Can Social App Encircle Wechat Vertical Market Usher In Vitality?

Even though wechat has become the king of social communication, there are still latecomers eager to challenge it.

In the first half of this year, today's headlines include flash, chat and Luo Yonghao's APP. In addition, the "oasis" launched by micro-blog and Sohu's "Fox friends" have been on the stage again recently.

On October 21, during the sixth World Internet Conference, the government nails jointly developed by Zhejiang provincial government and Alibaba were officially released. It is understood that the government nail is an online government collaboration platform, which has the functions of application software integration of government exclusive address book, worktable with thousands of people, intelligent meeting, mobile office, etc.

In terms of competition pattern, both wechat and enterprise wechat have met rivals in their respective fields. At present, in the field of digital government, Alibaba has reached cooperation with 30 provinces and cities across the country. The digital government service covers 442 cities across the country, covering more than 1000 service contents, with a total of 900 million people.

After the emergence of new technologies, new ways and new demands, the mobile social market, which has been stable for many years, is surging, and the industry is on the verge of change. Lin fan, CEO of pulse, said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter that wechat's user base is huge, but not all social relationships are suitable for wechat. At the beginning of this year, a lot of social products have sprung up. It's still challenging to build a general social product. However, there are still great opportunities in some subdivided vertical fields, such as students, workplace, games and other relative vertical fields.

Focus on the people who just need it

Whether it's focused on workplace social networking, or nailed to the main business and government users, the people they are facing are more mature and have formed their own segmentation needs.

According to Jin Zhipeng, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of big data development administration, Zhejiang's Government nail has been fully covered by the six levels of Zhejiang, city, county, township, village and group (grid), activating 1 million 230 thousand users, 715 kinds of on-line office applications and 715 auxiliary decision-making applications.

For example, when applying for newborn related certification by Zhejiang residents, 60 pieces of information need to be filled in, 20 pieces of materials need to be submitted, and 5 windows need to be run, which takes 2 days. Now, the Zhejiang provincial government has launched the "one thing" for birth, which is to focus on the issues that need to be handled after birth, such as vaccination, birth medical certificate processing, household registration, medical insurance insurance, etc., led by the health department, coordinated by public security, medical insurance, human resources and social security and other departments.

Hu Wensheng, vice president of Hangzhou obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, commented that "the family members of the newborn can handle and get the certificate at the bedside." In addition, due to the wide coverage of the government industry, complex rules and high requirements for security and stability performance, the government nail has made professional research and exclusive customization from the aspects of address book, instant messaging, document management, work portal, open platform, security and operation and maintenance services.

"We have set up the government nailing business department, which will help the office mobile and digital transformation. In the future, government nails will also serve national ministries and commissions, large state-owned enterprises, etc. " Zhang Jianfeng, Alibaba cloud's president, told 21st century economic news that the goal of this product is to optimize business processes and improve the efficiency of government coordination, which is not a simple instant messaging function.

If the communication between government and enterprises is just needed, the social interaction of the workplace crowd is also essential. In Freya Lim's view, workplace social interaction is an open and collaborative platform, and there are often many interesting cooperation. When each user voluntarily discloses his identity, some ideas are easy to practice. He often finds that people from different companies and people of different roles are interconnected and cooperate. "Our goal is to connect people to people, rather than to become a daily chat tool just like WeChat. Because there are many relationships, there is no need to stay on WeChat, such as transactions, headhunting, consulting and so on.

He also revealed that the current pulse of revenue has been close to profitability, the current focus is to achieve more commercial realization. The main ways of revenue are member service, enterprise payment, etc. "At present, 60% of the income comes from enterprises and 40% of the fees from individual members."

From this point of view, social networking still shows strong rigid demand characteristics, and its market space is huge. Zhang Yi, CEO of AI media consulting, believes that wechat, with its long-term efforts, has occupied the top position in the mobile social market. However, with the change of technology and culture, people's social needs gradually tend to be personalized and diversified, and the long tail effect of mobile social product market gradually appears.

Is it hard to escape WeChat?

In the emerging new social products, there are also many bright products. But most of the latecomers are ephemeral. During the world Internet Conference, Zhang Zhaoyang, chairman and CEO of Sohu's board of directors, also spared no effort to recommend Sohu's Fox friend APP in an interview with the economic report reporters in twenty-first Century.

In this mobile social application, which focuses on young people's social interaction, users can publish multiple types of personalized content, including text, pictures, videos, links, and interact with people who are interested in them in various forms, such as attention, forwarding, comments, chatting, and viewing dynamics, so as to expand their social circle.

In the past few years, Sohu has been exploring social products. It has launched Sohu blog, Sohu Weibo and other products, but has chosen to withdraw from the competition with Sina. Why do we choose to enter the social sphere at this time? Zhang Zhaoyang believes that it makes up for the vast territory between strangers and acquaintances, so that people have a very relaxed leisure and a very good cognitive atmosphere.

At present, there are two groups of people for foxfriends, one is the post-90s, the other is the Post-70s. Zhang explained that the post-90s were particularly sensitive to new products and found that foxfriends could meet some of their needs. "The other 70 are the users of Sohu blog and Sohu Weibo. These people are back again."

Compared with Zhang Xiaolong's calmness and rationality, Zhang Chaoyang's social dream is obviously more perceptual. "To make a good product, you must love it very much, and work hard to polish it for a long time, so that you can finally do better than others. The media likes to classify this as a category, and investors also like to classify it as a category, saying that the tuyere is the tuyere. In fact, the really good thing, you can't describe which tuyere and category it is. It may be that the team loves the product very much, grinds it carefully and does it carefully. At last, the product erupts. "

For Sohu, as a social value chain connecting Sohu business, foxfriends is of great significance. On the one hand, the acquisition cost can be greatly reduced based on the strong social association attribute. On the other hand, as a social platform carrying Sohu business, foxfriends also promotes the overall synergy of Sohu business. However, the reason why most social products fail in the end is that they are weak in commercialization and lack of profitability. Thus, it is unable to support high operating and promotion costs.

When it comes to commercialization, Zhang rejected the current general e-commerce model. He believes that it is too early to talk about profit at this stage, and products still need to be cultivated. AI media consulting data shows that in 2018, the scale of China's mobile social users is 737 million, which is expected to grow steadily in the next two years. In 2020, it is expected to exceed 800 million people. The huge user group highlights the huge market space.

Zhang Yi believes that in the future, the mobile social market will be a comprehensive competition. Only products that achieve win-win flow and commercialization can win. Although the attraction of slightly aging wechat to young people is declining, it is not easy for most people to escape from wechat at this stage.

However, for the latecomers, they do not need to replace wechat, but get a piece of their own in the huge social market feast, and small and beautiful is not a choice either.