2024 "Internet Giant Narrative List"

In 2024, major Internet giants have launched fierce competition in their respective fields, and are also facing many challenges and opportunities. This article will conduct an in-depth inventory and analysis of the narrative trends of major Internet companies in 2024, and help you understand the business logic and future trends behind the narratives of major companies.

At the beginning of 2025, let’s take stock of the narrative trends of major companies in 2024.

Whether you are Party A or Party B in the marketing circle, your work often revolves around large companies. The actions of large companies will determine whether you can make money this year, whether you will lose money, and whether your company will lay off employees. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the direction of large companies.

We hope to find out what the big companies are conveying, what they are hiding, and what everyone is complaining about through their narratives:

• The least expected narrative: Kuaishou, no story;
• The most sophisticated narrative: In Xiaohongshu’s narrative, there is no mention of big brands;
• The most banal narrative: Bilibili, the posture is wrong, making money is tiring;
• The most passive narrative: Tik Tok, I can’t scroll anymore, but I have no choice;
• The most mysterious narrative: Video Account, Buffett in short videos.

Kuaishou: Kuaishou has no stories

When we reviewed the narrative of Kuaishou in 2024, the first thing we got was: "Kuaishou seems to have no narrative in 2024." But if you think about it, no narrative is itself a narrative. Therefore, the narrative of Kuaishou in 2024 is "Kuaishou has no story."

I think this theme can be reflected in Kuaishou's stock price. As of the close of January 20, 2025, Kuaishou's stock price has plummeted by more than 90% compared with its historical high. Stocks are bought based on expectations for the future, and Kuaishou has made it difficult to establish various expectations for buyers.

When a platform loses its ability to create dreams, there is no difference between buying its stocks and giving start-up funds to square dance aunties; both are charity.

Let’s first take a look at what Kuaishou is talking about in 2024:

In January, Kuaishou held the 4th Golden Drama Award Short Drama Ecosystem Conference, which is already an old story for Kuaishou.

In March, Kuaishou focused on local life and held a Kuaishou Local Life Ecosystem Conference with the slogan "All group purchases are worth redoing on Kuaishou." Kuaishou hopes to gain new growth from local life, but the local life infrastructure capabilities of its model houses have hurt some customers.

In May, Kuaishou held an e-commerce gravity conference, defining Kuaishou e-commerce = good content x good products. When traffic peaks, only better content can bring more traffic, but what is good content? It is like a correct nonsense. For some old bloggers, good content means eating five pork elbows today and eating five raw pork elbows tomorrow.

In August, Kuaishou held the Photosynthesis Creator Conference. At this conference, Kuaishou once again emphasized the value of its private domain. For Douyin, the private domain is indeed Kuaishou's "moat", but this moat has been standing by the river for many years, and it can't stop the merchants and anchors who moved to Douyin overnight.

In September, Kuaishou held an investor day event, where they emphasized how AI technology can be deeply integrated into content, advertising, and business operations. For Kuaishou, rather than talking about the value of AI, merchants may expect Kuaishou to make its algorithms more accurate.

In November, Kuaishou held a conference on the ecology of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, hoping to maintain the user base in the lower-tier markets and attract more rural creators. However, farmers themselves are Kuaishou's advantage. According to my incomplete observation of my relatives in rural hometowns, if they don't watch Kuaishou on their phones, they will watch Douyin. I guess more rural creators may be on Douyin.

In all the official news, Kuaishou did not give the media any new information, but this is understandable, because Douyin, as a mature platform in 2024, did not release any new highlights. However, Douyin can stir up a storm of public opinion in the entire industry and even the entire society with just some policy adjustments.

Let’s take a look at the outside world’s narrative about Kuaishou.

After checking a large number of press releases, we were surprised to find that Kuaishou’s narratives were still the same:

The biggest news about Kuaishou is still the war of words with Simba; the biggest comment on Kuaishou’s business is still “success due to old friends, and failure due to old friends”; the media’s accusations against Kuaishou are still about its regulatory issues.

It is worth mentioning that as an advertiser, my only memory of Kuaishou this year is the three commercials in the Kuaishou 500 Hometowns series. The films were of course well shot, and Kuaishou’s method of promoting the three films was very clever, finding a large number of people in the advertising circle to forward them, creating a phenomenon of "local prosperity".

Kuaishou in 2024 is very much like the bath scrubber in Northeast China: he uses the same techniques as Douyin, but can’t scrub out any fresh dirt.

There is no story about Kuaishou in 2024.

Xiaohongshu: There is no mention of big brands in Xiaohongshu’s narrative

In 2024, Xiaohongshu has become the "older literary young woman" in the Internet industry - on the one hand, it is urged by investors to "quickly commercialize", and on the other hand, it is threatened by users to "break up if it changes."

In this state of schizophrenia, let’s take a look at what Xiaohongshu is doing in 2024.

Xiaohongshu will hold several key meetings for merchants and bloggers in 2024: 2024 Live Partner Conference, Treasure Manager Program, and Xiaohongshu Growth Brand Conference. One is to encourage creators to start broadcasting; the other is to encourage brand owners with brands and supply chains to become online small bosses on Xiaohongshu and run small but beautiful businesses. It also hopes to empower small businesses with long-term business capabilities to see the possibility of making money.

The concepts proposed in these conferences have one thing in common, that is, they are all aimed at small and medium-sized businesses and individuals. This is why I say that Xiaohongshu’s narrative in 2024 will not involve big brands.

The reason why Xiaohongshu is still communicating with small players and doesn't pay much attention to big players is mainly because the main users of Xiaohongshu are a group of women in first- and second-tier cities who pursue a slightly more advanced life, which is what Xiaohongshu calls the 15° angle atmosphere.

This group of people are tired of mass-market goods and services. Their characteristics and the atmosphere of Xiaohongshu determine that the brands that can gain popularity on Xiaohongshu are more likely to be niche brands. Even mainland brands have to come up with relatively scarce SKUs to attack Xiaohongshu.

If Douyin and Kuaishou attract more white-label merchants and factory stores, Xiaohongshu attracts a group of merchants that Taobao liked in its early days, which are niche, tasteful, and unique.

Therefore, compared with introducing more large KA customers, it is more in line with Xiaohongshu's business logic to tap more small businesses. It can be said that many of Xiaohongshu's businesses are more like the "lost pearls" of the Taobao Maker Festival.

Xiaohongshu doesn’t talk to big merchants because big merchants have big budgets, but big budgets mean more advertising space and content resources. Therefore, Xiaohongshu has always been “reluctant to accept” the big KA customers. It wants the budget but is afraid of being hurt.

Let's take a look at what Xiaohongshu's core business narrative will be in 2024. How does it want customers to place ads and do business on Xiaohongshu?

At the 2024 Will Business Conference, Xiaohongshu proposed the concept of "everything can be promoted", hoping to expand the categories of merchants entering Xiaohongshu from the early categories of clothing, beauty, and maternal and child products to broader fields.

In the 2024 Xiaohongshu Grass Planting Award, the concept they proposed is "planting grass, returning to people-oriented marketing". What Xiaohongshu conveys to everyone is: let brands achieve business growth while respecting users and maintain a balance between community authenticity and commercial content.

After watching these two important business conferences, marketers might react: “It’s 2024, and Xiaohongshu is still promoting products.”

Grass planting is good, it can indeed bring real word of mouth to the company and improve users' decision-making willingness. But the problem with grass planting is that its advertising capacity is limited. It is impossible for a blogger to have every piece of content as an advertisement. It is impossible for a big customer to spend 2 billion to buy all the KOLs on Xiaohongshu.

If Xiaohongshu wants to win the budget of KA customers, it must shift from pure marketing centered on promoting products to information flow and search with stronger carrying capacity. In Xiaohongshu's KFS model, its search capability has often replaced Baidu and become a very important search force in China.

As the traffic of Xiaohongshu platform grows, the carrying capacity of information flow continues to grow, and the algorithmic capabilities of the platform are constantly being optimized. However, by 2024, information flow and search are still just embellishments of Xiaohongshu and only the flanks of its marketing methods.

The commercial value that Xiaohongshu delivers to the industry is "decision-making power" around seeding marketing and its increasingly powerful search position. In 2024, Xiaohongshu has been influencing the industry around its decision-making ability.

Xiaohongshu publishes various trend insight reports every year, such as "2024 Xiaohongshu Top 10 Search Trend Insight Report", "Xiaohongshu Top 20 Lifestyle Population White Paper", "2024 Xiaohongshu Living Trends", etc. But what makes people feel a little helpless is that these users' behaviors occur on Xiaohongshu and lead the trend on Xiaohongshu, but in many cases they are not converted on Xiaohongshu.

"When in doubt, turn to Xiaohongshu" is everyone's affirmation of Xiaohongshu's search capabilities and content value, but "decision-making" is only one link in the business chain. In various links such as discovery, ordering, visiting stores, and joining groups, Xiaohongshu still has a lot of commercial wasteland to be cultivated.

The current state of Xiaohongshu is more like a user insight and research platform rather than a transaction platform.

Someone once joked: "In an era dominated by algorithms, Xiaohongshu is still highlighting the value of advertisers, and marketing is more about warmth and human touch." However, its commercial realization has lost its original efficiency and speed in such lengthy, emotional, and fragmented planning, which actually adds obstacles for Xiaohongshu to win the budget of big brands.

If we put it on Douyin, we rely more on Douyin's backend algorithm to automatically obtain business orders. But if we put it on Xiaohongshu, I am more like working with an advertising company. I have to do complex user and product insights on Xiaohongshu and switch my product language to Xiaohongshu's language in order to get volume on Xiaohongshu.

Brand owners with super budgets cannot get the exposure they want on the Xiaohongshu platform, and it is difficult to get direct conversions. For brands with particularly large budgets, Xiaohongshu is more like a lighthouse for them, responsible for guiding them and providing the warmth of home.

Of course, this is related to Xiaohongshu's insistence on growing in its own way. It is worth mentioning that the characteristics of Xiaohongshu as a platform determine that its path to growth is completely different from that of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou.

For example, the biggest "marketing Waterloo" in the history of Xiaohongshu was the cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala in 2024. They spent a lot of money on the Spring Festival Gala, but it did not significantly boost the status of Xiaohongshu. Therefore, the traditional generalization method may not be suitable for Xiaohongshu.

For general APP platforms, there are two traditional generalization methods:

The first is to continuously bring in more subdivided industries, such as culture and tourism, automobiles, outdoor, games, and the second dimension.

The second is to break the circle through large-scale general population deployment, and roughly increase the overall DAU.

Xiaohongshu’s approach is to customize some lifestyle scenarios, promote this lifestyle, make it a trend, and thus attract more people to join Xiaohongshu.

For example, Xiaohongshu has created many festival IPs in recent years, including Slow People's Day, Outsider Day, Snowman Day, Road Life Day, etc., all of which lead a trend and allow some people who don't pay much attention to Xiaohongshu to join in.

Xiaohongshu's way of growing is more like creating waves rather than generalizing.

In 2024, in all the narratives of Xiaohongshu, small bloggers, small brands, small budgets, and niche trends will still be the main players. Everyone respects Xiaohongshu's business rhythm, but the big players often have their hearts on Xiaohongshu but not their wallets.

Station B: If you don’t do it right, making money is tiring

In the past few years, Chen Rui has been named "the CEO who loves to apologize the most on the Internet." Just as the media wrote, on the road to commercialization of B Station, being scolded has become a kind of muscle memory. UP hosts scold the platform for not making money, users scold the platform for changing its nature, and the platform's own people also question their original intentions. But after scolding for a long time, all parties have become accustomed to the twists and turns of B Station.

In 2024, we finally no longer see the "twist" in the narrative of Station B. In 2024, the commercial narrative of Station B gives people the feeling of "lackluster".

Let’s take a few examples:

At the AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference in 2024 and the AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference in 2025, Station B sent a common signal: "Deeply influencing the minds of consumers is the most important narrative of Station B."

The main reason why B station is said to have a deep influence on consumers' minds is that consumers stay on B station for a long enough time and the community is interactive enough. According to B station, the average daily usage time of their platform is as high as 106 minutes, and a large number of users truly "live on B station".

But if we only look at the length of stay, many of Douyin’s users are on the app night after night. Has Douyin had a deeper impact on users’ minds?

In particular, the word "mind" has been used repeatedly in many media marketing conferences in the past two years. However, according to my observation, all platforms that cannot directly bring conversion effects to merchants will talk about mind. Mind is the long-termism of marketing, but it is also an excuse and pretext for not making promises in marketing.

Another point that B Station has emphasized at the marketing conference for two consecutive years is infrastructure, including advertising attribution, advertising automation, user data bank, etc. But in fact, the reason why infrastructure is infrastructure is because it is "something that should have been solved long ago."

People will call for infrastructure construction for the fast-growing Xiaohongshu. For old players like Bilibili, infrastructure construction is considered by advertisers to be a problem that is taken for granted and should have been solved long ago.

Secondly, youthfulness and circle-based nature have always been what advertisers and businesses value most about Bilibili, but in 2024, the youthful business narrative and Bilibili's actual growth model are contradictory.

For example, the old game business of B station has been booming in the past year, with revenue mainly coming from "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World". According to brokerage estimates, this game is expected to contribute RMB 1.1-1.5 billion in revenue to B station last year.

It is a good thing that Bilibili is getting closer to profitability, but "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" did not bring much positive comments to Bilibili's business narrative.

Because this game is not only very non-two-dimensional in style, but also its user group is not two-dimensional. Since the fourth quarter of 2022, Station B's games have experienced negative growth for six consecutive quarters. Throughout 2023, the revenue of the game business decreased by 20% year-on-year. Therefore, some media said that it was the middle-aged people who saved Station B's games from a continuous decline.

Currently, Bilibili is moving towards profitability in a very un-Bilibili manner.

At first glance, the advertising monetization business of Bilibili seems to be becoming more and more “iQiyi-like”. That is, it integrates the resources within the site around IP and sells them to advertisers in packages.

On July 26 this year, the IP cooperation model advocated by Bilibili at the 2024 Bilibili Licensing Ecosystem Conference is to create a "destination-style" cluster cultural consumption scene with a theme, allowing IP + brand, online + offline, and on-site + off-site to empower each other. This is more like the path that iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku have been taking many years ago.

In 2024, the public opinion on the commercialization of B Station is not that B Station has deviated from its original intention, but that B Station is no longer sexy. The public opinion on the commercialization of B Station is not that B Station cannot make more money in the future, but that B Station’s current money-making posture is wrong, which leads to concerns about B Station’s future ability to make money.

To sum up in one sentence, Bilibili’s commercial narrative needs to allow itself to “wander” again.

Tik Tok: “I can’t scroll anymore, but I have no choice”

In 2024, the entire Douyin narrative in public opinion is the accusation of merchants: "I can't scroll anymore, but I have no choice."

We looked through all the press conferences held by Douyin in 2024, including the 2024 Douyin Creator Conference, the Douyin E-commerce Author Festival, the Douyin Massive Local Promotion 2024 Upgrade Conference, the Douyin Instant Retail "Agricultural and Commercial Support Plan" Conference, and the Douyin Life Service "City Rush Plan·Come to the South for the Winter".

You will find that the official voices to the outside world are slight and scattered. They only released some new policies and new products at individual nodes, and made some small public releases for some very small projects.

If you only look at their official news, you will feel that Douyin's external image seems a bit "dull" throughout 2024. But if we pull our perspective back to the outside world, you will find that the media, businesses, and influencers' comments on Douyin are turbulent and turbulent:

Nine out of ten brands on Douyin e-commerce are losing money. If they increase the volume, they will lose money. If they don’t increase the volume, they can’t complete the annual framework, and even white-label products can’t be sold.

Dabo is gradually losing its advantages, and Dianbo is also in trouble. It relies entirely on purchasing traffic, and the cost of traffic is getting higher and higher.

The top brands on Douyin are going ahead with their efforts. The return rate of the top live streaming influencers remains high.

The voices on both sides formed a huge contrast.

Douyin seems to have grown up in 2024. On the one hand, it does not need to have any particularly groundbreaking products and policies to present to the world. On the other hand, facing the pressure of public opinion from all sides, Douyin seems to deliberately keep a low profile.

Therefore, Douyin's narrative in public opinion in 2024 is more shaped by the voice of a third party. This voice is: "I can't scroll anymore, but I have no choice", behind which are the voices of many businesses and influencers.

The volume of Douyin comes from several aspects:

The first is the price. Douyin has actively launched a "low-price campaign" in the past two years.

The second is the volume of operations. Limited by the business model of Douyin’s interest e-commerce, merchants have to stay in the live broadcast room for a long time through a large amount of content materials, and iterate their own operating methods according to Douyin’s constantly adjusted traffic policy.

The third kind of volume comes from the fact that the Douyin world will be reshuffled every few years. Whether it is a popular brand or a popular celebrity, it is difficult for anyone to become an "evergreen" on Douyin. That sense of crisis accompanies everyone at all times.

The entire ByteDance’s business principle is “growth solves all anxieties.” If Douyin wants to achieve wave after wave of growth curves, it must involve all merchants and influencers.

Let’s sort out the most important narrative branches of TikTok in 2024 and the impact it brings:

The first is that in January 2024, Douyin E-commerce set "price power" as the priority task of that year, launched "Super Value Purchase" to target Pinduoduo's "10 billion subsidies", and expanded the low-price strategy to shopping malls and short videos.

This policy is also criticized by all merchants. Because the traffic cost of Douyin is already rising day by day, and under the low-price policy, the merchants' already meager profits have hit the bottom again.

In 2024, Douyin e-commerce launched the "hot item bidding" function. If a product has a lower price than similar products, it can participate in the bidding and receive a large amount of traffic exposure support. This is actually imitating Pinduoduo. If Pinduoduo merchants want to gain traffic on the platform, they must bid the lowest price on the entire network for a single product.

But Douyin was not the first to launch the low-price strategy in 2024. Pinduoduo, Alibaba, and JD.com all used low prices as their core strategy before Douyin, and Douyin was actually just a follower. Moreover, the reason why e-commerce was able to impact the offline industry in those days, whether it was Alibaba or JD.com, was actually due to low prices. Low prices are the original sin of e-commerce.

But the strange thing is that among these companies, only Douyin and Pinduoduo have been criticized by the public for their low prices, and Pinduoduo has long been criticized by merchants and the public for its low prices. Therefore, Douyin seems to be the one that has been criticized the most in the "low price storm" in 2024.

I think this is related to the different positioning of the major platforms in the hearts of merchants. For the vast majority of mid-tier merchants, they believe that Tmall and JD.com are the basics, with Tmall contributing the largest GMV, JD.com contributing profits, and Pinduoduo responsible for the momentum of low-profit products. What is Douyin? For many merchants, Douyin is their hope for growth.

Whether it is a top merchant, a mid-level merchant, or a white-label factory store, Douyin is likely to be the fastest growing platform, and it may even surpass Tmall and JD.com to become its basic platform, not to mention those "Douyin brands" that rely on Douyin to start their business. When you become the "hope of the whole village", but the villagers gradually find that this hope may be a bubble, everyone's psychological gap is the greatest.

Among all the e-commerce platforms, it is a recognized fact that Taobao and JD.com have already stabilized their structures, and it is difficult for new players to make breakthroughs there. Pinduoduo's arena is more suitable for players with low average order values ​​and low delivery standards. Xiaohongshu's e-commerce links have not yet been fully opened up, and the e-commerce progress of Video Accounts has been relatively slow. Therefore, whether it is a mature large brand or a newly established small and medium-sized brand, the only place they can break through in China is Douyin.

Moreover, the reason why TikTok has been criticized so heavily by public opinion is that TikTok is everyone’s enemy.

In the e-commerce field, Douyin has challenged the status of Alibaba and JD.com, snatched the market from Pinduoduo, and tried to shake the foundation of Meituan's local life; in the search field, it has diverted Baidu's traffic; in the content and advertising field, it has snatched the limelight from iQiyi and Tencent Video.

When your enemies are multiples of others, the attacks you receive will naturally be multiples of theirs.

In 2024, TikTok’s low-price strategy did bring higher GMV, but it did not necessarily reach the expected GMV.

"LatePost" reported that in January and February 2024, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce was 500 billion, with a cumulative year-on-year growth rate of more than 60%, but by March, the year-on-year growth rate fell below 40%, and after the second quarter, the growth rate fell to less than 30%.

Moreover, the low-price strategy may also lead to higher return rates, higher complaint rates, and more merchant dissatisfaction.

Today, Douyin has abandoned its low-price strategy and put GMV back on top. They launched the "Golden Origin Plan" to support merchants in the industry and solve the derivative problems caused by low prices. But these cannot solve Douyin's current fundamental problems, because for an e-commerce platform, GMV as the first priority is still "low price first". Because without low prices, it is impossible to increase GMV.

Douyin’s solution to increasing GMV is essentially the constraints brought about by its product form.

First of all, the sources of Douyin e-commerce's GMV are information flow, live broadcast room and mall. As an interest-based e-commerce, Douyin can challenge Alibaba, Meituan, JD.com and Pinduoduo because its large amount of content brings a huge number of active users, which in turn brings advertising and GMV in live broadcast rooms and information flow.

But any business model must have its own ceiling. Platform-based e-commerce companies such as Alibaba and JD.com focus on the search logic of "people looking for goods", and their GMV naturally comes from the mall. Although the GMV that relies on the mall seems to be lifeless and has little growth, it is stable and simple, which makes it easier for merchants to operate and has a higher moat.

The growth of Douyin's e-commerce essentially comes from the rise of search and mall, but search and mall are contrary to Douyin's original user behavior habits. Even if Douyin continues to support it through internal operational methods, it is impossible to turn Douyin Mall into another Pinduoduo and Taobao.

In 2024, Douyin finally made Douyin Mall and Douyin Search into independent apps. This split seems very difficult, as it is equivalent to supporting two apps again to challenge Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Baidu. But if you think from the first principles, this seems to be Douyin's only option.

In 2025, Douyin is still a "big cake" in the pool of many businesses. But all businesses are calling for it, not wanting this piece of cake to become tasteless. I think the meaning behind the inability to roll is: "I don't want to be so tired and so unprofitable, but I dare not quit."

For Douyin e-commerce, the business narrative in 2025 should be to create hope for all merchants. This hope is not to increase GMV, but to gain a foothold on the Douyin platform.

What is different is that Douyin is not only an e-commerce platform, a search platform, and a social platform, but also a media. Douyin, a national media, has become a weather vane of society and the "mouthpiece" of the country.

Therefore, compared with other purely commercial platforms, society has always had business ethics requirements and social responsibility questions for Douyin. However, Douyin, which is an algorithm-driven platform, has not been doing well in this regard.

Throughout 2024, TikTok encountered several major public opinion crises:

The first wave was headed by Crazy Xiao Yangge, and included the collective collapse of internet celebrities such as Mao Yibei, Yang Maoyue, Northeast Yujie, Wang Hongquanxing, and Luo Wangyu.

The second wave was the borderline video incident involving former Olympic champion Wu Liufang.

The third and most serious wave was the direct "bombardment" of Douyin by Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nongfu Spring, because of the negative news on the Douyin platform.

On the one hand, as a national-level application, Douyin has provided many people with a platform to speak out through its technology and content. It has also given many small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to break through industry barriers and has created many companies.

On the other hand, Douyin’s social value at the content level has been criticized.

Even though the short dramas that have become popular in the past two years have broken the traditional content consumption model of movies, TV series, and even online movies, they still cannot represent human civilization, but can only represent human "traffic interest". Even TikTok, which has gone overseas, has achieved huge commercial value, but is still considered by elites like Musk to be a commercial return obtained by taking advantage of the power of human nature.

The “environmental deterioration” of TikTok in 2024 is not only the deterioration of commercial public opinion, but also the deterioration of social public opinion.

Douyin seems to have never found a balance between commercial and social value. I think this is not just a problem of Douyin. Douyin is more like a typical spokesperson for the future algorithm era and AI era. The social conflict brought by Douyin is a physical conflict between the future algorithm civilization and human civilization.

How much decision-making power should humans give to algorithms? How do we give algorithms values? How do we weave an ethical cloak for algorithms? This should be a topic that all AI products will have to think about in the future. As one of the most representative products in the algorithm era, TikTok should be brave enough to take the lead in building a value system for AI civilization while exploring how to maximize its commercial value.

Therefore, one narrative that TikTok cannot escape in 2025 and in the next few years may be “business for good”.

Video account: Buffett in short videos

We focus on Tencent's video account. Tencent is too big, so this year we will focus on Tencent's most promising and valued business - video account.

The video account's narrative is completely different from that of other major companies, and this difference is reflected in the various contradictions in the video account's narrative. The video account's narrative in 2024 is actually more low-key and mysterious than Douyin, but the few narratives that have been revealed have aroused the expectations of the entire industry.

For example, Tencent only issued a public relations article for the annual meeting, introducing some of Ma Huateng's judgments on Video Account, in which he mentioned the importance of Video Account e-commerce and reiterated Zhang Xiaolong's redefinition of Video Account e-commerce.

Zhang Xiaolong believes that product information should become an atomic transaction component that can roam freely in WeChat. The important signal behind this is that video account e-commerce will be completely integrated into the WeChat ecosystem and will be re-made in a way that is different from Alibaba and Douyin.

In August last year, Tencent turned its video store into a WeChat store.

At the end of December, WeChat launched a grayscale test of the gift-sending function, which allows goods to be circulated among WeChat friends as gifts. This is a bit like the WeChat red envelopes of the past. It uses WeChat's best social capabilities to penetrate a huge business without bloodshed.

With these two concrete actions, plus Tencent's use of Ma Huateng's speech at the annual meeting as the official tone, Tencent used only three smallest moves to set the narrative of its entire e-commerce business from 2024 to 2025.

Tencent and the entire video account team did not hold any press conferences with great fanfare, nor did they officially announce any concepts or policies that would benefit the market. With just some seemingly insignificant actions, they whetted the appetites of all merchants, influencers, and service providers, making them full of imagination about the future of Tencent's e-commerce.

I think this narrative effect can be achieved not because of how brilliant its public relations techniques are, but because of WeChat’s current status, WeChat’s past path to success, and everyone’s recognition of Zhang Xiaolong’s product manager-style strategic thinking. These things constitute the background of this wave of narrative.

If we want to understand the possibilities of WeChat e-commerce, we need to look back at the history of WeChat and understand Zhang Xiaolong’s product thinking.

First of all, we can see that WeChat has taken a completely different e-commerce path from Douyin. Douyin's e-commerce path relies on supporting celebrity anchors and influencers, quickly improving the infrastructure closed loop of e-commerce, monetizing its own traffic, and supporting e-commerce business.

All Douyin-style successes are essentially operational successes. But Zhang Xiaolong has always been an anti-operational thinker. He believes that good products should be de-operationalized. He believes more in developing a function, giving it to users, and letting them slowly grow a business while using the function. This kind of business is not the result of the company's strategic goals, but the result of user choice.

For example, when the WeChat team launched the Drift Bottle, they just thought that people would be lonely and need anonymous confidants. But after the Drift Bottle was launched, this product has spawned countless scenarios. Many people use Drift Bottles for advertising, and some boys use Drift Bottles to flirt with girls.

If WeChat Video Account does e-commerce, and also pulls in various MCNs to support Dong Yuhui and Xiao Yangge, that can only happen after Zhang Xiaolong retires.

Secondly, we can see that all of WeChat’s new businesses are “winning by being slow”, which is actually beyond the limit that many large companies can tolerate.

For example, in the first year or even the first two years after WeChat launched this service, the market response was mediocre. But today, mini programs have become a standard feature of Chinese businesses of all sizes.

For example, WeChat Video Account was launched six years later than Douyin. Even today, many of the functions and infrastructure of Video Account are still imperfect, but its daily active users have surpassed Kuaishou.

Therefore, the new business launched by WeChat is truly long-termism. In China and even in the world, it seems that only Zhang Xiaolong of WeChat has the strategic determination and the right to speak, which makes a super large company willing to wait for a new business for several years.

I think what is more important is that WeChat has always been a rare product with values. It really chooses not to do anything in the face of huge short-term benefits, while most companies "say one thing and mean another."

WeChat is the largest and most important application in China today. Its every move affects the living habits of more than one billion people. Every change in it may cause a storm in the opposite sea like a butterfly effect. Because the video account is embedded in WeChat, it must find its own posture and the right way to do e-commerce business.

Moreover, all merchants embrace the values ​​of WeChat. If Douyin e-commerce gives merchants the feeling of a "meat grinder", WeChat actually gives merchants the feeling of "altruism".

Just like the traffic of private domain and mini-program e-commerce essentially comes from the WeChat ecosystem, but is owned by merchants. Merchants also hope that WeChat will continue to uphold the altruistic values ​​in its e-commerce business, so that they can take root in the soil, get rid of involution, and have a long-term future.

Reinventing e-commerce with WeChat's approach instead of using Douyin's approach, Alibaba's approach, or Pinduoduo's approach is the strategic choice of Zhang Xiaolong and Tencent, and it is also the true desire of all businesses.

It can be said that only by doing so can WeChat e-commerce succeed, and only by doing so can it truly surpass all previous e-commerce.

The narrative of video account e-commerce, or more accurately, the "narrative of WeChat e-commerce", seems to have the least information and is the most mysterious, but in fact, its narrative is the voice of merchants. It is more like Buffett in short videos, using the simplest approach, the longest vision, and the "snowballing" method, hoping to outperform the market with the power of compound interest.

To sum up

In the narrative of big companies in 2024, Kuaishou, which has no stories, must use new narratives to awaken the expectations of users and merchants; Xiaohongshu, which is schizophrenic, wants the money of big brands, but its body is moving towards small brands and small merchants. We don’t know when its business will accelerate; the core of Bilibili’s commercial narrative is not generalization, but to let itself go wild again; and the increasingly mature Douyin not only needs to create hope for all merchants, but also must take the lead in building a value system of AI civilization while exploring business; if you want to reap the dividends of Video Account and WeChat e-commerce, you have to adapt to Zhang Xiaolong’s rhythm, slow down, and hold on.

We habitually use the power of reason to guide people's behavior, but almost all group expectations and spontaneous behavior following are brought about by narratives.

Just as businesses use narratives to solve growth problems, we can also use narratives to reshape our lives.