Image source @ Visual China
Text | Photon Planet, author | Wu Xianzhi, Editor | Wang Pan
Looking back at last year, the market value of Internet companies was mostly cut off, of which long, medium and short videos were left a knife, a right knife, some investors said that in a year's time, the excellent students in the class slipped into poor students, which was really a bit unbearable.
iQiyi, B station, and Kuaishou have fallen by 84%, 70%, and 83% respectively from the high point of the year, and have evaporated about 4 Baidus cumulatively. Some insiders pointed out that simply using "video" to summarize the three companies only see trees and do not see the forest, "content is the core of iQiyi and B station, and jitter and fast are actually creation and distribution."
The above view is not unreasonable, the short video industry is not as sluggish as the secondary market presents, we see that both Kuaishou and Douyin are accelerating integration with other industries. A report by QuestMobile, a domestic third-party data agency, mentioned that short videos are becoming more and more important in public services, more precisely in the form of a "short video + X" expansion. Therefore, it is worth arguing that short videos are becoming infrastructure and industry variables.
This may also explain why the market value of Kuaishou is still the sum of iQiyi and Station B, even if the growth is no longer the same as in the past, its online advertising revenue is still far more than that of a number of giants. Even if the traffic peaks, in terms of business prospects, short videos only show the tip of the iceberg, and there is still huge potential hidden under the water.
From competition to integration
Recently, JPMorgan Chase pointed out in a research report that the industry is changing in four aspects: from efficiency first to quality first, from MAU to DAU, from focusing on user increment to focusing on user quality, from focusing on GMV to focusing on user engagement.
The report mentions that the industry transformation in a sense heralds the coming of the second half, the monism that was once rampant is self-defeating, and the coexistence of trembling, fast symbiosis, and mutual integration may be a long-term state. Different from the zero-sum game of life and death in the past, due to changes in the macro environment and its own differences, the jitter fast to the service market will bring new increments to the entire industry.
Speed and efficiency were once the credo of all Internet companies, such as Douyin, which has advantages in product matrix and algorithm, and the competitive trend began to change as Liang Rubo took over the baton. From the perspective of timing, most of the past year has gone through three stages: optimizing personnel, determining the main line, and marching towards service.
Previously, byte commercialization, games, and online education teams have successively opened the optimization mode. Some game department employees mentioned to Photon Planet that they were already going through the resignation procedures due to the business development that was not as expected, but it was lucky compared to the dissolution of the online education team on the spot. The situation of Kuaishou is similar, with individual departments with long-term blood loss being included in mature departments, relevant personnel being streamlined, and benefits being adjusted.
Similarly, both companies are subtracting in the organizational structure, and in the "9·28" adjustment, Kuaishou has closed several business units. In November 2021, the two-headed governance model will be ended, which is obviously aimed at improving decision-making efficiency.
At about the same time, Liang Rubo opened his first organizational structure adjustment after taking office, and headlines, watermelons, search, encyclopedias and domestic vertical businesses were all packaged into Douyin, which showed that after entering the second half, Byte's domestic business will be more around Douyin.
In addition to organizational adjustment, jitter, fast intervention in the service market or the short video industry into the second half of the most obvious features. However, the outside world once misunderstood the change, believing that it was the two powers declaring war on the giants.
A securities analyst who has been tracking short videos for a long time believes that the traffic and service markets are like two ends of the Internet business model, and in the past, the two ends were mainly carried out in the form of cross-border cooperation, such as Douyin and Tao, Kuaishou and JD.com. "The advantage of cooperation is that both sides take what they need, give full play to their strengths, and have two sides to everything, because cooperation leads to enterprises staying in an acre and a half of land, and it is impossible to bring any changes to the industry."
At the same time, the stereotype that double columns were better than single columns is changing.
The analyst said, "The period of vigorous development of information flow and commercialization will maximize the advantages of the single column, which is one of the important factors for the great success of Douyin that year." However, now that the market focus has shifted to the service side, the platform must give the choice to the user, so the advantage will come to the double column side. ”
For example, earlier Kuaishou was compatible with single and double columns in the 8.0 version upgrade and promoted to the "Featured" page, but the double column was still retained in the discovery and attention page. Douyin is a complete "singularist", and its efficiency is still not discounted.
Due to the difference between single and double columns and tonality between Douyin and Kuaishou, there is diversity in the response of the short video and service market objectively.
"A single column makes users feel 'cool' and has an irreplaceable role in the ability to capture potential demand." The securities analyst said that once the recommendation stimulates user demand, then the follow-up service will most likely remain in the service interface of Douyin.
The Kuaishou strong community attribute is also moving towards depth, before proposing the concept of "new city well" business, focusing on "trust" construction in the field of e-commerce business, and then reaching cooperation with Meituan a few years ago, in a sense, it is hoped that offline consumption and pyrotechnics will be reproduced online.
"One is vertically pipelined, the other relies on communities, both for the purpose of forming a short-circuit economy."
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