments and shot a short video. Just before posting it to Moments, WeChat prompted: "This Moments post will be published to Weishi at the same time."

The only option is: OK.

This "OK" means that the author has read the prompt. After clicking OK, Hedgehog uses the default settings for WeChat Moments content editing. The video is successfully posted to Moments.

After closing WeChat, he logged into Weishi with his WeChat account. The videos he posted on WeChat Moments were automatically synced to the Weishi homepage, and Weishi read Hedgehog's WeChat profile picture, WeChat name, and other information. After Hedgehog deleted the videos in Moments, the videos in Weishi could still be saved and survive according to Weishi's content rules.

Looking back, there are two necessary steps for the videos shot by Hedgehog to be synchronized to Weishi.

• First, in the video editing section, select "Public" in the visible range. If you select "Private", the video cannot be synchronized to Weishi. In addition to the "Public" option, once you select "Partially Visible" or "Not Shown to Anyone", the video in Moments can also be synchronized to Weishi.
• Second, there is a small Weishi logo in the lower left corner of the video editing page. Only when you click the gray logo and turn it red, the video will be synchronized to Weishi.

The formula for synchronizing WeChat Moments videos to Weishi can be set as: Public/Partially Visible/Not Viewed by Anyone + Weishi logo turns red = Moments videos synchronized to Weishi. The symbol “/” means “or”.

This move by WeChat cannot help but remind people of the "Announcement on Further Upgrading External Link Management Rules" officially released by Tencent on May 18. The announcement clearly stated that "external links must not disseminate content containing audio-visual programs in any form without obtaining legal licenses such as the information network audio-visual program dissemination license."

The day after the announcement, some media pointed out that popular apps on the market such as Kuaishou, Douyin, Huoshan Video, Weibo, Changba, Lanren Audiobook, Ximalaya, Xigua Video, Miaopai, Huajiao Live, and Douyu Live have been banned by WeChat. The reason is that they have not obtained the information network audio-visual program transmission license referred to in the announcement.

This means that Tencent has used its largest traffic pool to block the "attack" of no less than 32 mainstream short video and live broadcast products on the market, cutting off their normal dissemination chain in the WeChat ecosystem. The number of users affected is calculated in the hundreds of millions.

The announcement released by WeChat has also become a public enemy, denouncing the relevant rules on the dissemination of audiovisual content in the announcement, saying that this is "cutting off the firewood from under the cauldron." The threshold for Internet companies to obtain audiovisual licenses has long been greatly raised, and Tencent has already obtained the "Information Network Video Audiovisual Program Dissemination License." The new Internet Audiovisual Program Service Management Regulations set the application threshold for licenses, requiring the applicant to be "a wholly state-owned or state-controlled unit."

However, WeChat officially released a supplementary announcement on upgrading the external link management rules in the early morning of the 21st, deleting the previously controversial rules related to the dissemination of audio-visual content. It also stated that the platform will further study solutions with developers to jointly manage the quality and compliance of video content.

The main target of WeChat’s announcement is “video content”, not commercial advertising regulations or new rules for official accounts.

The software on this rumored ban list are all video software, and there is no software that focuses on graphic products. Tencent's move immediately reminded people of the "Weishi" that it holds tightly in its hands. By banning other similar products from growing in the WeChat ecosystem, it wants to help Weishi.

Now, WeChat and Weishi are no longer independent combat columns, but a relationship of big brother pulling little brother, and this relationship is a "blood relationship".

Short videos are the new language of this era. The competition in the short video field has entered the second half. The space for expansion is getting smaller and smaller, and Tencent is becoming more and more impatient.

Tiantian Express vs. Toutiao, Penguin Q&A vs. Wukong Q&A, Tencent Docs vs. Graphite Docs, Weishi vs. Douyin... Every step of Bytedance (Toutiao) has been ahead of Tencent, and every product has been a hit in its own field. Bytedance's momentum and ambition are very similar to Tencent's attacking everywhere in the past. Since Toutiao's growth, Tencent has not had any young content products stand out, and the entire Tencent content department has been led by Toutiao products.

WeChat and Weishi have always been relatively independent content distribution platforms. Tencent's content pool is called Tencent Content Open Platform, also known as Penguin. The content of Tencent's content distribution platforms is all delivered by Penguin.

This time, WeChat and Weishi have a direct relationship because of short videos, which shows that relying on the content pool of Penguin Accounts alone is not enough. If WeChat is to be promoted, a larger traffic platform is necessary. At the National People's Congress, Ma Huateng revealed that during the Spring Festival, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat exceeded 1 billion. This is the highest traffic entrance in China's mobile Internet.

Just like all videos in WeChat public accounts must be uploaded to Tencent Video and WeChat "promotes products" for Tencent Video, in today's booming short video market, WeChat also has to fight for Weishi, which has died once.

The integration of WeChat Moments and Weishi poses a risk of content review. Short videos from WeChat Moments are directly imported into Weishi. This content has not been reviewed and no one is checking it. As content security becomes increasingly important, it is unclear how Tencent will respond, unless it has mastered very advanced content review intelligent technology.

If this technology exists between WeChat and Weishi, then it means that every one of our dynamics is under detection. In WeChat, we become naked streakers with no privacy space.

WeChat is becoming less and less like WeChat. Although it is still restrained, the increasingly open business ecosystem in recent days has allowed more and more information to flow into every corner of WeChat. WeChat has more and more functions and is becoming more and more bloated.

I wonder if Tencent has ever thought about whether the video content in WeChat Moments is of high quality? Are the videos shot in Moments suitable for the Weishi ecosystem? Is this feature launched for the quality of the content, or just for the quantity of the content? Or is it to establish a social chain in Weishi?

Tencent has pushed itself into a new era of wild content. Today's users are accustomed to watching Douyin and Kuaishou. Suddenly, it feels weird to let people use your Moments to shoot short videos and sync them to Weishi. It needs to spend a lot of money to educate its "new" users and make them adapt to Tencent's way of playing.

But Tencent is still taking frequent actions and is eager to protect its "children", which can only mean that Tencent is really anxious about the short video issue. Especially seeing the steep user growth curve of Kuaishou and Douyin during the Spring Festival, Tencent cannot be indifferent. Ma Huateng said at the National People's Congress that he has noticed short videos and is exploring the development of new social platforms such as short videos and live broadcasts.

But from the current perspective, Weishi, which is comparable to Douyin, is still far behind.

Full-screen HD, music, special effects filters, and personalized recommendations, these four keywords are the standard features of Douyin. Regrettably, Weishi did not learn the essence of Douyin, at least Weishi did not learn the "HD".



This is an era where appearance is everything. Eyebrows, contact lenses, foundation... none of them can be missing, but they must be just right. That's called superb skills, that's called beauty, and that's what keeps people coming back. This is the role that high-definition full screen plays.

Its advantage is that the same short video on the mobile phone can be viewed in different sizes. The full-screen effect is completely different in terms of visual impact and the feeling of being immersed in the scene. The clarity of the video determines how long others stay on your video.

Douyin President Zhang Nan once mentioned in an open letter that ByteDance decided to make Douyin high-definition short videos, and the company had to pay more CDN (Content Delivery Network) costs. "Today, these costs are worth it, as young and discerning Douyin users have found a good experience on this product."

Nowadays, the first criterion for judging the quality of short video content is visual clarity. To be honest, the video clarity of Moments and Weishi is not as high as that of Douyin. In other words, the video content on Weishi is not beautiful enough and cannot catch people's attention visually.

According to iResearch Consulting data, in April, a total of 3.37 million independent devices were using Weishi, ranking 16th in the short video field. The overall data showed an upward trend, but it was still far behind Kuaishou and Douyin.

WeChat is also not good at fighting the short video war. It is mainly based on pictures and texts, and users do not have the habit of shooting videos on WeChat. Some WeChat users post videos on Moments, but most of them have been finely processed on other software before being posted on Moments.

The personal updates posted on WeChat Moments are mostly experiences that cannot be bought with money.

Next, Tencent is likely to use subsidies to encourage WeChat users to produce short videos and synchronize them to Weishi. But would you shoot short videos specifically for Moments? Using the crudest video editing tools, the shooting function with pixels not as good as the original camera, and the video lens without music plug-in modification?

Here, we can also see that WeChat, as the "eldest son" of Tencent's traffic, is in an awkward situation. Zhang Xiaolong is no longer willing to disturb users, but there are too many people in the Tencent system who want to help, and they are all staring at WeChat. Even if Zhang Xiaolong can refuse most of them, he cannot refuse all requests.

Moreover, even if WeChat has its own reasons for blocking external links, it cannot help but provide excuses and room for speculation. WeChat has always maintained a good balance between closedness and relative openness, but this time, the balance was obviously broken. In the eyes of the outside world, Tencent was a bit unscrupulous in order to make Weishi a success.

But if in the end, even after doing so, it still fails to help Weishi, how will Tencent face this result?