had a conversation with a friend: Why did Tencent Weishi lose to Douyin ?
Behind this topic, you may be able to see the biggest crisis of and Tencent . He was an early employee of and Weishi . In his opinion, Weishi lost to Douyin and Tencent Weibo lost to Sina Weibo. He encountered the same problem:
He has been making content all the way. He first worked on Tencent Weibo. Seeing that Tencent Weibo could not do and Sina , he accompanied the Tencent Weibo team to transform and make Weishi. However, in the end, the results of microscopic examination were not ideal. I have also read a lot of news about Weishi. It is generally said in the news that Weishi’s failure came from doing it too early and not having the big budget to achieve miracles like Byte.
But he said: First, it is a little early, but today everyone does not spend all their data on Douyin. You can use Wi-Fi when you are fishing at noon, lazy at work, or at home at night, and watching videos is no problem. Second, on the surface, Weishihua’s budget is far less than Douyin’s. But the bosses are not stupid either! If you really have a good product, good retention, and good user online time, why not give you a budget? In the end, the most critical issue is poor retention. The retention is not good because the content is not captured.
He said: At that time, short videos were a new thing, and Internet celebrities did not know how to shoot them. You had to help Internet celebrities find content that users would like to see, find and teach Internet celebrities, and then Internet celebrities could do it.
is looking for content hot spots. Weishi couldn't find it, so it never became popular. Xiao Kaxiu found this point of lip-syncing, so she became famous for a while. Douyin found a lot of them, until users were better at discovering hot spots than the platform, so it became popular today. This is an operational issue.
I asked him again: Why hasn’t Tencent Weibo ever used Sina Weibo? Is it because there are no stars?
He said: That's not it!
Tencent Weibo had many celebrities at that time. If you were a celebrity, you would normally open both Sina and Tencent Weibo. You can post the same content twice. Moreover, Tencent Weibo has a large budget.
finally lost to Sina because it encountered two problems: First,
was one year later than Sina and lagged behind in scale at the beginning.
The second reason is that it has not formed an ecosystem - celebrities have come, but celebrity fans have not. As a result, fans only interact with celebrities on Sina Weibo, and celebrities mainly interact with fans on Sina. Tencent Weibo has become increasingly non-existent.
Anyone can think of bringing a star here. But bringing fans here and creating interactive topics between fans and celebrities is still an operational issue.
In his eyes, both Tencent Weishi and Tencent Weibo failed in operations. Because the core product mechanisms of these two products are really not that complicated. He is absolutely proud and confident in Tencent's products. So why is it that the product is so great, but it continues to encounter operational problems? Because in competing products, operations are responsible for numbers, and products support operations. These two products at Tencent are operational support products, and product managers have the final say. The division of labor determines that operations do not have enough say. In products that focus on operations, there is no chance of winning.
In fact, in most cases, platform products are operations-focused products. why?
No one will visit the empty Douyin. I came to Douyin to see the content. Douyin, together with Internet celebrities, provides services to users. At this time, Douyin is like a market. Internet celebrities are merchants selling vegetables, and the vegetables are their own content. Product managers cover the market. But someone needs to bring merchants in. Just selling them isn't enough, you have to tell the merchants that there is a strong demand for oranges recently, so just sell them and you will definitely make money. Merchants can survive. Only then can you have more and more merchants.
And users will definitely go to the market with more merchants. Let there be more merchants, and let merchants survive better. This is the problem that operations have to solve. This reminds me of the era of BAT. When everyone talks about the unique talents of the three companies, they are talking about: Baidu technology, Tencent products, Alibaba operations. However, expertise is often also a constraint.
In the earliest days of the Internet, it was not easy to make products! At that time, the focus was on technology. This is the era of Baidu’s rise. However, today I still hear that in some business lines of Baidu, technology will lead products and technology will be responsible for sales. As a result, user needs are ignored, and sales are certainly not good. After that, the fight was about technology + products. Technology became the bottom line and the fight was about products. This is the era of Tencent’s rise. At Tencent, operations will support products and be led by products.
As a result, for products that focus on operations such as Weishi and Tencent Weibo, they will certainly not be successful.
Today, the battle is technology + products + operations, and products have become one of the bottom lines.
This is the era of the rise of Alibaba, , Meituan, , and Byte. The winning management style back then has become an obstacle in this era. I think this may be Tencent's biggest crisis. Many companies will say "embrace change." In fact, change is painful for both employees and management.
But there is no way. Times will change, business will change, and if you want to win, you can only change with it. Only companies that allow themselves to keep pace with the changing times and business operations can remain victorious.
