Volume 3: Taking Roots 2016 Chapter 529 The Darling of the Times
In fact, the Internet industry has long reached a consensus that the next trend of the era is video. In the two major video tracks of live streaming and short videos, there have already been people who have become the first to take the plunge.
If YY Live is the leader that first entered the live broadcast track and grabbed a piece of the market, then the leader in the short video track is undoubtedly Kuaishou.
This can be seen in the strategic transformation at the end of 2013. At that time, Kuaishou was still called "GIF Kuaishou", which was just an animated image tool that used pictures as a carrier .
When Kuaishou keenly sensed that the era of pictures and texts was coming to an end, it made a decisive transformation, removed the "GIF" that symbolizes pictures and texts from its name, officially entered the short video field, and placed its strategic focus on building short video social networking.
From this point of view, Kuaishou's strategic foresight is indeed unique. It has accurately grasped the pulse of the times and bravely become the first to try new things.
Faced with the vast blue ocean of the video era, even if the first person to enter the market does not have strong enough professional ability, he will definitely be the one to reap the sweetness of the first bite of cake just by virtue of his courage to enter the market first.
However, although Kuaishou was the first to step into such a huge blue ocean, it is obviously impossible for it to belong to it alone.
In fact, among the earliest players to enter the short video field, the most dazzling one is actually Tenda. As an Internet giant, Tenda has gathered a large number of talents .
With the support of massive talents, the forward-looking vision of this company is naturally not weak. Tenda also sees a blue ocean in the video era.
In late 2013, it took the lead in creating the short video product Weishi. Relying on its invincible social advantage, it launched the slogan "Communication vision, eight seconds of infinity" with the intention of creating an 8-second short video social network.
During the 2014 Spring Festival, Tengda invested a huge amount of resources and invited hundreds of celebrities to pay New Year's greetings, which fully demonstrated its rich and inhumane side.
Therefore, during the Spring Festival, the daily active users of Weishi once reached a terrifying figure of 45 million. At that time, Kuaishou had just changed its strategy and was still in the process of rapid development.
As for Meipai, it is still in the internal incubation stage, which means it is still in the womb and there is no sign of it yet.
Perhaps it was the "success" of Weishi that prompted Kuaishou and Meipai to determine strategic goals and find the right industry direction.
However, being half a step ahead of the times may be a natural gift, but being a big step ahead of the times may not always be a good thing.
Especially after Tengda entered the market first with invincible strength and started to grab land, it found that there was no one who could fight it, so it naturally regarded it as its own back garden.
After raising the flag, they turned around and headed for conquering other fields, and the Weishi team arrogantly rested on their laurels. Apart from basic maintenance, they were too lazy to even develop new versions.
This kind of stagnation will never be able to turn into a winning advantage even if there is a huge advantage.
Even though we have heard the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" since childhood, it did not prevent the Weishi team from repeating the same mistake.
After all, there is a saying that goes, the only lesson mankind has learned from history is that it has never learned from history.
Even the invincible Tenda is no exception. Big company disease is something that will naturally come unexpectedly after becoming an industry giant.
Although Tengda is good at using the tactic of raising Gu to resolve the problem, it entered the market too early. There is no capable competitor in the short video field, and there is no one to raise Gu.
Therefore, although Tenda had a far-sighted vision and almost completed the myth of continuing its hegemony in the video era, it was unfortunately one step behind and gave its opponents an opportunity to take advantage when champagne was opened at halftime.
Kuaishou and Meipai have made continuous efforts, overtaking others one after another, accumulating hundreds of millions of users and becoming leaders in the short video field.
Tenda, which was very disappointed with Weishi, had no mercy on the incompetent Weishi. It directly downgraded Weishi internally, disbanded the team and merged it into the video department, announcing its strategic abandonment.
And then turned to focus on live streaming, another track in the video era .
At this point, Kuaishou and Meipai have become the two leading companies in the short video field, and after the fall of Weishi, they are both trying their best to become the big brother.
Just after the 2016 Spring Festival, Kuaishou proudly announced that its user base had increased from 100 million to 300 million!
It can almost be said that it has monopolized half of the mobile Internet users. According to statistics from an authoritative organization, the current number of mobile Internet users has reached about 790 million.
Rounding off, every 2.6 mobile Internet users will have the short video app Kuaishou on their phones, which shows how strong Kuaishou's user base is in the short video field.
In order to supplement the platform ecology, Kuaishou also launched the live broadcast function at the beginning of 2016. However, Kuaishou did not regard it as the main function and only placed it on the secondary page.
Similarly, Meipai is not to be outdone, although it cannot compare with the down-to-earth Kuaishou in terms of user numbers.
However, Meitu has always been a company that focuses on exquisiteness. Ever since the launch of Meitu XiuXiu, the word "beauty" has almost become their corporate culture, and the product Meipai is no exception.
Focusing on this technical core, Meipai regards live streaming as a key project, and is entering the live streaming market with "high-value mobile phone live streaming" as its differentiation, and plans to invite big-name stars to join.
The ambitious Meipai intends to use live streaming as a channel to overtake Kuaishou!
After all, in terms of capital strength, Meitu, which received US$190 million in Series C financing, has a market value of US$2 billion, which means it is very confident in terms of funds.
As long as Meipai can surpass Kuaishou and become the industry leader, Meitu's valuation will undoubtedly be further improved, which will be of great benefit to their path to listing.
Therefore, it is natural to imagine that Meitu Company has allocated a lot of resources to the product Meipai. Meitu Company is determined to become the first in this industry.
Just as the two leading companies were fighting, a handsome guy who returned to the domestic market from overseas markets quietly appeared on the scene, and even held a grand short video industry awards ceremony during the New Year’s Eve!
As a latecomer, although this behavior of taking over other people's business was excessive, it undoubtedly earned enough attention and traffic for the Douyin product and aroused the curiosity and novelty of a large number of users.
Perhaps in the eyes of ordinary people, this high-profile Golden Second Award is just a means of attracting attention, purely losing money to gain publicity.
But for Kuaishou and Meipai, what really makes them sense the crisis is the appeal of the award ceremony to short video creators.
The awards and bonuses that are waiting for you are undoubtedly a call to action, which accurately captures a crucial link in the platform ecosystem - content!
The reason why Weishi collapsed was that it was sitting on a mountain of gold without realizing it. Even with the traffic provided by Tencent, it had no content for conversion.
The team does not attach importance to content cultivation and gives incentives to users, so users will naturally only dabble in it and treat it as dispensable.
As soon as Douyin came on the scene, it undoubtedly grasped the most important core and spent a huge amount of money to create the Golden Second Award ceremony.
Anyone with a discerning eye can see that this is definitely a loss-making business, but in the eyes of Kuaishou and Meipai, this is not a loss-making business at all, it is buying horse bones for a huge sum of money!
With the blessing of the Golden Second Award, Papi Jiang has transformed into the first steed that rides on the wind and is poised to soar to the sky!
Just after the Spring Festival, Papi Jiang’s fans on Weibo have exceeded 10 million!
