The author | Gu Twenty
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With the theme of "entering the micro", WeChat completed its 11-year-old annual open class yesterday.
As an annual event, the relevant speakers at the main forum reviewed the past achievements and future prospects around the WeChat ecosystem with five business main lines: video number, WeChat payment, mini program, search and weChat.
If you use the two dimensions of data and direction to summarize the highlights of the speech content, the data is that the small program DAU reached 450 million, and the search MAU was 700 million. In the direction, the video number is officially defined as an atomized component, WeChat Pay is the credit system, and the enterprise WeChat continues to connect.
Among them, the video number is officially defined as an atomized component, which can also be called the most important knowledge point in this year's open class. It may be because Zhang Xiaolong was absent this year, resulting in the vacancy of the C position of the WeChat conference. As the focus of attention of the outside world, the video number has become the mythical topic of this conference.
For example, the video number is the future of WeChat; the definition of atomized video numbers is no longer aimed at Douyin and Kuaishou; in 2022, the video number is the future and so on. The atomized video number has also become one of the functions that are most in line with the theme of WeChat's "micro", making the video content meticulous in WeChat.
Undoubtedly, this will make the video number usher in more traffic, or will get rid of the previously criticized lack of creators. However, the other side of the meticulousness is that the video number that is pervasive and fully opened may usher in a new round of balance.
01 Two-year-old video number is very strong?
Before redefining the video number, Zhang Xiaochao, a speaker on the video number business, first shared the changes in the video number in the past two years.
However, although Zhang believes that the span of review is the past two years, the content shared is more concentrated in the last month. For example, the Xicheng Boys' online concert, which reached 20 million views in the main case, was just recently screened on the WeChat video number live broadcast, which was quite a bit of a feeling of preparing a case for the year-end conference.
Looking at the richness of the short video cases, among the four cases used to show the depth of consumption, two are official media news numbers such as "CCTV News" and "Beautiful Zhejiang", and there is a short video clip from the West City Boy Live Broadcast, and the only native short video creator who can really be officially appreciated and run out is the Planet Research Institute.
Finally, looking at the display of live broadcast cases, basically the same as short videos, the choice is a national event, such as the "Shenzhou 12 launch" and "Meng Wanzhou return" and other special events live broadcast display, and does not have universality.
As a content creation platform, the achievements of the video number in the past two years have not proved that there are many individual creators who are willing to work here for a long time.
The user's feeling is that the video number has not been able to run out of the head benchmark case so far, which also means that the content supply side of the video number is still lacking.
In addition to the case of only subjective feelings, WeChat did not use more objective video number overall market data to support the results. In contrast, other businesses such as mini programs and searches are quite a lot of data dry goods.
A year ago, Zhang Xiaolong had two important views on WeChat video number, one is that video number is a carrier of video content, which is used as a metaphor to replace the concept of video files transmitted between users. The other is that the confidence in the video number comes from the difference in traffic distribution of the social + algorithm, and believes that the traffic distribution in the WeChat video account can be rationally restrained.
Now it seems that the difference in traffic distribution in the latter has not enabled video numbers to get more content creators after a year of exploration. The videoization of the former's content is further deepened into pervasive atomization.
02 The two-sidedness of video number atomization
At this year's WeChat open class PRO, the video number team defined the video number for the first time on inheriting Zhang Xiaolong's understanding that "the video number is a structured video content carrier".
The video number is defined as one of the most atomized content components of WeChat, as a basic unit, it can be combined with other components within WeChat and produce new reactions, based on this atomized positioning, a lot of "video number +" can be generated in the future.
From a functional point of view, what has shown this trend is the interconnection of public accounts and video numbers. In the public account subscription message, you can see the video content card, live reminder; search can search for the video number content; the Mini Program can directly watch the live broadcast; the circle of friends advertising video and so on.
In the future, it can also bring the opening of video numbers and payments, video numbers and enterprise WeChat, as a strong bridge for circulating video content, circulating in the WeChat ecosystem.
The advantage of atomization is that the video number has become an inseparable form of WeChat, presented as WeChat's video capabilities. At the traffic level, the video number will usher in the traffic era of comprehensive openings. The traffic is no longer restrained video number, under the encouragement of WeChat, the supply of content side may usher in prosperity. This is the dividend that is about to be ushered in as a platform and creators, and it is also the main reason why WeChat atomized video numbers are mythologized.
Atomization has opened more openings, and it has basically determined that the video number will intervene anywhere on WeChat, everywhere, and achieve pervasiveness to users.
Before the video number, the same role mainly has the public account as a graphic capability component and the mini program as a service capability component.
However, although they are all pervasive components, the three do not feel the same.
First of all, on the user demand side, the entrance to the early public account mainly consisted of subscriptions, and this period was the boom period of high-quality content and traffic of the WeChat public account. After that, the traffic decline introduced social relationship-based likes and algorithmic recommendations under the watch. At this time, the public account that has entered the mature and stable stock period has been fully infiltrated in the WeChat ecosystem as a graphic component.
The reason why it can become a component is that the public account that has entered the mature period has been verified by user needs, and in the stock period of graphic traffic, the opening only ensures the sustainability of the graphic content in the ecosystem.
Different from the spontaneous growth of public accounts, the video numbers that transition to the end are pervasive, short-timed and seriously lack content ecology have obviously not yet entered the mature stage. The reason for being able to become a video component comes more from the ripening demand of traffic flooding, which means that the degree of user disgust may be higher.
Secondly, at the entrance end, as a small program that is determined as an atomized component in the direction of the growth period as the video number, it is used as an extension component of WeChat service capabilities at the beginning of its birth and circulates in the Ecosystem of WeChat.
However, as a carrier of services, the entrance of the Mini Program is in the user scenario, such as offline stores or the demand scenario at a certain time. When the user has no service needs, this service ability will not be noticed by the user.
Therefore, mini programs are also regarded as a model of WeChat running out and product restraint. However, the video number carries the content, which determines that the pervasiveness of the content needs to be displayed in front of the user and allowed the user to selectively consume.
Finally, on the content supply side, this kind of video consumption content also has alternatives to short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou for users.
Although the WeChat team believes that it may be able to differentiate in content, for example, it said at the conference that it will invest more platform resources to encourage the output of real-person, original, paid, and knowledge-based content in the future, but in the direction and vibrato, Kuaishou, B station and other mature video platforms with a large number of POGC content, just involved in the same track.
03 Inner volume of knowledge content track
If taking 2021 as the dividing line, the short video platform that has been occupied by entertainment content for a long time and has fallen into homogenization anxiety will begin to focus on supporting and continuously increasing pan-knowledge content this year.
In terms of Douyin, the "Mengzhi Plan" will be launched in early 2021 to provide tens of billions of traffic support for creators who produce knowledge content for teenagers. At the end of 2021, the learning channel was officially launched, opening up a separate page for knowledge video content, and users only need to click on the original first-level entrance "same city" to choose to switch to the learning channel.
In terms of Kuaishou, in April 2021, the "Photosynthetic New Knowledge New Job" plan was launched, trying to make 100 new knowledge sharing officers, 1,000 second-time talents, and 10,000 new professionals accumulate 100 million fans. After June, Kuaishou increased its size again and launched a large-scale live broadcast activity "Kuaishou New Knowledge Broadcast", linking 100 knowledge masters, more than 50 professional institutions, and more than 1,000 knowledge anchors, who covered 16 vertical fields of finance, science, science and technology, law, humanities and arts, and the workplace, and planned to bring tens of thousands of live broadcasts within 3 months.
In terms of station B, after the second dimension, the generalized knowledge interest content such as pan-finance, pan-technology, and knowledge area has become a popular field, forming more than 7,000 cultural circles, and completing the platform cognitive characteristics of "everything can be B station".
So many pan-knowledge short video players outside the inner volume, unlike the WeChat video number is only a component of the video capability bearer, pan-knowledge short video for Vibrato, Kuaishou, B station directly determines the future strategic space.
Some industry observers believe that first, in 2021, knowledge short videos still have traffic growth dividends within the platform, which is the growth logic of each platform to exert efforts in this field. The other is that the platform hopes to break the circle with knowledge content, widely cover the multi-level content needs of users, and play the content difference of the platform's own brand characteristics on the content supply side.
For example, on the inner volume of the pan-knowledge video of the three major platforms, the knowledge label of station B is used to get rid of the niche two-dimensional positioning and move towards a wider range of people. The knowledge content of Douyin is to get rid of the algorithm cocoon and serve the strategy of algorithm traffic for good. Kuaishou is to increase the penetration rate of high-line people and make entertainment fun for the platform.
On the track of short video knowledge, no platform with short video as its main business dares to relax its vigilance. There is no user base, purely open atomization, and the ripening of WeChat video accounts with pervasive traffic is a good decision, but it does not necessarily have a good result.