Video account, more like a cultivation system

Video accounts have opened up new growth space and are expected to become an important product of WeChat in the next 10 years. This article introduces the structure and mechanism of video accounts in detail, as well as the comparison with the same industry. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Video account, the hope of the goose farm.

It not only integrates the public and private domains, but also opens up new growth space, and is expected to become an important product of WeChat in the next 10 years. However, I don’t know if you have noticed that it has some special rules.

for example:

It does not display the number of fans, the number of interactions after 100,000+, and there is no ranking list or data API for external access, which makes its real data quite mysterious and it is difficult for the outside world to obtain specific information.

I have also made short videos, but every time I tried, I always felt like a funny blogger. Although I have tried many times and have not found the most suitable style, my attention to the development of the short video industry has not diminished.

From the perspective of a marketing insight, I found that from the internal testing of WeChat Video Account in 2020 to the present, its growth trajectory seems to be similar to that of cultivation games. Why?

1. Video Account Infrastructure

It can be seen from the three stages:

In early 2020, the infrastructure of WeChat Video Account was established, allowing users to post videos of no more than 1 minute and upload 9 static images.

Drawing on Weishi’s past experience, Video Account has clearly defined its development direction from the very beginning, putting user needs first and encouraging the sharing of high-quality content on the platform.

In order to better integrate this new function with other parts of WeChat, the Video Account team has also wholeheartedly optimized and improved it.

During this stage, Video Account also tested the product interface (UI) for some users, compared and tested different user samples and interaction modes to improve its recommendation algorithm. By continuously expanding the test user base, the product direction and positioning of Video Account was further clarified.

In 2021, the status of Video Account in WeChat began to rise.

They encourage everyone to post more touching and positive content, which attracts many middle-aged and elderly people. In order to attract young people, Video Accounts host various live concerts. At the same time, they strongly support original creators and promote that "high-quality content" is the key.

By June, the basic functions of Video Account had gradually matured.

Not only does it highlight several new columns on the homepage, such as "Personal Attention" and "Friends Recommendation", but also the barrage comments and live broadcast functions, as well as the integration with the official account, the entire platform has become more interesting and interactive, and the content orientation is richer and clearer.

In 2022, Video Accounts became commercialized and began to open "small shops" for merchants. It also introduced advertising and other payment methods to provide more income channels for creators and merchants.

According to QuestMobile data, in June 2022, the monthly active users of WeChat Video Account reached 800 million, exceeding Douyin's 680 million and Kuaishou's 390 million; and the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute report pointed out that the daily active users of Video Account have exceeded 400 million, which is almost the same as Douyin's 421 million and Kuaishou's 347 million.

Many industry experts have stated that Video Account has become the mainstream platform for short videos. Even Ma Huateng emphasized at an employee meeting that the most eye-catching business of the WeChat Business Group (WXG) is Video Account, which is the hope of the entire venue (the entire company).

By the first half of 2023, its outstanding performance in commercialization has indeed led Tencent's major businesses. The financial report mentioned that the quarterly revenue of video account advertising has exceeded 3 billion yuan.

Driven by the video account, advertising has become Tencent's fastest growing business segment this quarter. Those authors who create works for the video account have indeed felt that Tencent is strongly supporting them and that traffic is also continuing to increase.

Judging from the overall development, the current approach of Video Account is different from that of Weishi in the past. It is no longer blindly pursuing a certain amount of volume, but really wants to establish long-term and stable relationships with everyone on such a large platform as WeChat.

In other words, Video Account wants to make it clear that the platform values ​​real and meaningful content more and hopes that everyone can interact with content creators. All of this directly lays the foundation for Video Account's e-commerce model to be different from that of other platforms.

2. Choice of Mechanism

Alibaba has been changing its business and strategy over the years, and its main way of making money is to obtain traffic on various platforms through various user activities. This means that Taobao always faces the problem of insufficient traffic, except for some traffic brought by the brand effect, and there is always the possibility of new competitors.

Therefore, one of Taobao’s core competitive advantages in the past was its traffic distribution mechanism.

When a user searches for a product or browses a category on Taobao, Taobao will use its complex algorithm to decide which products to display first and which to display later. All of this is based on factors such as the user's shopping history, preferences, the merchant's advertising bids, and the product's reputation.

In order to gain an advantageous position in the competition for traffic distribution, merchants also need to constantly optimize their product descriptions, pictures, prices, reviews, etc., and even place advertisements to obtain better display positions.

This means that Taobao is not just a shopping platform, it is also a huge traffic market where merchants "bid" for traffic in the hope of gaining more user attention.

It was not until the overall growth of the Internet peaked that Taobao began to pay attention to issues such as "retention, private domain, and user retention."

However, as the growth of the Internet approaches saturation, we urgently need a technological revolution to lead a new direction of development. In this technological evolution, information is not only the core driving force, but also the inexplicable but vital surplus value.

Douyin happens to have mastered the information link of "people, goods and places" and has a huge user flow. Douyin's main direction is e-commerce business with content as the core.

Merchants compete for customers on this platform. Once they make a profit, they invest again in the hope of attracting more customers. This cycle continues like an endless race.

It is not difficult to find that from the initial short videos to today's pictures, texts and live broadcasts, Douyin has successfully surpassed traditional e-commerce platforms such as JD.com.

The development of video content is an unstoppable trend, which effectively speeds up the efficiency of information transmission. At the same time, public accounts have begun to show signs of decline, which has also prompted Tencent to launch new video products to supplement the development of its overall ecological chain.

If we compare the development trajectory of Video Accounts with that of Official Accounts, the main difference between them is that Video Accounts need to be more closely integrated with the overall ecosystem of WeChat.

This also explains why Tencent’s chief strategy officer said in the earnings call: “We are in the early stages of monetizing and deploying advertising on video accounts.”

It can be inferred that Tencent's current strategy is to first consolidate the position of Video Account in the WeChat ecosystem and achieve profitability by gradually introducing advertising and other monetization methods. On the basis of ensuring the stable growth of Video Account, it is likely to explore more business models to maximize the commercial value of this new platform.

Therefore, for Taobao’s traffic distribution business, the most important task at this stage is to complete the content ecosystem. Douyin is centered on content e-commerce, but its e-commerce infrastructure (supply chain, operations, and express delivery) is still incomplete.

As for Video Account, it is not in a hurry to engage in e-commerce now, but is more focused on building its content ecosystem and enhancing user stickiness.

Tencent is aware of the appeal of video content, and its strategy is to first cultivate a stable user base and get them used to consuming content on video accounts. Once the content ecosystem is stable and has accumulated a large number of users, it will be natural to gradually introduce e-commerce or other monetization models.

This also means that the future e-commerce competition landscape will no longer be just pure commodity transactions, but will find the best combination of content, interaction and commodities.

If you understand these, you will understand why the video account is slow. This is just like the "micro-business and group buying" business in the circle of friends in previous years. It emphasizes natural growth and has a solid foundation.

3. Why is Douyin so eager to develop shelf e-commerce?

So why is Douyin so eager to develop shelf e-commerce? We once stood out by relying on our characteristics that distinguished us from shelf e-commerce, but why do we seem to have returned to the starting point?

First, the upper limit of income from entertainment and advertising alone is obvious. Although advertising can indeed bring a lot of income to the platform, as the number of users grows, the number of ad impressions and click-through rates may saturate, leading to stagnant growth.

Secondly, information is like a flowing medium, it represents "surplus value efficiency and infrastructure". This value is continuous and never disappears, always in constant iteration and evolution. It is the dynamic nature of this information that enables us to transform the passage of time into concrete and tangible spatial power.

For current technology, pictures, texts and videos are already the main carriers that are very intuitive and can quickly convey information. In the future, as technology develops, we may see more advanced interactive methods.

For example: virtual reality, augmented reality or direct brain-computer interfaces…

These methods can provide a more immersive experience, making the information transmission more real and in-depth. However, in terms of current technology, think about it, is there any carrier that can convey information more efficiently than pictures and texts? No.

Therefore, using information to do e-commerce is in line with the core driving force of the Internet. I think that instead of paying too much attention to details such as shopping malls and global ecosystems, merchants should be more concerned about how to obtain subsidies and support from the platform.

for example:

The platform wants "certain vertical cultural content", and if merchants and bloggers create some high-quality content together, the traffic will be tilted, which is much more reliable than simply subsidizing sales.

Although the Douyin e-commerce market has grown to a trillion-level, there has not yet been a super-large brand that has successfully listed. If we can help several big brands in certain fields to successfully list in the future, other brands will have better opportunities in this market.

Of course, there are many other reasons to explain. Douyin's development of shelf e-commerce is not only a strategic choice, but also to meet the diversified needs of users, and supply chains, while ensuring its continued growth and leading position in the market.

Therefore, from this perspective, Douyin and Video Account are not real competitors. Although they may both move towards e-commerce, their respective development paths and focuses will definitely be different.

4. Challenges faced by video accounts

For video accounts, I think there are three biggest challenges in entering e-commerce:

1. Balance between privacy protection and openness

There are many components in the WeChat ecosystem, and Video Account is one of the functions. WeChat is used for chatting, so it attaches great importance to user privacy.

If you look at the official accounts of previous years, you will know that they do not display the number of fans, do not display the number of interactions after 100,000+, and do not even open rankings or APIs for external data access.

Douyin is like a big market, and anyone can see what is going on inside. It’s like everyone knows where to make money; Video Account is like a private club, and people outside cannot see what is going on inside, and don’t know where the opportunities are.

In addition, many Douyin B-side service providers have contributed a lot of business growth to Douyin. Although Video Account also has the potential to grow, because it is part of WeChat, it must follow the company's internal product principles.

In other words, even if the video account team wants to take big steps, if a certain thinking direction does not match the overall strategy or even harms users of the entire ecosystem, it may be blocked.

Therefore, the problem with Video Account is not the outside market, but how the company strikes a balance.

2. Can you completely open up your circle of friends?

In the past, Moments did not support sharing of live broadcasts and short videos.

Although it is now possible to forward these contents to Moments, every time you finish reading them, you still need to click the back button to return to Moments, which is not convenient enough. I think the scale can be a little bigger.

Imagine that when you are browsing the Moments and come across a video or live broadcast, you can play it directly on the current interface without jumping to another page.

In this way, while browsing pictures and texts, you can also switch seamlessly to video content. Everything is done on the same smooth interface. Isn’t it more exciting?

Moreover, the interactive functions of videos and live broadcasts should be further enriched. The current like, comment and share functions are still a bit conservative, and can only be seen in videos or live broadcasts, not in Moments.

Not only that, for merchants, adding purchase links directly in videos or live broadcasts can also create more commercial value for them.

However, I believe the WeChat team must have considered these. The reason why they did not take action immediately may be that they are carefully weighing the user's behavior habits and acceptance.

This is like the broken windows effect. Once you start making major changes to an already stable system, it may trigger a series of chain reactions.

3. Can you live a better life by being independent?

If Video Account wants to truly upgrade and win market share, it must ensure that its users have developed the habit of watching videos on WeChat. On this basis, making video e-commerce independent may bring it greater development opportunities.

Without this transformation, Video Account will always be a supporting role in WeChat and will be marginalized. Although attempts have been made to make Video Account more open, this is just the beginning and is far from enough.

If the video account does not find its own position in the e-commerce field, then it can only rely on advertising and commissions to make profits, following a similar path as the official account.

However, I noticed that the main user groups of video accounts are now middle-aged and elderly people, and their consumption habits are also very specific.

One part of the purchase is made during square dance activities, and the other part is in the live broadcast environment, where people recommend and purchase goods from each other through WeChat; this consumption pattern is a bit unique, and also reflects the current market positioning and audience characteristics of the video account.

However, there are still relatively few young people participating in the entire platform, so where are the young people? Of course, it is Douyin or Moments. Therefore, in order to truly attract more young users, Video Account needs to make more innovations and attempts.

For example, integrating some things that young people like, supporting cooperation with popular culture, music, art and trendy brands, etc.

V. Conclusion

Video account, take your time.

Some things are not the most important, but they are necessary, like the Little Green Book. This strategy of filling in the differences with other platforms is, on the contrary, more conducive to building a solid user base.

Author: Wang Zhiyuan

Source public account: Wang Zhiyuan