Recently, Tencent "resurrected" the friend network, the internal test real name new social product "friend" the news caused the widespread concern. This is Tencent's fifth social application so far this year, and outsiders can't help but speculate that Tencent is in a hurry to build the "next Wechat."

The reason why Tencent intensively promotes the new and finds his own way on various social races, in addition to abandoning the investment banking model and reviving product thinking, it is also because the previous investment route is not successful.

In an interview with the media during the two sessions in 2015, Ma Huateng revealed that Tencent had invested in same, a social app. At that time, the interest community same became so popular that Ma Huateng said, "there doesn't seem to be any potential, but it shows a sense of the future." "

However, same's practice of encouraging users to set up their own channels to explore social play has spawned countless small circles of self-talk that are too fragmented to survive. Tencent's principle of non-interference left the app to fend for itself.

In August last year, sterling Silver Weibo Corp, a well-known product manager and serial entrepreneur, revealed that the short video clip product cat cake launched in July 2017 had been sold to Tencent. The positioning of cat cake is "Xiaoqing's new version of Kuaishou Technology". Through powerful video editing functions and rich filters, short videos have become a recording tool for ordinary users.

After being sold to Tencent, the app disappeared again, with the most recent update remaining a year ago. Due to the lack of operation and promotion support, cat cake did not come out of the small circle of users after all, and it was abandoned after the stop. Flicker, Catton and bug have become commonplace, and users complain.

In 2015, Ma Huateng said publicly that "there is still a lot of room for anonymous and vertical socializing, and anonymous socializing is not suitable for Tencent. Tencent's structure is suitable for basic and architectural services. I used to think that as long as it is related to us, we can't let go. I'm more open-minded now. "

Guided by this spirit, Tencent invested in nearly 20 social apps from 2011 to 2018-covering almost all branches such as stranger social, video social, private social, interest social, question and answer community, and so on. However, apart from the above two star products, the other products have not even caused any waves.

Why did Tencent's "wide net" strategy fail? Because these social applications crawl in the shadow of Tencent's own Wechat and QQ, they do not get support from Tencent in terms of traffic, operation, relationship chain, etc., and have never formed a so-called "product matrix". Of course, the success rate will not be higher than that of companies outside the "Tencent department".

Tencent's own social apps face the same problem.

On September 2 this year, DOV, a short video social platform launched by Tencent QQ in January 2018, announced that it would cease operation on September 30. at the beginning of its launch, DOV was regarded as Tencent's "secret weapon" against the standard. Born with Jin Tang Spoon, it was built on the relationship chain of QQ's 800m users.

However, in March this year, the media revealed that DOV had "embezzled" the QQ relationship chain, and users had never downloaded DOV, but their QQ information was recommended to other friends. This reflects from the side that DOV has run out of skills in terms of user growth. Before the shutdown was announced half a year later, DOV had failed to live up to its expectations except for its brief launch.

Compared with DOV, multi-flash, which also focuses on short video social networking, has at least caused enough controversy. Compared with DOV secretly embezzling the QQ relationship chain, as an "upgrade of Douyin's private message function", Duoflash has been forcibly bundled with Douyin from the very beginning, only with a Douyin private message has been upgraded to multi-flash, users can only access Duoflash to view Douyin's private messages.

Not only that, duo Shuo was also sued by Tencent for exceeding the scope and illegally using Wechat and QQ profile pictures and nickname data.

This kind of behavior of borrowing one's own relationship chain with great fanfare and trying to "steal" another's relationship chain, so that Duoxiao is not as silent as DOV, with more than one million users in 24 hours on the shelves, and more than 10 million daily active users at one time during the Spring Festival. However, forced bundling can not change the fate of more flash, higher and lower. The data began to dive all the way after the Spring Festival, and in October there were rumors that it would be disbanded at the end of the year.

If Tencent can also fully support investment or "self-research" social applications in terms of relationship chain, operation and capital investment, can he walk out of a more beautiful growth curve than multi-flash?

This year, Tencent launched five social apps in a few months, reviving the friend network that was shut down two years ago, and launching attacks one after another in the directions of voice social (light chat), second social networking (friends), open social networking (remember), virtual social networking (cat call) and so on.

This certainly makes people see Tencent's ambition of defense and self-revolution, but the idea of promoting and operating the "Buddhist system" has not fundamentally changed. It can be predicted that these products will soon fade out of everyone's sight, just like the social applications that Tencent invested and launched in the past.

There is no doubt that Tencent, who is in the shadow of Wechat, is unable to judge where the next social outlet will be. However, such aimless scattering and unfocused "horse racing" are doomed to blossom and bear fruit.

"just as everyone is looking forward to a new social app to lighten the burden, Wechat needs such a lightening. Either the social relationship is split off, or the product architecture is reconstructed for the open expansion of social networks. "

Tencent's top priority may not be to find the way on various social tracks, but to try to break through Wechat's closed genes and help Wechat users "expand". As one social entrepreneur pointed out, "the problem with Wechat is not that there are too many friends." it's too few.

Last year, several product managers who ran away from Wechat's team started anew, hoping to expand second-and third-degree relationships based on Wechat's acquaintance chain, but such an attempt outside Wechat was doomed to fail. They left because of the lack of support within Wechat.

Whether Tencent can continue to take the lead in the next social era depends on Zhang Xiaolong's determination to revolutionize himself, whether he is willing to further open the Wechat relationship chain, and how scalable Wechat's product architecture is.

In fact, Mini Program can take on the important task of expanding new relationship chains within Wechat. After Wechat's user growth gradually stagnates, can we turn to inward expansion? This year, a Mini Program called her dating has gained a lot of users, but most of the social Mini Program is still of poor quality, playing side balls such as "chat company" and "looking for love".

If Tencent allocates part of his energy to develop social applications to develop a benchmark social Mini Program, it may set off an upsurge in social Mini Program development.