Reporter Han Lu Editor Chen Xiaoping
"Cut can't be done" Pinduoduo, and it is on the hot search again.
Douyu platform anchor "Super Xiaojie", in its live broadcast room, "organized" a Pinduoduo bargaining activity, calling on a total of more than 60,000 people to come to the live broadcast room, to participate in the Pinduoduo bargain free mobile phone activity.
There were a lot of people, and the results were not good.
In the past 3 hours, the VIVO mobile phone worth 2099 yuan has not been "cut". During this time, the bargain link also became invalid.
After this bargain was made public, the whole network was hotly discussed, and Pinduoduo also made an explanation, but it failed to completely calm the criticism.
The progress bar does not move
Xiao Jie participated in a total of 2 bargaining activities.
Once is a free mobile phone, due to the large number of people in the live broadcast room, the two-dimensional code shared by the link will soon become invalid, and it is prompted that it is a malicious website, and the user cannot help.
After Xiao Jie called customer service, there was no result, and the task was stuck. His summary is: "The progress bar does not move when there are few people, and the multi-task of people is stuck." ”
The second time, Xiao Jie chose to participate in the cash withdrawal activity of 100 yuan.
This time, he has experience, in order to avoid collapsing again, did not send the two-dimensional code link to the live broadcast room, in a very small range of QQ groups one by one, a group of an average of dozens of people.
"Sure enough, there was no collapse, everything went smoothly, but at the last moment, every time I shared a person, I was given a chance to draw a lottery, and I tried more than 40 times, all of which were 'good luck to you', and the progress bar no longer moved."
The second event failed again. It seems too difficult to pin a lot of wool.
Afterwards, on the discussion of "60,000 people bargaining unsuccessfully", Pinduoduo responded quickly, pointing out 2 "untrue" statements:
1, the phone is cut successfully;
Pinduoduo said that at 12:52 on March 17, the anchor opened a group to bargain for a mobile phone worth 2099 yuan, and at 16:40 on March 17, the bargain was successful.
According to the rules of the campaign, the platform sent a special coupon to its account to claim the product. At 23:34 that night, the anchor had received the coupon, and the goods obtained from the bargain had been delivered to the anchor's collection point on March 19.
2, involved in bargaining, not tens of thousands of people.
Pinduoduo claimed that the anchor's statement in the live broadcast room was that tens of thousands of viewers issued a help-cutting invitation to its QQ friends, not all of whom actually participated in the bargaining behavior.
In response to this, Pinduoduo showed that the success time of the event was 16:40 on March 17, "I had already broadcast it at that time"; in terms of numbers, the "task" of bargaining only showed the latest 30 users, and the actual number of participants was indeed unknown.
In this way, there seems to be some reversal in terms of a single event, but it does inspire a resonant mood.
Forever a knife away?
From chopping things to chopping cash, "chopping a knife" is common.
"Relatives and friends around you often send such links, Pinduoduo makes you always feel that you are about to achieve your goal, always let you from 99% to 99.9% to 99.99% to 99.99% to 99.999%... You'll notice that pulling more heads is just adding a 9 after the decimal point. A Pinduoduo user told reporters.
This is just a personal subjective feeling, not necessarily correct. Some careful people were more truthful, suspected that they were "deceitful", and directly sent Pinduoduo 'slashing a knife' to court.
In March 2021, Shanghai lawyer Liu Yuhang participated in Pinduoduo's "Bargain Free Take" activity because his friends shared a link, and received a "super free single card", and after inviting multiple people to bargain, the difference was always "0.9%".
Why is it always a knife away?
Liu Yuhang suspected that Pinduoduo's data was untrue, and submitted prosecution materials to the court on the grounds that Pinduoduo was suspected of violating the principle of good faith when providing network services, and the use of false data to conceal the rules constituted fraud.
At the hearing, Pinduoduo explained that because the page displayed a limited number of decimal places, they omitted a percentage with more than 6 digits after the decimal point as 0.9%; the bargaining page showed 0.9%, and the real data was 0.9996427%.
Pinduoduo stressed that the "bargain free collar" activity is real and effective, with a total of more than 1,200 products participating in the current period, and a total of 7.09 million items have been delivered.
Many users have also learned wool.
"Successfully cut 100 yuan, WeChat arrived." Some users told reporters that "know-how", similar activities, if you can invite new users to download and participate in "slashing a knife", it is generally a "big knife".
"The more you pull new ones, the higher the probability of getting $100." She said that almost 20 people participated and helped her get 100 yuan in cash.
As for multi-person bargaining, why hasn't the progress bar changed?
Tang Jiangrong, senior director of the legal department of Pinduoduo, explained that because the amount of goods cut for free is large, the amount of money cut by a small number of users is not enough to change the percentage, and consumers will think that there is no change in bargaining.
As of now, the case has not been conclusive. The criticism attracted by Pinduoduo is real.
"Pull people's heads" sharp weapons
Pinduoduo, why do you love to use "slash a knife"?
Lens Research founder Kang Yuqing told the "21CBR" reporter that this is the way pinduoduo pulls people's heads and does traffic, and its marketing methods are extended from the logic of the group, which is very suitable for the target customer group of Pinduoduo.
"After all, Pinduoduo has more users in the sinking market on the low line, and these consumers are price sensitive and have time." Kuang Yuqing explained.
The logic of Pinduoduo's "slashing a knife" is to take the logic of "social grouping" and obtain traffic as efficiently and at a low price as possible.
For example, the "slash a knife" activity of 100 yuan free collar, if you can really pull 20 new people, it is to send 100 yuan of real money and silver, how to calculate, it is a cost-effective sale.
However, the algorithm is complex, the result is not convinced, the rules are not transparent, and it is easy to hurt credibility.
"It depends on how to define the 'cost', if it is only money, of course, it is the lowest; if it is sacrificed for long-term trust and experience, the cost is high." Guan Yuqing said that the high degree of attention this time is not conducive to the brand image.
In fact, this kind of marketing is increasingly regulated.
In 2021, Shanghai promulgated the "Guidelines for the Application of Algorithms for Online Marketing Activities on Online Trading Platforms (Trial Implementation)", requiring platform operators to apply algorithms to make prize sales to consumers, and must not use algorithms to manipulate the probability of winning the lottery, the results of winning the lottery, the winners and other deceptive methods to carry out prize sales.
Even internally, the "Slash a Knife" project is no longer very popular.
It was previously reported that due to the poor effect of pulling new ones, in the first half of 2021, the Pinduoduo "slash a knife" project was rated as the lowest "1" in the "271" performance score.