Image source @ Visual China
Text | Wang Xinxi
Since the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology advocated interconnection in September 2021, the major giants have gradually launched a phased opening up.
At present, Alibaba, Kuaishou, Tencent and other eight-party Internet platforms have set up working groups to promote the opening up of technologies in the field of aging and barrier-free, Baidu Intelligent Mini Program has launched cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers, in addition, Alipay, WeChat Pay, etc. have achieved mutual recognition and mutual scanning with UnionPay.
But overall, the interconnection of the wall demolition movement is slow, at present many companies are still evaluating the impact of open external links on their own development, the head short video platform video link still can not be shared to the head social platform, the head search platform can not search for mainstream e-commerce platform product information.
What are the core challenges of connectivity?
Judging from the response of several giants to interconnection, each one is relatively cautious, and the attitude and urgency of openness are different.
Based on connectivity, Tencent said that it "will resolutely support the decision of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and implement it in stages and steps under the premise of taking security as the bottom line." For Tencent's phased and step-by-step implementation, ByteDance does not agree: "Because this will be dragged out for a long time, it will not be solved." And said that "on Tencent's turf, it is understandable that Tencent has formulated its own rules, but it is still hoped that the link to Douyin will be unblocked as soon as possible." ”
Shen Ji, executive vice president of Baidu Group, also advocated demolishing the "walled garden" and rebuilding the open Internet at the recent alliance summit.
Behind the different attitudes of the giants, on the one hand, each company has not yet assessed the uncertainty caused by the open ecology, on the other hand, the openness is actually unequal for the interests of each family.
From the perspective of interests, if Ali Tencent Bytes are open to each other, in the short term, Byte and Ali may make more profits.
The essence of Byte and Baidu's growth is to obtain traffic through content, but according to the 2021 semi-annual report released by QuestMobile, although the scale of users in the mobile Internet industry reached a record high of 1.164 billion in June this year, the year-on-year growth has slowed down. Connectivity is in line with the needs of giants to communicate with each other in the stock market and obtain long-tail traffic.
For ByteDance, Tencent's traffic is open, and Byte's content market has obtained a new traffic access entrance, which is expected to drive a new round of traffic growth, so ByteDance's demand for interconnection with Tencent is stronger.
For Ali, the cost of traffic is getting higher and higher, once Ali and Tencent communicate with each other, Ali is expected to reduce the cost of traffic procurement, Tencent can also sell more commodity advertising, but the exclusive advantage of Tencent's social traffic will be eliminated.
The reason why interconnection is slow is because compared with the openness of the PC Internet era, the closed traffic closed loop of the mobile Internet can build a centralized business model and better maximize the benefits of a single platform.
From e-commerce platforms to social platforms to short video platforms, they all sell traffic and advertisements to the B-end to make money, and merchants or advertisers pay commissions to the platform according to the traffic and exposure obtained. The platform controls the distribution and bargaining power of traffic in the closed ecosystem, firmly binding merchants and users. This is also why Douyin content cannot be directly shared to WeChat, Taobao WeChat and mutual blocking.
Therefore, interconnection involves the interest chain of multiple parties, and also involves a certain impact and impact on the original business model, traffic distribution, and platform rules of each platform, which is the problem.
To tear down the city walls is to break the institutionalization process of closed platforms
Different from the traditional linear production enterprises, Internet platform enterprises do not directly control the creation of value, but through the establishment of infrastructure to carry the creation and exchange of value, and formulate rules to manage the interaction on the platform.
For example, whether it is Douyin, WeChat public account, video number is a content producer's infrastructure, it carries the creation of content value and interaction with the outside world to generate content value, content producers through the output of content value, get traffic revenue and advertising revenue.
Consumers have also obtained valuable content, in this process, user stickiness has increased, the activity of content production has increased, the influence of the platform has increased, and the ecology has continued to prosper.
The support behind this is more from the promotion of platform mechanisms and rules. For example, the platform will advocate which content and behaviors are encouraged and recommended, and which behaviors and content are restricted by the rules of the platform. Through the benign rules of the platform, a mechanism for good money to expel bad money is formed.
For example, in the process of short video development, it has experienced a round of adjustment of the content platform mechanism, from vibrato to kuaishou, and the content of singing and dancing, hunting, voyeurism, and vulgar content at the beginning of the past is quite popular, so that short videos have been stigmatized.
With the adjustment of the platform algorithm, the short video content recommendation mechanism gradually targeted the recommendation of depth value, news value, and content with nutrition and dry goods, while the proportion of vulgar and edge-rubbing content is marginalized by the algorithm.
In this way, the output of such content has been gradually reduced, and the influence of the platform has gradually increased, which has also led to the growth of the platform's advertising revenue.
One of the great advantages of interconnection is that it can create a more free and open Internet platform market, consumers can obtain more diversified information content, more open sharing and creation of content, from content creators to developers to increase the probability of obtaining long-tail traffic, brand enterprises precipitate private domain assets and build new user relationships are possible.
But from the perspective of the platform, interconnection may also break the rules of the platform, once a large amount of content from the external platform is shared to the platform, if there is no reasonable mechanism to screen and guide it, it may lead to the platform's rule system being destroyed, and bring greater platform governance costs, the platform is also facing data, traffic, users and other asset loss and security risks, the platform is naturally unwilling to make the traffic of its own platform for others to make a wedding dress.
Because of this, this practice of closing the wall is not a special case for domestic giants.
For example, The Fire Phone launched by Amazon many years ago, in order to build a software and hardware integration platform, it isolated basic applications such as Google Maps, Google Search, Google+, and Google App Store instead of its own maps, bing search and other applications.
In 2012, Apple's iOS6 operating system was launched, and there was no pre-installed Google-owned YouTube app, and a series of actions have been taken since then to isolate some of Google's blockbuster products from Apple's closed system.
In March 2014, Apple announced CarPlay, a platform product that integrates iOS devices and in-car infotainment systems, and Apple has made strict restrictions on mobile software running on CarPlay. For example, Google Maps is a direct opponent of Apple Maps, and Apple CarPlay excludes Google Maps.
In essence, the core purpose of self-built closed ecology is to protect traffic, data and business models, and the deep purpose is to maintain the institutionalization of closed platforms.
In the movie "The Shawshank Redemption", it is explained what is institutionalized, when a person lives in an environment for a long time, he becomes unaccustomed to the outside environment and becomes dependent on this environment. Red said: "These high walls are really interesting. At first you hate it, then you get used to it. After a considerable amount of time has passed, you will still rely on it.
"System" can be understood as a process of gradual assimilation of a subtle force within the besieged city, including dependence and assimilation of the environment of rules, habits, consciousness and atmosphere, and this assimilation must be effective within the closed system, because the closed system is prone to dependence on the internal ecology, but the invasion of external forces will interfere with the shaping process of institutionalization.
For example, from WeChat to Douyin, from Douban to Station B, from Taobao to Pinduoduo, they all have specific platform tones, atmospheres and rules within their platforms, and the formation of this atmosphere depends on an internal institutionalized cultural promotion.
Once the ecosystems of Internet platforms such as Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Baidu are open to each other, behind this may bring about the private domain of public domain traffic and the public domain of private domain traffic.
In the past, whether it was link blocking or data blocking, entrepreneurs could not use their accumulated data across platforms, and needed to repeat operations and investments in different platforms, which was particularly evident in the field of content creation and mini programs, and once opened, it was a good thing for content entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises, APP and mini program developers.
However, from the perspective of the giant itself, it will break the rules of the platform and tear open a hole in the internal institutionalized culture and atmosphere of the platform, whether it is good or bad, it is not clear in a short period of time.
Therefore, in the face of the uncertainty of the future of interconnection, it is not easy to achieve. Because the distribution of benefits is uneven, the responsibilities and responsibilities are not clear, it involves the mutual openness and integration of different markets and different ecosystems, how to establish standards, how to distribute traffic benefits, and how to determine the responsibility for data security.
Some people say that in the PC era, the innovation and prosperity of the industry ecology comes from interconnection. From personal webmasters, independent bloggers, BBSs to small and medium-sized business websites have blossomed everywhere.
But the reason why in the PC Internet era, openness has become a consensus, stemming from the PC Internet era of interconnection to establish an effective benefit distribution mechanism, which can allow participants to obtain benefits.
For example, a large number of webmasters on the PC Internet can make money through the advertising network platform (Baidu Alliance and Google Alliance) - including users can click on the customer's advertisement through the website, and the webmaster can get a share of the revenue.
From an economic point of view, what consensus do the giants need to reach?
In fact, the difficulty of interconnection between platforms is that platforms are worried about being transported by others, resulting in losses for themselves. This is somewhat similar to neighborhood disputes, how to resolve neighborhood disputes, in fact, is an economic problem.
In fact, nobel laureate and British economist Ronald Ronald Scott is the only one who has ever been a member of the United States. Coase's case study of how two neighboring farmers resolve disputes can give us inspiration: one farmer raises cows, the other grows crops, the problem arises, the cows eat the crops, and the farmer who grows the crops faces financial losses, how to solve it?
An effective solution, Coase argues, is for cattle herders to pay compensation to farmers whose crops have been eaten. Coase further argues, however, that it does not really matter who owns the property or who is considered to be at fault, and that if the cattle herder owns all the land property rights, it will become a case where the farmer who grows the crops pays the cattleherd a sum of money to build a fence to prevent their crops from being eaten by the cattle.
According to Coase's theorem, two neighbors seeking a solution to the conflict negotiate their solution until both sides are satisfied with the outcome.
The essence of Coase's theorem is that as long as property rights are clearly defined, it does not matter which party is more sensitive to cost payment, and if for us, the value of the income exceeds the cost, we must have the willingness to solve the problem by paying.
That is, if property rights are clearly defined, the market mechanism will allow the participants to resolve their disputes on their own and ultimately lead to a Pareto optimal outcome – it is a reciprocal agreement where everyone can gain something from the transaction.
Coase's theorem is placed in the interconnection, there are two key issues, one is to define the boundaries of property rights, and the other is to solve the problem of the interest payment mechanism, so that every participant does not suffer losses.
If this idea is used to solve the problem, the author believes that the giants need to form a consensus: who owns the property rights of the platform, then after the interconnection, if other platforms obtain benefits from the platform, they should pay a part of the fee to the property rights platform to form a set of benefit sharing and exchange mechanisms.
For example, the e-commerce shopping link shared by Douyin Ali to WeChat, once the transaction is generated, then the process is similar to Douyin and Ali herding cattle in Tencent's crop land (property rights platform), eating the crops and obtaining the income, then it is necessary to pay the share of the income to the property rights platform.
Therefore, platform interconnection, it is also necessary to form a set of benefit sharing mechanisms between platforms on the basis of defining property rights, so that mutual reciprocity is formed, and in the whole process, everyone has gained benefits. Barriers to connectivity are likely to be lifted.
And put on the responsibility clarity, for example, the false link is placed on the property rights platform, resulting in interest damage, then the responsibility and fault party should be more in the source platform, rather than the property rights platform.
To smoothly promote interconnection, in fact, it is more necessary to reciprocate and balance interests, weakening the problem of who takes advantage of whom and who rubs who traffic.
How to calculate the interests of all parties from the perspective of economics, and to reach the balance of interests to the greatest extent and reach the implementation of enforceable rules, this is the core problem that needs to be solved in the process of promoting interconnection in the future, and it is also the consensus that major Internet giants should reach.