Tencent'S Short Video Service "Counterattack"

A few days ago, a business adjustment message from Tencent PCG (platform and content business group) aroused the concern of the outside world for Tencent's short video business. Tencent PCG issued an internal document, announced the adjustment of Tencent video business organization structure, and cancelled the product department of the short video platform. On the same day, the message circulated to the outside, and the voice interpreted it as "Tencent will give up the short video business", and the PCG official will soon rumor.

"The restructuring of Tencent video has nothing to do with the micro vision of Tencent Inc's short video service. In fact, Tencent's micro vision belongs to PCG's "short video community product department", which has been developing independently and is one of the key businesses of the company. Tencent PCG responded.

Tencent's short video service has attracted much attention from outside world. In recent years, Tencent has also invested a lot of energy in the field of short video. However, unlike the first more than 10 products, Tencent now focuses on a product. To some extent, the outside world has equated Tencent's short video service with micro vision, which explains the reasons for the misunderstanding.

Inevitably, this focus also brings expectations from the market. As the short video continues to be in the vents of the Internet industry, the outside world also wants to see how Tencent is laying out its own short video business under the two mountains of jitter and fast hand.

Slight "make up a missed lesson"

Today's micro vision is in a "missed lesson" period. It needs to constantly accumulate and optimize all aspects including user growth, content precipitation, product technology and so on, so as to catch up with the competitors on the market.

As we all know, micro vision was first released in 2013. Although it started early, it did not catch up with the late episode. In April 2017, the micro vision announced that it would be closed. The outside world attributed it to a misjudgement of Tencent at the strategic level.

However, in April 2018, after nearly a year of exit from the market, micro vision returned from strategic abandonment to resurrection, which has witnessed the change of Tencent's attitude towards short video business.

Ren Yuxin, President of Tencent Inc COO and PCG business group, told an economic report reporters in 2019 that short video is an important trend of content consumption. Basically, all content products should introduce short video content in this direction. Therefore, how to make up for missed opportunities quickly after restarting is the main task of today's micro vision.

But this is not easy. The short video industry told the twenty-first Century economic report that the short video product is a closed loop ecosystem of content, and users, content, algorithm, data, commercialization and other aspects are interlinked. If we want to grow, we need to introduce content, user consumption and content production into a parallel growth cycle.

Therefore, for a content product, the support from outside sources, such as capital and resources, is more icing on the cake, and things in the snow need to be relied on internally. As for micro vision, it won't succeed without the support of Tencent.

"For example, Tencent products give micro diversion, and users will not be able to retain users if there is no good content and distribution experience." The above industry personages said, therefore, micro vision must be optimized according to the closed loop, and can not be expected to achieve leaping growth through a single link. "This is not a thing that can be accomplished in a short time".

By the end of 2019, Ren Yuxin had set a goal for micro vision, that is, to achieve 50 million days in 2020. A person familiar with micro vision told the twenty-first Century economic report that from the perspective of the current growth of users, the problem of achieving this goal should be small.

From the public data, we can see that the user data of the micro view is growing. According to the Tencent Q4 2019 earnings report, the number of daily active users increased by 80%, and the average daily video uploaded increased by 70%.

Quick addition

In addition to its own products, the fast investment of Tencent is also an important layout in the short video area.

In December 2019, according to media reports, the last round of financing before the completion of IPO was completed. The amount of financing was nearly US $3 billion, of which Tencent invested about US $2 billion. Meanwhile, in a quarterly report in 2020, Tencent disclosed a $1 billion 500 million investment in an online video sharing service platform, and at the end of March, Tencent held a 19% stake in the company.

Informed sources told reporters that the online video sharing service platform is fast. In fact, since the first investment in 2017, Tencent has participated in the next round of financing as a leader.

Tencent's attention to the fast hand also inevitably leads to some guesses about the quick hands and the slight vision. Last year, in the Tencent investment fast process, many rumors that Tencent will incorporate micro into fast hands, and even this rumor has been interpreted as a number of dramatic versions.

Although this rumor has not landed in the end, it is clear that this will have some problems for the development of the micro team. "It's hard for you to imagine that so much attention has been paid to such a product that has just been stable for more than a year." A near micro person told reporters.

And from the point of view of fast hands, it is in the field of short video and struggling with the sound. Last June 18th, the founder of the fast track, Su Hua and Cheng Yi Xiao, jointly issued a full letter letter at the time of the 8th Anniversary establishment of the fast hand. They said, "behind the good performance of the fast hand, we saw a deep hidden danger: we are not the fastest team. When we grow up, our muscles begin to become feeble, the reaction slows down, and our connection with users is felt. Knowledge is weakening. "

At the same time, they announced that they should open up the "fighting mode" and put forward the goal of "300 million DAU before the Spring Festival" in 2020. From the final result, the quick hand won the internal code named "K3 campaign", and in early 2020, the quick hand activity exceeded 300 million.

It can be seen that fast and micro are also setting goals, but their starting points are quite different. The problem with the fast hand is that the speed changes from 1 to N, so we need to open the "combat mode" and "combat target" so as to make the fast hand faster.

Micro vision is still in the stage from 0 to 1, and it must catch up with itself. In this process, how to build a healthy closed loop ecosystem is the most urgent problem to be solved at present.

For Tencent, in the short video area, between micro vision and fast hand is not a single choice question, they are more like a clear, dark and two line under Tencent. Therefore, every move of micro vision and fast hand can also affect the future of Tencent in the short video battlefield.

New internal forces

In fact, apart from the independent short video APP such as micro view and fast hand, other platforms inside the Tencent are also exploring short videos. Ren Yuxin also told reporters before, including Tencent video, Tencent news, etc., the original content platform of PCG is also embracing short video.

At the beginning of this year, WeChat also took the video Number "into" the short video area. The entrance is located in the "friend circle" below the video number, also considered to be WeChat after the public number, small program, launched another heavy product.

In the WeChat open class held in early January, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong said that in his view, WeChat has made two minor mistakes. One is that the public platform has only PC web version for a long time, which limits the scope of the content creators. The other is to make the public platform an article as a carrier of content, so that other forms of short content are not presented.

It is reported that the contents of the video will include pictures and videos, so in the product positioning, WeChat team has not positioned the video number as a short video platform, but a short content platform. But judging from the current test, video is the main content.

Recently, the video number has also made a significant update in the Android system. It turned the original single information flow into three lists of "attention", "friend" and "hot". In addition, the video number also added the entrance of "nearby video".

According to a video Number creator, this revision means that after several months of testing, the video number begins to join "social attributes", which is of great significance to video numbers. Because with this acquaintance social interaction and the social chain of strangers, the user stickiness of the video number will be improved.

From the perspective of Tencent's short video, video frequency is a function embedded in WeChat products, which is the perfection of WeChat ecology for short video service. It is totally different from the independent micro APP. And the video number is still a new product, and nobody knows what the future is going to be. So there is not much competition between it and micro vision.

All along, we all say that WeChat will not win the next WeChat, but no matter what products it is, its product capability should at least reach WeChat's level before we can discuss the problem of "defeat". The same is true in the short video area. No matter which product it is, at least we must first achieve the same ability as the quiver and the quick product, and then we will talk about subversion.

At present, judging from the official position of Tencent, it still has great confidence in the short video business. Tencent annual report points out that in 2019, Tencent significantly increased its investment in the short video area and will continue to invest. Moreover, Tencent said that with its advantages in social networking and media, the company is also confident of its long-term prospects for short video services.

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