When it comes to Internet companies, when there are repeated defeats in a certain field, the outside world often attributes it to a lack of "genes" and a certain business DNA. For example, there are rumors circulating in the industry that Tencent has no short video genes, Alibaba has no social genes, and Baidu has no video genes. This "company gene theory" has also sparked a wide range of discussions. Zhang Yiming commented on Weibo in 2016, "The gene theory is reasonable, but everything belongs to the gene, and it is no different from making excuses." Even if ByteDance is often evaluated as "without boundaries", in many fields, the barriers built by core defending companies are often difficult to break through. They dominate in short videos, but they fail repeatedly in social. In fact, in many fields and tracks, the market cannot achieve full saturation. It is for this reason that both established Internet companies that have grown up and startups that are still exploring are trying to take a place in it. Social, short video, search, education, the competition and challenges of these four fields and tracks have never stopped. The competition is fierce and there are countless swarmers, but at a time when the Internet dividend has disappeared and there are already "leading players" on the main track, there are very few real disruptors.
These fields are like bottomless pits. Everyone understands that there are still opportunities, but it is always difficult to achieve results. How difficult are these "tiankeng"? 01 Social: No one gives up No established Internet company is willing to let go of social networking easily. After sorting out Tech Planet, it was found that in 2019, Internet manufacturers alone launched more than 50 social products. Before April this year, 16 social apps including Tencent "Qingyuan", Ali "Taohua", and Kuaishou "Maoyou" were launched. Although 2019 is a social year, there are still no products that stimulate the broad market. On the one hand, social products emerge in an endless stream in the market, targeting different groups such as middle-aged and elderly people, post-95s, post-00s, and sinking markets, and are subdivided into fields such as interests, voice, video, and office work. On the other hand, there are enough social products running on the market, but people's essential social needs have not been fully met. The difficulty of social products is that it is difficult for acquaintances to migrate or re-establish social relationships; while for strangers, it is necessary Phone Number List to jump away from Momo’s existing products, the rising soul, etc., to establish real social and interaction. A steady stream of social products all focus on how to meet social needs in different scenarios, but it is difficult to break away from the existing product construction.
The cruel point of the social industry is that if you are not the first to do it, and you are not the first to run out, you will lose the opportunity. In fact, with the increasingly strict supervision of the social industry, the threshold for starting a business has gradually increased. In particular, at a time when the Internet dividend has disappeared as a whole, how to play new tricks with social products leaves fewer opportunities for product innovation or arrangement and combination. ByteDance, known as the “App Factory”, and Alibaba, which owns the “Alibaba Economy”, are hard to find a way out of it. For a long time, Ali was trapped in the shadow of "no social gene". Dingding has accidentally opened up the path of working in the workplace, and judging from the recent addition of functions such as "circles", Dingding also wants to become a social product. Social represents the traffic pool and the mastering of the social relationship chain. At the beginning of the birth of Pinduoduo, Yunji, and many micro-business enterprises, they all extended their tentacles to WeChat, where they can spread and grow rapidly. But today, it is no longer easy to share links to other products within WeChat. Social networking is not an industry that can be easily copied.