Make a friend to start the premiere of the video account
Making a friend does not put all your eggs in one basket, but has a multi-platform layout and walks on multiple legs. This time, make a friend and set an eye on the video number.
At 5 p.m. on April 23, Make a Friend started the first live broadcast on the WeChat platform video account, and its anchors Mo Qian and Zhu Xiaomu came to the live broadcast room. This means that the Make a Friend live broadcast room will span the four major platforms of Douyin, Taobao, JD.com, and WeChat Channels, and the multi-platform strategy has been further expanded.
Make a friend The video number in the live broadcast room starts broadcasting Source: Video number
Judging from the timeline, making a friend accelerates the pace of cross-platform layout. In April 2020, Luo Yonghao created a live broadcast room to make a friend, and the cumulative number of viewers of the Douyin live broadcast debut exceeded 48 million, achieving a total transaction volume of more than 110 million. In October 2022, Make a Friend officially settled in Taobao, and Luo Yonghao took the lead in opening the live broadcast debut, with sales of more than 100 million. According to reports, the sales of Make a Friend to settle in Taobao have exceeded 1.5 billion in a year. In May 2023, Make a Friend reached a strategic cooperation with JD Live, with premiere sales exceeding 150 million. So far, Make a Friend has successfully laid out the three major e-commerce platforms.
According to the information on the group's official website, at present, Make a Friend has signed a number of celebrities and created a number of vertical accounts, covering alcohol, food, beauty and skin care, etc., with a total of more than 50 million fans on the whole platform. Among them, on the Douyin platform, Make a Friend has the main live broadcast room of "Make a Friend" and a number of vertical live broadcast rooms, with a cumulative number of 30 million+, and on the Taobao platform, Make a Friend has a big IP live broadcast room with 10 million+ fans.
Source: Make a friend holdings official website homepage
In March this year, Jiaoyou released its 2023 annual performance report, which showed that in 2023, Jiaoyou's revenue was 1.074 billion, a year-on-year increase of 152.4%, and the adjusted net profit was about 180 million, a year-on-year increase of about 601.3%. Among them, the new media services sector showed strong growth, and the gross merchandise transaction volume (GMV) exceeded 12 billion.
Source: Make a friend live broadcast room public account
It's been four years since I made a friend and started live streaming, and now I have become one of the top MCN agencies. Behind the explosion of the performance of making a friend, it also benefits from the company's multi-platform layout.
In fact, the multi-platform strategy has gradually become an industry consensus.
With the development of the Internet, the growth of users and traffic has hit the ceiling. In order to seek new growth, live broadcast agencies are no longer satisfied with the operation of a single platform, but have begun to deploy multiple platforms to reach more consumers and traffic.
Yuanwang Technology, known as the "first share of live broadcast e-commerce", has also accelerated its cross-platform layout. At the end of 2022, Yuanwang Technology completed the layout of Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao cross-platform live broadcasts, and on Double 11 last year, Yuanwang Technology's anchor "Yu Dagongzi" came to Jingdong Live to test the waters, and as a result, Yuanwang Technology became the first head live broadcast e-commerce organization in the industry to lay out on the four major platforms of Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao and Jingdong.
Oriental Selection is no exception. At the end of 2021, New Oriental launched the Oriental Selection Live Broadcast Room and launched it on Douyin. In June 2022, Dong Yuhui became an instant hit with his bilingual live broadcast, and Dongfang Selection and Dong Yuhui quickly became popular on Douyin. In August 2022, Dongfang Selection launched its own APP. In July 2023, Oriental Selection will open the live broadcast of its own APP for the first time. In August of the same year, Dongfang Selection settled in Taobao, Taobao live broadcast debut, and Dongfang Selection achieved sales of 175 million yuan. In February this year, Dongfang Selection entered the video account for the first time and started broadcasting, and has now opened a video account and WeChat official account.
Channels have become a new growth opportunity
All in all, starting a live broadcast on Channels is another big move in the multi-platform layout of Make a Friend. Backed by WeChat, the fast-growing video account may bring more traffic to it.
As a national-level APP, WeChat has a huge user base and will provide a huge potential market for making friends. According to the financial report data released by Tencent, as of December 31, 2023, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat were 1.343 billion, a year-on-year increase of 2%. In 2023, the total time spent by users on Channels will double compared to 2022.
At the same time, the commercialization of Channels has also made great progress, and the e-commerce ecosystem of the platform has also continued to mature. According to the data, in 2023, the GMV of Channels will increase by nearly 3 times, the number of orders for Channels will increase by more than 244%, and the number of goods supplied will increase by about 300%. In addition, there is market news that the GMV of WeChat Channels e-commerce in 2023 will be about 100 billion, which can be seen with the naked eye, and the development speed of Channels e-commerce is quite fast.
In this regard, Tencent President Martin Lau once said: "The video number has indeed lived up to expectations, with very rapid growth and great potential. In January this year, Tencent founder Ma Huateng mentioned that Channels lived up to expectations and would make every effort to develop Channels live broadcast e-commerce.
From this point of view, in 2024, the video account will accelerate on the road of live broadcasting. This time, making a friend to start a live broadcast on Channels may be a fancy to the future growth opportunities of Channels. As mentioned above, in February this year, Dongfang Selection also improved the layout of the WeChat video account, and it can be seen that in the fiercely competitive e-commerce track, the video number seems to have become one of the ways for live broadcast e-commerce practitioners to tap new increments.
Nowadays, a large number of brand merchants and talents are pouring into the video number, at present, Crazy Brother Yang has settled in the video number, and in the product window, you can see a number of products selected by Brother Xiaoyang's own brand. Not only that, but the video account has also gradually incubated native delivery experts, such as Guo Yiyi, Sect Master Qiao, Brother Bao Bao and his wife, Yan Jun and his wife, Shunzi Tea, etc.
Making friends is still challenging
Make a friend and open the live broadcast of the video account to bring goods, the effect is not yet known, and it depends on the official battle report data. After taking stock, the multi-platform layout of making friends is gradually improving, and it is gradually gaining a firm foothold in the live broadcast e-commerce industry, but this does not mean that making friends is no challenge.
In July last year, Century Sage Scientific officially changed its name to Jiaoyou Holdings, and as a result, Jiaoyou completed the curve listing, but the performance of Jiaoyou in the capital market was not so optimistic. In March this year, after making a friend released its 2023 financial report, the share price of Make a friend Holdings fell sharply, falling by more than 9%. On April 23, 2024, the Hong Kong stock market closed, and Jiaoyou Holdings closed at HK$1.440 per share, with the latest market value of 1.8 billion yuan.
Make a friend to hold Hong Kong stocks Source: Baidu Stock Market
Not long ago, the live broadcast room of Make a Friend was caught in a public opinion storm. In April this year, some media reported that the 149 yuan 250-gram pack and 10-year-old Xinhui old tangerine peel previously sold in the live broadcast room of Make a Friend were suspected of year fraud, and the origin was not Jiangmen Xinhui.
With the fermentation of the heat of the incident, the topic of "Luo Yonghao made a friend in the live broadcast room of tangerine peel was exposed to year fraud" quickly rushed to the hot search on Weibo, causing widespread attention.
On April 18, a friend responded that it attaches great importance to this and has quickly formed an internal investigation team to investigate, and will properly handle the incident in the future, and update the public on any progress in a timely manner. On April 19, a friend responded again, saying that he had a preliminary understanding of the relevant situation and would contact the relevant testing agency, Authentic Chenpi Terahertz Testing (Jiangmen) Co., Ltd., to "thoroughly investigate the matter, and it is estimated that it will take about a week."
What the final truth will be remains to be officially announced. However, consumers go to the live broadcast room to buy things, largely based on their trust in the anchor, and this time they make a friend and fall into the "tangerine peel fraud" storm, which will more or less have an impact on the company's image, and may even trigger a crisis of trust among consumers.
On July 1 this year, live broadcast e-commerce will usher in the strictest new regulations in history. Nowadays, the supervision of the industry is becoming stricter, and the relevant regulations on live streaming are becoming more and more refined, which puts forward higher requirements for making friends.
In the "Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests", the official particularly emphasized the information disclosure requirements for live streaming, making it clear that anchors must clearly state "who is bringing goods" and "whose goods are bringing goods" in the future.
In terms of consumer rights protection, the Regulations clearly stipulate that the operator is the first person responsible for consumer rights protection. Operators are required to be responsible for the first question, "who sells is responsible" and "who serves is responsible", and consumers have the right to directly find sellers and service providers. At the same time, it also encourages direct-to-consumer entities to pay compensation in advance, such as shopping malls, platforms, scenic spots, etc., when the settled merchants refuse to perform their responsibilities, they can pay consumers in advance.
In today's increasingly standardized development of live broadcast e-commerce, if you want to gain a firm foothold in the industry, you must first keep the bottom line of the law, control the quality of selected products, and protect the rights and interests of consumers. Secondly, in the era of content e-commerce, making friends must also continue to innovate and bring high-quality content to users.
In general, making a friend can only go far in the industry if you continue to adapt to the changes in the live broadcast e-commerce industry.
Author | Li Xiang