Is the social recommendation of video account a false proposition?

Initially, the video account was launched in the form of social distribution, leveraging the public domain through the private domain, and then diverting traffic to the private domain through the public domain. However, in the past six months, we seem to have hardly seen the social distribution method. What is the significance of the video account advocating social distribution? Now it seems that it is a false proposition?

Regarding the content distribution method of video accounts, the view has always been that it is a combination of social distribution, interest distribution and subscription distribution, but social distribution accounts for the largest proportion.

Because of this, when video accounts were first created, the logic that everyone recognized was to use the private domain to leverage the public domain, and then the public domain would divert traffic to the private domain.

However, in the past six months, few people have mentioned this view. Judging from the trend of the platform, the official video account seems to be close to giving up the social distribution method.

So, is the social distribution advocated by Video Account a false proposition?

1. The three sins of social distribution

1. Breaking the social product service contract

Most users use WeChat because they want to treat it as a social product.

As for WeChat, they should only provide social-related services to users. This is a default contractual relationship between users and the platform.

Once WeChat provides services beyond social services, it will often overdraw users' goodwill towards the product itself, and may even bring unpredictable consequences.

These negative impacts are not just something I made up, there have been precedents before.

In August 2020, a man named Tang fell to his death because his WeChat account was blocked.

This incident caused controversy among netizens at the time. The point of controversy was whether payment tools should share a set of user information with social products.

2. Social distribution actually goes against the user’s wishes

Social distribution is essentially recommending content that users like to their friends.

The user who triggers the interaction may want others to see that he or she has liked the video, but the user to whom the video is distributed may not necessarily want to see the video liked by his or her friends.

This behavior undoubtedly goes against the user's wishes and constitutes an abuse of the social network.

3. Not in line with the underlying logic of content distribution

Currently, the content distribution logic of most content platforms is to match users with the most accurate content from the platform content pool based on user needs.

For content producers, social distribution is not a good distribution method.

In any business model, the premise of customer acquisition is accuracy. Social distribution is doomed to fail to ensure accuracy because the spread of social networks is in the form of a star-studded node graph, which is completely uncontrollable.

Therefore, whether from the user dimension or from a commercial perspective, social distribution is inconsistent with the underlying logic of content distribution.

2. Social distribution vs. interest e-commerce: creating concepts is not a goal but a means

The proposition of social distribution may not be true, and it is not important for WeChat. However, the introduction of the concept of social distribution has played a decisive role in the rapid development of video accounts.

At the end of 2020, a set of data was circulated in the industry, saying that social distribution accounted for 55% of the entire video account distribution, and interest tag recommendations accounted for only 15%. In other words, throughout 2020, the video account product actually relied on WeChat's social advantages to promote it.

At the WeChat Open Class in 2021, Zhang Xiaolong made a prediction about the future of Video Account: Among the total VVs of the video, the proportion of attention, friends’ likes and algorithm recommendations should be 1:2:10.

Although I am not sure whether this data has been reached at present, as a first-line player of video accounts, my personal intuitive feeling is that it is getting closer and closer to this ratio.

In fact, the iteration of the official version of the video account is enough to prove this point.

In May 2021, Video Account fully updated the private likes function, which means that social distribution is no longer the main distribution method of Video Account, and it has also completed its historical mission.

From being proposed to being gradually abandoned, the concept of social distribution has only been popular for more than a year. Therefore, I have every reason to suspect that social distribution is just a concept created by WeChat officials to promote video accounts.

Of course, the act of creating concepts is not unique to WeChat, but is a very common practice in the Internet circle.

As early as a few years ago, Douyin launched the concept of so-called "interest e-commerce". A few years later, Douyin e-commerce has indeed developed rapidly, but it has nothing to do with interest.

In the past few years, Douyin e-commerce has been able to attract users by relying on low prices and vague rhetoric (some people bluntly call these rhetoric Ma Bian rhetoric). There is a joke in the industry: I don’t want you to charge 998, I don’t want you to charge 698, I only want you to charge 298, but in the end I earned 280 yuan from the customer with tears.

Of course, Douyin e-commerce has now successfully landed, and relying solely on rhetoric is no longer applicable. Since last year, Douyin has even started to engage in shelf e-commerce (actually platform e-commerce). From this point of view, Douyin e-commerce has gradually become traditional e-commerce.

3. Creating concepts is a good way to change user perception

From e-commerce, Internet+, O2O, and sharing economy in the early years to community group buying, interest e-commerce, social distribution, etc. in recent years, Internet companies seem to have been obsessed with creating concepts. In fact, these concepts are essentially the process of informatization of various industries, and have not essentially changed the business logic of these industries.

So why do Internet companies insist on creating concepts? In my opinion, creating concepts is a good way to change user perception. In fact, this is not unique to Internet companies.

In order to get people to accept the concept of shared office, the concept of incubator was introduced. In order to get people to accept new products that are not well-known, the concept of new domestic products was created. There are countless similar examples.

Li Shanyou once said: "It is better to be different than to be better."

Video Account plays the social distribution card in order to highlight the difference between itself and Douyin. Only when users feel that there is a difference between the two can Video Account have a chance to compete with Douyin. If it only does 100% product benchmarking, even if the user experience can be better, it will be difficult to shake the position of Douyin.

ByteDance was once a beneficiary of concept creation. Its early flagship product, Toutiao, actually highlighted the difference between its distribution method and the clients of the four major portals, and eventually gradually surpassed the clients of the four major portals. In fact, the difference between Toutiao's early distribution method and the clients of the four major portals was not that obvious.

In short, relying on social distribution, Video Account has taken a good first step. However, this can only help Video Account gain the opportunity to compete with Douyin. As for how far it can go in the future, there is still a lot of work to be done.

Author: Cai Zhao, WeChat public account: I am Cai Zhao (ID: woshicaizhao)