Please answer | WeChat 2023: small steps and fast progress, big opening and closing

The war on the Internet has never stopped. As time goes by, only Tencent still retains its dominant position. The most undisputed fact about it is that WeChat is Tencent's invincible existence. If we were to answer WeChat 2023 in less than 10 words, we would say “small steps, fast progress, big openings and big closings”. Let’s take a look together!

Ten years ago, people often said "There is no Internet outside of BAT". Ten years later, BAT has become a classic term, but the war for the Chinese Internet has never stopped. ByteDance is entering local life, same-city retail, and shelf e-commerce. Xiaohongshu has become a competitor that all players have to pay close attention to.

After achieving such devastating market share growth in the past three years, Pinduoduo has not stopped its significant expansion momentum. After the disclosure of the 2023Q3 financial report, Pinduoduo's stock price rose again, surpassing Alibaba at one point. The 20-year e-commerce leader changed hands in a short period of time. The surge in waves also means that the rights structure of the Internet is undergoing some irreversible changes.

Among the former BAT, only Tencent still retains its dominant position.

Although there are still voices saying that Tencent is just a gaming company, and later some people believe that Tencent is an investment company, these are all very one-sided. But it is easy to reach a consensus that WeChat is Tencent's invincible existence.

WeChat, and it seems, only WeChat. The main product form has not changed since its launch. It will not change its logo form or opening screen because of holidays, marketing activities, or investment from sponsors. Its four main tabs are still the same four.

WeChat’s initial moat was its IM, or instant messaging. Now its moat is the connection between people and content, information, and products. But not quite, it's hard to describe.

In 2023, WeChat's micro product experience and macro business strategy will be frequently adjusted.

Video accounts have undergone changes in terms of short video streaming, live streaming, and transactions. SouYisou has obviously gained stronger potential. Little Green Book has been suspected of imitating Little Red Book. WenYiWen is also constantly testing. Even the "Nearby" has started to develop a product based on LBS that is similar to "Dianping".

On the other hand, Tencent Advertising and Alimama have reached the deepest cooperation in history. Taobao has full access to video accounts, Moments, and mini-program traffic. Moments and video accounts can directly reach the Taobao Tmall live broadcast room with one click. Of course, Tencent Advertising belongs to CDG, not WXG.

If you want to answer the question about WeChat 2023 in less than 10 words, "small steps, fast progress, big openings and closings" is at least appropriate.

1. e人i人, are all “people” in WeChat

Not long ago, after WeChat added a new independent send button, the original "Send" of the iPhone's built-in input method became "Line Feed". The send button is on the right side of the dialog box, which can realize one-click enter and line feed. In October, WeChat updated the chat message reminder function, and a WeChat message screen appeared.

When users open the WeChat chat page or check their Moments, they will no longer miss chat reminders due to being in different interfaces.

Of course, a functional update of this magnitude is bound to involve the usual arguments from netizens. People were delighted, as the functionality had improved a small step but social efficiency had taken a big step forward. They then opened Xiaohongshu and started searching for "how to close WeChat message pop-ups".

Judging from product attributes and user habits, this update is not a big step. After all, there is still room for a closable popup state. However, if we consider the ever-expanding content pool of WeChat, real-time message pop-ups can help video accounts.

For a long time, in the mobile phone system, Apple WeChat notification bar reminders only pop up in an inactive state. They will not pop up when you are browsing Moments or reading WeChat articles. But after version 8.0.42, both Android and Apple should pop up as much as possible.

Just looking at the message pop-ups within WeChat, this function is essentially designed to facilitate users to watch WeChat videos or read public account articles without exiting, making it easy to use and not increasing user costs.

By extension, it may be that they are intentionally expanding the ecosystem of video accounts.

Previously, when a user shared his experience with the message pop-up feature on social media, he used "on-site push" to describe the new feature and said, "The previous painful experience was that when I was reading public accounts, watching video accounts, and watching Moments, I always heard the sound of messages. I couldn't judge the source and importance of the message, so I was forced to return to the message page to check. The on-site notification solves the problem of fragmented messages nowadays."

In August, Xinbang mentioned in an article that the WeChat Video Account’s ecological operational initiative has been enhanced. In addition to speeding up product updates, WeChat Video Account has changed its "laxity" in event planning and operational support in the official account era, and has increased its actions, with a significant improvement in overall operational initiative. From the C-end to the B-end, ecological operations have become more proactive.

In fact, not only has the overall operation of WeChat Video Account become more proactive, but the entire WeChat product shows signs of taking small steps and moving fast.

2. Accelerate in multiple places and jog overall

For a long time, when observers mentioned WeChat, they would praise its relaxation, restraint, and elusive sense of commercial sophistication.

But this year, there have been some changes in the style of painting. From Video Account to Little Green Book, the speed of WeChat function iteration is getting faster and faster, and the changes are getting bigger and bigger. Taking the video account as an example, according to incomplete statistics from the New List Research Institute, as of August 2023, WeChat Video Account has updated 60 functions and issued 60 policies, while this number was 49 for the whole year of 2022.

If you look at the official account now, you will see a completely new look. One is the major change in the content recommendation algorithm, and the other is the repeated activation of short content formats.

Of course, the former was more of a last resort, while the latter was once interpreted as a siege and annihilation campaign against Xiaohongshu.

But in fact, people who have some understanding of WeChat products should know that the emergence of the little green book is not a "growing pain" but a "long-standing regret."

Previously, official accounts became a gathering place for long content by chance, but Zhang Xiaolong always regretted the lack of short content on official accounts.

At the WeChat Open Class Pro in January 2020, Zhang Xiaolong repeatedly emphasized the importance of "short content". He also mentioned the vision of the WeChat public platform at the beginning: "The original idea of ​​the public platform was to replace SMS as a group messaging tool based on connecting brands and subscribers, and effectively avoid spam messages. The content of the group message is not the focus, and all kinds of content should be acceptable, such as text, pictures, videos, etc."

Nowadays, in order to fill the gap of short content in the content ecosystem, WeChat has taken a lot of actions.

From the emergence of the Little Green Book to the revision of the public account information flow, and then to the "Ask a Question" which is a bit like Zhihu, these actions of WeChat are directly targeting the core territory of short content.

However, judging from the current results, the integration of long and short content still needs to be dynamically adjusted. Especially when the long articles and video content of the official account are mixed in one information flow page, the consumption experience is not efficient.

Long text and picture reading and short video watching belong to different user scenarios. The former is the save time content, and the latter is the kill time content. When the two are integrated on one page and recommended to users linearly, it will actually lead to a decrease in the efficiency of algorithm recommendations.

The reason is that this integration is another degree of left-right struggle. "If the content of Kill time and Save time is on the same platform, it is a competition between users' energy. Generally speaking, Kill time wins. For example, for short videos, most people like to watch interesting content that does not require thinking."

From a commercial perspective, the loading efficiency of short content ads is obviously higher. Of course, commercialization is what CDG needs to consider, and improving product functions is what WXG needs to consider.

The product will only be adjusted when a certain commercial function is also needed by the vast majority of users on the WeChat platform, who mainly include consumers and merchants. In most of the time, product will comes first.

This is why the commercialization within WeChat gives people the feeling that there is no rush to make money.

However, WeChat can be slow, but Tencent cannot be slow. You don’t have to be aggressive in advertising monetization, but you must be proactive in competing for user usage time. This sounds a bit confusing, but it can be explained: small steps and fast progress, but also big openings and closings.

According to the latest financial report, Tencent’s online advertising revenue in Q3 2023 was 25.721 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.95% and a month-on-month increase of 2.87%.

WeChat’s internal circulation advertising revenue increased by more than 30% year-on-year, contributing more than half of WeChat’s advertising revenue.

On the demand side, the explosive growth of WeChat mini-games and short dramas will bring about a sustained increase in internal circulation demand.

On the supply side, the number of views on video accounts increased by more than 50% year-on-year, but the Ad load was less than 3% (other short video platforms basically exceeded 10%), so there is still a lot of room for operation.

Video Account cannot kill Douyin, but Douyin cannot suppress the growth of Video Account. Although many people still say that Video Account does not have native top streamers. However, what Video Account is doing is to continuously strengthen its own characteristics and form its own advantages in more content and categories, which essentially improves its own recognition efficiency.

The middle-aged and elderly customer base and cultural and tourism live broadcasts have already left a deep impression, and there will probably be more impressions in the future.

As for the issue of top streaming, it doesn’t really matter whether it exists or not. After all, Papi Jiang is the only short video queen who has gone through the cycle and has almost no bottleneck. But more often than not, the top streamers on Tik Tok are replaced one after another, and the top 100 streamers on Bilibili collapse one after another.

3. Correlation is more important than causation

Among BAT, only T is still standing. Essentially, it is because WeChat has given Tencent a ticket to the mobile Internet. It is also because the more than ten years since the birth of WeChat have been an era in which correlation is more important than causation.

Eleven years ago, Victor clearly put forward such a view in his book "The Age of Big Data" that the biggest change in the era of big data is to abandon the desire for causality and instead focus on correlation.

In order to support this point of view, he cited many successful business cases where "you only need to know "what" but not "why"".

At that time, this proposition, which overturned the human thinking conventions for thousands of years, encountered a lot of rebuttals, but reality taught people a lesson. From O2O to OTA, from online car-hailing to the sharing economy, from short videos to live streaming, trends are emerging one after another, and many companies born in these trends come and go based on cause and effect.

Many people say that relaxation is advanced, and it is advanced because it is difficult. The feeling of relaxation is the accumulation of long-term and effective efforts. Only when you are proficient in it and can handle it with ease, can you relax.

At present, the competition in the Internet has begun to enter a real battle for existing resources. E-commerce, finance and even community social fields have evolved from early product competition to a competition that integrates products, content and business, and WeChat is no exception.

However, to become a national-level product, it must focus more on correlation rather than causation. Why there are at least 100 million people who want to teach Zhang Xiaolong how to make products every day is because most people only deduce how to make products based on cause and effect.

Of course, the above only applies to the eve of the AI ​​era. The AI ​​singularity is approaching, and no one knows what will happen.

Author: Xianyuyu, WeChat public account: Wuduidui (esnql520)