Huang Zheng is retired, and the routine of "cutting a knife" in Pinduoduo is still there

On January 18, a Shaanxi user who has participated in Pinduoduo's "slash a knife" activity many times wrote a rather high-level sentence in the WeChat group: "Playing the people like this will eventually be abandoned by the people." ”

Recently, Liu Yuhang, a Shanghai lawyer who sued Pinduoduo for allegedly infringing on consumers' right to know, published an article on social platforms revealing more details in the trial of the case.

Pinduoduo explained at the trial that due to the limited number of percentages displayed on the page, 0.9996427% was directly omitted as 0.9%. Therefore, after Lawyer Liu bargained, it was not that there was no change, but that what changed was six decimal places.

"0.9% not 0.9%?" At the same time, this explanation subverts user cognition, but also unveils the mystery of Pinduoduo's "bargaining price difference of 0.9%", many people instantly feel that they are "routine", due to the unprecedented attention, the topic has continuously rushed to Zhihu and Weibo hot search.

1

In fact, in March last year, lawyer Liu Yuhang began to "die" with Pinduoduo. At that time, Liu Yuhang participated in the Pinduoduo "bargaining free take" activity. During the bargaining period, Liu Yuhang invited a number of friends to bargain but the difference of "0.09%" can be taken for free.

Subsequently, he bargained for several other products in the "bargain free take" activity, invited a number of friends to bargain, and the platform still showed a difference of "0.09%".

Liu Yuhang believed that when Pinduoduo provided network services, it was suspected of violating the principle of good faith, using false data, and concealing rules, which had constituted fraud and seriously affected the social atmosphere, and then sued Pinduoduo in court.

On March 31 last year, the Shanghai Changning District People's Court reviewed the indictment materials.

Lawyer Liu Yuhang said that the lawsuit is not against the "bargain free to get" rule, but the information displayed to consumers on the event page. The cause of action is an infringement lawsuit, a non-contractual lawsuit, and a lawsuit that infringes on the consumer's right to know.

According to Liu Yuhang, he has been interviewed four times in just three months since the prosecution of Pinduoduo in April 2021 attracted public attention. Two of them were Pinduoduo's real-name complaints to different competent authorities.

Liu Yuhang also said that this has seriously affected his normal work and life, and his family is even worried about their personal safety and fear of more retaliation.

Liu Yuhang insisted that the biggest motivation for the lawsuit is "I believe that this has warning significance for major Internet infrastructure platforms, including Pinduoduo, and not to try to deceive consumers in a way." ”

In response to the lawsuit, Pinduoduo also responded last year, saying that the original intention of the activity was to provide free benefits for consumers, so that every user could participate fairly, and by participating in the bargaining free activity, it was free to get goods within 24 hours by cutting to 0 yuan.

Pinduoduo said that the consumer reflected "always a difference of 0.09%", the actual situation is "has been cut 99.1%, there is still a difference of 0.9%", because some of the free cut goods amount is larger, pull a small number of users to cut the amount is not enough to make the percentage change, will make consumers think that the bargaining price has not changed.

However, Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, recently said that shanghai municipality mentioned in the "Guidelines for the Application of Online Marketing Activity Algorithms in Shanghai Online Trading Platforms (Trial)" launched in November 2021: "When platform operators apply algorithms to consumers to make prize sales, they must not use algorithms to manipulate the probability of winning the lottery, winning results, winning personnel and other deceptive ways to make prize sales." ”

Pan and Lin said that the "slashing knife" of the e-commerce platform is very misleading, and the winning mechanism is not transparent, and there is a problem of misleading or even deceiving users. And even if someone really wins the lottery, due to the unfairness of the winning mechanism, pulling the same person to "slash a knife" to get different benefits will also produce "algorithmic discrimination" problems.

2

Lawyer Liu Yuhang and Pinduoduo stumbled to a certain extent, shaking the "traffic foundation" of Pinduoduo and unveiling the "traffic password" of Pinduoduo's crazy acquisition of users in the sinking market.

In April 2015, Taobao and Jingdong, which have been working in the e-commerce field for many years, are busy with consumption upgrades, in order to compete with the two giants to differentiate, Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo, locked his eyes on the low-end market that many e-commerce have abandoned, that is, the later sinking market, launched the fresh e-commerce "Spelling Good Goods", invited friends to join the group through social platforms such as WeChat Circle of Friends, and the spelling list will take effect when the specified number of people is reached.

5 months later, Huang Zheng drew more than 20 people from the dream game, incubated the e-commerce platform "Pinduoduo", based on the experience of the game company, Huang Zheng operated Pinduoduo, introduced the idea of operating the game, through continuous iterative updates, stimulating users, fission fission and then fission.

That is, since then, WeChat groups and circles of friends have often been "help to cut a knife" brush screen, many people found that for many years of not contact with classmates and relatives who could not hit the eight rods also suddenly bounced over the chat box, chatted for half a day you thought he wanted to find you to reminisce, the result is often to throw over a connection, let you help "slash a knife".

In 2016, Pinduoduo's revenue reached 504.9 million yuan, and it received $110 million of B round financing from investment institutions such as Tencent, Gao Rong and New Horizon, and 36-year-old Huang Zhengguang became Ma Huateng's guest of honor.

Tencent in addition to the support of Pinduoduo Capital, but also gave greater support on the WeChat side, backed by the big tree of Tencent, Pinduoduo will use the rules of WeChat to the extreme, "slash a knife" activity in the WeChat system spread rapidly, a large number of users flow to Pinduoduo.

It is no exaggeration to say that under the tilt of WeChat's traffic, no Chinese can escape the "slash" of Pinduoduo. With the help of the "slash a knife" activity, Pinduoduo has continuously attacked the city in the sinking market, from the countryside to the town, from the small county to the big city, all the way to the bamboo.

The "slash a knife" activity can quickly fission, on the one hand, the activity has "game attributes" and is more attractive to users; on the other hand, WeChat provides a comfortable soil and growth environment for the activity.

Objectively speaking, this activity also has a very large "mass base." According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2018, the population of the four first-tier cities in the north, upper, Guangzhou and Shenzhen was 21.542 million, 24.1833 million, 14.9044 and 13.0283 million, respectively, totaling 73.658 million. At the end of 2018 Chinese mainland the total population 139538 million, accounting for 5.28% in the four first-tier cities, which means that more than 94% of the population lives in second-tier and below-tier cities.

Sinking market users are not only large in scale, but also have many characteristics. These users have low incomes and are extremely sensitive to the price of goods, and the "slash a knife" activity can well cater to the motivation of consumers to "bargain"; on the other hand, users in the sinking market have more leisure time and are willing to spend time to participate in activities and get price concessions.

It is also very important that the vast majority of users in the sinking market live in the "acquaintance society", and the user relationship chain is easier to establish. Compared with first- and second-tier cities, the familiarity between netizens in the sinking market is higher, and it is easier to form a fission in the WeChat ecology, which reduces the cost of customer acquisition for Pinduoduo.

3

Due to its great success in social networking, Pinduoduo has labeled itself as "social e-commerce" to distinguish it from Taobao and JD.com.

In March last year, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020: as of the end of 2020, the number of active buyers in Pinduo for many years reached 788.4 million, surpassing Alibaba to become the largest e-commerce platform in China.

Relying on activities such as "slashing a knife", "duoduo orchard", "tens of billions of subsidies", Pinduoduo successfully counterattacked, and Huang Zheng's personal wealth also expanded sharply.

At the close of the U.S. stock market on December 30, 2020, Pinduoduo's stock price rose 7.77% to $179.11 per share, with a market value of more than $210 billion. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Huang Zheng is now worth $58.6 billion, surpassing Jack Ma ($50.9 billion) and Ma Huateng ($53.3 billion) to become The second richest man in China.

Surprisingly, at the peak of Pinduoduo, on July 1, 2020, 40-year-old Huang Zheng sent a letter called "A Small Step of Pinduoduo" to all employees, announcing that he resigned as CEO of the company, and soon he stepped down as a director.

On March 17, 2021, Pinduoduo released its 2020 financial report, accompanied by another piece of news: Huang Zheng announced that he would retire from Pinduoduo, step down as chairman, withdraw from the board of directors, and hand over the voting rights to the board of directors.

At about the same time, Liu Yuhang sued Pinduoduo. He said: "The law does not protect people who sleep on their rights, and also ask netizen friends to tell themselves that 'there are always people who have to defend their rights, why can't it be me?'" he said.

4

After Huang Zheng retired, Pinduoduo's growth slowed down significantly. On the one hand, this is related to the general trend of the Internet, on the other hand, the purchasing power of users who use activities to stimulate and use small profits to lure in the early stage is not high.

On November 26 last year, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the third quarter of 2021. According to the financial report, Pinduoduo's revenue in the third quarter was 21.5058 billion yuan, an increase of 51% over the same period last year, compared with 239% in the first quarter and 89% in the second quarter.

The slowdown is also reflected in the number of active users. As of September 30, 2021, the number of active buyers in Pinduoduo reached 867.3 million, an increase of 17.4 million in a single quarter. However, compared with the new 35.8 million in the first quarter and 21.6 million in the second quarter, it is significantly lower.

Throughout 2021, Pinduoduo has not been able to reproduce a very high growth rate, whether it is to attract new users or increase the amount of consumption of individual users.

According to media reports, Pinduoduo's "slash a knife" project was rated as the lowest "1" in the "271" performance score in the first half of 2021.

On the morning of the 19th, the "2021 Hurun China Top 500" released by the Hurun Research Institute showed that TSMC and CATL new entries entered the top ten, and Pinduoduo's ranking fell to 12th.

"Water can carry boats, but also can overturn boats", Pinduoduo relies on various activities to obtain a large number of users, will it now be eaten by angry users?