Introduction to The Stone: Zhang Xiaolong said, "If we know what is good and what is bad, we can stick to it." And not just be a two-faced person with personal values and product values."
Editor-in-Chief of The Stone Business Review Ordinary | wen
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As a business researcher, it's not a good time to go.
That's because since the outbreak of COVID-19, China's business community has begun to return to calm, and the grandeur of the past many years is gone, which has made the current Chinese business community lackluster.
If you have to find some bright spots from this node, WeChat is still the biggest surprise in China's business community. In the past few years, the success of public accounts, WeChat Pay and Mini Programs has not only made WeChat a god in products, but also made WeChat an increasingly important money-making machine in Tencent's ecology in the business dimension.
For Tencent, for a long time, it has been almost invincible in all the fields it wants to get involved in, such as games, long videos, music, sports and financial technology, but only short videos and live broadcasts are a track that cannot be conquered for a long time. Even if Tencent sent Ren Yuxin, the core executive who had created an online game miracle in the Tencent system, to lead the short video product Weishi, and invested huge resources and energy, it failed to turn the tide of the war. In the end, Tencent's heavy responsibility in the field of short video and live broadcasting had to fall on the WeChat team led by Zhang Xiaolong again.
At the beginning of 2020, the WeChat team officially launched the video number under the industry pattern of short video companies such as Kuaishou and Douyin. In the early days of the introduction of the video number, the video number was not optimistic about the outside world, but time eventually gradually changed the public's perception.
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Every year' CCTV Spring Festival Gala is the arena of China's major Internet companies, who can become the main partner of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, to some extent, means who is the protagonist of China's Internet industry that year. It is Jingdong Group that has the exclusive right to get the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala red envelope activity, which is somewhat surprising, but it is also worthy of the name. Because in 2021, when the performance of many Internet companies in China was sluggish, JD.com Group was recognized as the strongest performer.
In the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, in addition to the greater attention of Jingdong Group, the WeChat video number is the other biggest winner. Among them, the WeChat video number "Spring Festival Gala" exclusively broadcast the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the form of vertical screen, with a cumulative number of viewers approaching 130 million. In addition, after the end of the Spring Festival Gala, countless content related to the CCTV Spring Festival Gala program emerged on the video number, creating a huge number of views.
Before the vertical screen live broadcast of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, the WeChat video number has actually shown a strong potential energy. In the past year, video numbers have exploded frequently, and content with more than one million likes has emerged in an endless stream, which has become a new platform for users to browse news events and experience leisure and entertainment. Before the Spring Festival, the online concerts such as Xicheng Boys, Mayday and Wutiaoren were repeatedly screened in the WeChat circle of friends; Tencent NBA moved the live broadcast of the event to the video number, launched a three-minute trial and continued to watch the paid function; many individuals and institutions began to use the video number as the main position of content creation; a large number of anchors with goods also flocked to the video number and created considerable sales results. All this proves that the video number has begun to find the successful password.
Why can the video number achieve a counterattack without being optimistic about the outside world? The author believes that its core root is still the way wechat is the team of WeChat, or it can be called the values of WeChat.
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Readers familiar with Tencent will understand that Tencent as a whole has the core values of "integrity, enterprising, collaboration and creativity", but at the same time, Tencent also authorizes each business group to combine its own business characteristics to formulate values with the distinctive characteristics of its own business group. Among them, Zhang Xiaolong systematically expounded the seven values of WeChat in the email of all employees on the day of the establishment of the WeChat business group in 2014.
First, do something valuable to the user.
Second, maintain our own values, as they are reflected in our products and services.
Third, keep a small team and stay agile.
Fourth, learning and iterating quickly are more important than past experiences.
Fifth, systems thinking.
Sixth, let users bring users, and word of mouth wins word of mouth.
Seventh, speculation is better than execution.
After the establishment of the WeChat business group, Zhang Xiaolong's cognition is also constantly improving, and his values for WeChat have also been continuously upgraded. In 2016, he delivered a keynote speech on the theme of "WeChat Values" in the WeChat Open Class, summarizing "everything is based on user value", "let creation play value", "good products should be used up and go", and "let commercialization exist invisibly" as the four core values of WeChat. In 2020, Zhang Xiaolong mentioned his two driving forces for doing WeChat in the WeChat open class, "to be the best tool and let the people who create value reflect value."
The counterattack and rise of the video number is the victory of the above values that WeChat adheres to.
First of all, WeChat video accounts have never fallen into the vicious circle mode of infringing on the interests of users such as "vulgar content pulls traffic, false advertising squeezes traffic" and other vicious circles of traditional short video products, but always insists on doing only things that are valuable to users, and unswervingly implements them into the product logic of video numbers.
From the current content of the video number, we can see that Zhang Xiaolong has been setting content recommendation rules from the perspective of user value, and strives to find a balanced password for content quality and traffic. For example, it does not rely entirely on machine recommendations, but increases the proportion of social recommendations, and expands the scope of information selection by users through mutual recommendation between friends. This is because in the machine recommendation mechanism, the system will strengthen the information that users have contacted, continuously learn user history, and will only recommend entertainment content that is in line with human nature but has no knowledge value; but based on social recommendation liked by friends, it will often recommend knowledge-based content that some users will not actively watch, but has greater value. In addition, social recommendation is also a decentralized content recommendation method, which can better "let the people who create value reflect value".
Secondly, WeChat has a perfect system thinking for video numbers, which is not simply a short video content product that benchmarks with Kuaishou and Douyin, but from the perspective of longer-term ecological construction, the video number is regarded as a tool that everyone can use.
As a tool, the more important meaning of the video number is the account, not the video content. The establishment of the video account system allows a person to have a dual ID in WeChat, one is used for communication and social field, private WeChat ID, and the other is used for public information field, used to create and express video id ID. The video id can not only carry video content, but also carry live broadcasting, but also form a systematic linkage with WeChat groups, circle of friends, public accounts, WeChat payment, mini programs and enterprise WeChat, thus creating a greater imagination.
Third, in the process of functional iteration of the video number, we can also see its spiritual core of "speculation is greater than execution", as well as the working mode of rapid learning and iteration.
Many people should remember that WeChat's earliest exploration in the field of short video is actually the moment video promoted in 2018-2019, which was later changed to video dynamics. However, the video dynamics did not achieve the expected effect, and later WeChat gradually shifted its focus to the video number. In this process, WeChat has never drawn a solid picture, but has continued to speculate on "what is correct", continuously optimized and iterated on the product, and finally found the right key.
Finally, the rise of video numbers is not through large-scale paid marketing, but truly realizes that users can bring users and let word of mouth win word of mouth.
When I communicated with many friends of the WeChat team, I found that the origin of their thinking was "What is the real need of users?" What kind of things can bring value to users? ”。 They believe that "the product that can meet the real needs of users and give users real value is what users really need, and if this thing is not done well, it may be necessary to do publicity, but this is not its root and core." Therefore, the principle that WeChat has always adhered to is, "If this product can truly give users help, users will choose you."
We carefully examine the above values that WeChat adheres to, in fact, they are all common sense, not esoteric truths, but there are very few companies that can do it. This is because although common sense seems ordinary, it is actually the crystallization of human civilization that human beings have constantly insight into the essence of things and have been precipitated after thousands of years of development, so it is not easy to do. In reality, people are often keen on taking shortcuts, and shortcuts are mostly superficial and fail to understand the essential choices. So, common sense is actually not something that people can do.
The core reason why WeChat has created a product feat that has never been seen before or since in the history of Chinese business is that Zhang Xiaolong can deeply understand the essence of things, and reflect his understanding of the essence of things in WeChat products, and internalize them into WeChat values, so as to achieve the unity of knowledge and action. Zhang Xiaolong once said, "If we know what is good and what is bad, we can stick to it." And not just be a two-faced person with personal values and product values."
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If the WeChat red envelope of the 2014 CCTV Spring Festival Gala has made a qualitative change in WeChat Payment, then the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala is a milestone node in the development of video numbers, which means that it has entered the main battlefield of China's short video and live broadcasting field. Although WeChat officially does not disclose the data of the video number, according to its current potential performance, it is likely to have surpassed competitors in terms of user number and traffic.
For the future of video numbers, the author is extremely optimistic. Because a team that can always do "everything is based on user value, has systematic thinking, attaches importance to speculation, and maintains agility, continuous learning and rapid iteration", it is bound to continue to bring us greater surprises.