Video accounts counterattack the short video battlefield: restraint and greatness under SWOT analysis

Tencent Video's counterattack in the short video field has attracted much attention. This article uses the SWOT tool to deeply analyze the winning strategy of Video Account and explore how it can achieve restraint and greatness in the fierce competition. By comparing with competitors such as Douyin, it reveals the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities and threats behind the Video Account product, and reveals the winning strategy of this short video war for you.

The competition between Video Account and TikTok has long been a commonplace topic. This article does not elaborate on the whole process of how Tencent won this short video battle, but instead wants to use the SWOT tool to talk about the restraint and greatness of Video Account products.

We know that Tencent initially competed for 17 short video products in order to enter the short video market, but its previous short video product Dau was a whole order of magnitude behind Douyin. It was not until Zhang Xiaolong started short videos on WeChat that Tencent turned the tide, seized the short video ecosystem, and soon became the first echelon of the short video industry.

At present, what are the key data of the video account like?

1. Video Account VS Douyin Data

As of March 24, the number of daily active users (DAU) of Video Account was approximately 500 million, and the average daily user usage time was 58 minutes; the number of daily active users (DAU) of Douyin was approximately 700 million, and the average daily user usage time was 120 minutes; in terms of total usage time, Douyin is three times that of Video Account.

However, the commercialization of Video Account has just begun, and the growth rate of DAU and user time is faster than that of Douyin. It is estimated that the commercial revenue will reach one-third of Douyin in the next 3-5 years, such as increasing profits by 100 billion.

2. Why did Video Account win? What did Tencent do right?

Before the video account, Weishi was considered by Tencent as a key internal development product. In 2014, Weishi's daily active users reached 45 million, but it was downgraded and merged into Tencent Video just one year later because its daily active users stopped growing.

Although Weishi had all the resources of Tencent at that time, the traffic strategy still did not work, but Douyin was undoubtedly superior in terms of product positioning, recommendation algorithm and commercialization capabilities. Ma Huateng mentioned in an internal meeting that he "no longer believes in the story of buying traffic", but that all product development needs to return to the essence and study the products and services themselves.

In Tencent, WeChat has a large number of users. It is a product operated by all users and has always occupied the product ecological niche of communication. Therefore, WeChat's product optimization has always been very restrained, and a small change has a huge impact on WeChat. However, in the short video war, Tencent finally decided to make a video account in WeChat.

Adding short video ecosystem functions to WeChat is a risky and cautious thing to do, but Tencent insists on this approach, which means that Tencent has already shown its trump card in the battle, which is equivalent to Tencent taking out all its assets to fight with its strongest products to fight against the user grabbing of Douyin and Kuaishou. Tencent absolutely cannot lose this battle.

How can we avoid losing?

Zhang Xiaolong took advantage of the product advantages of his WeChat, quickly trialed and errored, took shortcuts, and quickly made a name for himself.

What are the advantages of WeChat? WeChat’s biggest advantage is its powerful network synergy effect. This product barrier is higher than technology and traffic barriers, and it even transcends cycles.

The reason why Video Account wins is ultimately because it returns to the original intention of the product, leverages its own advantages, and uses product magic to defeat product magic!

3. Use the SWOT tool to analyze the restraint and greatness of video account products

We say that compared with the 17 short video products that Tencent competed against internally before, Video Account was able to turn the tide because it took advantage of its advantages to quickly try and fail, and took shortcuts to get results. But how did Zhang Xiaolong think and plan specifically? Using the SWOT tool to analyze, how exactly does Video Account product restrain itself and why is it so great!

1. SWOT analysis of WeChat products

From the perspective of advantages, WeChat realizes that its advantage is the social circle of acquaintances, and the product stickiness of acquaintances is high. Moreover, WeChat users naturally love to post content creation in Moments + public accounts, and WeChat naturally has the habits and advantages of graphic content producers.

However, the biggest disadvantage of WeChat is that, on the one hand, WeChat’s own algorithm has little cold start data, which will inevitably lead to poor cold start video recommendation capabilities for video accounts, and WeChat will not easily use user chat information for recommendations, which involves user privacy and is a red line issue. On the other hand, WeChat lacks top short video celebrities.

Of course, this is both an opportunity and a challenge for WeChat.

First of all, after four years of cultivating users' short video habits on Douyin, the Douyin short videos forwarded by users on WeChat provide certain data support for WeChat.

At the same time, Douyin's traffic mechanism favors top anchors, and a large number of mid-level anchors lack business opportunities, reaching a bottleneck in the development of Douyin. This is precisely the best opportunity for Video Accounts. For Video Accounts, all anchors are equal and can have the same traffic opportunities. Secondly, WeChat's private domain operations combined with Video Accounts can form a new ecosystem.

In terms of threats, short videos generally last longer, and there are concerns that they will affect WeChat chat scenarios. At the same time, they will also have an impact on the producers of graphic content on public accounts.

2. Product decision-making based on SWOT analysis

Based on the SWOT analysis of WeChat, how did Zhang Xiaolong make decisions? I think WeChat did two things to make it great!

1. Focus on content creators and encourage mid-level talents from other apps to produce their own original content

If you were asked to make decisions among these four types of users, ordinary users, public account creators, mid-level anchors, and private domain traffic operators, who would you prioritize in the early stages of your video account? Who can bring you more video content? From whose perspective should you think about the problem?

There is no doubt that in order to operate an ecological platform, the problem of content supply must be solved first.

The mid-level anchors on platforms such as Douyin can bring more high-quality content. This group of users does not need to educate themselves too much to understand short video creation, while other types of users need to invest more in education and support costs. In the initial stage, it is necessary to prioritize solving the content problem. Only with content can more content consumers be attracted.

2. The algorithm recommendation is decentralized and does not direct excessive traffic, so that the traffic can cover more outstanding grassroots talents.

Tik Tok and Video Account are typical examples of two opposite product strategies.

Tik Tok’s strategy is based on data growth-driven strategies. Through an unlimited AB horse racing mechanism, it gives the best traffic to the top anchors. The Matthew effect is clearly driven by capital!

One very intuitive feeling is that the anchors at the top of the Douyin list are always stars. The top anchors control the traffic, and the middle and lower anchors have little business opportunities.

On the contrary, Video Account adopts a classical product strategy. It has not succumbed to capital for the sake of business and traffic and created short video functions that damage the user experience. Instead, it has been very restrained and has always been decentralized.

Therefore, you may not know who the anchors on the top of the video account list are just by looking at their nicknames. Why is there such a big gap? Because the algorithm recommendation of the video account is decentralized and does not direct too much traffic to the top anchors, so that excellent grassroots talents can be covered by traffic.

From the previous observations on the traffic recommendations of video accounts, the traffic distribution of video accounts is mainly divided into three categories: attention traffic, traffic recommended by friends’ likes, and traffic recommended by algorithms. According to the current observation data, the traffic proportions of these three types of traffic are:

Zhang Xiaolong once said that the ideal ratio of these three types of traffic is 1:2:10. If the algorithm recommendation of video accounts can be decentralized, then small and medium-sized businesses and mid-level anchors can get equal traffic and business opportunities in video accounts, and video accounts can truly empower them. In this way, video accounts can be more beneficial to society and revive all industries at all levels of the market. Today, the commercialization of video accounts is still in its infancy, and recommendations are still decentralized. A gentleman has his own way and his own way. Video accounts use strategies to overcome manufacturing to achieve product greatness, and are impressed by Zhang Xiaolong's underlying product philosophy Zen.

References:

1. Guojin Data

2. Video account related data prediction, source - Snowball, author - Dust of the Vast Universe

3. Gao Wei: "In-depth Analysis of Commercial Niches from Video Accounts"

4. Alpha Factory "Expert Interview Summary"

Author: Kaka

WeChat public account: Kaka's product notes