Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Over the past year, the strategic position of video has been visible to the naked eye in Tencent's business landscape.

In the 2023 Wechat Open course PRO, the video number, as Tencent's "hope of the whole audience", occupies the absolute C position. According to the information disclosed by Wechat Open course, a number of data such as short videos, live broadcasts and GMV with goods soared in 2022.

However, taking into account the video number in all aspects of the past year from zero to one "attack", the base is limited, so the data level of year-on-year growth is inevitably limited.

On the other hand, although the video account backed by Wechat draws a lot of traffic from it, its slightly fragile content ecology is not enough to make it precipitate this part of the traffic and undertake the important task of realization.

Based on this, at a time when the short video campaign tends to be white-hot, the video number will still go through many tests if it wants to make full use of its strength.

Traffic still needs to be deposited in the video number, the importance of traffic is needless to say. And over the past year, video accounts seem to have done a good job in digging traffic.

According to the video number team, its total user time in 2022 has exceeded 80% of its moments, and many data, such as the number of daily active users and the number of creators and daily video uploads, have increased by more than 100% compared with the same period last year.

However, the multiple growth of the relevant data does not necessarily reflect its true appearance. After all, what is aggregated in the video number of Wechat is the traffic.

Wechat, one of the most successful and high-barrier products on the mobile Internet, had 1.309 billion monthly active users in the third quarter of 2022, including almost all Internet users in China, according to Tencent Financial report. As a short video platform integrated with Wechat App, Tencent can continue to extract traffic from Wechat as long as it wants.

Take "customized red packet cover" as an example, it has played a key role in WeCom's promotion. After the video number was launched, Wechat quickly introduced new rules: in addition to corporate customers, individual users with video numbers and more than 100 followers can also customize red packet covers.

With the improvement of the strategic significance of the video account, Wechat not only connects the video account with videos of more than 30 seconds on moments, but also continues to expand its boundaries, blending with mature plates such as WeCom, Mini Program and Subscription account to increase display space. In this context, Wechat users who do not pay attention will be absorbed by video accounts as so-called users, which will be counted as monthly active users.

Based on this, the video number standing on the giant's shoulder can counterattack the data in a short period of time. According to the data disclosed by the media at the end of last year, the number of monthly active users of the current video account has reached 800 million, which alone has surpassed the regular players of short videos such as Doukuai.

However, although Wechat can drain video numbers continuously, it is very difficult for users to develop the habit of consuming video number content-even at the moment, some so-called video number users don't even know what "video number" is. All I know is that there is a lot of video content in Wechat now.

In other words, even though the number of monthly active users of the video account has reached the top level in the industry, there is still a multiple gap in the usage time compared with Douyin, Kuaishou, and even bilibili, who has joined the vertical-screen video service. This will directly affect its commercial realization scenarios such as information flow advertising.

It is easier to know than to teach Wechat users how to use video numbers.

From the user side, after years of development, whether focusing on accounts or personalized algorithm recommendations with thousands of people, most of the existing fast B users have accumulated "assets" in line with their content consumption preferences on their respective platforms.

In contrast, the video number is more like a "whiteboard", and the cost of user migration is high. "Why do you want to use your video account when you have Douyin / Kuaishou?" has also become a "heaven question" in the process of breaking the circle of a video number.

Similar logic is also reflected at the level of content creators.

As a simple example, after bilibili launched the vertical video section, many content creators who used to focus on shaking quickly gradually began to distribute videos to bilibili. In this process, a lot of content is actually mixed with the creator's "welfare" to the user.

However, the final "place" of activities such as followers and comment raffles is often shaky-even in the videos posted on site B, the creators will lead fans to Douyin to participate in the activities in the comments area. The video number, to some extent, is also in the situation of bilibili.

A short video MCN insider told Photon Planet, "although we have several big V accounts that continue to send video accounts, the content is basically moved here from Douyin, there is no differential operation, and some other secondary accounts have stopped."

This means that both users who already have the habit of consuming short video content and mature content creators have regarded platforms such as Doukuai as a "stronghold". In contrast, bilibili and video number are more like channels to seek increment.

It is impossible for Tencent to miss this logic. One of the key points of the live broadcast of the concert to be launched by Tencent in 2022 is to cultivate the habit of Wechat users using video numbers.

In terms of data and communication effects, the online concert is indeed a good attempt to educate users, as long as it can compete with Douyin-Douyin, as a "defender", not only performs with video numbers at the same time, but also spends a lot of money on this year's World Cup. Therefore, as far as video numbers are concerned, how to precipitate the huge traffic provided by Wechat will still be a problem.

Objectively speaking, video account also has its own advantages, such as Wechat's social relationship chain. It can be said that, compared with the relationship chain precipitation weaker shake fast B, based on the Wechat video number if the user is really transformed over, it is difficult to migrate to other content platforms.

However, the transformation and migration of users often depends on the quality of the content, while at this stage of the video number, the content ecology seems to be not mature enough to undertake the important task of realization.

Content ecology needs to be made up although Tencent's products have always been its advantage, but in terms of content quality, the video number can be said to be "born reckless".

At the beginning of the launch of the video number, it was filled with a lot of low-quality, handling content, as if the people who bought Weishi wool had found a new project. Although in the Wechat open course, the video number team admitted that it has sifted out a large number of transported content through various means, in terms of content, the video number after governance still appears to be a bit "messy".

A simple example: users try to flip down while watching the live broadcast of Wechat Open course-one second, they may be watching the Web3 Innovators Summit in Hong Kong, the next, I'm in a competitive studio full of Kuaishou. The video account of "accept all Rivers" seems a little immature in the area of content distribution.

On the other hand, the "information" kernel of the current video number content is not conducive to increasing the duration of user use.

Take a content creator who focuses on "appearance". According to Photon Planet Watch, his past works mainly tend to the Douyin "look at the Little Sister" mode. Perhaps it is due to the strong binding between the video number and the social ecology of Wechat, which makes users "converge". For the content that is very popular on Douyin, the data on the video account is slightly bleak, with the number of likes and retweets stuck in the triple digits.

But what is rather treacherous is that when the creator added the same content with subtitles and apocryphal interviews, packaged as self-directed and self-performed "fake information", it quickly exploded on the video number, and the data soared from hundreds to tens of thousands. It also seems to have found the "traffic password" on the video number, and the recent content has been switched to "pseudo-information".

In addition, after turning off the video account's "personalized content recommendation", the video account also revealed the most authentic side, that is, a large number of ordinary users casually record the long-tail content of their lives.

As mentioned earlier, a considerable number of users will not regard the video number as a content platform, but a "tool" to send videos for more than 30 seconds on moments. Therefore, you can not only browse to a vendor who buys chicken feet and then record the video recorded after bone removal in the morning, with the caption "on sale", or you can browse to the record of mobile phone vendors going out to give away orders, and at the same time say, "if you buy a second-hand mobile phone, you can come to me."

Although these records of life can be summarized into the category of "being present" in this Wechat open course, the result of strong socialization is the dullness of the content.

Thus it can be seen that, compared with more emphasis on "entertainment", the content ecology of video number is more inclined to "information" with stronger attributes of information and tools. However, if you take "information" as the core, users are likely to leave after reading, and the long-tail content produced by a large number of ordinary users is also difficult to form a stable content support.

Based on this, in the current video number, if you want to improve the duration of user use, you must focus on more "time-killing"entertainment" as the core. And this is the logic of the current video number.

In the Wechat open class, the video number team revealed that it will upgrade the "Polaris Project". In addition to providing flow support to qualified high-quality creators, it will also launch special incentive programs for music, funny, games, plots and other key categories. Obviously, the video number attempts to match the depth of the user through vertical content to improve the user's stickiness and content distribution ability.

However, the content ecology always needs to be "nurtured", and there is no hurry. If you act in haste, the flow dividend is likely to be divided by those "eye-catching" low-quality content, Bad money drives out good, but damage to the content ecology. Therefore, finding the video number in the right direction may need to make more efforts at the content operation level.

Finally, in addition to realizing its own short video dream, Tencent has another hope for video number, that is, to engraft e-commerce through video number. According to Ma Huateng, "I hope to be closer to the transaction and do a good job in the closed loop of e-commerce."

Unfortunately, content e-commerce has high requirements for user stickiness, which is closely related to the content ecology of the aforementioned video account. Although it is making up the content, but at this stage, the video number of the real high stickiness users, is still not shaken fast, bilibili "as their own" middle-aged users.

A newcomer to live broadcast of video number once made such a joke: when the video number first started broadcasting, he still kept the habit of live broadcast on Douyin, shouting "babies of the live room." Unexpectedly, as soon as these words came out, many viewers spoke one after another: "people who are 50 or 60 years old are no longer babies."

According to the aforementioned MCN personage, although the video number traffic is large, but the ROI fluctuation is also very big, the algorithm seems to have problems, it is difficult to accurately get customers. In addition, the video number has a high demand for selection, and the volume of performance-to-price ratio of goods is not flattering, while some of the low performance-to-price ratios aimed at middle-aged and elderly users sell well.

This may be groundless. Wechat Open course data show that the price of customers with goods in the live video number is more than 200 yuan, the proportion of users in high-line cities on user portraits is more than 60%, and the proportion of female users is 80%. Only weakening the age level. But even so, Shunzi, one of its live broadcast cases, said tea, as a blogger in the fields of famous tea and tangerine peel, the age structure of users is self-evident.

In other words, although the "aging" of the video number can bring some opportunities for businesses in some areas, not all businesses can enjoy this dividend. Although the logic of traffic trading and running ROI is narrow, it is a very effective way to play for many small live e-commerce teams.

Therefore, if Tencent wants to engraft e-commerce through video accounts, besides making up for "infrastructure" such as streaming tools, the core is still to reverse the current face of content consumption of video accounts and upgrade from "short videos with Wechat as the core" to "diversified content communities with short videos as the core". Before taking off, the video number may need to find a clearer landing direction.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: photon Planet (ID:TMTweb). By Wen Jiehao.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.