Kill DingTalk? Is this a sad story?

Recently, an article titled "Ma Huateng threatens to kill DingTalk" has attracted widespread attention. I was shocked when I saw the title. Who is DingTalk? Why is it that even Ma Huateng, who owns WeChat and QQ, is so nervous?

However, if you look closely, there is a lot of mystery in this, more like a self-written and self-directed melodrama. Preliminary judgment, it is unlikely that Pony Ma would say such a thing. However, after the failure of Laiwang, Alibaba seems to be competing with Tencent again through enterprise IM.

Ali's attack will be "fierce"

This is not the first time that Alibaba has wanted to make a difference in social networking, and each time it is always done with great force.

Remember 2013? At that time, Tencent's WeChat had 300 million users?

Alibaba could not sit still any longer, and with the slogan of "killing the penguin's nest and setting fire to Antarctica", Laiwang was born. Jack Ma even personally attended the event and chatted with everyone in the Laiwang group. Not only that, he also required all Alibaba employees to add 100 Laiwang friends, and even spread the word internally that "whoever does not participate should not stay in this company."

However, it was of no use.

LaiWang is dead, and now even the name is gone. Do you think that Tencent is to blame for this?

Judging from the DingTalk article, it is probably true. The article says, "Ma Huateng, who has always been low-key, has become a little anxious recently. According to reports, at a meeting within Tencent, Ma Huateng threatened to "kill DingTalk like he killed Laiwang." This sentence doesn't seem to be the tone of Ma. Tencent, which is known as the first to get the "mobile Internet ticket", is sure to win. How can it be nervous about DingTalk, which has no social genes at all?

Isn’t this a self-depreciation? DingTalk’s public relations responded by saying: WeChat is a dinosaur, and we are ants. But dinosaurs are extinct, and ants are still alive and well.

This response is a bit low. Is DingTalk’s PR so stupid that they really believe this? Or do they really think DingTalk can threaten Tencent’s status in the industry?

But with all due respect, enterprise social networking seems to be easy to do, and increasing the installed base is not a problem. After all, there are subsidies, marketing promotion, and pre-installation. For a company with strong financial resources like Alibaba, increasing the number of registrations is not a problem at all. However, the installed base does not necessarily bring active users. Just look at the data of DingTalk and WeChat Enterprise Account: DingTalk has 1 million daily active users and 5 million users. WeChat Enterprise Account has 2 million daily active users and 11.5 million users.

However, DingTalk is different from WeChat and Laiwang. As a collaboration tool within a team, it is limited to communication within the company during working hours, emphasizing communication between team members, and has little significance for expanding personal connections. More importantly, it is difficult to make such a product "fun".

From another perspective, Laiwang was not killed by Tencent. At most, it was killed by its own stupidity, because its social performance was so poor. If Dingding wants to compete with Tencent, it must learn from Laiwang's lesson.

Why is there such a lot of drama in this sad drama?

Obviously, the enterprise market has entered the vision of the giants. WeChat already has enterprise accounts, and Alibaba has DingTalk. It seems that a fight is inevitable. It is said that Alibaba has spent hundreds of millions just to promote DingTalk. After losing Laiwang, Alibaba obviously has high hopes for DingTalk. Frankly speaking, DingTalk has indeed seized some market gaps, such as free calls, etc., but this market is far from active.

If you can increase market attention and awareness through various means of fighting, it would be great. The most important principle of fighting is to find the industry leader to fight with. Just like Alibaba's situation in the e-commerce industry, Alibaba certainly understands that if it wants to fight in the social field, who else can it find but Tencent? The ready-made target is that WeChat's enterprise account and new RTX already have a strong position in the industry, and WeChat has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. If you can create a market impression that "even Ma Huateng is afraid", it is enough to show how awesome DingTalk is!

But these days, the sad drama and the scenes of sucking up to the boss are really overused. To be honest, Ali’s sad drama has not been fully performed. If the public relations officer had not responded and shown his face, the effect might have been better. Now, it seems a bit superfluous.