Tencent expects organizational changes to strengthen the capacity of the industrial system, which is one of the necessary capabilities in the era of content industrialization.

In the era of industrialization, the consumption and supply of content is characterized by the total brush always immersive scene, with a steady stream of assembly line content.

The two best content delivery methods that Tencent used to be good at in the past-- UGC or OGC-- feel a little bit like the farming era.农The farming era pays attention to personal experience and emotional connection.For example, it is easy for people to resonate and then interact with friends based on the original content to produce new content.

The disadvantage is that the matching efficiency of "people-content" is unstable. Users in moments and Qzone do not have any expectations about what content is about to be brushed. At the same time, how much content is brushed depends entirely on whether the friends around them are diligent or not.

Tencent OGC content such as Tencent News, Tencent video content supply should be more stable, but still stay in the "supply side determines what users see" stage. Professional, depth, exclusive, value... Are natural enemies of efficiency.

Content consumption on social applications bores users, at least by instant messaging, but the boredom caused by information / long video applications is fatal.

The workshop / semi-workshop content like Tencent can be defended and unassailable, and the understanding of professional content and the talent reserve for producing professional content are all moats (as shown in the following picture).

However, the limited content and poor matching accuracy determine the consumption scale and the ceiling of user duration, so it is naturally impossible to seize more user attention from competitors. Jinri Toutiao was born three years ago in the use of a single user longer than the longer-established Tencent News.

Conversely, it is unrealistic to expect this kind of assembly-line content to enter Tencent's stronghold. Copyright barriers such as animated film competitions are far higher than information. Wechat official account, as the most successful content creation platform in the past decade, shows that content distribution based on relationship chain is still important, which is confirmed by byte jump relying on content reverse layout community and social actions.The brand halo that professionalism and authority bring to the content platform has been proved to be unlikely to be achieved through machine algorithms.

A few years ago, Jinri Toutiao launched the "Golden Byte Award", starting with the evaluation system, trying to play an authoritative corner overtaking. Although it was stopped in the end, the train of thought was right.

When Tencent PCG was founded, the two cards in his hand-- social and broad-spectrum, professional content-- were wanted but missing by byte jump. However, the problem of Tencent PCG is also obvious, the content is numerous and complicated, and it is difficult to form a joint force. This is related to the long-term neglect of technology and content, resulting in a lack of continuous sticking to users.Entry-level content distributor。

Tencent video users use for a long time, but users' attention is mostly focused on a single content, the rest of the content has less effective exposure time, and users are not as sticky as short videos. QQ Music is the dominant player in the field of domestic online music, but he can only occupy the ears of users. the space for imagination is also limited.

Inside PCG, the best effect of sticking users is QQ. QQ can really bear this burden. QQ, a built-in news and information streaming service launched in April 2016, achieved 80 million DAU in less than two years, enough to see the potential of QQ in content distribution.

The problem is that QQ, as a social app for young people, can't fully carry the distribution of PCG's music, text, short videos, and so on.

This is first of all related to QQ's social positioning, such as Zhang Xiaolong never said that the launch of Wechat official account is to meet the creative needs of content practitioners (official account reading and communications conflict with each other). On the other hand, QQ has been criticized by the younger age of content since it became popular, so we can see some limitations of QQ as a content distributor.

Another consequence of the lack of scenarios is that it is difficult to focus on business, because developers can't immediately know what is most appropriate and can only try.

Before Jinri Toutiao was established, Zhang Yiming made 12 APP to explore users' reading preferences, and finally imported all users and hot content into Jinri Toutiao, focusing on user retention.

Tencent seems to be repeating this scene. Since the "930th Revolution", they have run the information flow service and horizontal / vertical screen short video service (supported by Tencent) on several major APP, such as QQ Browser, Tencent Video, Tencent News, Weishi, and KuaiBao.

They don't expect an APP, including Weishi, to stand up to the byte beat right away-- if so, it's best-- the focus is on developing the team's ability to fight.

Thinking along this line of thinking, it is difficult to say that Tencent did not collect data feedback for a number of pre-planned business scenarios through the content China Channel at the moment. Once straightened out, they will be able to push the new product at an ideal speed.

Just as every change in combat weapons in human history will bring about military formation and personnel structure adjustment, this weapons update has also had some irreversible impact on Tencent's organizational form.

Why not get off the poker table?

Before the "930 change", Tencent compared the usage time of users with bouncing bytes as follows:

From June 2017 to June 2018, the total usage time of Tencent APP decreased by 6.6%, while the byte jump system increased by 6.2%. Considering that the data of several other Internet companies have not changed much, we can roughly equate the byte jump growth with Tencent's decline.

Both growth and decline occurred in information flow and short video tracks. In September 2016, Tencent News was surpassed by Jinri Toutiao in terms of active penetration (data source: Cheetah Global think tank). And since then, Jinri Toutiao has maintained an advantage over Tencent News in terms of user usage time (see below).

Douyin launched in September 2016, and it took only 14 months for the number of daily active users to exceed 100 million, with a surge of 60 million in the last two months. Weishi's monthly active users did not reach 30 million until the end of 2018.

On September 30th, 2018, Tencent announced the structural adjustment, which marks the second anniversary of the establishment of the PCG Division on the eve of this year's National Day. It is still the data report of QuestMobile. Let's take a look at what changes have taken place between Tencent and the byte-beating war.

It can be seen that the total usage time of Tencent APP has not stopped the decline as a whole, while the total usage time of byte APP continues to grow. However, the time length of Tencent system slows down and the time length growth rate of byte system tends to slow down.

On the information flow track (excluding QQ Browser), what Tencent can hit best is Tencent News. In the past year, Tencent News is slightly better than Jinri Toutiao in the number of monthly active users (as pictured above). Backed by Tencent, the user penetration rate of Tencent News in audio-visual entertainment, sports and games are all at the top of domestic news and information APP (data source: Trustdata).

However, the length of time and per capita daily frequency of users of Tencent News are still lower than those of Jinri Toutiao (pictured below).

Kuaibao (which has been integrated with QQ into a new product "Kandian KuaiBao") is also inferior to Jinri Toutiao in terms of the number of monthly active users and the duration of user use.

On the short video track, the per capita monthly use time of Douyin in the first half of this year is more than six times that of Weishi (pictured below).

In short, in the past two years, Tencent is still on the defensive in the information flow and short video track.

The slowdown in the growth of the byte system is mainly attributed to two points: 1. The overall growth rate of the domestic information flow and short video track slows down, and the byte beat turns to internationalization.

2. Kuaishou Technology's clampdown on Douyin.

By combing through the business failures of Tencent PCG in the past two years, and combining the public conversation of its director Ren Yuxin, Tiger Pro found that Tencent PCG's thinking and attitude in the information flow and short video track have the following characteristics:

First, user-oriented rather than competition-oriented considerations. They have no intention of making another Jinri Toutiao or Douyin-- of course, at a time when the industry's growth is slowing down, nor is it realistic (byte systems have stronger economies of scale)-- but to combine their strengths with a blank market.

Second, will not take a single APP as the only bet, even if the powerful Weishi, Tencent for this product to buy the amount of investment, compared with Douyin, Kuaishou Technology are slightly shabby. To put it simply, Tencent hasn't put much effort into it.

Perhaps in Tencent's opinion, it is more important not to get off the poker table.

At the launch of Tencent's watch point strategy in November last year, Tencent PCG revealed a figure that the number of daily active users of Tencent watch point content synchronized on Wechat, QQ and QQ Browser has reached nearly 200 million, and the average daily use time of a single person is 49 minutes (Weishi's data performance is about 8 minutes in the first half of this year), considering that Tencent watch point content has been accessed to more platforms (such as Tencent News). The above statistics are definitely even higher today.

The market generally does not count QQ or QQ Browser as information flow products, but there are real information flow products running on these products, which, in turn, is the terrible thing about Tencent, because his family background is thick enough, so even under the adverse start of the information flow and short video track, Tencent still has the capital of not going down the card table and waiting for a reshuffle.

This is also in line with the point of view provided by Tiger Pro who visited a number of high-level people close to Tencent that Tencent could not give up the short video track, but he did not have a chance to turn the disc in the short term. The right thing to do is to find a new way to do content while pushing DAU up.

It is said that Liu Chiping, Tencent's second-in-command, has a basic judgment on the short video: the short video isUser rigid demand, haveHigh-quality business model、Advanced mode of productionIf Tencent is not on the track of the small video, he will lose a huge opportunity.

The so-called excellent business model and advanced mode of production refers toBefore the advent of short videos, the content industry was like a toy for the rich, with great influence, but not many people who really made money, from literature to 3A games to movies.

However, content products such as short videos and information streams greatly reduce the threshold of creation, and can directly transform the duration of user use into commercial interests, which not only promotes the development of the product itself, but also helps other participants in the ecology to realize cash.

And the huge opportunity that Tencent sees may be that the short video / information stream product form on the market at the present stage has not been brought into full play without the efficiency of transforming commercial interests into long-term use by users. For example, live e-commerce is a supplement to information flow advertising and has the effect of expanding content. Tencent also has the opportunity to find new transformation ideas in this track to meet the greater commercial interests.

Tencent's two kinds of content solution

Tencent and Byte now have the meaning of rowing the river.High frequency + high duration + pipeline content + monetary incentiveThis is the commercial flywheel of the byte system APP, with which Tencent cannot enter the standardized content entry-level application. But Tencent in the content side of the source advantage, bytes are also no way.

Standardized content production threshold is low, but fast decay; non-standardized content production threshold is high, can be used repeatedly, across the line of fire in the domestic operation for 12 years, is still one of Tencent's thickest cash cow, Tencent also shot across the line of fire into an online drama this year, it is said that word of mouth is OK.

This is the case with the game, not to mention the literary IP. Batman IP has been adapted into a movie for more than 50 years, and it is still being remade. It doesn't matter if some of the works have lost their reputation. IP still has its vitality.

Tencent's first solution is to slow down the expansion momentum of byte jump in the field of standardized content, and then strengthen the moat in the advantageous areas.In April this year, China Literature's management changed greatly, and Tencent's "Ali-style" takeover was eye-catching. From another point of view, it just shows Tencent's determination and will to integrate the upstream IP.

In the opinion of Zhang Heng, chief analyst of Guoxin Securities Media sector interviewed by Hu smell Pro, several kinds of content with the most IP value under PCG are nothing but source content. "content like music, literature, animation and so on has a long life cycle. As a matter of fact, content products such as movies and online dramas have reached the last link of realization, or the penultimate link, and the precipitating value is not as good as IP. "he said.

Zhang Heng believes that the potential value of Tencent lies in the opportunity to eat all the contents, operation and maintenance, and distribution on the same section of sugarcane. He also proved that the content realization efficiency of mango hypermedia is higher than that of iQIYI, Inc. 's advertising, "if PCG can link content and distribution well, you will find that the content value will not be weaker than the insertion of an information flow advertisement, especially the high-quality content of the head, the bonus to the brand is far from being replaced by CPI advertising. "

Tencent did not do very well in this area in the past, the revenue structure is highly dependent on value-added services (games + virtual props) and social / media advertising, the contributions from video and music are reciprocal, especially China Literature, the loss continues to expand.

There are many explanations for why this has not been done well in the past, such as federal governance, where successful content operation experience is reused to other teams, or short and long videos lack of joint operation.

The second solution to PCG is to expect product managers to play a role again, which has been the foundation on which Tencent has settled down over the past 20 years.

Since the "930th Revolution", Tencent has made every effort to build technology and content, so some people think that product manager culture is no longer important. We relayed this sentence to PCG insiders and learned that it was "not a thing". The other party also saidThe ultimate goal of building technology and content China TV is to provide a place where we can dig out the next "Zhang Xiaolong".

In fact, not only Zhang Xiaolong, looking back on the history of domestic Internet development of all the star product managers, what they have in common is very obvious, that is to understand human nature.Even Zhang Yiming's success in the early days of Jinri Toutiao should be classified as understanding human nature rather than machine rationality.

Machine rationality has been proved to be highly adapted to industrial content, but it may not be suitable for content-based products outside industrial content. Two of the most successful products so far are the products of industrial content watering. But the success of byte beating may also bind itself.Companies that have achieved great success are more or less path-dependent, including Tencent before the "930 change".

The content products that rely solely on the recommendation algorithm can not go far, and the recommendation algorithm can not be created out of nothing. It is difficult to find out the unknown because it enlarges the known.Xu Yilong, deputy editor-in-chief of Jinri Toutiao, said that the most effective ability of the algorithm is to identify what you are most interested in and what you are not interested in, but the algorithm has no solution to the "content you may be interested in" between the two.

The recommendation algorithm is especially suitable for products in the fast-growing phase. Under the premise that the click-through rate and exposure time are guaranteed, content creators can make a good profit by creating according to a fixed routine (title is king, subject matter is second, and content is the last).

However, with the intensification of competition and the differentiation of traffic, the exposure income obtained only by the recommendation algorithm can no longer satisfy the content creators, so it is necessary to introduce attention (to give private domain traffic) and search (to increase the exposure of long-tailed content). It is necessary to expand the information access area by hot / hot search (similar to the editor's recommendation of traditional portals).The point is that this kind of human behavior is better than machine algorithms to find out what "might be of interest". Things from 1 to 10 can be given to machines, but things from 0 to 1 can only be done by people.

"recommendation + search + focus + hotspot" is now standard for all content products in the network, as well as for content community products.

Look away from Tencent and byte jump and look at Tiger Pop, Little Red Book, Bilibili Inc., Kuaishou Technology, Weibo Corp. This is not the case. As the overall threat posed by the market size of the above-mentioned products to Tencent is far less than the byte jump, it is still a true book.

Jinri Toutiao and Douyin have already started the process of changing from information flow products and short video products to content community products. Perhaps the recommendation algorithm has left too deep a mark on the company, and the transformation process has not yet been completed.

Jinri Toutiao launched micro-headlines (Weibo Corp) and Wukong Q & A (to Zhihu) in 2017, and increased the weight of "user feedback behavior data" in the recommendation system. As a result, the two products are still not popular. Douyin is known as a short video community, but the media attribute is greater than the community attribute, and the content is not as granular as Kuaishou Technology.

There was a question on Zhihu Inc., "how to treat the rumors that Jinri Toutiao signed more than 300 Zhihu Inc. Vs in one breath". The answer that was most agreed with (ID: Zhang Jiawei) had a very mysterious explanation:Many words, too lazy to say on other websites, are easy to say in Zhihu Inc., which is the reason why many people are willing to stay in Zhihu Inc..

The second most popular answer (ID: why) is similar, to the effect thatMoney is important, but it is not the only or even the most important thing for content creators.

Apart from these material incentives, machine algorithms may not be able to generalize things that are difficult to generalize.

To say a digression, on platforms such as Tianya, Sina blog, Niubo, Wechat and Zhihu Inc., there have been a number of leading authors and the circles formed around them. In the eight years since Jinri Toutiao was founded, it feels different from the previous ones. When it comes to Jinri Toutiao, users are more likely to think of the platform and an event than the person behind the message, not to mention the social interaction between creators.

Only from this point of view, Bilibili Inc. is worth learning from other platforms, the interaction between UP master and official, and the interaction between UP master and UP master has been integrated with content creation. OpenTiger sniff Pro memberFrom the perspective of the product manager, I will tell you how Bilibili Inc. makes community products

The thing that has not been solved yet is the opportunity of Tencent. Of course, whether it can be done or not.

Wechat and QQ are communication tools in the final analysis and should not be confused with the community. The last famous community app inside Tencent was called Tencent Weibo Corp, which was officially closed not long ago.

If you take a detailed look at the layout of Tencent's community applications, you will find that there are very few phenomenal applications, and the friend network was defeated by Renren Inc and Tencent, who were exposed to plagiarism and then were taken off the shelves. On the contrary, Tencent's attitude of repeated defeats and repeated battles instead shows his determination to seize territory in this field.

From the perspective of public information, Tencent's layout of the inclusive community has not stopped. In June this year, Tencent News Express also transformed into a community-based product "flavor".In terms of layout, Tencent has one horizontal and one vertical.(below)Vertical is highly interactive content, horizontal is for young people. The content form is a mixture of picture and text, horizontal / vertical screen short video.

A typical example of highly interactive content is games. The game has a natural topic and social nature, and has a wide audience. The total number of followers of League of Legends Bar, Arena of Valor Bar and Crossing Fire Bar has reached 34 million, which is on a par with Li Yi Bar, the biggest post bar of Baidu, Inc..

In the past few years, Tencent has successively launched game community products such as Camp of Kings, first Tour, bonfire, sugar jar, soy sauce, flash and so on, not counting Wechat game circle and QQ interest tribe. Kuaishou Technology is also socializing around the reverse content of the game. Kuaishou Technology first relies on the community to do Mini Game, and then relies on Mini Game to socialize (fast flashlight pill). In terms of thinking, it is tantamount to doing the pros and cons of QQ's "social networking + Mini Game" game at that time.

The social / community business around young people seems to be dominated by QQ, but it is actually an undercurrent. Last year, the toilet MT, multi-flash, chat treasure with the sky line, the outside world's first reaction was "Wechat was besieged", but the multi-flash is obviously aimed at QQ. Far away, there are fast flashlight pills and Bilibili Inc. mentioned above, whose main audiences are young people.Communication business is not so much Tencent's basic market as young talent is Tencent's basic market.

Compared with dominant Wechat, socializing among young people is the "weak" area that other Internet companies such as Douyin, Kuaishou Technology and Bilibili Inc. most want to break through. At the group strategy meeting in the middle of last year, Liu Chiping commented on the achievements of QQ: DAU is still stable, the number of young users has increased, and has kept the challenges of many competitors. But Tencent has not been idle, and in September this year, a video social product called Maohu was released. This is not the first time, and certainly not the last time.

The retention paths of users of social products and content products are very different. Social products are easy to defend and difficult to attack, while content products emphasize that the best defense is offense.

The relationship between social products and users is closer to an one-shot deal. To socialize is to attract people at once, try to keep them, and never come back if you can't stay and leave. This business has a low fault tolerance rate, unlike content products-especially information streams / short videos-whose business model is similar to that of restaurants, which need to buy ingredients to process and sell to customers every day. For dishes that don't taste good, customers may leave today, but they will come back tomorrow because of new dishes to try.

In the information flow / short video products here, the purchase volume is particularly normal, as long as there is no problem with the supply and matching, there is a chance for users to retain. But there are too many uncertain variables in social / community products, such as discussion atmosphere, incentive mechanism, identity relationship, interaction frequency …... These things can not be simulated by machine algorithm, and no matter how large the purchase is, it is impossible to retain people. And the contradiction between the inside and outside, not only in front of the byte beat, but also in front of Tencent, the two sides returned to the same starting line.

Whether Tencent's product manager culture and IP reserve first play a wonderful effect, or byte beat to take the initiative by first-mover advantage, this community war is worth looking forward to.