Author: Guo Jiayi
Editor: Lin Jiongjia's "Taojianghu" now has the two highest clicked posts, one is the "Letter to taobao.com Users" released by the head of the Taobao website business department, announcing the launch of the Taobao web version; The other is a post by Ma Yun 20 years ago, signed "The wind is clear", when Taobao was just 9 months old.
The number of clicks on the post is 10-200,000, which is not high compared to the current APP with hundreds of millions of daily activities. But in the two months since the Taobao forum restarted, nearly 800 posts have been published on Taojiang Lake. Trading + forum, Taobao's temperament is still there; The demand for the web version is still there. At the end of June, Kongwu posted again, in addition to announcing that the image search has been launched on Taobao PC, and more importantly, PC Xianyu will be launched soon.
A few days ago, Alibaba Cloud's network access was abnormal, and some users of Xiaohongshu's web version were also "exploded" in Xiaohongshu.
In the era when everyone has a mobile phone and nearly 100 APPs, the portal once became the tears of the times. However, while many apps and platforms are silently closing the web version, apps such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin are also improving the web side. "The development of the mobile Internet is so mature, how many users can it attract to upgrade the PC side?" The question of emptiness is also a question for many people.
There is a joke on the Internet that 10 years later, the product manager of an Internet company said that he wanted to make a product, no matter what operating system, what device, software, the content of this product can be displayed correctly, completely open, free and inclusive, no need to download any App, applet, no need for a specific application to open, to provide the best browsing experience for all visitors, and then it will be able to unify the entire Internet. At this time, a veteran employee born in the 90s asked: Is this thing you are talking about called a website? In that era when computers were still a luxury, users did not need to download and install, almost all applications could be run on the browser, there was no need to consider the compatibility of the operating system, and the application updates did not require users to download manually. We only need a browser to browse all kinds of web pages unimpeded, socializing, shopping online, watching movies, reading novels, and playing 4399. That single web page can hold the childhood of tens of thousands of games. The version of the full transaction of the empty and unweighed PC Xianyu is still under intense development. Now open Xianyu,The page is still a guide to download APP,This page is not unfamiliar。
This is also the page on the PC side of Amazon China, which was officially closed on January 27 this year, and now Amazon has turned to launch a new version of the App.
In the past few years, not only e-commerce platforms, but also the web side of many apps have stopped updating or directly closed, and platforms have tried every means to migrate users to the app to increase the activity and stickiness of the app. After all, in the era of mobile Internet, APP is the main business position. For the platform, the web side "just have". Therefore, even some e-commerce platforms that are still operating on the web side, most of the website designs can make people directly dream back to the Win98 era.
It became a logical thing for the web version to be abandoned. Just like no one seems to have noticed, Meituan's web version was silently shut down a few years ago. From the user's point of view, the transformation of the Internet carrier has made everyone accustomed to using mobile phones to retrieve information, and almost all applications will now only adapt to the mobile terminal for UI optimization. After all, developing and maintaining a web app isn't cheap. From the perspective of the platform, the premise for users to use the web terminal is that they need to open a browser first, which means that the platform will be controlled by browsers and search engines, so Baidu at that time can be said to be firmly in the top spot of SEO. At the same time, the web side often faces more security threats, such as most of the content on the web page will be forced to share, and many enterprises can directly obtain the detailed data of the entire web page with crawlers, compared to the APP permissions. But as empty as nothing said, this Taobao web version, which has hardly been upgraded in 7 years, still has nearly 10 million users visiting Taobao every day, even under such a bad experience. At the end of the day, it's the user. In the past two years, major platforms have been claiming to return to user value, and "digging stock" is the main reason for the web version to usher in spring again.
Before the revision of Taobao web version, Xiaohongshu, which was born in the APP era, caused discussion because of the online web version, and at that time, "fishing at work" became the keyword of Xiaohongshu's web version. At present, the web version of Xiaohongshu can be said to be the best experience among the content platforms. In addition to commenting, liking, and favorites, users can browse notes normally even without logging in.
The web version of Xiaohongshu can be said to greatly meet the needs of users, and also help to cultivate user habits in multi-port. In contrast, the online version of Douyin's "wind review" earlier than Xiaohongshu is average. When it was first launched, it was even commented by netizens, claiming that the Douyin web version launched for "touching fish" workers was also made by "touching fish" workers. The early page design is so rough that it even looks like it is a direct copy of the design of the watermelon video web terminal. Even though the relevant person in charge of Douyin said earlier that the web version is still in the testing stage, the relevant functions and services will continue to be optimized in the future. However, PConline opens the current Douyin web version, and the homepage recommendation is still presented in the form of information flow, and the web UI design still looks a bit simple and crude.
To a certain extent, using a large screen to watch short videos is not in line with the usage habits of users who are used to mobile phones. Quickly swipe your finger on the mobile phone screen to watch a few minutes or even dozens of seconds of short videos, this kind of experience that is fully adapted to the short and fast era, is a major reason for the popularity of Douyin, plus the viewing experience of short videos based on vertical screens on the web side is also a natural disadvantage. Interestingly, the web version of Tiktok is even more brutal, directly copying the mobile phone, but the user uses the mouse instead of the finger.
In contrast, Xiaohongshu, which is mainly based on pictures and texts, is the first choice for migrant workers to "touch fish". Kong Wu also revealed that among the main users of Taobao, the 25-35 age group accounts for the highest proportion. As we all know, these users are often the main users of the web side of platforms such as Bilibili, Weibo, and Zhihu. Just like most AI products that focus on tool attributes, they generally launch the web version first, and then make the app. In fact, whether it is Xiaohongshu, which has nearly 100 million daily active users, or Weibo, which has nearly 300 million daily active users, the traffic on the web side is definitely not large. However, in an environment where user growth has peaked, competing for the stock of users on the PC side is at least the first choice for content platforms under "traffic anxiety", just like Taobao can regain users' sense of belonging and improve user retention whether it launches the web version or restarts the forum. In May last year, Ma Yun pointed out at Alibaba's internal meeting that Taotian's three directions in the future are to return to Taobao, return to users, and return to the Internet. At present, it seems that Taobao web version is more like a product of these three "returns".
So that's all it takes, if you want to touch the fish at work, will you open Taobao?
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