The hidden champion of short video track

In the era of attention economy, where eyeballs are the driving force of commercial interests, short video apps, which already account for nearly 30% of users' usage time, continue to expand. As a latecomer in the industry, WeChat Video Account, which has been online for only a year and a half, is expected to become the ultimate leader in the short video field.

Recently, Tencent President Martin Lau said in a financial report conference call that WeChat Video Account is developing well, "with the boost of Olympic content, both user viewing time and the number of content creators have seen good growth."

According to Tencent’s second quarter 2021 financial report, “with its advantages in social networking, long and short video distribution, and content management, (WeChat Video Account) surpassed other online platforms in terms of playback volume and user sharing.”

Data shows that WeChat Video has 300 million daily active users in just one and a half years. In contrast, it took Kuaishou 9 years to achieve this goal, and Douyin 3 years. In a battle over the number of daily active users, the exquisite chess game between Douyin in the south, Kuaishou in the north, and Tencent Shentong in the center has quietly taken shape.

With the rapid growth of WeChat Video Account, the business ecosystem around it has also begun to bear fruit. Recently, WeChat Video Account digital marketing and service platform "Baizhun", also a service provider of Tencent Group, completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of yuan. This is the first third-party institution of WeChat Video Account to receive financing, which also indicates that the commercialization ability of Video Account has been recognized by the mainstream market.

Although Tencent Weishi failed in the past, it has never wavered in its original intention to regard short videos as an important content track in the future and an essential part of the WeChat ecosystem. WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong once said: "Video will be the main content of WeChat in the next ten years." Tencent's forbearance, pragmatic and continuous investment and persistence have finally led to the success of the video account today.

Another battlefield after the game

In the Internet era, short videos are becoming the main form of social interaction and entertainment for users.

If we zoom out, we can easily find that as network bandwidth restrictions are continuously lifted, people's social and entertainment methods are advancing in a very similar way. From QQ text communication to voice chat and video chat; from online novels and online games to streaming media applications and short video platforms, the development trend is very clear.

What once caused Tencent great anxiety was the competition for the attention of its main source of revenue - the gaming player group - by short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou.

The "2021Q2 Mobile Internet - Industry Data Research Report" released by Aurora Mobile (NASDAQ: JG) comprehensively presents the app data situation of the mobile Internet industry in the second quarter of 2021 by giving an overview of the overall app market.

The report shows that the share of short video apps, which ranked first, continued to increase to 29.8%, and the gap with the second-place instant messaging app further widened to 9.4%. Although the share of mobile game apps has slightly decreased, no matter how the share of each track changes, Tencent's dual-wheel drive model built by Video Account and King of Glory ensures that Tencent once again holds the ticket to the mobile Internet tightly in its hands after WeChat.

In the current attention economy, the short video track accounts for nearly 30% of users' usage time, and the commercial potential contained in it is self-evident. Although it does not have its own direct monetization channel like games, advertising marketing, live e-commerce and other channels built on short video platforms have been hot topics in the Internet industry in recent years.

Tencent was once caught in "short video anxiety" and launched more than a dozen short video apps including Weishi, Shanka, QIM, DOV, MOKA, MO Voice, YOO Video, etc., but basically none of them escaped the fate of much ado about nothing.

But considering that many related companies invested by Tencent, such as Kuaishou, Bilibili Animation (hereinafter referred to as B Station) and other apps have a large audience in China, in fact, Tencent has already overtaken Douyin in the number of users in the short video field.

Public data shows that Kuaishou’s average daily active users reached 293.2 million in the second quarter of 2021. Bilibili, which originally focused on niche areas, has also "broken the circle", with daily active users exceeding 65 million.

Even if we only consider Tencent’s own WeChat Video Account, according to the digital marketing platform “Baizhun” mentioned above, based on the current strong momentum, the video account is expected to reach 600 million daily active users by the end of the year. In other words, WeChat Video will surpass Douyin by the end of this year and become the veritable number one short video platform in China.

Zhongshentong Video Account is at ease in conquering the north and attacking the south

It should be pointed out that WeChat Video Account, which has only been online for a year and a half, is still gradually improving its related functions and supporting infrastructure. The platform is still updating and iterating at a speed visible to the naked eye. As one of the giants with the most complete ecosystem in the domestic Internet industry, Tencent still has many cards to play in the field of short videos.

Since its launch in early 2020, WeChat Video has successively launched functions such as short videos, half-time videos, and live broadcasts. In just one year, it has undergone a gorgeous transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change in product form, content quality, and the number of creators. On WeChat, a national app that is almost installed on everyone's smartphones, it can meet almost all of users' video content needs.

The launch of secret likes that pay more attention to entertainment privacy has prevented some users from experiencing social "death" on the Internet. The youth mode that is being gradually launched and improved has also helped Video Accounts break free from the shackles of government supervision and invisibly gain broader user development potential and space.

In addition, the recommendation algorithm of Tencent's short video platform is also being gradually improved. In Zhang Xiaolong's ideal, the ratio of users watching WeChat video accounts is "view volume attention: friend recommendation: machine recommendation = 1:2:10", but according to the video account research report released by Founder Securities, the overall traffic generated by social recommendations in video accounts is currently twice that of machine recommendations, which is still 10 times lower than expected.

In other words, under the machine recommendation algorithm envisioned by Zhang Xiaolong, each user should watch 10 short videos after clicking on a video recommended by a friend, and the time users spend on WeChat accounts will increase tenfold from the current level.

Social traffic is certainly needed, but excellent machine recommendation algorithms can undoubtedly bring users a more immersive viewing experience and bring more traffic to the video account.

Of course, Tencent's most powerful weapon is still the huge ecological platform it has built around WeChat. Video accounts can seamlessly leverage WeChat traffic to catch up with the torrent of social traffic, freely enter and exit Tencent's ecological hinterland, and interact with the huge private traffic ecology such as social, payment, e-commerce, and mini programs.

While completing the last piece of the video content puzzle of Tencent's WeChat ecosystem, WeChat Video Account has also gained development soil that Douyin does not have. This is the underlying logic of Video Account's efforts to catch up when its competitors still occupy most of the market. The current leading Douyin can no longer curb the development momentum of WeChat Video Account.

It must be mentioned that in fact Tencent still has many winning cards in its hand that have not been played.

As the commercial empire with the most complete domestic content ecosystem, Tencent has already occupied a position in many fields such as games and entertainment, and has woven a huge copyright network. Once this network is established, it will be difficult for short video content without copyright to break through without touching all the red lines.

In the fields of game live broadcasting and cloud gaming, Tencent has successfully blocked competitors with its huge game copyright library. In the field of short videos, Tencent has filed a high-cost copyright lawsuit against Douyin.

Summarize

To sum up, although it seems that Tencent's WeChat Video Account is still one and a half steps behind ByteDance's Douyin, its development momentum is strong and its potential cannot be underestimated. It has become the "hidden champion" in the short video track.

For Tencent, with the help of the massive social traffic brought by WeChat, it can quickly enter a certain track, quickly integrate this field into its own complete ecological construction, obtain monetization, and continue to increase investment in this field, achieve mutual promotion between this field and Tencent's ecology, and continue Tencent's overall upward spiral.

We are already very familiar with this business logic, and now this story is being repeated in the short video field.

The reason why Tencent is willing to continue trial and error and increase its investment in the short video field is not only because it sees the potential of video content formats, but also because of the huge incremental market hidden in short videos.

The Aurora report also pointed out that the overall penetration rate of Tencent apps is 28.3%, which still maintains its leading position, but is being overtaken by Toutiao's 26.6% penetration rate.

The user traffic value of Douyin alone is close to that of WeChat, the core of Tencent. It is not difficult to imagine how much commercial value the successful short video account will bring to Tencent. This will also feed back to WeChat and form a healthy WeChat private domain interactive ecosystem.

Therefore, Tencent's efforts in WeChat Video Account are a battle that cannot be lost in the new track. At present, in the Huashan Sword Contest in the short video track, Tencent will still be the winner in the end.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.