This morning, the news that "WeChat responded to cut off Douyin's external links" rushed to Weibo's hot search.
According to the first financial report, on the evening of January 10, the Douyin link could not be directly opened in WeChat, and the password could not be copied, so it could not be effectively jumped in Douyin or the browser.
On the contrary, the link and password of Taobao can be copied in WeChat normally...
In this regard, the WeChat team responded in the middle of the night yesterday:
"In order to ensure user experience and protect the security of user data, WeChat has maintained strict and standardized management of external link content for a long time, and resolutely cracked down on special character sets, special logos, special codes and various passwords that induce and harass users. For external link content that affects user experience and privacy security, WeChat will continue to optimize management measures and continue to create a green and healthy network environment. ”
This morning, the editor tried it and found that the link to Douyin can still be sent and copied on WeChat, I don't know if it is because WeChat has not been updated.
After all, it has only been more than a year since the "truce" between WeChat and Douyin, and the two conveniences are about to set off a "war" again.
The "battle" between WeChat and Douyin
The "battle" of WeChat and Douyin dates back to 2018. WeChat Moments and QQ Space have successively blocked Douyin links, preventing Tencent's social traffic from being diverted by ByteDance.
Then there is the classic screenshot, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming in the WeChat circle of friends, and Xiao Ma Ge's conversation. This makes the contradiction between ByteDance, which was originally an undercurrent, and Tencent public.
The user avatar incident in early 2019 brought the "battle" between the two sides into a white-hot state. In the early morning of January 23, the Douyin product team posted a note on its official Weibo account, saying that it had received a large number of user feedback that new users could not log in and use Douyin normally with WeChat authorization.
To put it simply, of Douyin's 250 million daily active users at that time, 200 million users logged in through WeChat with one click.
In this way, Douyin uses big data and other means to push their WeChat friends and even friends' friends to these users in large numbers. Even if you don't give address book authorization, Douyin still achieves accurate push.
At this time, Tencent was not happy, saying that this behavior would bring great privacy and security troubles to users, and Douyin would not be allowed to use WeChat to log in with one click.
After that, the two sides began various lawsuit battles.
On June 3, 2021, Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent, criticized short videos at the China Network Audiovisual Conference, saying that "some low-minded and vulgar short videos have long affected users' minds, and all you like to see pig food is pig food".
The next day, Li Liang, vice president of ByteDance, issued a reply saying: "Tencent itself has been attacking the short video industry while vigorously developing short videos. ”
The scolding war escalated, and ByteDance released a long article on the official WeChat account, listing "various facts that ByteDance has been blocked and banned by Tencent in the past three years".
In the past three years, ByteDance has been banned by Tencent 17 times, and the two sides have fought more than 30 lawsuits. Tencent's ban on ByteDance's Douyin, Volcano Mini Video, and Watermelon Video lasted for three years, affecting more than 1 billion users, and more than 49 million people were blocked from actively sharing Douyin to WeChat/QQ every day.
However, Tencent is not a gas bag, publicly stating that ByteDance's Douyin and other apps have stolen user relationship chains through the WeChat platform for many years, and "strictly guarded" Tencent on ByteDance's platform.
Some Tencent PR mentioned in the circle of friends that Tencent's official Douyin account has long been blocked, and the name of the direct sales number has been changed to garbled.
No wonder, Byte can come to Tencent's territory to quarrel, but Tencent has never spoken in Byte's territory.
The real reason for restarting the "campaign"
The turning point of this "battle" occurred in September 2021.
Relevant departments interviewed several Internet giants such as Tencent, Ali, ByteDance, Baidu, and NetEase, and asked for "external link interoperability".
On November 29, 2021, WeChat issued the "Updated Statement on the "WeChat External Link Content Management Specification", announcing further interconnection plans under the guidance of regulatory authorities, which will allow direct access to external links in peer-to-peer chat scenarios, and will open the direct access function of e-commerce external links on a trial basis in group chat scenarios.
Soon, we will be able to directly open links to Taobao, Douyin and other platforms in WeChat. Unexpectedly, just over the past year, this great interconnection project has appeared a moth.
But there was also something yesterday that deserved our attention.
Lecturer Zheng Wei at the venue said: It is expected to invest 5 billion traffic in 2023 to continue to help new anchors start broadcasting traffic.
After more than ten short video products such as Weishi, Penguin Look, and Flash Coffee were folded, the video account launched by Ace WeChat has undoubtedly become Tencent's "hope for the whole factory".
Judging from the published data, the ace is really different. In 2022, the total usage time of Channels exceeded 80% of the total usage time of Moments. The viewing scale of Channels increased by 300%, the length of watching increased by 156%, and the sales of live streaming goods increased by 800%.
So much so that at Tencent's online internal staff meeting on December 15 last year, Ma Huateng criticized all of his products, but the video number was praised.
Channels is the future of Tencent
Behind the huge potential of Channels is a predictable profit. At present, the revenue sources of short videos are mainly divided into three parts: short video information stream advertising, live broadcast payment revenue and e-commerce revenue.
At present, Channels has about 500 million daily active users and an average daily usage time of 35 minutes. According to the report given by Guosheng Securities Research Institute, it is estimated that by 25 years, video channel advertising can contribute about 23 billion in revenue.
In terms of live broadcast payment, the monthly active users of Channels have exceeded 800 million. Referring to peers such as Huya Kuaishou, the payment rate is expected to stabilize at about 8%, and the average revenue per paying user is estimated to be about 40 yuan. As a result, this revenue is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan next year.
As for e-commerce revenue, the e-commerce of Channels is still in its infancy, and last year's results were good, and the future can be expected.
At present, from the perspective of short video information stream advertising and live broadcast payment revenue, Channels will become one of Tencent's most profitable products in two years.
Heading into 2023, with the future of gaming and advertising, the revenue pillars, uncertain, Tencent needed a new business to take on the responsibility of future growth, and Channels was elevated to an unprecedented strategic position. It can be said that Channels is not only WeChat's video account, but also carries the expectations of the entire Tencent.
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